THE REMINISCENCES OF AN IRISH PATRIOT.• A CERTAIN sad sense
of unreality comes over us as we read one contribution after another to the literature of such an uncertain quantity as Home-rule. There is no denying the trials, the suffering, and the devotion which the many and various champions of Ireland have given to their cause in their own times and fashions, with a hope which, like a very mirage, recedes ever more and more mockingly into the distance even as its votaries pursue it. To say that such a cause is hopeless altogether is more than one can ever venture to say, seeing the extraordinary power of revival that it has so continually shown. But we cannot resist the belief that, apart altogether from the blows that have been dealt to it by the disappearance of the strange, powerful, almost Robespierre-like, figure of Parnell from the scene, and by the depressing jocularity of the Rosebery regime, a certain want of reality has grown up round the whole business, born partly of the very methods which Parnell devised so effectively for their purpose, at least, as it seemed for the time. To substitute Parliamentary tactics for armed, if hopeless, rebellion was by degrees to soften manners and enmities, little as it seems so on the surface;—the association was so intimate, and the very amenities which caused such a mixture of laughter and anger on the floor of the House of Commons had in them so much that tended to better knowledge and more peaceful understanding. Indeed, it looks as if, with Parnell, the more sombre aspects of the war had taken their departure altogether. What can be the outcome of such a genial rebel as Mr. Justin McCarthy, a bright and successful Englishman of letters, whom everybody likes and everybody meets at dinner, instead of wishing to see his head where historically of course it ought to be, on the griffin by Temple Bar, cheek-by-jowl with Bishop Butler's beloved old annotator ? The most earnest of English Home-rulers seem to agree that the book is closed for a time. At what chapter will it open next?
We have been led into these remarks by the vein of specu- lation to which the book of an old-fashioned Home-ruler like Mr. Daunt can scarcely fail to lead. It is painfully sad and unsatisfying, and obviously the outcome of a genuine spirit of patriotism which scarcely understands the beginning of what it wants or what it leads to,—f nil of suggestions of mistrust here and indecision there, no one party sympathising with or even allowing for the failings or virtues of another, bat ever at odds and all at sea. Yet here was a man of character and position, grave enough in life, we should imagine, though he has crammed his book so fall of anec- dotes of every description as to make him figure as half.
• A Life Spent for Ireland: Leine Selections from the Journal. of the Late W. J. O'Neill Daunt. Edited by his Daughter. London: Fisher Unwin.
jester and half-patriot. The lover of Irish stories will find them here, old and new, in such abundance, that we much fear he will find the feast too tempting for his taste, and, in spite of himself, leave the grave fields of history behind to indulge in a debauch of anecdote, for a large proportion of which, unavoidably as we suppose, " the priests " are as usual responsible. There is something in their connection with the people in Ireland which seems so perpetually in contact with the comic side of things, that it does not perhaps tend always wholly to edification. In some places our patriot introduces his stories into his diaries, which are but a half-edited record after all, without reason or prelude, in this simple way :—
" Story of a Frenchman who wanted eggs for breakfast and forgot the English for ail. Vaiterre, vat is dat walking in de
yard ? A cock, Ah ! and vat you call de cock's wife '— The hen, Sir ? And vat you call the shildrens of de cock and his vife Chickens, Sir.'—' But vat you call the shicken before
dey are shicken ? Eggs, Sir.'—' Bring me two.' "
We were somewhat more amused by the story of the Pro- testant soldier who married a Catholic wife, and having joined her faith for the purpose, was taxed by his former pastor with the proceeding, and admitted that " Father So-and-So had made a — Christian of him." But Mr. Daunt's tales are not all so short as this, and the story of a young Tipperary squire who, when salmon-fishing at the foot of the lawn of the lady of his affections, caught his line in the tail of a bull, and followed him—bull, hook, and all—to the lady's door, culminates in nothing more, after much detail, than that "the lady stared in surprise." The style of Mr. Daunt is at times rather portentous, as when, after telling us that Dr. Strauss, the famous Freethinker, married an opera-dancer, he proceeds to say that "that cir- cumrotatory particle of the great Pantheistic existence possessed divergent qualities," and left him. It must be con- fessed, however, that Mr. Daunt's daughter, who has edited his journals and records, is a little hard upon him when she selects this episode, and this alone, for quotation from what she describes as a somewhat lengthy review of Strauss's Vie de Jesus. And we are disposed to conclude that it is the lady's own love of stories and eccentricities that gives so prominent a place to the jokes in her father's work. Mr.
Lecky, who writes a letter which finds its place in Miss -O'Neill Daunt's preface, gives him a high character among the Irish Nationalists. He was formed in the school of O'Connell, and took a prominent part in the Home-rule movement of Isaac Butt, which in its general lines met his cordial approval. His aim was the union, on a national basis, of all classes, creeds, and interests in Ireland, and the restoration, through such a union, of the National Legislature. Bat for these very reasons he was, as Mr. Lecky says, very
unlike the Nationalists of later days. Though he followed his idea consistently from youth to age, he was "profoundly
disappointed when the movement was afterwards turned into an agrarian war and a war of classes, and he had no sympathy with the violence and crime that followed." It is only quite at the end of the volume that we are introduced to Parnell, and then only through allusions so brief and inconclusive that we do not get any real clue to Mr. Dannt's opinions upon him or his methods of campaign. In one place he says that Parnell had received a letter from him, and "expressed willingness to correspond—but cud bono ?" In another be speaks without commendation or the reverse of the Parnell tribute, and expresses desire for a conference with him; but he impresses upon another correspondent his feeling that, whatever he may himself have thought of it, the Parnell agitation was " all the fault of the landlords." That he wanted two Chambers in his Irish Parliament, and was no believer in the virtues of one, while holding that the Vice- royalty called for reform but not for abolition, comes out in another part of the work. But it is amazingly hard to con- ciliate these Irish champions. From many parts of the book Mr. Daunt seems to credit Gladstone at all events, with a sincere desire to serve the Irish cause ; yet under January 4th, 1888, we find the following :—
"Mr. Gladstone has been justly and ably denouncing the Union in the Westminster Review and other periodicals. He has given many unanswerable arguments against it. He might add, how- ever,—' If you want to appreciate the evils of the Union, look at me, W. E. G. When Ireland lay crushed and prcstrate beneath the miseries of a seven years' famine, when multitudes had perished by starvation, and when all who could obtain the passage- money were flying to America, I, W. E. G., seized the propitious moment to give a spur to the exodus by adding 52 per cent. tc the previous taxation of Ireland, and pleaded the terms of the Union as my justification for inflicting this scourge on the suffering people.' " So much for Mr. Gladstone's conversion ; but, indeed, whether he calls himself Daunt or Parnell, it seems the truth that no Irish Nationalist can, or will, believe in the virtues or good faith of any Englishman whatever. John Morley was the last who was believed in; but the statue to Oliver Cromwell undid him. It is amusingly characteristic to read that Mr. Gladstone sent the author a postcard to say how glad he was of his approval, which, as he is careful to explain, was in- tended to apply only to the Minister's admission of wrong.
Mr. Daunt was the member of an old family, and through- out his life sincerely respected. The best parts of his book relate to O'Connell, of whom he had already published some personal recollections. But one parts from him with the sad feeling of a wasted life. Mr. Leoky himself says of him that he was wholly wanting in the gift of historical impartiality :- " Your father's hatred of the Union," he writes to Miss Daunt, " and his antipathy to English rule in Ireland, had become an overmastering passion, and he had fully persuaded himself that Pitt and Castlereagh, and indeed most past English Govern- ments, acted through motives of an almost demoniacal character. If he had possessed more power of graduating opinions and dis- criminating motives, or realising the point of view of those who differed from him, and understanding that there are two sides even to questions relating to Irish Nationality, if he had accus- tomed himself to judge men and actions by the moral standard of their own age, and not by that of a later one, your father would have been a better writer, and would have exercised a more healthy influence on Irish literature."
Previous page
