Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (2 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)Hurlbert, William Henry
History
Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (2 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)
Hurlbert, William Henry
Ireland -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901
We found Mr. Hutchins at home, a cool, quiet, energetic, northern man,
who seems to be handling the difficult situation here with great
firmness and prudence. Mrs. Hutchins, who has lived here now for nearly
a year--a life not unlike that of the wife of an American officer on the
Far Western frontier--very amicably asked me to lunch, and Mr. Hutchins
offered to show me the holdings of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride. Mr. Lynch
proposed that we should all go on my car, but I remembered the protest
of the jarvey, and sending him to await me at Father Maher's, I drove
off with Mr. Hutchins. As we drove along, he confirmed the jarvey's hint
as to the difference between the views and conduct of the parish priest
and the views and conduct of his more fiery curate. This is a very
common state of affairs, I find, all over Ireland.
The house of Mr. Dunne is that of a large gentleman farmer. It is very
well fitted up, but it was plain that the tenants had done little or
nothing to make or keep it a "house beautiful." The walls had never been
papered, and the wood-work showed no recent traces of the brush. "He
spent more money on horse-racing than on housekeeping," said a shrewd
old man who was in the house. In fact, Mr. Dunne, I am told, entered a
horse for the races at the Curragh after he had undergone what Mr.
Gladstone calls "the sentence of death" of an eviction!
Some of the doors bore marks of the crowbar but no great mischief had
been done to them or to the large fine windows. The only serious damage
done during the eviction was the cutting of a hole through the roof. An
upper room had been provisioned to stand a siege, and so scientifically
barricaded with logs and trunks of trees that after several vain
attempts to break through the door the assailants climbed to the roof,
and in twenty minutes cut their way in from without. The dining and
drawing rooms were those of a gentleman's residence, and one of the
party remembered attending here a social festivity got up with much
display.
A large cattle-yard has been established on this place, with an
original, and, as I was assured, most successful weighing-machine by the
Land Corporation. We found it full of very fine-looking cattle, and Mr.
Hutchins seems to think the operation of managing the estate as a kind
of "ranch" decidedly promising. "I am not a bit sorry for Mr. Dunne," he
said, "but I am very sorry for other quiet, good tenants who have been
deluded or driven into giving up valuable holdings to keep him and Mr.
Kilbride company, and give colour to the vapourings of Mr. William
O'Brien."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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