At this point, a note to communicators is in order. Because The Irish Times is now available on the Internet (address: http://www.irish-times.com), various Internet subscribers have taken to communicating with me through that system. Their messages flash unbidden on my computer screen. But if they expect a reply in return, they expect in vain.
I have tried to reply through the special Internet-for-the-brain-dead devised by Irish Times technicians. This is specially designed so that a newly hatched ostrich can use it. Before it was installed here, experiments were done on frostbitten turnips, all of which were able at least to establish links with their cousins in the Galapagos. Alas, I am not capable any form of communication through the Internet. I have tried, and I have failed to reply to Internet messages from Irish Times readers in different parts of the world. Once upon a time, such people would have addresses based on roads, locations, places, which with the aid of a pen, a stamp and an envelope, I could reply to.
Silicone Valley dialects
But Internet addresses seem to consist of random numbers and semicolons and !!! and * and () and nothing else. Since letters to me are written in English, is it too much to ask correspondents to put their address in the same language, not in those odd and impenetrable punctuation dialects of Silicon Valley? That is like writing a letter in English but putting your address in naval semaphore or in Arapaho smoke signals.
Simply, if you want to get a reply - and this is no guarantee that you will, for a Himalaya sits on my desk awaiting epistolary response - give me your name, address, town, city, country - that kind of caper. That's not too much to ask is it?
Nor is too much to ask letter writers to give their names; anonymous letters are normally sent binwards the moment of opening, as was one the other day, until I glimpsed the name Gough; and then I noticed a phone-number. The phonenumber rescued the letter from the oblivion of unreadlessness.
It contained a gentlemanly/ladylike rebuke for my remarks about Gough and the caste to which he belonged. "In Ireland," she/he writes, "there is . . . a sensitivity shown to every minority except one, variously called West Brits . . . ascendancy . . . Anglo-Irish etc. A remark which would be condemned as incendiary and racist in every other context is perfectly acceptable in one applied to the Big House."
Well said. But as one who has tackled the disagreeable side of all identities - including Ulster Protestants, nationalists of all hues, paratroopers, feminists and travellers - I am not ashamed to repeat that there were some unpleasant aspects of the Anglo-Irish culture too. If out of reasons of sensitivity we ignore the truth, we do a primary disservice towards understanding. We lie. And lies only cause disharmony; they do not bind, they do not unite.
Condescension For there were intensely irksome aspects to the Anglo-Irish culture, not least the condescension often shown towards the mere tenantry. This is evident in the writings of Somerville and Ross, who could use the word "clever" about the lower orders, but never the word "intelligent". It was evident in Lord Kitchener's dislike of any expressions or organised Irishry (including demotic unionism). And it was evident in Gough's lordly disdain for the common and no doubt - to his mind - unreliable Irish soldierly under his command. I doubt whether he would have referred to the nationality of soldiers if they had been English.
I do not know Gough's religion. He was, I believe, married into the Waterfords, a Catholic family. But he was insecure in his identity, and that insecurity was not an uncommon quality amongst people torn between the two loyalties, two identities, two islands. It inclined many Anglo-Irish people to belittle those around them, especially in the eyes of the English (which is what I believe Somerville and Ross were doing, while, perversely, feeling a fierce and often tender loyalty towards those whom they probably regarded as children).
But Anon is quite right to put the matter in context. The one species whom it is politically correct to lampoon is the Anglo-Irish. But there are refuges within the category; if the person concerned were to be homosexual or republican, lampoonery would suddenly become unacceptable indeed. Countess Markievicz, for example, has been transformed into a goody for shooting a blameless an unarmed Catholic policeman in Stephen's Green. Had she shot that same poor fellow when he was a mere peasant, she would of course be vilified by the right-thinkers of Irish life.
Anon is also correct in pointing out that the one accent that it is politically correct to complain about is the English one. If British listeners had complained about Terry Wogan's or Henry Kelly's accent on British radio the way that certain listeners to Radio Ireland complained about my rather angloaccent, there would have been uproar in Irish newspapers, complaints in the Dail about racism, and a long turgid whine of self-pity.
Sectarian fatuity
And the entire discussion about the meaning of Irishness has taken a profoundly unpleasant turn with the recent debate about Elizabeth Bowen, which permitted Jack Lane of Aubane Historical Society to declare that George Bernard Shaw was Anglo-Irish; which manages, with a succinctness which one can only marvel at, to achieve heights of sectarianism and fatuity simultaneously.
But Gough's caste was Anglo-Irish, and many of its members did dislike Irish nationalism; perhaps understandably. That force is capable of a nihilistic and racist savagery which periodically has launched itself in vengeful attacks on the buildings and the persons associated in its mind with the old Protestant Ascendancy. The survivors of that Ascendancy still peer out of their windows and wonder. Maybe they are right to wonder. But if we are permitted to laud them as a species, and cite the Butlers and the Plunketts and the Parsons, sentiments which Anon would surely not disapprove of, then as with any other species, we are permitted also to note their shortcomings. I merely did.