Chapter VII: Killarney

I know no place to compare with Killarney: so soft to the eye, so full of unspeakable grace. It is as a compendium of Ireland; all the characteristic features of the country are united there: the elegant “round towers,” drawing on the horizon the airy outline of their conic shafts; the soft moistness of the atmosphere, the tender blue of the sky, the intense green of the meadows, set off by long, black trails of peat, and the white, ochre, and red streaks which the grit-stone and clay-slate draw on the hill-side.

Within the oval circus formed by the mountains of Kerry, the Killarney lakes succeed one another like small Mediterraneans, all dotted with lovely islands, where myrtle and rare ferns grow freely, fostered by a Lusitanian climate. Every one of those islands has its legend, its own saint, buried under some old moss-grown mound; its ruined castle, its ivy-clothed abbey, paved with tombstones and haunted by some _banshee_. They are like large baskets of flowers floating on the clear, silent waters, whose peace is only broken now and then by the jumping of a fish, or the clucking of some stray teal. All there unite to form a landscape of almost paradoxical beauty. You think you have landed in fairyland, outside the pale of ordinary life.

The most illustrious of them is Innisfallen, where the monks wrote in the seventh century their famous _Annals_, the pride of the Bodleian Library. In viewing this enchanting island, you involuntarily fall to repeating the beautiful lines of Moore which you used to bungle in your school days, and of which you first realise the profound truth:

“_Sweet Innisfallen, fare thee well,_
_May calm and sunshine long be thine,_
_How fair thou art, let others tell,_
_While but to feel how fair be mine, etc._”

* * * * *

Along the shores of that range of lakes, two lordly domains display the noble arrangement of their parks: one is the seat of the Earl of Kenmare, lord-lieutenant of the county, late Lord Chamberlain to the Queen during the Gladstone Ministry. The other belongs to Captain Herbert of Muckross, late Member of Parliament. As far around as you can see the land belongs to either of those two landlords. Just as in the tale, down to the extremity of the valley, up to the very top of the far-away mountain, land and water, beasts and Christians, all belong to the “Marquis de Carabas.”

Some restriction must be made, however. Changes have been introduced lately. Only a few years ago it was a thing understood that of the two members which the borough returned to Parliament one must be the heir presumptive of the house of Kenmare, the other the chief of the house of Muckross. That is over. Now-a-days the Kerry voters send whom Mr. Parnell likes to the House of Commons. But the air of the parks is still the property of the two owners; none may breathe it without their leave. I hasten to say that the permission is most courteously given by Lord Kenmare to all tourists, and as readily (if less liberally) sold on the Muckross grounds to anyone willing to pay one or two shillings, according to his approach walking or on horseback.

The two parks are marvels, almost without other rivals in the world, for their prodigious extent, their admirably kept shrubberies and avenues, and the splendour and variety of the points of view which art has devised on the lakes. Those lakes themselves, with their islands, bays, and toy-peninsulas, their rippling brooks and foaming cascades, are only part of the beauties of the whole. Muckross is proud to possess the old abbey of the same name, and the Torc Cascade. Kenmare boasts Innisfallen, Ross Island, Saint Finian’s Tomb, the legendary ruins of O’Donoghue’s Castle, and a hundred other wonders. It is more regal than lordly, and there are indeed few royal residences which can boast such gardens.

You go away dazzled, enchanted, intoxicated with verdure, ozone, and poetic sights. You come back the day following, you almost wish to take root there for a sort of contemplative life, where you would discard any heavier occupation than catching salmon, smoking endless cigarettes, and reading over your favourite authors. A rich artist, it is said, being pricked with a violent desire of that kind, offered I don’t know how much ready money to Lord Kenmare if he would grant him five hundred square yards of ground on Ross Island. The offer was declined.

* * * * *

There is a reverse side to the picture; and it could scarcely be less brilliant. Killarney is a sorry borough of about four or five thousand inhabitants, more miserable looking than words can express. Except in the great hotels which English enterprise has raised for fleecing the tourists attracted there by the beauty of the lakes, there is not a vestige of ease or prosperity. No busy workman, not one manufacture is to be seen. The miserable shops exhibit a few dusty wares which nobody seems anxious either to buy or to sell. There is a despondent stillness about, and people look tired with doing nothing. The women, all more or less “tattered and torn,” wear a poor rag of a shawl on their heads. Half-naked children, wild-haired, full of vermin, swarm out of all the small alleys which open on the one street of the town. Only the Anglican and Catholic churches rise above the sordid little dwellings with a substantial and well-to-do air.

Go out of the village, follow the long walls which enclose the lordly seats, and after three or four miles you will find again the Irish country such as you have seen it everywhere. Turnip and barley fields, thin pastures, few trees or none at all. On the road-side occasionally is a consumptive cow, or a pig wallowing in mud fraternally with two or three bright-eyed urchins. Here and there a hovel with the traditional dung-hill and three hens. Nothing, in short, calculated to bring a new light on the agrarian crisis.

It is in Kerry, however, that the malady has reached its most acute state, they all tell me. But you could not believe how hard it is to obtain any definite information about those matters. People who really know about it feel a sort of shame to bare their national wounds before a stranger, and besides, the diversity of judgments makes it difficult to draw something positive from them. Every man has his party feeling, and is wishing to enforce it upon you. Provided with a good number of letters of introduction, and everywhere received with perfect cordiality, I have talked already with people of all conditions—landlords, agents, farmers, doctors, priests, and labourers,—without having obtained as yet any but individual views. Home Rulers and Orangemen have made me hear arguments that I know by heart from having heard them repeated these last eight years, ever since the crisis entered its actual phase. This is not the thing we want: we want _espèces_, as they say in French law; specific illustration, direct symptoms of the Irish disease.

And that is the difficulty. The habit of living among certain deformities so familiarises us with them that we are no longer able to perceive them, and still less to point them out. Moreover, when upon receiving a letter from London, a man is kind enough to ask you to dinner, to introduce you to his wife and daughters, to lend you his horse and trap, and to empty for your benefit his store of ready-made opinions, is it possible decently to ask him more? He has his own affairs, and cannot spend his time running with you through hill and dale in order to help you to unravel a sociological problem.

By a stroke of good luck I met the scout I wanted.

* * * * *

I was returning from an excursion to the Gap of Dunloe when, on the banks of the river which waters the Kenmare estate, near the bridge, I noticed a man of about forty, of middle height, poorly but neatly clad, who was walking in front of me and gave evident signs of wishing to enter into conversation. I had been so harassed lately by the swarm of cicerones and incompetent guides who crowd all ways to the lakes and sights around Killarney, that I had grown suspicious, and pretended not to see the man. But he had his idea and stuck to it. Slackening his pace, he began to whistle _La Marseillaise_.

That was saying plainly:—

“You are French, and I am a friend of France like all Irishmen. You are welcome here.”

Throughout the world it is the adopted form for such a declaration of love. On board a transatlantic steamer or in the sitting-rooms of a cosmopolite hotel, when a fair-haired or dark-haired new acquaintance seats herself to the piano and begins to play the march of Rouget de l’Isle, the French tourist can see his way: he is looked upon with no unfriendly eye.

There were no dark or fair tresses here, but only a bearded pepper-and-salt quadragenarian, with the patent purpose of hooking me at the rate of half-a-crown an hour: so I remained obdurate. But he, suddenly making up his mind:—

“Well, _Sor_,” he said to me with a soft voice and the most enticing smile, “how do you _loike_ our country?”

“Your country? I should like it a great deal better if one could go about it without being pestered by guides at every turning,” I said, but half-remorsefully.

“How true, sir! Those guides positively infest the place. And if they only knew their trade! But they are regular swindlers, beggars who steal the tourist’s money; the shame of Ireland, that is what they are!”

The conversation then commenced, and to say the truth I have no reason to repent it. The fellow is well-informed, quick-witted, incredibly talkative, and in five minutes has given me really valuable information, besides biographical details about himself. He is called MacMahon like many others in this country, for I have seen that name over twenty village shops already. Is he any relation to the Maréchal? No; he makes no pretension to that. But after all it is not improbable that they come from one root, for my friend is not, of course, without his relationship with some of the numberless kings of Ireland.

“And the Marshal is a great man, a brave soldier, a true Irishman. I have his picture at home. I’ll show it to you if you do me the honour to visit my humble roof, and accept a glass of ‘mountain dew.’”

* * * * *

My new acquaintance has been quill-driver at a land surveyor’s, and he knows many things. This, for instance: that all people here, from the most insignificant farmer to the biggest landowner, are in debt.

“All that glitters is not gold,” he says, with a melancholy smile. “Do you see that large expanse of land, sir? Well, those who own it are not perhaps richer than I, and have not perhaps always as much pocket-money as would be convenient for them. Their annual income goes to pay the interest of an enormous debt, the hereditary obligations which weigh on the property, and the normal keeping of it. Mr. Herbert, the owner of Muckross, had to emigrate to America, where he is now an attorney’s clerk, for his daily bread. The shilling you give for entering his park goes to the scraping of it. As for Lord Kenmare, he never sees as much as the tenth part of the revenue of his property, let alone his being forbidden his own grounds under pain of being shot dead! Lady Kenmare lives there alone with her children under protection of a detachment of the police.” So the masters of those two noble estates are exiled from them, one by mortgage, the other by agrarian hatred. O, irony of things!

“But Lord Kenmare’s not a bad landlord, is he?” I said to MacMahon.

“Far from it. His tenants are eight hundred in number, and there are not three evicted in the year. I know personally twenty of them who owe him four years’ rent and are never troubled about it. But he has taken position against the League—that is enough. And then, don’t you know, sir, the best of landlords is not worth much in the eyes of his tenants. _They want the land and they will have it._ But this is my house. Please come in, sir.”

* * * * *

Thus chattering, the communicative Celt had brought me to the entrance of a small low house in a by-street of Killarney. We entered a sort of kitchen-parlour on a level with the lane. No carpet or flooring of any kind but the simple beaten clay, a large old-fashioned chimney, a table, a few straw-covered chairs; on the walls a whole private museum in chromo-lithography: Pope Pius IX., the Marshal Duke of Magenta, Mr. Parnell, &c., and a branch of holy palm.

Upon our coming, a poor creature, pale and emaciated, had risen without showing any surprise.

“Mrs. MacMahon, _Sor_! Everilda Matilda, a French gentleman who honours our house by stopping a moment in it. Call the children, my dear; the gentleman will be pleased to see them, I think.”

A tall girl with brown eyes first presents herself, then a boy between twelve and thirteen years old, then a variety of younger fry. I am told that Mary has passed successfully her “standards,” that Tim has just begun Latin with an ultimate view to become a priest “like his uncle Jack;” then the “mountain dew” is produced. It is a kind of home-made whisky, not unpalatable.

At last mine host turns to his wife.

“Supposing, my dear, you show your lace to the French gentleman, to let him see what you can do when you are not bed-ridden. Perhaps he will like to bring back some little remembrance of Killarney to his ‘lady.’”

I was caught.

Everilda Matilda instantly produced a box containing cuffs and collars of Irish point, and all that remains to me to do, if I am not ready to forfeit my rights to the qualification of gentleman, is to buy a few guineas’ worth. Hardly is the matter over, than MacMahon turns to the future ecclesiastic—

“And you, Tim, will you not show the gentleman those sticks you polish so well?”

Caught again!

If each member of the family has his own private trade, the _mountain-dew_ threatens to be rather an expensive refreshment.

“I am greatly obliged to you,” I said, “but I have got already a complete collection of _shillelaghs_.”

MacMahon’s jaw fell visibly.

“But we could perhaps make another arrangement, that would be more advantageous,” I continued quietly. “You know the country well, you tell me?”

“As a man who has lived forty years in it and never left it.”

“Well, let us have a pair of good hacks; you lead me for a couple of days across field and country, and show me a dozen authentic cases of eviction, agrarian violence, or boycottism. If you will undertake this, and I am satisfied with you, upon our return I will take the whole lot of lace.”

You should have seen the glowing faces of the whole family! The affair was soon settled, and the day after we started.