Changing Winds: A NovelErvine, St. John G. (St. John Greer)
General
Changing Winds: A Novel
Ervine, St. John G. (St. John Greer)
Fiction
An Englishman, hearing Mr. Quinn talk in this fashion, might pardonably
have imagined that he was listening to a fanatical Nationalist, a
dynamiting Fenian, but if, being a Liberal, he had ventured to advocate
Home Rule for Ireland in Mr. Quinn's presence, he would speedily have
found that he was in error. "Damn the fear!" Mr. Quinn would say when
people charged him with being a Home Ruler. The motive of his Unionism,
however, was neither loyalty to England nor terror of Rome: it was
wholly and unashamedly a matter of commerce. "The English bled us for
centuries," he would say, "an' it's only fair we should bleed them.
We've got our teeth in their skins, an' they're shellin' out their money
gran'! That's what the Union's for--to make them keep on shellin' out
their money. An' instead of tellin' the people to bite deeper an' get
more money out of them, the fools o' Nationalists is tellin' them to
take their teeth out! Never," he would exclaim passionately, "never,
while there's a shillin' in an Englishman's pocket!"
Mr. Quinn, of course, treated every Englishman he met with courtesy, for
he was an Irish gentleman, and he had sometimes been heard to speak
affectionately of some person of English birth. The chief result of this
civility, conjoined with the ferocity of his political statements, was
that his English friends invariably spoke of him as "a typical
Irishman." They looked upon him as so much comic relief to the more
serious things of their own lives, and seemed constantly to expect him
to perform some amusing antic, some innately Celtic act of comic folly.
At such times, Mr. Quinn felt as if he could annihilate an Englishman.
"Ah, well," he would say, restraining himself, "we all know what the
English are like, God help them!"
It was because of his strong feeling for Ireland and Irish things that
he decided to have his son, Henry, educated in Ireland. "Anyway," he
said to the lad, "you'll have an Irish tongue, whatever else you have!"
He sent the boy to a school in the County Armagh and left him there
until he discovered that he was not being educated at all. He had
questioned Henry on the history and geography of Ireland one day, and
had found to his horror that while Henry could tell him exactly where
Popocatepetl was to be found, and knew that Mount Everest was 29,002
feet high, and could name the kings of England and the dates of their
accession as easily as he could recite the Lord's Prayer, he had no
knowledge of the whereabouts or character of Lurigedan, a hill in the
County Antrim, and could tell him nothing of the Red Earls and the
beautiful queens of Ireland. He knew something that was true, and much
that was not, of Queen Elizabeth and King Alfred, but nothing, true or
false, of Deirdre and Red Hugh O'Neill.
"What the hell's the good of knowin' about Popocatepetl," Mr. Quinn
shouted at him, "when you don't know the name of a hill on your own
doorstep!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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