Paddy at Home ("Chez Paddy")

by baron de E. Mandat-Grancey

It only takes half an hour to go from Kingstown to Dublin. When I reached the station I had the pleasure of making acquaintance with the jaunting car, the favourite carriage with the Irish, who often refer to it in their novels.

The jaunting car is certainly the strangest vehicle that an insane mind ever conceived. The hansom, with its seat placed like a box behind the hood, is sufficiently original, but when one has seen a jaunting car, one begins to think that the cab is a rational conveyance.

Evidently the first idea of the jaunting car suggested itself to an ingenious man who found himself the owner of an old packsaddle and the frame of a cart. To utilise these articles he put the saddle on the two wheels and Erin was dowered with a jaunting car, the only one of her institutions that the Saxon conquest has respected.

The coachman seats himself on one side of the rolling saddle. In my own case he placed my trunk next to him, I installed myself on the other seat with my feet on a thin plank, which, in case of collision, protects the wheels at the expense of the traveller’s legs, and we started at a very good pace to my great satisfaction.

I must own that I am delighted with this style of locomotion, which resembles nothing found elsewhere. The Swiss carriages with side seats, which were used a few years ago, are the only things I can compare them to, and it was in one of those vehicles that the legendary Englishman drove for three days round the Lake of Geneva, and then inquired where the lake was; he had not seen it, for he was sitting on the wrong side and his back was turned to it.

My first drive in a jaunting car also proved to me that mechanical laws are the same everywhere. The sentinel who guarded the gates of the Louvre could not free our kings from their consequences, and in spite of its power the Land League has no perceptible effect in this direction. On this occasion at every corner I was seized by an almost irresistible force, which, taking as its fulcrum the spot a little below the loins, where Dr. Liouville places the centre of gravity in the human body, threatened to throw me out upon the pavement. Thanks to the studies of my youth I recognised in this impulse the force which learned men call centrifugal, and defying its insidious attacks I clung to the car with both hands, quite ignoring the fact that I was outraging all sense of local etiquette. It appears that one must no more cling to a car in turning corners than hold on by the mane of a runaway horse.

The first thing that strikes the attention of a stranger arriving at Dublin is the tattered state of its inhabitants. When, owing to the social and economical condition of a country, the majority of its citizens are unable to afford themselves the luxury of even mending their clothes, custom really ought to allow them to dispense with garments entirely, at least in summer. It would be an act of charity and every one would profit by it. On one hand the eye would not be offended by the lamentable spectacle of an urchin who has but two hands with which to hold the tattered fragments of stuff that once formed a pair of trousers; on the other, the said urchin, freed from his absorbing occupation, might perhaps do some work, which is manifestly impossible now. I venture humbly to suggest this idea to those conscientious philanthropists who seek every means of relieving suffering humanity. But it is not only the street arabs that are clothed in this way. The art of mending seems absolutely unknown here. I am sure that I have not seen one person in ten whose garments are not torn. My driver’s sleeve only holds on to the jacket by a miracle of good nature, and his trousers are slit from the knee to the ankle.

At every corner of the street one sees groups of women, their hair falling round the face, their dresses, full of holes, only reach the knees, leaving their incredibly dirty feet and legs visible below their rags. In hot countries poverty matters little. At Cadiz, Naples, and Cairo we see numbers of people who are certainly quite as poor as these. But they do not look miserable. The sun supplies nearly all they need. If it does not feed it comforts them. A Neapolitan lazzarone may only have eaten a slice of water-melon, but he looks satisfied. Here, under the cold grey skies, in the muddy streets, these poor creatures fill one with pity. The drawn faces, the hollow, brilliant eyes, have a hungry look which makes my heart ache.

I went and dressed at Shelburne House, the best hotel in Dublin, which looks over Stephen’s Green, the Hyde Park of the Irish capital. I then took another jaunting car and drove to the office of the United Ireland. Most of the heads of the Irish movement are absent from Dublin just now through the elections, but the newspaper editors are naturally at their posts and I wish to make the acquaintance of the two most important of them—Mr. O’Brien, editor of the United Ireland, and Mr. Dwyer Gray, editor and owner of the Freeman’s Journal, to both of whom I have letters of introduction.

To-day the elections commence. I say commence, because in England things are not managed in the same way that they are at home. When an election is about to take place the Queen issues an official notice, a writ, to each electoral division by a special officer. Committees are then formed and each candidate must be nominated to the sheriff within a given time by a specified number of the electors. At the same time money for the purposes of the election must be placed in his hands—such as placards, notices, &c. &c. Of course this sum varies, with the number of voters, but it seldom exceeds more than 120l. or 160l.