Here, as at Ottawa, a viceregal dinner-table is set off by the neat uniforms and skyblue facings of the aides-de-camp and secretaries. For some mysterious reason Lord Spencer put these officers into chocolate coats with white facings. But the new order soon gave place to the old again.
At the dinner to-night was Lord Ormonde, who is returning to London, but kindly promised to make arrangements for showing me at Kilkenny Castle the muniment room of the Butlers, which contains one of the most valuable private collections of charters and State papers in the realm.
Tuesday, Jan. 31.—I lunched to-day with Sir Michael Morris, the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, whom I had last seen in Rome at the Jubilee Mass of His Holiness. Sir Michael is one of the recognised lights of social life and of the law in Dublin. While he was in Rome some one highly commended him in the presence of that staunch Nationalist the Archbishop of Dublin, who assented so far as to say, “Yes, yes, there are worse fellows in Dublin than that Morris!” It would be hard to find a more typical Irishman of the better sort than Sir Michael, a man more sure, in the words of Sheridan, to “carry his honour and his brogue unstained to the grave.”
The brogue of Sir Michael, it is said, made his fortune in the House of Commons. It has hardly the glow which made the brogue of Father Burke a memory as of music in the ears of all who heard it, and differs from that miraculous gift of the tongue as a ripe wine of Bordeaux differs from a ripe wine of Burgundy. But to the ordinary brogue of the street and the stage, it is as is a Brane Mouton Rothschild of 1868 to the casual Médoc of a Parisian restaurant. “Do you know Father Healy?” said one of the company to whom I spoke of it; “he was at a wedding with Sir Michael. As the happy pair drove off under the usual shower of rice and old slippers, Sir Michael said to the Father, ‘How I wish I had something to throw after her!’ ‘Ah, throw your brogue after her,’ replied the Father.”
This brogue comes to Sir Michael lawfully enough. He belongs to one of the fourteen tribes of Galway. His father, Mr. Martin Morris, was High Sheriff of the County of Galway City in 1841, being the first Catholic who had served that office since the time of Tyrconnel. His mother was a Blake of Galway, and the family seat, Spiddal, came to them through a Fitzpatrick. “Remember these things,” said one of the guests to me, a Catholic from the south of Ireland, “and remember that Sir Michael, like myself, and, so far as I know, like every Irish Catholic in this room to-day, is a thoroughgoing Unionist, who would think it midsummer madness to hand Ireland over to the ‘Home Rule’ of the ‘uncrowned king,’ Mr. Parnell, who hasn’t a drop, I believe, of Irish blood in his veins, and who, whatever else he may be, is certainly not a Catholic. Didn’t Parnell vote at first against religion and in favour of Bradlaugh? and didn’t he do this to force the bargain for the clerical franchise at the Parliamentary conventions?”
“But there are some good Catholics, are there not,” I answered, “and some good Christians, and of Irish blood too, among the associates of Mr. Parnell?”
“Associates!” he exclaimed; “if you know anything of Mr. Parnell, you must know that he has no associates. He has followers, and he has instruments, but he has no associates. The only Irish men whom he has really taken counsel with, or treated, I was about to say, with ordinary civility, were Egan and Brennan. His manner with them was always conspicuously different from his cold and almost contemptuous bearing towards the men whom he commands in Parliament, and Egan, who directs his forces in your country, rewards him by calling him ‘the great and gifted leader of our race!’ ‘Our race’ indeed! Parnell comes of the conquering race in Ireland, and he never forgets it, or lets his subordinates forget it. I was in Galway when he came over there suddenly to quell the revolt organised by Healy. The rebels were at white-heat before he came. But he strode in among them like a huntsman among the hounds—marched Healy off into a little room, and brought him out again in ten minutes, cowed and submissive, but filled, as anybody can see, ever since, with a dull smouldering hate which will break out one of these days, if a good and safe opportunity offers.”
“How do you account, then,” I asked, “for the support which all these men give Mr. Parnell?”
“For the support which they give him!” exclaimed my new acquaintance, “for the support they give him! Bless your heart, my dear sir, it is he gives them the support! Barring Biggar, who, to do him justice, is as free with his pocket as he is with his tongue—and no man can say more for anybody than that—barring Biggar and M‘Kenna and M‘Carthy, and perhaps a dozen more, all these men are nominated by Mr. Parnell, and draw salaries from the body he controls; they are paid members, like the working-men members. Support indeed!”
“But the constituencies,” I urged, “surely the voters must know and care something about their representatives?”