Myles Away From Dublin (11 page)

A newspaper is like the man: it behaves itself, does not print scandalous matter, achieves dignity, worships truth, and refrains from libel. Most of us would like to be men as noble as our newspapers.

A friend recently gave me a copy of the
Evening
News
. Dublin people are mightily surprised that London, a town with a population approaching 9,000,000, has only two evening papers, whereas Dublin has three. It makes no difference. The contents are the same. Even the type-faces don’t vary.

This copy of the
Evening
News
, still going strong, was presented to readers on Tuesday, July 26,
bearing
the date 1881. It was a reproduction of the first issue of a publication that prospered. It is a curious thing to look at in 1961. Very different people from us must have read it. And they must have had better eyes.

It is not too easy to isolate what is different about it, apart from some obvious physical things. I should say that the main differences lay in editorial attitude. The news was presented with a take-it-or-leave-it gesture. It didn’t matter very much. Neither did the reader.

Perhaps the most impressive fact about the publication was the absence of display type. There were no headlines. The death of a dog in Hammersmith got the
same show as the suicide of the head of a ruling house in Europe. Ireland was never mentioned at all, but plenty of space was given to cricket.

Absence of display type meant that births, marriages and deaths got mixed up with mattresses, honey, and goings-on in South Africa. In that year of 1881, it will be recalled, the Queen was on the throne. Mr Gladstone was performing in the House of Commons. It was the Age of Peace, at least for Britain. The great Empire was still there.

Yet that paper shows some curiosities. I don’t mean that it announces its price as one halfpenny (as it does) but hints at a different social attitude. Everything is mentioned in monotone, as if it did not matter very much. Generally, one feels that the
Evening
News
of 1881 is very different from today’s
Daily
Express
. Is it better? It is not easy to answer that question. I would say it is more restful. It would be unlikely to give you a heart attack in bed in the morning.

No occurrence, however catastrophic, rated a greater display than the upper case of the text, or just plain capital letters. Thus one read a heading such as Outbreak of Siberian Plague without being unduly disturbed. Another report was headed Punishment at Sea. Still another – please remember the date – was headed The Russian Imperial Family.

News reports are announced as ‘Telegrams’, thus paying tribute to the new invention, and there is an enormous, very heavy leading article about the
Transvaal
. There were no features, no glimpse of the common man.

Yet perhaps he did intrude a little bit.

One man inserted a notice saying that he was selling first quality salt. That was fair enough, and several other people were doing the same. But this man said
that there was a reduction in price of 10 per cent for total abstainers.

I think I had better end here.

I think I mentioned some weeks ago that I had smashed my right fore-arm. It may be that a person who expatiates on such an injury is to be likened to the lady who talks endlessly and minutely (for at least forty years, anyhow) about her operation, conferring
excruciating
boredom on her listeners and making them want to run away.

I don’t think, however, that the two situations are identical. For instance, no operation lasts for several weeks and in practice, anybody who undergoes a serious operation can know nothing about it.

I may be permitted initially a few general observations. The human being is fitted out with certain twin organs such, for example, as the arms, legs, eyes, ears, kidneys, lungs. It is unprecedented for each of the twins to operate with equal efficiency.

Everybody has a master eye. How often does a companion say to us: ‘Walk on this side of me. I’m deaf in the left ear.’ Disease frequently appears in one lung and not in the other, and this is also true of the kidneys.

Ambidexterity, or the use of either hand with equal ease, is more a word than a fact. Even skilled and well-trained boxers do not have it. Biologists have often recommended that children should be meticulously trained in ambidexterity but since it is the left hemisphere of the brain which controls the motor apparatus of the right side of the body, other
commentators
have said that the equal development of the right hemisphere would cause speech impediment.

In practice, what happened when we were all very young? Those of us who showed a clear tendency to use the left hand as the primary corporal tool got a severe hiding for our pains. All the same, there are many
left-handed
people in the world – particularly, for some reason, cricketers. The ‘normal’ person’s left hand and arm is almost quite useless except for assisting the right.

If, however, one closely observes a person who is well and truly left-handed, one soon notices that his right hand is by no means as useless as the ‘normal’ person’s left. It has a real though diminished usefulness. I think I know why.

Are parents who sternly discourage a left-handed attitude on the part of their children ignorant and eccentric people? I do not think so. They are really trying to save the child from a lifetime of inconvenience, and even situations of physical danger. The reason is that the whole world is organised on the basis that everybody is right-handed. That is why left-handed adults must put the right hand to some use, whether they like it or not, and attain gradually a certain proficiency in its use.

To put the fore-arm in plaster from the elbow, it is necessary to continue the iron dressing down to the knuckles in order to obtain anchorage at the seat of the thumb. That usually immobilises the whole hand and the fingers. I soon found what this meant.

Like most gents, to wash myself I used nothing more than water, soap and my two hands. Well, I could not wash myself. Preposterous licks with a left-handed cloth may have removed some of the more striking filth. But that was merely to confront me with another ordeal – shaving.

This was a very lengthy and terrifying business, with great blood losses, and a finished job that looked just awful. Then putting on a shirt, manipulating studs to fix a collar, and finally knotting a tie – that was plain impossible.

Discarding all pride, I had to call in my consort, to discover, however, that she did not know how to knot a tie, though some lessons soon fixed that. And lacing shoes was another task beyond me.

Later, I found that a bus is designed for the right hand as to mounting it, dismounting and finding a seat. There was infinite danger in a bus trip. A meal which entailed use of a knife and fork was impossible. Even lighting and smoking a cigarette was perilous. I had to give up completely playing billiards, the violin and the piano. And typing with the left hand only is infinitely arduous.

Are you curious about all this, dear reader, or even incredulous? Why not find out? For a trifling cost, any chemist will put your own right arm, from elbow to knuckles, in pitiless plaster. Then heaven help you, and me too, if we manage to get mixed up in a rough house.

That question is serious. Just what makes us laugh? I once asked a celebrated physician what a sneeze was. He began giving me a lengthy piece of rawmaish about the windpipe, the throat, the larynx and the lungs. I cut him short.

‘Doctor,’ I said, ‘you are describing the location of the sneeze. I asked you about the event itself.’

After a pause, he said:

‘A sneeze is a paroxysm, and quite harmless.’

‘A paroxysm? I see. If it’s quite harmless, why does everybody in Ireland say “Bless you” when a person sneezes?’

‘Don’t know. It’s an ancient custom, probably pagan.’

Well, what’s a laugh? Is it another style of paroxysm? Let us immediately note one important distinction
between
the sneeze and the laugh. Human beings and animals sneeze but animals don’t laugh. Maybe that’s why we insist on regarding them as very thoughtful and infinitely wise. ‘My slippers are missing again, as usual. That dog knows where they are. If only he could talk, he’d tell me.’

The number of things included under the head of HUMOUR is uncountable. Humour can be visual, or something written or spoken. If you have a man who has a certain arrogance of manner and who is impeccably dressed, it is very funny to pour a bucket of dirty water over him, preferably from an upstair’s window. Should we not pity a person subjected to such a plight? No, indeed. We roar laughing.

The year 1854 did not occur yesterday. I have been looking over a bound volume of a weekly named
The 
London
Journal
under that date, and it seems far further away than a mere 107 years. It seems concerned with events on another planet, and the drawings which adorn it (woodcuts) look slightly unearthly. It announces itself to be a ‘weekly record of literature, science and art’. I have not investigated that claim, and for a peculiar reason: I found the paper nearly
impossible
to read. I do not wear glasses and regard my sight as ‘normal’, but the print is unbelievably small. This means that the plain people had far better eyesight a century ago.

But why do I disinter this publication in the year of grace, 1961? Because it contains a funny column under the stupidly cumbrous title of FACETIAE. Is the funny stuff funny? Let the reader judge. I present samples, taken absolutely at random.

Benevolent Old Lady: Sakes alive, child! What do you want two pails of cold victuals for? You had only one yesterday.

Little Girl: Yes, ma’am; but mother’s taken boarders since.

(I deduce here that ‘cold victuals’ means slops.)

Self-Possession and Presence of Mind – A thief, surprised in the act of robbing a bank, was asked what he was about; and answered, ‘Only taking notes.’

Why may we reasonably expect that the Turk will succeed in preventing the Russian bear from devouring his subjects? Why, because he’s a muzzle-man.

Straw is a servant that occasionally blows up its master.

An Orleans paper says: It requires three persons to start a business firm there; one to die with yellow fever, one to get killed in a duel, and the third to wind up the partnership business.

Why should money not be called ‘blunt’? Because a man can ‘cut a dash’ with it.

We decidedly object to the first-floor lodger coming home in a state of inebriation and getting into our bed with his boots on.

When does a lady’s dress resemble Joan of Arc? When it’s
made
of
Orleans.

The British Tar’s Motto:
Semper
Hide
’
em.

Cab Colloquy – First Cabby (who is run up against): Now then! Where did you pick up that old strawberry bottle you call a cab? Second Cab (retorts): Same place where yer found that bit of old rag you calls a ’orse.

A Noun of Multitude: A gentleman accustomed to the signature of the firm in which he was a partner, having to sign a baptismal register of one of his children, entered it as the son of Smith, Jones and Co.

Well, good reader, had enough? Or can you carry on a bit further? I can NOT.

By the time these words come to the eye of the reader, he will find himself faced with a choice. The choice will not be whether to vote for FF or FG but whether or not to vote at all.

The election campaign has been brief (no doubt a stratagem thought clever by Mr Lemass) but it has lacked nothing of the vulgarity and brazen cheek of its many predecessors.

Both in roared open-air speeches and in garish full-page newspaper ads it is made very clear that the electors are regarded as numbskulls and half-wits.

It is assumed that he cannot tell a lie from what is at least possible as a down-to-earth reform, and accepts that men of little education are capable of making critical and far-reaching decisions on world affairs, and the domestic economy, honest dealing, and a thousand matters. There is one promise candidates will keep and, curiously, it is not one they ever make from atop a dray: I mean pocketing their handsome salaries. That is a situation one need not be too scornful about. They are professional politicians in the most absolute sense.

It is universally accepted that persons who engage in the science of government should be grown up. In practice no trust is reposed in the ancient phrase about wisdom emerging from the mouths of babes and sucklings. Yet one can reason too far in the opposite direction. Here are the ages of some FF worthies.

These are, so to speak, some of the stars. But there is no noticeable suffusion of youth elsewhere. Lemass himself is 61. Aiken is well over 63.

I lack at the moment of writing specific knowledge of the ages of FG ‘shadow cabinet’ but it may be assumed that they are far from being infants, even in the strict legal interpretation of that term.

It has become customary to picture Ireland as a ‘young resurgent nation’. Whether or not that is true, I think it is gravely scandalous that the conduct of national affairs should be left in the hands of men in their old age. The intention of the four gentlemen I have isolated above seems to be to cling to office until they die. Let us hope that they will not live to be centenarians. Even then, they might continue to interfere in Irish political affairs from a ‘safe seat’ in heaven.

It is interesting to wonder who exactly supplies the FF and FG parties with money. (The Labour Party I cannot take seriously, since it appears to win only the votes of the disgruntled.) Not long ago an FG deputy asked the appropriate Minister to fix a minimum pork content for sausages. The Minister declined, saying that such an order ‘would not be in the public interest’ or words to that effect. I have long eschewed, rather than chewed, the Irish sausage because I am convinced that certain brands
contain
no
pork
at
all
!
The high spice content makes it impossible for the palate to distinguish pork from horse. It must be taken that the firms benefiting from the Minister’s astonishing attitude are heavy subscribers to the Party funds. The FG nose is very likely no cleaner.

The total cynicism and self-interest of both parties will make many electors other than myself wonder whether it is worth going to the trouble of voting at all.
I will not be so impertinent as to advise the reader but I do beg him to think. Some day we will have a Dáil of educated, honest men. When that day comes, an election will be important, even if candidates still scream at us when we emerge from Mass on Sundays.