“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.”