One Irish Summer

by William Eleroy Curtis

The street-car system of Dublin is excellent. It reaches every part of the city and all the lovely suburbs, and every line starts at a lofty column, which was erected many years ago in the middle of the principal street in honor of Horatio Nelson, the greatest of Irish sailors, the hero of the battle of Trafalgar. The cars are large and neatly kept, the conductors and motormen are very polite and love to give information to strangers, although they are paid only thirty and thirty-six shillings a week, which would certainly make men of their occupation very reticent in America. The roofs of the cars are arranged with comfortable seats, from which one can see everything within the range of human vision and gratify his curiosity about what is behind the high stone walls, green with lichen and ivy and overhung with lustrous boughs. There isn’t much satisfaction going about in an automobile in the immediate vicinity of Dublin, because the roadways are mere tunnels between walls eight feet high and overhung with foliage, which makes a perpetual twilight, a damp, cool atmosphere, a dustless ride, and a picturesqueness that an artist would admire. The owners of suburban homes have shut themselves in so successfully that nobody can see what they are doing or enjoy the wondrous beauties of their private parks. But the seats on the top of a tram car permit the public to penetrate their secrets, give an abundance of fresh air, gratify the love of motion that we all inherited from our savage ancestors, and enable us to look beyond the barriers into beautiful gardens and groves.

The River Liffey, as I have told you in a previous chapter, divides all Dublin into two parts and empties into a bay about four miles below the business limits of the town. The bay is famous for its beauty, and is closely embroidered with history, legend, and romance. One street-car line follows the river and the north shore as far as the ocean, and then turns northward to accommodate the population of several pretty watering-places and fishing-towns. Another line, also starting from Nelson’s Pillar, follows the south bank of the Liffey and the bay and encircles a most picturesque and romantic landscape. It takes three hours to make a round trip by either of these routes, and one can spend an entire afternoon or indeed a whole day with profit on both of them.

We will take the south side first. The track runs through the best residence section of the city and several of the prettiest suburbs down to the port of Kingston, where all deep-draft steamers have to receive and discharge their passengers and cargoes because the water is too shallow for them above. The turbine ferries that cross St. George’s Channel from England land their passengers there and send them by rail into the city.

Between the frequent villages along the train line are comfortable and spacious mansions surrounded by beautiful grounds owned and occupied by the wealthy citizens of Dublin, and occasionally there is a long row of “semi-detached villas” occupied by “the prosperous middle classes,”—brick houses of two and three stories built in pairs, with strips of lawn on either side and quite a little space for a garden at the back. Every house has a name painted on the gatepost as well as a number, and that is a matter of great importance, because, when Miss Genevieve says she lives at Heatherhurst, Princes’ Crescent, it sounds a great deal more aristocratic than No. 1660 Rockville Road. Princes’ Crescent is a long block of two-story brick houses on a curve in the street; Heatherhurst is one of them, situated about the middle, twenty feet front and sixty feet deep, with thirty feet of lawn in the foreground and a garden at the rear. And these houses are much more comfortable than any the city can furnish, and I do not know of any town so well provided with suburbs as Dublin.

Sackville Street, Dublin, Showing Nelson’s Pillar.

There are several historical places on the road. Beyond Booterstown is Blackrock, where an ancient granite cross in the center of the main street marks the limit of jurisdiction of the lord mayor. Many years ago it was customary for that official after his installation to ride out there and fling a dart into the waters of the bay, as a symbol of his right of admiralty; but these old-fashioned demonstrations of power and prerogative have been abandoned for stupid parades and long speeches.

Just before entering Blackrock the tramway passes the entrance of a lovely estate christened “Frascati,” after a favorite resort of Rome. It formerly belonged to the Duke of Leinster, and was an early seat of the Kildare family, and one of the strategic rendezvous of the Geraldines, for two centuries the strongest clan in Ireland. Frascati has a pathetic interest to every one, and particularly to all Irish patriots, because for several years it was the home of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Pamela, his mysterious French bride. It was there they spent their honeymoon and there he left that fascinating little person while he was off on political missions preparing for the Revolution of 1798. Her letters, full of domestic details and loving prattle, written during this period, have been preserved, and give us a charming impression of the character of a woman who suffered much for the cause of Irish liberty, even poverty and shame.

Edward Fitzgerald was a brother of the Duke of Leinster and the Earl of Kildare, an amiable, high-minded, warm-hearted, gallant fellow of learning and culture and fine manners. He served as a major in the British forces during the American Revolution, and for a time was an aid-de-camp on the staff of Lord Howe. He was dismissed from the British army, however, for active sympathy with the French Revolution, went to France, and took refuge among the friends he had made there. There he met and married Anne Syms, better known as “Pamela,” a woman of great personal and mental attractions, whose origin was involved in a mystery that was never revealed, and concerning whom many romantic stories have been written and told. It is generally believed that she was an illegitimate daughter of Philippe Égalité, Duke of Orleans, sometimes called “Philip the Handsome,” by an Irish woman named Syms, and was, therefore, a half-sister of King Louis Philippe of France. By Edward Fitzgerald she had three children: Edward Fitzgerald, who was an officer in the British army; Pamela, who became the wife of Sir Guy Campbell; and Lucy, who became the wife of Captain Lyon of the Royal Navy. Several years after Fitzgerald’s tragic end she married John Pitcairn, an American, with whom she came to the United States, and lived in Philadelphia until her death in 1831.