The Rebels of Ireland (104 page)

“It was all in Irish,” he explained. “The O'Connells had to translate, because most of us from Leinster didn't have enough Irish to understand. First, he reminds them of their duty, and they all look suitably solemn, but he isn't sure he has them. Then he reminds them of all the others that are voting as they should, and how accursed they will be by all their fellows if they let them down. That affects them considerably, by the look of it. And then comes the clincher. Did they not know, he cries, wagging his long bony finger at them, that one of the Catholic men voted for the Protestant—and that he was struck down by an apoplexy as soon as he stepped out of the booth? ‘Divine retribution will be swift,' he cries. ‘You may count upon it. The saints are watching, and taking note!' He was quite terrifying. I was frightened myself.”

The earl gave a wry smile. Stephen was chuckling. But Tidy was not amused.

“Do you mean that there was an unfortunate who was struck with an apoplexy, or that there was no such man?” he asked seriously.

“Heavens, man,” cried Stephen, “I haven't the least idea. What does it matter?”

“Does it not matter to thee whether a thing is the truth or a lie?” the Quaker asked.

“You haven't the spirit of devilment in you,” said Stephen, “or you would understand.”

“I hope,” answered Tidy quietly, “that I have not.”

It was a little while later, walking along the street where the local newspaper, the
Clare Journal
, had its offices, that Stephen caught sight of the big, blue-eyed fellow he had noticed in the band of ten
ants who'd been harangued by Father Murphy. They'd all voted for O'Connell. He'd checked. Now it remained to be seen whether Callan the agent would evict them, or whether he could be persuaded not to.

The big fellow was standing by a small cart and looking serious. Beside him was a girl, maybe ten or so, pale and with a solemn face. The big man had his arm around her shoulder. Father and daughter, obviously. Was he comforting her, or she him? She must know what he had done.

Pity, he thought, that the girl was so plain.

 

1843

 

It began quietly, in America. A farmer in the New York region, looking out over a field of growing potatoes one day, noticed that something was amiss.

Some of the potato leaves had spots on them. He waited a few days. More of the leaves were spotted now, and the ones he had first noticed had withered. The stems on which they grew seemed to be affected, too. That night, he discussed with his wife whether he should dig them up or lift the entire crop early.

The following morning, when he went out to the field, there was a stench of putrefying matter rising from the ground.

He set to work at once. He dug up everything that looked infected. Many of the potatoes were already rotting; in others, rot had clearly begun. When he had completed this work, he made a large bonfire and burned them all. About half of the crop was still in the ground.

Being a decent man, he went to all his neighbours and then into the local town, to warn of the blight and discover whether others were experiencing similar problems. A number of farmers were reporting the same thing.

Some days later, he saw spotting once again and said to his wife:
“Better lift the whole crop. Save what we can.” A good many of the potatoes were obviously infected, and these he destroyed, as he had the others. About half the remaining crop, fortunately, appeared to be sound, and these he stored in a pit.

Ten days later, he checked the crop he had saved. He picked out a potato and cut it open with a knife. It was rotten. He tried another. The same. Half the potatoes he had thought were sound were now useless.

Phytophthora infestans
: it was a fungal infestation. But where had it come from?

Nobody knew, but the likelihood was that it had come into the United States as an importation. For, desirous of avoiding any degeneracy in the potato stock, the American agriculturalists were in the habit of importing fresh seed potatoes from Peru. Some of the ships also brought guano, the seabird manure used as fertilizer. It seems likely that the fungus spread from the guano to the seed potato on the ship.

Having established itself in New York, the fungus was already starting to spread with astonishing rapidity. It would cross New Jersey and Pennsylvania. By 1845, it would reach the American Midwest.

The trade in seed potato was triangular. From America's eastern seaboard, the seed was exported east to Europe. By the time it was established in the Midwest, the blight would also appear in the Low Countries of Holland and Belgium, and on the south coast of England.

“You have never read
The Wild Irish Girl
?” Lady Mountwalsh looked at Dudley Doyle with astonishment. She thought everybody had.

Everyone liked Henrietta. She must be fifty, Doyle thought; yet there was still something girlish about the Englishwoman William
had chosen as his bride. And the complexion, the peaches-and-cream complexion that had turned heads in every drawing room in London and Dublin—it was still the same. That, and the china-blue eyes that were turned upon him now, and the delectable, plump little breasts. He envied Mountwalsh his marriage bed. The couple had been happy and had raised a healthy family. She might be a little silly, but there was certainly no malice in her. And she was, as he supposed, an enthusiast for all things Irish.

“And you,” she said, “with those dark, Celtic good looks.” He smiled. One had to like her.

“You know, Henrietta, in Irish, my name actually means ‘dark foreigner.' So I must suppose that my ancestors were Viking pirates,” he explained to her, “rather than Irish heroes.” Vikings who would certainly have married local Irish women, themselves a mixture of tribes from northern France and, so the legends said, people from the Spanish peninsula. Since those ancient days, what other strains would have entered the blood? Norman, Flemish, Welsh, English, to be sure. Some more Spanish, probably. His clever, somewhat ruthless mind enjoyed such analysis. “It's hard to know what Celtic means, really,” he remarked.

But Henrietta knew. It meant the romantic heroine of Lady Morgan's famous novel, the wild daughter of the “Prince of Connaught,” who wins the heart of the prejudiced Englishman and teaches him to love the glories of Irish wit and learning, bravery and generosity. It meant the purity of soul that came from the timeless Celtic wellsprings. It meant Hibernia—a land of heroes and mystics, a magical counterpart to the sterner beauties of Scotland in the novels of Walter Scott. It had made Ireland quite fashionable. In fact, Doyle had read the book, though he preferred to tease Henrietta gently by pretending that he hadn't. And if, to him, it was all nonsense, the fictional romantic Celt was at least an improvement upon the traditional view of the Irishman as a bog-dwelling murderer and devious papist—a slander that was still to be found in the cartoons of
Punch
magazine or the pages of any English newspaper.

Every time Henrietta went back to London with her husband, she told people about the Ireland she knew. True, he thought wryly, it was an Ireland that consisted of the big house on St. Stephen's Green and this great estate in Wexford, with its rolling pastures and its ornamental gardens. It was a land where you called upon similar-minded neighbours, enjoyed their dinner parties, where you were waited upon by their loyal Irish servants, played cards, went to the club. Since her husband was a decent man and one of the best landlords in Ireland, she had encountered a friendliness from the local Irish tenants and labourers that was entirely genuine. And all this was glossed with a magical Celtic romanticism that coloured the landscape like a charming evening sunset amongst the hills. However, if she induced some members of the English governing class to take a more kindly view of the western island, then so much the better, he supposed.

“This is a most excellent meal,” he added with a smile. Gaston, the Mountwalshes' chef, always performed miracles with the produce from the estate whenever he accompanied them into Wexford. Outside, the dusk was gathering. The magical season of Halloween, the old Celtic festival of Samhain, was only days away.

Much as he liked Henrietta, however, it was not her that he had really come to see. He glanced across the table at Stephen Smith. They hadn't spoken much yet, as the fellow had only arrived that afternoon, looking tired. But when William Mountwalsh had invited Doyle to stay, he had told him: “Stephen Smith is a man I think you should know better.” And William, he always reckoned, was a fair judge of men. “Though, of course,” the peer had added, “I know how hard you are to please.”

If his ancestors had always chosen to remain in the merchant class, Dudley Doyle had chosen a slightly different style. To all outward appearances, he looked, dressed, talked, and, to a large extent, thought like a country gentleman. He belonged to the Kildare Street Club, whose members were mostly landowners. But although he owned two farms in Meath, he had always lived in town except in
the summer months, when he resided in a seaside villa he had built at Sandymount, in the southern part of Dublin Bay. He had ample funds. The collection of Dublin properties that old Barbara Doyle had passed on to his grandfather was still in his hands. He owned a half share in a thriving wine merchants, and received ground rent from three large pubs. And though he met the country gentry at his club, at the races, or as a guest in their houses, he often preferred the company of the university men. At Trinity College, he had been a precise, classical scholar. But for many years now, he had chosen to occupy his spare time in the private study of political economy. Since being widowed two years ago, he had devoted himself to these studies even more. From time to time, if asked politely, he would even give a lecture upon the subject.