Oddly enough, his passion, and the naive profession of it, may be the easiest thing about him to explain. Nineteenth-century men had many curbs on the ways in which they could express themselves. Despite some unexpectedly swift mail services, communication was generally limited, so a romance had few escape valves.
As a further restraint, all aspirant lovers were weighted down with Victorian respectability. In any wooing they did, men like Charles were obliged to convey purity of heart. It's even remarkable that he was able to speak to April without a chaperone (although that probably had to do with her self-assurance).
So in terms of managing his own life in his early forties, the most positive thing to be said of Charles O’Brien is that in his lowest moments, he proved capable of taking some sort of action, however indirect. As witness his trip to Bruree, where, unable to heal himself, he had healed someone else.
And, of course, he displayed his historical value by the way he describes his visit—with brief but eyewitness clarity. Against the background of the era's great theme—“land, land, land,” as he earlier put it—he reported, a moment at a time, people's lives. With small, even delicate touches, he captured their moods, feelings, details—as with the tubercular young wife. In other words, such strength as Charles O’Brien had yet developed lay in his acute powers of observation.
The general knowledge of the day has served an important purpose when setting down my History. In this spirit, I wish to record the number of people living in Ireland during the periods about which I have been writing, because the Census findings in descending generations tell a powerful story of Ireland.
If I look at the population in my father's boyhood, a total of 8,175,000 people lived in Ireland in 1841. After Black '47, the worst year of our great potato famine, that number shrank drastically, and in a Census taken the year after I was born, the Census of 1861, the total population amounted to 5,797,000. Of these, 4,504,000 professed Catholicism, and the remaining number of 1,293,000 consisted of “Protestants”—which included in the main Anglicans or Episcopalians, as well as Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists.
On the year 1881, I can cast no such light; I have been unable to acquire the figures from the authorities in Dublin, who tell me that they “can't find them.” My most recent figures, which come from the Census of 1901, show the population of the island at 3,221,000, with a thousand fewer men than women. Therefore, from 1841 to 1901, almost five million people—that is to say, sixty percent of Ireland's inhabitants—left the country, whether through migration or death. It is widely understood that almost all of these came from the native, or Catholic, population.
Given my family's mixture, I was most interested in the polled figures of the religious denominations. In the one instance I have been able to acquire, it seemed that the Catholics outnumbered their landlord Protestants by between three and four to one. But I did not need a Census-taker to tell me that; the Irish people know their country. In some Catholic houses, I even heard them claim that the proportion fell closer to ten percent owning ninety percent.
Nor have I ever needed a Census-taker to tell me that I lived in a land of two peoples—and of such marked contrasts. I rode through the country for many years, on early mornings, high noons, late evenings, and often on dark nights; I rode from province to province, from county to county, from town to town, from village to village; I rode into places a horse had difficulty climbing; I rode down broad streets, gay with awnings. And in my journeyings I met and talked to two peoples, all the time, everywhere, deep in their baronies, boroughs, and parishes, two categories of Irish who resembled each other not at all.
They wore different clothes, ate different foods, and read different books; they danced to different music, answered to different Gods, asked different questions. “Many a time and oft,” as the poets and story-tellers say, I reflected upon these divisions on such a small island, and marveled at how wide was the chasm.
When I visited an Anglo-Irish—that is to say, Protestant—residence, I met gentlemen in shiny boots or shoes, in cutaway coats and fine trousers or knee-britches, with rings on their fingers and linen on their backs. They shone in waistcoats or vests made of brocade or silk, often of rich colors. At their throats, they folded elaborate cravats or, sometimes, wide and thought-provoking bow-ties. When going to church on Sunday, they sported hats and greatcoats; some carried walking-sticks. At the hunt, a few affected the red coat of the English—“the pink” as they call it, after Mr. Thomas Pink, the preferred tailor of many Englishmen and, therefore, of many Anglo-Irishmen.
The ladies of the Anglo-Irish wore gowns, and they cultivated airs of fashion. They professed an awareness of London and Paris; some even talked of America and what the “quality” wore there. I took it that the clothes in which I saw them—dressed for receiving visitors on ordinary days or for visiting their friends or for dining—reflected the world abroad.
Therefore, I concluded that London and Paris and the United States of America had a taste for brown and gray, and in summer, yellow and green, with trimmings of lace and other embroidery. Unless faced with a widow—always dressed simply and in black—I encountered bright fabrics and elaborate designs. Most women wore their hair up, except when retiring for the night. All gowns observed the ankle, and only in circumstances of great good fortune did one glimpse a shoe. But in time, I perceived such restraint beginning to ease, particularly among the younger women. When April strode about Paris, she cared not that her ankles showed now and then.
An Irish tenant farmer and his wife, however, dressed very differently. Their appearance generally lacked style; they could not afford fashion; and they scarcely wore any color other than brown for both man and woman, or green, and sometimes an unattractive black. In good wear, on Sundays, they might sport shirts or blouses of white, but in general they confined themselves to drab colors from easily available—and therefore inexpensive—fabrics. Among the Catholics I have seen serge but no silk; they wore tweed but no twill; no barathea, no bombazine, some sleaze, especially among the very poor, and a little cotton and linen.
They had no style; their tailors were often their wives, or a local village man who had little training, no flair, and poor ability. The women's skirts reached to the floor; the men's trouser-legs terminated above the ankle. Both sexes wore boots, and it would be a sign of a certain well-to-do comfort if, to Mass on a Sunday morning, a wife wore shoes rather than boots. Their children, in the main, went barefoot. In the—rare— childless house, a little more quality might be seen in the costume of husband and wife.
As to food: in the great houses of the Anglo-Irish, I have eaten some disgusting meals. I often wondered whether the Catholic cooks of my Anglo-Irish friends spent a deal of time trying to poison their privileged employers. This theory, however, collapses upon scrutiny, because the kitchen staff had so little knowledge of cooking that they would not have known where, or how, or in which dish to apply poison.
Some meals were worse than others. One day in March 1892, having been long expected for luncheon, dinner, and breakfast at L—— House, I arrived at a quarter before noon. The butler (who had bulging eyes, one of them turned to the wall—quite disturbing) led me straight to the dining-room, where sat my old friend Daniel B.
“You are so punctual, Charles. Luncheon will begin presently. Let us pity ourselves in advance.”
I sat down, and in due course, his mother, Lady G., and his sister, Miss K., appeared. Both greeted me prettily and Lady G. said, “Only a true friend would stoop to share our food.”
Miss K. added, “This is not a house that flatters the palate.”
Daniel completed the sentiment: “But excellent for the bowels.”
Luncheon was served. At that moment I began to understand the slenderness of the ladies. Judging from the offering before me on the table, they cannot have eaten much on any day of the week. I still do not know what lay in my plate; I can only describe it, and I shall not permit myself to recall it at length.
All seemed gray or black—excellent colors in themselves, but not in meat or potatoes. I thought I was looking at beef until Lady G. said, “Why must we always have mutton?”
To which her daughter replied, “Mama, this is pork.”
Lady G. replied, “I lost my sense of taste the day that I came to live here.”
Daniel ate his meal heartily and with great speed.
“The only way,” he said, “in which I can address such offerings is by eating very fast. I bypass the mouth and aim straight for the throat. At least the stomach is filled by my method.”
“Mr. O’Brien, please drink much water,” said his sister. “It is necessary.” She did not explain why.
A pudding arrived, which required Daniel to stand up and press the knife down with great force in order to cut it. I was quite unable to chisel even a crumb from my portion; for a while I contemplated licking the side, but I gave up when I saw that the dog, named Disraeli, refused Daniel's piece and left the room.
As the maid took away the plates, Lady G. said, “Mr. O’Brien, are you a religious man?”
“Not at all, madam,” I said, “but it is my principle to respect those who are.”
“Good,” she said. “You will note that we did not say a Grace before our meal, because we simply could not bring ourselves to say, ‘Oh, God, for what we are about to receive make us truly thankful.’ ”
Her daughter said, “Here, we say a Grace after we have dined.”
Daniel: “My father began this practice. He passed away soon afterward.”
Miss K.: “He passed away one night after dinner.”
Lady G.: “You may have heard it, Mr. O’Brien—Hebrews, thirteen: eight.”
All three bowed their heads and intoned, “Jesus Christ, yesterday, and today: and the same forever.”
Strangely, the food of the Catholics could prove more generally edible, however spare it might have been. On many occasions I have eaten in the humbler houses of the tenant farmers and the cottagers—the “peasants,” a term that they dislike. For economic reasons, they could not provide much variety at table, and it was the more fortunate who ate two meals a day. For breakfast they took porridge, made of oatmeal and cooled with the milk of their domestic cow or, more often, goat. But it was often excellent porridge, salted and with a good consistency. (Porridge must be almost capable of being poured, must hesitate on the thick side of liquid; and the best method is to mix milk with water equally at twice and a half the quantity to that of the oats.)
No matter how good the oatmeal, however, affluence stayed away from the table. Though all the family partook, they often had to wait their turn for the use of a utensil; the bowl or spoon had to be rotated according to the seniority of the family members. The father went first; the mother usually waited for the last child to have eaten.
If they were well enough off to take luncheon, it typically consisted of no more than a bowl of milk, with perhaps some of the soda-bread the woman of the house had baked, if she was industrious and if the family could afford flour. But in many houses no such meal was afforded, and all, including the youngest children, had to wait until evening. Then the family dined (I hesitate to use the word) on potatoes that had been boiled in hot water.
Of some such families, I have heard of an irony that they practiced— that they called their evening meal “potatoes-and-point.” This derived from the fact that the family had, hanging from the kitchen rafters, a flitch of bacon, which would remain there until Christmas dinner. However, until then, all raised their potatoes on their forks and pointed at the bacon, in the pretended belief that the flavor of the bacon would some-how travel through the smoke of the kitchen and invest their potatoes with its tang.
As will be understood, this culinary experience differed severely from that of some of the Great Houses—where, should the cook be a person of capacity, often foreign, it was not unusual to dine on pheasant and salmon, pastries and wine. But mostly, these delicacies were also dreadfully prepared.
When I observe that these two peoples of Ireland “read different books,” I am arrested. Books stand at the center of my family's and my country's lore.
Not all of my forebears possessed the gift of “footwork,” as described by my father. One antecedent, by name Michael Joseph O’Brien, who lived in the south of the county around the year 1790, had received some education abroad, where some of the great Catholic universities contentedly took in Irish boys who sought education. This Michael Joseph went first to Louvain, where he took a dislike to the Belgians. He fared better in Salamanca. (“The Spanish have wine,” said my father, “and the Belgians have only beer.”)
Upon his return, my forebear was shrewd enough to conceal all his volumes about his house, because the possession of books was, for a native Irishman, a serious crime in those days. But Michael Joseph O’Brien grew defiant and quoted from his books when arrested. He was flogged and sent to Van Diemen's Land, a poisonous island off Australia, where he prospered and eventually died among his many children.
When education and the owning of books became free of criminality, many Catholic households—even quite poor ones—rushed toward reading. Printing-houses in Dublin began to enjoy a vivid trade. People would read anything; some printers even published in daily book form the proceedings of sensational court trials.
As the century wore on, Mr. Yeats and Lady Gregory began to make clear the value of ancient Ireland's traditional legends and culture, and literature became a symbol of national patriotism. The Catholic Irish flocked to these renditions of their past. In their houses, I have heard them read aloud the mighty tales of Celtic gods and heroes—of the boy-hero Cuchulainn (whom some call “Coo-Hualann” and some “Koo-Kullen”), of the warrior-god Finn MacCool and his hunters. They regale me with the stories that they find in these books; they know that such tales were originally handed down by word of mouth, and now they joyously rediscover them—and pass them on.
I have taken care to acquire some myself; and here is a story that I tell when I am among them. When I first heard it from an old story-teller, I took the precaution of transcribing it while I remembered it well, and since then I have memorized it; I rehearse it often.
As you all well know, Ireland is a country where magic rises out of the ground. There's magic around every corner, in the branches of the trees, in the beards of the bushes. The story I'm going to tell you is about magic that came out of the woods one day in County Louth.
If you go to the village of Dunleer, there's a hill. Nearby there's a great plain of land, and in days gone by there was a wood bordering that plain; it ran all around the edge of it like the whiskers on an old man's chin. Before our time and before that time again, great warriors and hunters strode this beautiful country, and the greatest of these was a man called Finn MacCool. He was named Finn because the word means “blond” and he had hair the color of straw on snow. And he was named MacCool because he was the son of a man called Cool.
Finn always hunted with a band of companions. He was a young man and young men like each other's company, and there was no wife at home to tell him that she didn't like his friends. One day they were all on this plain, hunting near Dunleer, and out of the woods steps this beautiful deer. She was young, she was limber, she was lovely, not much older than a faun. The dogs began to bark and the hunters began to run, their spears at the ready.
Off runs the doe, like the wind; she heads up by the edge of the wood, onto the breast of the hill, and across the top of the ridge. They could see her clear against the blue sky, her movement fluid and graceful. She had that effortless flow of all great athletes, who never seem to be hard-pressed.
Finn and his hunters thought they had no hard job in catching her, but to their amazement they never got near her. Not only that, but one by one the young men and their dogs were unable to keep up the pace. Only Finn had the stamina. Finally, he and his two dogs drew ahead of the rest and were soon lost to sight.
As the great man a
nd his two hounds came down a steep hill, they saw the deer ahead of them. She must have slowed down a bit and Finn thought she was tiring—so he urged his two dogs on faster and faster. To his great surprise, the deer lay down on the grass. She lay there quite happily—as though she was waiting for the dogs. When the two hounds came to the deer, they ran at her—but they didn't bite her, or rend her with their teeth. Instead, they stopped and began to lick her, and play with her, and gather round her in a protective manner.
You could have knocked Finn MacCool down with the feather of a Galway goose. He stood there and he watched the three animals, the deer and his two dogs, nuzzling and nosing and caressing, the best of friends.
The deer rose from the grass, and the two dogs, like escorts, began to trot across the fields with her. Finn followed them, and by now the rest of his band had begun to catch up. When their dogs went after the deer, Finn's dogs bared their teeth and barked—they were not going to let anything, man or beast, harm that deer.
Soon, Finn began to understand that his dogs were leading the deer home, and sure enough, when they reached his mansion gates, his dogs turned into the yard and led the deer into a comfortable stable. The dogs ran back and forth, to and from to the barn, and made sure they brought enough hay and straw in their mouths to make for the beautiful doe the most comfortable bed in the palace that night.
As the deer bedded down, Finn and his companions went in to dinner, and their talk for the evening was full of this mysterious deer, with which they had all become enthralled. They drank a lot and they ate a lot, and after the day's exercise out in the open air they soon began to feel sleepy, and off they all went to bed.
At about four o'clock in the morning, the hour when all strange things occur, something wonderful happened to Finn MacCool. A bright light filled his bedchamber, so dazzling that no man could stand a chance of staying asleep. Finn woke up, and standing there in front of his bed he saw the most beautiful young woman that he had ever seen. He reckoned that she was about nineteen years old but with the maturity of a grown woman. Tall, slender, and with long hair that was ornamented with tiny golden balls, she wore a gown of green and gold, and she had a serious face that now broke into a smile as sweet as the sea on a sunny day. The beautiful young woman spoke, and this is what she told him.