The Henson Journals

[18]

Monday, August 15th, 1927.

Before getting up I read an entertaining book, which mine hostess recommended to me as giving a faithful picture of the life of the Irish gentry in the old days when they reigned in Ireland. – Irish Memories by E. Somerville & Martin Ross. Longmans. 1918.

This, and other similar books, written with immense complacency & self–admiration, by the members of an upper class which was intensely self–centred & undisciplined, enable me to understand a phenomenon, which has often puzzled me, I mean, the fierce resentful hatred against the gentry which blazes out in revolutions. The gentry themselves are unconscious of the exasperation which they provoke by their assumption of innate superiority, their amusement with the crudities & absurdities of a peasantry which they speak about and treat at best as small children, often as nothing other than well–liked dogs, but which they leave in their depressed level, with no better assistance than that of their fondling & half–contemptuous assistance in extremity. In France, in Ireland, in Russia, the story is the same, – a sudden flaming up of outrage & cruelty of hatreds which smouldered & gathered strength in a servitude [19] which had been taken for granted on one side, and secretly repudiated on the other. As soon as the dominion of immemorial custom is shaken by the invasion of novel ideas, by the spread of education, by the teaching of revolutionary agitators, the process of disintegration is extremely rapid. There is but a step between smiling acquiescence in subordination and a fierce repugnance to it. The devoted serf of yesterday is the heartless assassin of today. His victim dwells on the ingratitude, the treachery, the shamelessness of his conduct, but in truth, that conduct is just the bursting of a dam, against which pressure has been long gathering force. It could not but be dramatically sudden. The small, closely inter–married, aristocracies live so much by themselves and to themselves, that they do not realize or even suspect how odious they have become. A man must be both honest and déclassé – a very rare combination – in order to understand the social situation. The frantic violence of revolutionaries is as much inspired by fear as by hatred. The peasant in his heart still dreads his quondam – master, though he has him in his hands as a powerless captive.

[20]

We lunched with Lord Louth. The house is large but has a dilapidated aspect. The present owner, an easy–going, self–indulgent man, had reduced himself to considerable embarrassment, when his third marriage gave him the assistance of a wealthy wife. She is doing much to restore prosperity, but his health is evidently insecure, and his death would mean her banishment. It was melancholy to observe how the property had been stripped of its timber, and the castle of much of its old furniture, in order to meet the expenses of the owner's pleasures. The two step–sons are delightful boys, who will be rich men.

We returned to Stephenstown, and made our preparations for departure. Mine host made me quite an elaborate speech expressing his enjoyment of my visit, his wish that it could have been more prolonged, and so forth. It appears that, as a Baptist minister, he had read utterances of mine which attracted him, and induced a desire to meet me. We left Dundalk at 7 p.m., and travelled directly to Kingstown where we took steamer for Holyhead. The passage took 3 hours, & was calm enough. At 1 a.m. we reached Holyhead, & went on to Chester, arriving shortly after 2.30 a.m. We put up at the Queen Hotel.