Part 11
Ordinary schools . . . . . . . . . . . 8,100 401,000 Model schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 6,955 Convents and monasteries . . . . . . . 384 80,712
"The money is divided among these different schools as follows:
Amount. Per Capita.
Ordinary schools . . . . . . . . . . £1,038,854 £2 13s 10d Model schools . . . . . . . . . . . . 27,755 3 19s 10d Convents and monasteries . . . . . . 164,048 2 7s 6d
"The average daily attendance seems very small, and is due to several reasons: first, the lack of accommodations and the long distances between schoolhouses in the thinly settled sections along the west coast of Ireland, where some families are many miles from a schoolhouse, and where the children have no means of conveyance to reach them. In all the poorer sections of the country, where the men of the family go off to England or Scotland to do labor, the children have to stay at home and look after the place. They take care of the cows and the sheep and the pigs. Many parents make their children work where the compulsory education law and the child labor laws are not enforced. In the factory towns of northern Ireland the laws prohibit children under eleven years old working, and they are pretty well enforced.
"The following table will show the number of children of the different religious denominations enrolled in the national schools:
Roman Catholic . . . . . . . . . . 541,638, or 74.4 per cent Church of Ireland . . . . . . . . . 87,904, or 12.1 per cent Presbyterian . . . . . . . . . . . . 82,434, or 11.3 per cent Methodists . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9,387, or 1.3 per cent Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,794, or 0.9 per cent
"Of the Catholic children a large number, perhaps 112,000, are in the convents. The Catholic families prefer to send their girls to be taught by the nuns. And about 10,000 boys are in the monasteries.
"Every teacher is required to pass an examination prepared by the commissioner of education as a test of his or her qualifications, and the teacher is responsible to the educational department for the enforcement of the rules and the application of the methods of instruction that have received its indorsement. But, as a rule, teachers are nominated by the priests of the Roman Catholic church or the clergy of the Church of Ireland or those of the non-conformist churches, as the case may be. The consequence is that there have to be separate schools for each denomination, which naturally adds to the cost of maintenance. In two-thirds of the schools, however, you will find both Protestant and Catholic children. Any sect that can furnish twenty pupils can have a school of its own, to run it as it likes at the expense of the government and select its own teachers, provided the persons selected demonstrate their qualifications by submitting to the regular examinations.
"Religious instruction, prayer, and other exercises of worship may take place before and after the ordinary school hours, during which all the children of whatever denomination may attend, but the regular school business cannot be interrupted or suspended for any religious instruction or worship or any arrangement that will interfere with its usefulness or cause any pupils inconvenience in attendance.
"No pupil who is registered as a Protestant is permitted to remain in attendance during the time of religious instruction in case the teacher is a Roman Catholic, and no pupil who is registered as a Roman Catholic can remain in attendance during religious instruction by a teacher who is not a Roman Catholic, and further, no pupil can remain in attendance during any religious instruction whatever if his parents or guardians object. A public notification of the hours of religious instruction must be made in every school and kept posted in large letters for the information of the public as well as the pupils. No schoolroom can be connected with any place of worship; no religious emblems or emblems of a political nature can be exhibited in any schoolroom, and no inscription which contains the name of any religious denomination.
"Thus we have, as you will see, all points guarded against religious proselyting. Monks and nuns are eligible as teachers if they pass the examinations, and any convent or monastery can be made a national school by accepting the regulations and observing them.
"The salaries for men teachers range from £77 to £175, and for women from £65 to £141, according to length of service, experience, the grade of the school, and the number of pupils.
"We are introducing some modern ideas similar to those you have in America. We have already introduced cooking into a thousand schools and are introducing Gaelic as fast as the teachers can be found, but they are very scarce. We furnish special instruction in the teachers' colleges, or normal schools as you call them, and to excite the interest of the children special prizes are offered for proficiency in Gaelic.
"We are improving our school buildings generally, and parliament has allowed £40,000 a year for three years for building new primary schoolhouses.
"Our secondary or intermediate schools are under the supervision of a different board, also appointed by the lord lieutenant, and they distribute £85,000 a year in grants to about four hundred different institutions, preparatory, collegiate, and university."
"What is the ratio of illiteracy in Ireland?"
"It has gradually been reduced from 53 per cent of the population in 1841, the first census taken after the establishment of the national school system, to 18 per cent in 1891 and 14 per cent in 1901. The ratio of illiterates is being reduced nearly 1 per cent per year, and it is calculated from five years old and upward. If the minimum age were made seven years the ratio would be very much less. It is the old people and the little ones under seven years who cannot read and write, and many adults claim that they are unable to do so for their own reasons."
VIII
ROUND ABOUT DUBLIN
The street-car system of Dublin is excellent. It reaches every part of the city and all the lovely suburbs, and every line starts at a lofty column, which was erected many years ago in the middle of the principal street in honor of Horatio Nelson, the greatest of Irish sailors, the hero of the battle of Trafalgar. The cars are large and neatly kept, the conductors and motormen are very polite and love to give information to strangers, although they are paid only thirty and thirty-six shillings a week, which would certainly make men of their occupation very reticent in America. The roofs of the cars are arranged with comfortable seats, from which one can see everything within the range of human vision and gratify his curiosity about what is behind the high stone walls, green with lichen and ivy and overhung with lustrous boughs. There isn't much satisfaction going about in an automobile in the immediate vicinity of Dublin, because the roadways are mere tunnels between walls eight feet high and overhung with foliage, which makes a perpetual twilight, a damp, cool atmosphere, a dustless ride, and a picturesqueness that an artist would admire. The owners of suburban homes have shut themselves in so successfully that nobody can see what they are doing or enjoy the wondrous beauties of their private parks. But the seats on the top of a tram car permit the public to penetrate their secrets, give an abundance of fresh air, gratify the love of motion that we all inherited from our savage ancestors, and enable us to look beyond the barriers into beautiful gardens and groves.
The River Liffey, as I have told you in a previous chapter, divides all Dublin into two parts and empties into a bay about four miles below the business limits of the town. The bay is famous for its beauty, and is closely embroidered with history, legend, and romance. One street-car line follows the river and the north shore as far as the ocean, and then turns northward to accommodate the population of several pretty watering-places and fishing-towns. Another line, also starting from Nelson's Pillar, follows the south bank of the Liffey and the bay and encircles a most picturesque and romantic landscape. It takes three hours to make a round trip by either of these routes, and one can spend an entire afternoon or indeed a whole day with profit on both of them.
We will take the south side first. The track runs through the best residence section of the city and several of the prettiest suburbs down to the port of Kingston, where all deep-draft steamers have to receive and discharge their passengers and cargoes because the water is too shallow for them above. The turbine ferries that cross St. George's Channel from England land their passengers there and send them by rail into the city.
Between the frequent villages along the train line are comfortable and spacious mansions surrounded by beautiful grounds owned and occupied by the wealthy citizens of Dublin, and occasionally there is a long row of "semi-detached villas" occupied by "the prosperous middle classes,"--brick houses of two and three stories built in pairs, with strips of lawn on either side and quite a little space for a garden at the back. Every house has a name painted on the gatepost as well as a number, and that is a matter of great importance, because, when Miss Genevieve says she lives at Heatherhurst, Princes' Crescent, it sounds a great deal more aristocratic than No. 1660 Rockville Road. Princes' Crescent is a long block of two-story brick houses on a curve in the street; Heatherhurst is one of them, situated about the middle, twenty feet front and sixty feet deep, with thirty feet of lawn in the foreground and a garden at the rear. And these houses are much more comfortable than any the city can furnish, and I do not know of any town so well provided with suburbs as Dublin.
There are several historical places on the road. Beyond Booterstown is Blackrock, where an ancient granite cross in the center of the main street marks the limit of jurisdiction of the lord mayor. Many years ago it was customary for that official after his installation to ride out there and fling a dart into the waters of the bay, as a symbol of his right of admiralty; but these old-fashioned demonstrations of power and prerogative have been abandoned for stupid parades and long speeches.
Just before entering Blackrock the tramway passes the entrance of a lovely estate christened "Frascati," after a favorite resort of Rome. It formerly belonged to the Duke of Leinster, and was an early seat of the Kildare family, and one of the strategic rendezvous of the Geraldines, for two centuries the strongest clan in Ireland. Frascati has a pathetic interest to every one, and particularly to all Irish patriots, because for several years it was the home of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Pamela, his mysterious French bride. It was there they spent their honeymoon and there he left that fascinating little person while he was off on political missions preparing for the Revolution of 1798. Her letters, full of domestic details and loving prattle, written during this period, have been preserved, and give us a charming impression of the character of a woman who suffered much for the cause of Irish liberty, even poverty and shame.
Edward Fitzgerald was a brother of the Duke of Leinster and the Earl of Kildare, an amiable, high-minded, warm-hearted, gallant fellow of learning and culture and fine manners. He served as a major in the British forces during the American Revolution, and for a time was an aid-de-camp on the staff of Lord Howe. He was dismissed from the British army, however, for active sympathy with the French Revolution, went to France, and took refuge among the friends he had made there. There he met and married Anne Syms, better known as "Pamela," a woman of great personal and mental attractions, whose origin was involved in a mystery that was never revealed, and concerning whom many romantic stories have been written and told. It is generally believed that she was an illegitimate daughter of Philippe Égalité, Duke of Orleans, sometimes called "Philip the Handsome," by an Irish woman named Syms, and was, therefore, a half-sister of King Louis Philippe of France. By Edward Fitzgerald she had three children: Edward Fitzgerald, who was an officer in the British army; Pamela, who became the wife of Sir Guy Campbell; and Lucy, who became the wife of Captain Lyon of the Royal Navy. Several years after Fitzgerald's tragic end she married John Pitcairn, an American, with whom she came to the United States, and lived in Philadelphia until her death in 1831.
While he was in Paris Lord Edward met Wolfe Tone, the leader of the Revolution of 1798, Arthur O'Connor, Thomas Addis Emmet, an elder brother of Robert Emmet, and other fellow countrymen, who were conspiring with the French directoire for an attack upon Ireland. He joined the movement with great earnestness and enthusiasm, and finally arranged with the French government to send a fleet of forty-three vessels with fifteen thousand troops under General Hoche, Wolfe Tone being attached to the commander's staff, to attack the Irish coast simultaneously with an uprising of the people. Ireland was taken by surprise and thrown into a panic, but Providence intervened. A violent gale arose, the landing was postponed, the French fleet became separated, and each vessel found its way back to the Continent.
Lord Edward remained in France until March, 1798, when he returned to Dublin, was betrayed by a man named Mangan, and a guard of soldiers was sent to arrest him in 151 Thomas Street, just below the Bank of Ireland. A tablet with an inscription now marks the house. There was a desperate struggle, in which the captain of the guards was killed by Lord Edward, and the latter received a bullet in the shoulder, from which he died in prison a few days later at the age of thirty-two. As everybody knows, the rebellion was a failure, and nearly all the other leaders were captured and executed. Wolfe Tone was betrayed by an old school friend and sentenced to be shot. He tried to kill himself in prison. The wound, though fatal, was not immediately so, and he lay ill for several months before death rescued him. Poor Pamela lived in poverty and distress for several years before she was able to return to her friends in France. "Frascati," her home, now belongs to a prosperous Dublin tradesman.
A little farther down on the shore of the bay is a monument marking the spot where the transport _Rochdale_, carrying the entire Ninety-seventh Regiment of Foot, went ashore a hundred years ago, and the names of an entire regiment, officers and men, were instantly erased from the British army list. Since then an artificial harbor has been inclosed by long breakwaters of masonry, giving a place of refuge for ships in distress.
The tram line terminates in a pretty and picturesque village, called Dalkey, which was a medieval stronghold and the scene of many fierce fights, first between the earls of the Pale of Dublin and invading Danes, and after that with the pirates who haunted this coast for a century. It was a Danish settlement for several centuries, and afterward the most important outpost of Dublin, defended by seven great castles, three of which still remain in partial ruins. One of them is now remodeled for use as a town hall. They are imposing piles of masonry, and thick mats of ivy conceal the ancient wounds.
We took an "outside car" at the end of the tram line at Dalkey to drive around the shore of the bay, which the driver assured us was the most beautiful in the world and even surpassed the Bay of Naples, which it is said to resemble, and for that reason many of the names are the same. The resemblance might possibly be detected by a person with a vigorous imagination. Killiney Bay, however, is a lovely sheet of water, surrounded by high bluffs that are clad in June with glowing garments of gorse and hawthorn. The first is a low bush which has a brilliant yellow flower, and the hawthorn trees are as white as banks of snow. The land is divided into meadows and pastures on the slopes by hedges of hawthorn, and the turf is concealed by millions of buttercups as yellow as gold. It is a rocky coast. Rugged crags that break out give a stern expression to the picture, and sometimes rise a hundred feet or more in frowning precipices of black granite.
Here and there the towers of a castle or the chimneys of a villa arise from banks of foliage, and, perched along the bluff above the seashore, like the chalets of Switzerland, are comfortable cottages and mansions in which rich people from Dublin dwell. Clinging to the side of the bluff and protected by a stone wall is a splendid roadway encircling the entire bay, quite as beautiful, although on a smaller scale, as the Corniche road from Nice to Monte Carlo. The deep blue of the water, the vivid green of the foliage, which seems more pronounced in Ireland than anywhere I have ever been, the great white banks of hawthorn, the yellow of the buttercups and the gorse give a brilliancy to the landscape that does not appear anywhere on the Riviera or anywhere else I know.
The winding road with this wonderful panorama always before you leads finally through a glen into a park named after the late Queen Victoria,--a wild stretch of rocky woodland and pasture, which in ancient days was one of the principal meeting places of the Druids, and it was well chosen. The land was purchased by subscription to commemorate the queen's jubilee in 1897, and has been thrown open to the public ever since. From the number of people who are present every Sunday afternoon one would think the money was well invested.
A winding path leads to the summit, which is cleared of trees, and in the center a shaft of stone rises about sixty feet, which, the inscription tells us in quaint and laconic manner, was erected by John Mapas, Esquire, June, 1742, in order to give employment to his less fortunate neighbors, "last year being hard with the poor." A hundred yards distant is a round, conical tower marked, "Mont Mapas." Nobody seems to know who erected it or what it is for. And there is a pyramid of seven tiers of stone thirty feet square at the base and eighteen feet high, with a flat stone at the top.
There is a monument to mark the spot where the Duke of Dorset was killed by being thrown from his horse in 1815, and what is more interesting, four Druid judgment seats, formed of rough granite blocks about twelve feet long, two feet high, and three and a half feet wide at the top. They are situated in pairs some distance from each other, and tradition says that the Druid chiefs in prehistoric times sat in judgment upon them to settle disputes between their people and to receive petitions from the members of their tribes. Of course, we know that Ireland was held by the Druids once, and it is very certain that they could not have found a more appropriate or a lovelier place than this for their assemblies.
We took our luncheon at the Washington Inn at Dalkey, where a large and familiar engraving of George Washington, a picture of Sulgrave Manor, the English home of the Washingtons, a pedigree of the family, and a representation of its coat of arms, showing its development into the Stars and Stripes, hung upon the wall. I asked the landlady the whys and wherefores of all this, and she told me that her name is Martha Washington and that she is very proud of it. Her ancestors came from Sulgrave, where they trace their relationship to the Father of our Country.
Another trolley line, with cars marked "Howth" (pronounced Ho-th), starting from the same place, Nelson's Pillar, on Sackville Street, will take you entirely around the great island hill at the north entrance of the harbor of Dublin and for a mile or two on the shore of the Irish Sea. For the first fifteen or twenty minutes the car runs through the busy streets of the city, past the Amiens railway station, which, a friendly priest who occupied the adjoining seat told me, occupies the site of the house in which Charles Lever wrote "Harry Lorrequer," "Charles O'Malley," and other famous novels, and the good father sighed when he said that the reckless gayety and the jolly folks that Lever painted with his pen existed no longer. He was a most interesting companion was this friendly priest, and talked incessantly of the scenes and associations through which our little journey led.
We passed a monumental gate supported by two classic columns. One of them was marked in large letters "Deo Duce" and the other "Ferro Comitante" (With God for my guide and a sword by my side), which, he told me, was the motto upon the coat of arms of the great Lord Charlemont, who had taken so active a part in the history of Ireland. It was a famous family, he said, although the present earls are decadents and have no place in public affairs.
This ancient family seat, called "Marino," was built at a tremendous cost by a _dilettante_ earl who never allowed his expenditures to trouble him, but left the anxiety entirely to his creditors. The interior of the villa at the time it was built was the perfection of art and luxury. The floors, the ceilings, and the wainscoting were of mosaic. The walls were hung with the finest Irish poplin and decorated by the most noted artists of the time. The villa has been the scene of ghastly carousals and assemblies of the finest intellects in Ireland. The grave and the gay have gathered and dined beneath its roof, but the estate was sacrificed to the extravagance of the family, and its splendor, somewhat tarnished and rusty, to be sure, is now enjoyed by the students of the Christian Brothers, who occupy the beautiful villa for a school.
On one side of the car line high walls shut out to the ordinary passer-by the beauties they are intended to protect, but from the top of the tram cars any one can share them for "tuppence." On the other side is the water, the Bay of Dublin, and, running parallel with the shore, is a long spit of land called the North Bull, which was formerly a terrible menace to the commerce of the coast. Nearly every winter's gale sent a ship or two to destruction, and the bodies of hundreds of poor seamen have been washed up where the children are now playing in the sand. Here and there the skeletons of dead vessels may yet be seen, but the North Bull is no longer dangerous. Modern devices protect navigation, and in the midst of the heather and the glowing yellow gorse golf links have been laid out and a clubhouse has been erected, surrounded by lilacs, laburnums, and hawthorns, now in the full glory of their bloom. It is only twenty minutes' ride by street car from the center of Dublin, and the business men can come out here to spend the long summer evenings at their sport.
A little farther on is a beautiful mansion built in 1835 upon the site and with the materials of Clontarf Castle, one of the oldest and most famous within the English Pale--which was an area sixty miles long and thirty miles wide around the city of Dublin. The castle originally belonged to the Knights Templar, and from them passed to the Knights of St. John. In 1541 it was surrendered to the crown by Sir John Rawson, prior of Kilmainham, who was created Viscount of Clontarf as compensation.