Compton Mackenzie
IT might be considered an expression of reactionary opinion if 1 were to denounce all one-way streets. Let me hasten to testify that in London the one-way streets have been chosen with commendable discretion and have done their gallant little bit toward easing the traffic situation. On the other hand, some of our great cities impress the motoring stranger with having chosen their one-way streets under the inspiration of the Minoan labyrinth. I am told, though I think it must be an exaggeration, that there are motorists who have spent weeks in trying to reach the centre of Birmingham; the police of Bristol wear a permanent expression of commiseration for drivers involved in their cats'-cradle, whom they always seem to help with a kindliness and a courtesy that is an honour to the West Country. There are moments when York Minster appears unattainable to the visitor in a car. Once in despair I entreated a passer-by to tell us which was the right street to take for the Minster, and he directed us to the local office of the Ministry of Labour. No doubt the traffic problems of Birmingham, Bristol and York presented exceptional difficulties and their complicated solution may be accepted by the stranger as inevitable. I do think, however, that too many small towns are now insisting Upon one-way streets in the same spirit as too many pedestrians dawdle on what they perversely call " zebbra " crossings meNly to assert their own importance. If ever a town was entitled to impose one-way streets on motorists that town is the ancient town of Wexford, with its ma7e of the narrowest streets 1 have encountered anywhere in Great Britain or Ireland. Nevertheless, in that fine spirit of independence which defied Cromwell and was the heart of the rising of 1798, Wexford has not surrendered to the fashion. A magical spirit of co-operation animates the motorists of Wexford, where the most intricate Gordian knot of traffic is unravelled at once without a single one-way street to assist.
That spirit has achieved more than co-operative driving in Wexford; it has made it possible for a town of about 12,000 inhabitants to offer a " Festival of Music and the Arts " which is a challenge to the criticism so often repeated that Ireland since her independence has become parochial. This year Donizetti's delightful opera Don Pasquale was given in the old Theatre Royal, a small house about a century and a half old which was converted into a cinema for a while and therefore has lost a good deal of its original theatrical arrange- ment. Nevertheless, the Theatre Royal is still able to give its audience that intimate 'rapport with the actors which was characteristic of the old provincial theatres. Four Italian singers of international repute were engaged for the chief parts, and the chorus of local singers, whose Italian had been taught to them by Father Enda, a Franciscan friar, held their own admirably. In fact, I never heard as good a,performance of Don Pasquale, and the production, the setting and the musical direction were of the highest quality. Besides the opera on the stage, there were films of operas in the cinemas with con- certs, exhibitions df arts and crafts, a play from the Abbey Theatre, and a Festival Forum with the best questions and the best audience imaginable. More significant than the pro- gramme, whatever its merit, was the ability of this compara- tively small Irish town to express itself as a festival. The man who persuaded his neighbours in County Wexford to support this enterprise is a local doctor with a passion for Operatic gramophone records fiercer even than that of Desmond Shawe-Taylor, and Dr. T. J. Walsh, after founding an Opera Study Circle in Wexford four years ago, turned this a year later with -the aid of an almost supernatural optimism into the present Festival. -What Wexford has been able to do might be done by fifty towns of the same size in Great Britain and Ireland, and the benefit to art would be immense.
As I walked about the narrow streets of that Irish town, so curiously English in many ways in spite of its agelong and redoubtable resistance to English rule, and watched the gay people under a myriad fairy-lamps, I thought of that August in 1924 when, after the bitter blood-stained years from which modern Eire was to be born, the first Tailtean Games were celebrated. G. K. Chesterton, Augustus John, Edwin Lutyens, John and Hazel Lavery and others who had spoken out for Ireland at a time when it was difficult to argue the Irish case without starting a miniature riot at a dinner-table, had been invited as guests of the Irish nation to attend the great occa- sion. had the good fortune to share with G. K. Chesterton the hospitality, of Tim Healy in what until recently had been the Vice-regal Lodge. Dublin in spite of the festivities still bore many marks of the troubles. "Death to the Murder Gang" and other menacing slogans were painted in green on the walls of gardens along the roads, and as we got into the cars that were to drive us to the Horse Show the Governor- General said in his most solemn voice, his eyes twinkling above his beard, "We will probably be shot at. but I'm sure you won't let that spoil the day." I replied that I, At any rate, was safe because I should be sitting to leeward of G. K., and therefore protected against any bullet.
I was wishing during the Wexford .Festival that Tim Healy could have lived to see the happy occasion, and that I could have been sitting again with a decanter of old Irish whiskey between us and until three or four o'clock in the morning listening to tales about the parliamentary fights of long ago, G. K. having been safely in bed since midnight.
In the course of those reminiscences the Governor-General made a remark about Gladstone which has remained in my memory as the most notable tribute I ever heard paid to him. Tim Healy was talking about the Parnell crisis and was telling of a visit he had paid to Gladstone. "And I said to him, ' Sir ' . . ." then he paused and eyed me almost owlishly over his beard. " You know," he said in solemn tones, "we all of us always called him ' Sir.' " Could any Prime Minister before or since have exacted from every single member of that old Nationalist Party such an admission of respect?
One morning the Governor-General announced he had something he wanted to show me. I followed him out into the gardens of the Vice-regal Lodge, the old warrior walking ahead, his hands clasped under the tails of his coat. At last we came to a cemetery of the pets of various Viceroys and Vicereines. Here among the graves of bygone spaniels, pugs, ponies and what not was a representation in stone or marble of a sapling tree. "Read the inscription," the Governor-General commanded. I have forgotten the exact wording, but it was to the effect that this memorial had been erected to a sapling planted by some Vicereine which had failed to survive, and added that she who planted it had herself unfortunately soon followed her sapling's example to the great grief of the Viceroy. "And we paid for that,' Tim Healy commented. Then he swung round, his hands still clasped beneath the tails of his coat, and I followed him back to the Lodge.
Yes, Tim Healy, who was almost the only one of the old Nationalists, to adapt himself to the new Ireland created by Sinn Fein, would have been gladdened by the way that borough of Wexford which he represented in Parliament from 1880 to 1883 was recognising the contribution it could make to the European tradition. The fourth Wexford Festival will be held at the end of October next year: it will provide a remarkable experience for the visitor from Great Britain.
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