ROYALTY IN IRELAND. T HE relations between "the incompatibles," as Matthew
Arnold termed England and Ireland, have always been marked by the most curious misunderstandings on each side. "If only those misunderstandings could be cleared up ! "—that is what all earnest well-wishers to the union of both countries are perpetually saying to themselves. We are by no means sure that people in England quite catch the use that may be made of either a Royal visit or a Royal residence in the sister isle. We think that no little use may be made of these, but not perhaps in the sense in which it is generally taken. The spirit of misunderstanding enters again into this problem, and tends to thwart its solution. We will explain what we mean. A not uncommon attitude on the subject is, we fancy, that Royalty is to be used to charm away political discontent, to convert political hostility into friendliness, to break up the Separatist element, and to make Ireland as loyal to the -Union as Scotland. Irishmen are to be stroked and caressed, to be fed with sugar-plums and other dainties, to be drawn from allegiance to a bad cause (or at least an impossible cause), and to be won over to the cause of loyalty and union. We, of course, wish, and wish most strongly, to see the Irish people in cordial union with England; and yet, little as we believe in the permanence or strength of any definitely Separatist ideal in England, we should feel even greater contempt for the Home-rule move- ment if we thought the people of Ireland were to be drawn away from it by a Royal visit or a Royal residence. Ireland would, indeed, be an absolutely incomprehensible country if, after long years of fierce agitation and the display of violent anti-English sentiments, she were all at once brought round to political salvation by any agency of such a kind. We will do the Irish people the justice of believing that they are not quite so flighty, so super- ficial, as this view of a Royal visit would suppose.
The real ground on which the beneficial effects of a Royal visit to Ireland rest is quite different. It is an advertisement for Ireland, it brings her in an amiable aspect before England, and enables English people to think of Ireland from other than a mere political point of view. For years Irish politics are dinned into unwilling English ears, and then there is a long pause, during which we are apt to go to sleep and forget that such a country as Ireland exists. That has been the normal character of Anglo-Irish relations during the last seventy years, and a very unfortunate condition of things for both countries it has been. We had at the beginning of that epoch the violent Catholic agitation under O'Connell. That was settled, and we again forgot Ireland. Then came the Repeal agitation, with its monster gatherings and its grandiose sensationalism, to be followed on its collapse by the sentimentalism and poetry of Young Ireland. These movements having run their course, a period of lassitude and indifference followed, partially broken up by the performances of the Pope's brass band, which merely aroused the more unreasoning form of English Protestant bitterness. The dead calm was again broken by the terrorism of the Fenian agitation. The Irishman, who had appeared in English popular imagination as a slave of Rome, now loomed large as a revolutionary and a rebel. As soon as the Fenian danger was past, English indifference resumed its fatal sway, to be again changed into indignation and alarm by the rise of the Parnellite portent. In this way we see how unfortunate have been the relations of the two countries, due to the fact that Ireland never presented herself in any other light to English imagination than as either "a forgotten, far-off thing" or as a deadly foe. What has been needed above all things has been the setting of Ireland in a new light,—a changed aspect was the thing to be desired. It is from this point of view that we think the Royal visit serves a most valuable purpose. The Duke of York will not suddenly persuade the Southern Irish to become loyal Britons, but his tour in Ireland will serve to show that country in a new and charming light to Englishmen, who will discover that Ireland is something other than a nest of sedition or a country suggesting dismal problems about rent. Ireland stands revealed as one of the most fascinating and attractive lands in Europe, a pleasure-ground for the tourist, a paradise for the angler and fisherman, a retreat for the weary and the invalid, a lovely land of flashing rivers and emerald meadows. In a general way we all know this, as we have heard from our earliest days of the "Emerald Isle" and its attractions, but- we do not fully realise it. It is amazing how few English people have travelled in Ireland for pleasure. The American tourist has found out the charms of Ireland, and is very apt to land at Queenstown, and visit the fairy scenes of the South-West, and the vales and rocks of Wicklow. But you may meet cultivated English people by the score who have been in every country in Western Europe save Ireland ; while to the mass of average English people in London and the Midlands, and the country districts generally, Ireland. is a foreign country, suggesting politics mainly, and butter and bacon in a subsidiary degree.
Royalty can do much to change this feeling, for it is one of the best and most effective advertising agencies in this age of advertisers. The German Emperor has taken thousands to Norway, the Queen of England has made of Deeside one of the favourite, as it is one of the most health-giving, resorts in the British Isles. The Queen of Italy has made the fortune of Gressoney, the Prince of Wales has rendered the coast of Norfolk known to large numbers who knew nothing about it a generation ago. If the Duke of York can present Ireland to English popular imagination as a pleasant land, as one of the most charming of pleasure-grounds, easily accessible to the English tourist, he will have rendered to England and Ireland alike a very substantial service. " The incom- patibles" will at least stand in some different relation to one another from that of constant political strife. The day of the agitator is for the time over, the somnolent period is in full swing; but instead of wasting that period in mere indifference, it can and should be utilised for the purpose of showing Ireland at her best, of present- ing her in a new and attractive light. Royalty is by no means unpopular in Ireland. There is, indeed, in the Irish character an exuberance of sentiment for popular or highly placed individuals, which was never more signally displayed than on the occasion of the famous visit of George IV. The notion that the Irish are Republican because there was or is a body called the Irish Republican Brotherhood, or because the Irish Members refused to join in an address to the Queen, is quite a delusion. They have less of the special Republican feeling than most European peoples, their sentiment always runs to indi- viduals rather than to general ideas, they have the old tribal feeling for chieftains, and they have absolutely no ground of quarrel with Royalty. We think, therefore, that much good in the way we have suggested may come out of the Royal visit to Ireland.
But let us say candidly that, if Ireland is to be ranked among the successful and attractive pleasure-resorts of Europe, as it might and ought to be, some changes must take place there. Beautiful as many of the noted scenes of Ireland are, there is no special provision made for the touitst; indeed, there is less than in any country with which we are acquainted. Irish accommodation is, as a general rule, dear and bad. There are lakes in Ireland almost as beautiful as those of Switzerland or Italy, but there are no cheap and pleasant hotels on their banks, where one may Jive in comfort as one can live at Montreux or Stresa. or Bellaggio. An atmosphere of squalor is by no means rare, an aspect of dingy and untidy discomfort is only too common in Ireland. Why the charges should be so high in a laud where the mass of the people are poor, where labour is cheap, where provisions are abundant, we do not know ; but such, as a rule, is the fact. The towns are less attrac- tive than in almost any country, and the inn is very often as unpleasant as a corresponding English inn is charming. The tourist in the West or South of Ireland does not want the luxury of the Schweitzerhof, but he does ask for cleanliness, for dinner-napkins, for windows that shut and blinds that can be drawn down, and carpets without holes, and plates that are unbroken. We do not say that these features are universally absent in Ireland, but we do say that the average Irish inn leaves much to be desired, and that English tourists will not visit Ireland in great numbers until something approaching to the com- forts of a Swiss or English hostelry can be found more generally in Ireland. Perhaps the problem of prices will adjust itself when the demand is more extensive ; but the spread of any effective demand in Ireland is dependent on a better supply of the ordinary and generally expected amenities of travel. The people are usually generous and anxious to please, but they have not yet accustomed their minds to the thought that their country is competing as an attractive tourist resort with lands where cheapness, corn- fort, and, ordinary luxuries can easily be obtained. Easy- going indifference has been one of the chief defects in the- Irish character ; to persevere, to excel by patient attention- to details and by the exercise of forethought, is now the- special need of Irishmen. If they can add to their many attractive qualities these homely virtues, they will do not, a little to make their island a centre of attraction for lovers of scenic beauty all over the world.
Previous page
