“God bless my soul!” exclaimed the gentleman who goes to Norwich, “if that is the kind of laws your American Irish will give us with Home Rule, I’ll go in for it to-morrow with all my heart!”
After an early dinner, I set out with Lord Ernest to see the Morley-Ripon procession. It was a good night for a torchlight parade—the weather not too chill, and the night dark. The streets were well filled, but there was no crowding—no misconduct, and not much excitement. The people obviously were out for a holiday, not for a “demonstration.” It was Paris swarming out to the Grand Prix, not Paris on the eve of the barricades; very much such a crowd as one sees in the streets and squares of New York on a Fourth of July night, when the city fathers celebrate that auspicious anniversary with fireworks at the City Hall, and not in the least such a crowd as I saw in the streets of New York on the 12th of July 1871, when, thanks to General Shaler and the redoubtable Colonel “Jim Fiske,” a great Orange demonstration led to something very like a massacre by chance medley.
Small boys went about making night hideous with tom-toms, extemporised out of empty fig-drums, and tooting terribly upon tin trumpets. There was no general illumination, but here and there houses were bright with garlands of lamps, and rockets ever and anon went up from the house-tops.
We made our way to the front of a mass of people near one of the great bridges, over which the procession was to pass on its long march from Kingstown to the house of Mr. Walker, Q.C., in Rutland Square, where the distinguished visitors were to meet the liberated Lord Mayor, with Mr. Dwyer Gray, and other local celebrities. A friendly citizen let us perch on his outside car.
The procession presently came in sight, and a grand show it made—not of the strictly popular and political sort, for it was made up of guilds and other organised bodies on foot and on horseback, marching in companies—but imposing by reason of its numbers, and of the flaring torches. Of these there were not so many as there should have been to do justice to the procession. The crowd cheered from time to time, with that curious Irish cheer which it is often difficult to distinguish from groaning, but the only explosive and uproarious greeting given to the visitors in our neighbourhood came from a member of “the devout female sex,” a young lady who stood up between two friends on the top of a car very near us, and imperilled both her equilibrium and theirs by wildly waving her hand-kerchief in the air, and crying out at the top of a somewhat husky voice, “Three cheers for Mecklenburg Street! Three cheers for Mecklenburg Street!”
This made the crowd very hilarious, but as Lord Ernest’s local knowledge did not enable him to enlighten me as to the connection between Mecklenburg Street and the liberation of Ireland, I must leave the mystery of their mirth unsolved till a more convenient season.
At Rutland Square the crowd was tightly packed, but perfectly well-behaved, and the guests were enthusiastically cheered. But even before they had entered the house of Mr. Walker it began to break up, and long files of people wended their way to see “the carriages” hastening with their lovely freight to the Castle. Thither Lord Ernest has just gone, arrayed in a captivating Court costume of black velvet, with cut-steel buttons, sword, and buckles—just the dress in which Washington used to receive his guests at the White House, and in which Senator Seward, I remember, insisted in 1860 on getting himself presented by Mr. Dallas to Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace.
CHAPTER II.
SION HOUSE, COUNTY TYRONE, Feb. 3d.—Hearing nothing from Mr. Davitt yesterday, I gave up the idea of attending the Ripon-Morley meeting last night. As I have come to Ireland to hear what people living in Ireland have to say about Irish affairs, I see no particular advantage in listening to imported eloquence on the subject, even from so clever a man as his books prove Mr. Morley to be, and from so conscientious a man as an acquaintance, going back to the days when he sat with Kingsley at the feet of Maurice, makes me believe Lord Ripon to be. How much either of them knows about Ireland is another matter. A sarcastic Nationalist acquaintance of mine, with whom I conversed about the visitors yesterday, assured me it had been arranged that Lord Ripon should wear the Star of the Garter, “so the people might know him from Morley.” When I observed that Dublin must have a short memory to forget so soon the face of a Chief Secretary, he replied: “Forget his face? Why, they never saw his face! It’s little enough he was here, and indoors he kept when here he was. He shook hands last night with more Irishmen than ever he spoke to while he was Chief Secretary; for he used to say then, I am told, in the Reform Club, that the only way to get along with the Irish was to have nothing to do with them!”
There was a sharp discussion, I was told, in the private councils of the Committee yesterday as to whether the Queen should be “boycotted,” and the loyal sentiments usual in connection with her Majesty’s name dropped from the proceedings. I believe it was finally settled that this might put the guests into an awkward position, both of them having worn her Majesty’s uniform of State as public servants of the Crown.