The Red Hand of Ulster/Chapter 10

FIND by consulting my diary that it was on the 30th of June that I went to Dublin. I am not often in Dublin, though I do not share the contempt for that city which is felt by most Ulstermen. Cahoon, for instance, will not recognize it as the capital of the country in which he lives, and always speaks of Dublin people as impractical, given over to barren political discussion and utterly unable to make useful things such as ships and linen. He also says that Dublin is dirty, that the rates are exorbitantly high, and that the houses have not got bath-rooms in them. I put it to him that there are two first-rate libraries in Dublin.

“If I want a book,” he said, “I buy it. We pay for what we use in Belfast. We are business men.”

“But,” I explained, “there are some books, old ones, which you cannot buy. You can only consult them in libraries.”

“Why don’t you go to London, then?” said Cahoon.

The conversation took place in the club. I lunched there on my way through Belfast, going on to Dublin by an afternoon train. I was, in fact, going to Dublin to consult some books in the College Library. Marion and I had been brought up short in our labours on my history for want of some quotations from the diary of a seventeenth-century divine, and even if I had been willing to buy the book I should have had to wait months while a second-hand bookseller advertised for it.

Trinity College, when I entered the quadrangle next day, seemed singularly deserted. The long vacation had begun a week before. Fellows, professors and students had fled from the scene of their labours. Halfway across the square, however, I met McNeice. He seemed quite glad to see me and invited me to luncheon in his rooms. I accepted the invitation and was fed on cold ham, stale bread and bottled stout.

Thackeray once hinted that fellows of Trinity College gave their guests beer to drink. Many hard words have been said of him ever since by members of Dublin University. I have no wish to have hard things said about me; so I explain myself carefully. McNeice’s luncheon was an eccentricity. It is not on cold ham solely, it is not on stale bread ever, that guests in the Common Room are fed. If, like Prince Hal, they remember amid their feasting “that good creature, small beer,” they do not drink it without being offered nobler beverages. When the University, in recognition of my labours on the Life of St. Patrick, made me a doctor of both kinds of law, I fared sumptuously in the dining hall and afterwards sipped port rich with the glory of suns which shone many many years ago on the banks of the upper Douro.

After luncheon, while I was still heavy with the spume of the stout, McNeice asked me if I had seen the new paper which was being published to express, I imagine also to exacerbate, the opinions of the Ulster Unionists. He produced a copy as he spoke. It was called The Loyalist.

“We wanted something with a bite in it,” he said. “We’re dead sick of the pap the daily papers give us in their leading articles.”

Pap is, I think, a soft innocuous food, slightly sugary in flavour, suitable for infants. I should never have dreamed of describing the articles in The Belfast Newsletter as pap. An infant nourished on them would either suffer badly from the form of indigestion called flatulence or would grow up to be an exceedingly ferocious man. I felt, however, that if McNeice had anything to do with the editing of The Loyalist its articles would be of such a kind that those of the Newsletter would seem, by comparison, papescent.

“We’re running it as a weekly,” said McNeice, “and what we want is to get it into the home of every Protestant farmer, and every working-man in Belfast. We are circulating the first six numbers free. After that we shall charge a penny.”

I looked at The Loyalist. It was very well printed, on good paper. It looked something like The Spectator, but had none of the pleasant advertisements of schools and books, and much fewer pages of correspondence than the English weekly has.

“Surely,” I said, “you can’t expect it to pay at that price.”

“We don’t,” said McNeice. “We’ve plenty of money behind us. Conroy—you know Conroy, don’t you?”

“Oh,” I said, “then Lady Moyne got a subscription out of him after all. I knew she intended to.”

“Lady Moyne isn’t in this at all,” said McNeice. “We’re out for business with The Loyalist. Lady Moyne’s—well, I don’t quite see Lady Moyne running The Loyalist.”

“She’s a tremendously keen Unionist,” I said. “She gave an address to the working-women of Belfast the week before last, one of the most moving—”

“All frills,” said McNeice, “silk frills. Your friend Crossan is acting as one of our agents, distributing the paper for us. That’ll give you an idea of the lines we’re going on.”

Crossan, I admit, is the last man I should suspect of being interested in frills. The mention of his name gave me an idea.

“Was it copies of The Loyalist,” I asked, “which were in the packing-cases which you and Power landed that night from the Finola?”

McNeice laughed.

“Come along round with me,” he said, “and see the editor. He’ll interest you. He’s a first-rate journalist, used to edit a rebel paper and advocate the use of physical force for throwing off the English rule. But he’s changed his tune now. Just wait for me one moment while I get together an article which I promised to bring him. It’s all scattered about the floor of the next room in loose sheets.”

I read The Loyalist while I waited. The editor was unquestionably a first-rate journalist. His English was of a naked, muscular kind, which reminded me of Swift and occasionally of John Mitchel. But I could not agree with McNeice that he had changed his tune. He still seemed to be editing a rebel paper and still advocated the use of physical force for resisting the will of the King, Lords and Commons of our constitution. It is the merest commonplace to say that Ireland is a country of unblushing self-contradictions; but I do not think that the truth of this ever came home to me quite so forcibly as when I read The Loyalist that it would be better, if necessary, to imitate the Boers and shoot down regiments of British soldiers than to be false to the Empire of which “it is our proudest boast that we are citizens.” The editor—such was the conclusion I arrived at—must be a humorist of a high order.

His name was Diarmid O’Donovan and he always wrote it in Irish characters, which used to puzzle me at first when I got into correspondence with him. We found him in a small room at the top of a house in a side street of a singularly depressing kind.

McNeice explained to me that The Loyalist did not court notoriety, and preferred to have an office which was, as far as possible, out of sight. He said that O’Donovan was particularly anxious to be unobtrusive. He had, before he became connected with The Loyalist, been editor of two papers which had been suppressed by the Government for advocating what the Litany calls “sedition and privy conspiracy.” He held, very naturally, that a paper would get on better in the world if it had no office at all. If that was impossible, the office should be an attic in an inaccessible slum.

O’Donovan, when we entered, was seated at a table writing vigorously. I do not know how he managed to write at all. His table was covered with stacks of newspapers, very dusty. He had cleared a small, a very small space in the middle of them, and his ink-bottle occupied a kind of cave hollowed out at the base of one of the stacks. It must have been extremely difficult to put a pen into it. The chairs—there were only two of them besides the editorial stool—were also covered with papers. But even if they had been free I should not have cared to sit down on them. They were exceedingly dirty and did not look safe.

McNeice introduced me and then produced his own article. O’Donovan, very politely, offered me his stool.

“McNeice tells me,” he said, “that you are writing a history of Irish Rebellions. I suppose you have said that Nationalism ceased to exist about the year 1900?”

“I hadn’t thought of saying that,” I said. “In fact—in view of the Home Rule Bill, you know—I should have said that Irish Nationalism was just beginning to come to its own.”

O’Donovan snorted.

“There’s no such thing as Irish Nationalism left,” he said. “The country is hypnotized. We’ve accepted a Bill which deprives us of the most elementary rights of freemen. We’ve licked the boots of English Liberals. We’ve said ‘thank you’ for any gnawed bones they like to fling to us. We’ve—”

It struck me that O’Donovan was becoming rhetorical. I interrupted him.

“Idealism in politics,” I said, “is one of the most futile things there is. What the Nationalist Party—”

“Don’t call them that,” said O’Donovan. “I tell you they’re not Nationalists.”

“I’ll call them anything you like,” I said, “but until you invent some other name for them I can’t well talk about them without calling them Nationalists.”

“They—” said O’Donovan.

“Very well,” I said. “They. So long as you know who I mean, the pronoun will satisfy me. They had to consider not what men like you wanted, but what the Liberal Party could be induced to give. I don’t say they made the best bargain possible, but—”

“Anyhow,” said McNeice, “we’re not going to be governed by those fellows. That’s the essential point.”

I think it is. The Unionist is not really passionately attached to the Union. He has no insuperable antipathy to Home Rule. Indeed, I think most Unionists would welcome any change in our existing system of government if it were not that they have the most profound and deeply rooted objection to the men whom McNeice describes as “those fellows,” and O’Donovan indicates briefly as “they.”

“And so,” I said, turning to O’Donovan, “in mere despair of nationality you have gone over to the side of the Unionists.”

“I’ve gone over,” said O’Donovan, “to the side of the only people in Ireland who mean to fight.”

Supposing that Ulster really did mean to fight O’Donovan’s position was quite reasonable. But Babberly says it will never come to fighting. He is quite confident of his ability to bluff the conscientious Liberal into dropping the Home Rule Bill for fear of civil war. O’Donovan, and possibly McNeice, will be left out in the cold if Babberly is right. The matter is rather a tangled one. With Babberly is Lady Moyne, working at her ingenious policy of dragging a red herring across the path along which democracy goes towards socialism. On the other hand there is McNeice with fiery intelligence, and O’Donovan, a coldly consistent rebel against English rule in any shape and form. They have their little paper with money enough behind it, with people like Crossan circulating it for them. It is quite possible that they may count for something. Then there is Malcolmson, a man of almost incredible stupidity, but with a knowledge, hammered into him no doubt with extra difficulty, of how to handle guns.

O’Donovan and McNeice were bending over some proof sheets and talking in low whispers; there was a knock at the office door, and a moment later Malcolmson entered. He looked bristlier than ever, and was plainly in a state of joyous excitement. He held a copy of the first number of The Loyalist in his hand. He caught sight of me at once.

“I’m damned,” he said, “if I expected to see you here, Kilmore. You’re the last man in Ireland—”

“I’m only here by accident,” I said, “and I’m going away almost at once. Let me introduce you to Mr. McNeice and Mr. O’Donovan.”

Malcolmson shook hands with the two men vigorously. I never shake hands with Malcolmson if I can possibly help it, because he always hurts me. I expect he hurt both McNeice and O’Donovan. They did not cry out, but they looked a good deal surprised.

“I happened to be in Dublin,” said Malcolmson, “and I called round here to congratulate the editor of this paper. I only came across it the day before yesterday, and—”

“You couldn’t have come across it any sooner,” I said, “for it’s only just published.”

“And to put down my name as a subscriber for twenty copies. If you want money—”

“They don’t,” I said, “Conroy is financing them.”

“Conroy has some sound ideas,” said Malcolmson.

“You approve of the paper, then?” said McNeice.

“I like straight talk,” said Malcolmson.

“We aim at that,” said O’Donovan.

“I’m dead sick of politics and speech making,” said Malcolmson. “What I want is to have a slap at the damned rebels.”

“Mr. O’Donovan’s point of view,” I said, “is almost the same as yours. What he wants—”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Malcolmson, “and I need only say that when the time comes, gentlemen, and it won’t be long now if things go on as they are going—you’ll find me ready. What Ireland wants—”

Malcolmson paused. I waited expectantly. It is always interesting to hear what Ireland wants. Many people have theories on the subject, and hardly any one agrees with any one else.

“What Ireland wants,” said Malcolmson dramatically, “is another Oliver Cromwell.”

He drew himself up and puffed out his chest as he spoke. He must, I think, have rather fancied himself in the part of a twentieth century Puritan horse soldier. I looked round at O’Donovan to see how he was taking the suggestion. Oliver Cromwell I supposed, could not possibly be one of his favourite heroes. But I had misjudged O’Donovan. His sympathy with rebels of all nations was evidently stronger than his dislike of the typical Englishman. After all, Cromwell, however objectionable his religious views may have been, did kill a king. O’Donovan smiled quite pleasantly at Malcolmson. I dare say that even the idea of a new massacre of Drogheda was agreeable enough to him, provided the inhabitants of the town were the people to whom he denied the title of Nationalists and Malcolmson wanted to have a slap at because they were rebels.

Then McNeice got us all back to practical business in a way that would have delighted Cahoon. McNeice, though he does live in Dublin, has good Belfast blood in his veins. He likes his heroics to be put on a business basis. The immediate and most pressing problem, he reminded us, was to secure as large a circulation as possible for The Loyalist.

“You get the paper into the people’s hands,” he said to Malcolmson, “and we’ll get the ideas into their heads.”

Malcolmson, who is certainly prepared to make sacrifices in a good cause, offered to hire a man with a motorcycle to distribute the paper from house to house over a wide district.

“I know the exact man we want,” he said. “He knows every house in County Antrim, and the people like him. He’s been distributing Bibles and selling illuminated texts among the farmers and labourers for years. He’s what’s called a colporteur. That,” he turned to O’Donovan with his explanation, “is a kind of Scripture reader, you know.”

If any one in the world except Malcolmson had suggested the employment of a Scripture reader for the distribution of The Loyalist, I should have applauded a remarkable piece of cynicism. But Malcolmson was in simple earnest.

“Will you be able to get him?” I said. “The society which employs him may perhaps—”

“Oh, that will be all right,” said Malcolmson. “There can’t be any objection. But if there is—I happen to be a member of the committee of the society. I’m one”—he sunk his voice modestly—“of the largest subscribers.”

I am inclined to forget sometimes that Malcolmson takes a leading part in Church affairs. At the last meeting of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland he said that the distribution of the Bible among the people of Ireland was the surest means of quenching the desire for Home Rule. Free copies of The Loyalist for the people who already have Bibles and a force of artillery are, so to speak, his reserves.