The Life Story of an Old Rebel | Page 4

case that adverse circumstances compel the great bulk of them to
have recourse to the hardest, the most precarious, and the worst paid
employments to be found in the British labour market.
In the large towns, in the poorer streets in which our people live, a
stranger would be struck by the swarms of children, and of an evening,
at the number of grown-up people sitting on the doorsteps of their
wretched habitations. John Barry once told me that a friend of his asked
one of these how they could live in such places? "Because," was the
reply, "we live so much out of them." The answer showed, at any rate,
that their lot was borne cheerfully.
Nevertheless, there are Irishmen too--men who know how to keep what
they have earned--who, by degrees, get into the higher circles of the
commercial world, so that I have seen among the merchant princes "on
'Change" in Liverpool men who, themselves, or whose fathers before
them, commenced life in the humblest avocations.
Liverpool has, on the whole, been a "stony-hearted stepmother" to its
Irish colony, which largely built its granite sea-walls, and for many
years humbly did the laborious work on which the huge commerce of
the port rested. But, perhaps, in years to come Liverpool will realise the
value of the wealth of human brains and human hearts which it held for
so long unregarded or despised in its midst.
CHAPTER II.
DISTINGUISHED IRISHMEN--"THE NATION"
NEWSPAPER--"THE HIBERNIANS."
I have met, as I have said elsewhere, most of the Irish political leaders
of my time in Liverpool, but I will always remember with what
pleasure I listened to a distinguished Irishman of another type, Samuel
Lover, when he was travelling with an entertainment consisting of

sketches from his own works and selections from his songs. Few men
were more versatile than Lover, for he was a painter, musician,
composer, novelist, poet, and dramatist. When I saw him in one of the
public halls he sang his own songs, told his own stories, and was his
own accompanist.
His was one of a series of performances, very popular in Liverpool for
many years, called the "Saturday Evening Concerts." He was a little
man, with what might be called something of a "Frenchified" style
about him, but having with it all a bright eye and thoroughly Irish face
which, with all his bodily movements, displayed great animation. I can
readily believe his biographers, who say he excelled in all the arts he
cultivated, for his was a most charming entertainment.
Lover undoubtedly had patriotism of a kind, and some of his songs
show it. It certainly was not up to the mark of the "Young Irelanders,"
one of whom attacked him on one occasion, when he made the clever
retort that "the fount from which he drew his patriotism was a more
genuine source than a fount of Irish type"--alluding to the plentiful use
of the Gaelic characters in "The Spirit of the Nation," the world-famed
collection of songs by the Young Ireland contributors to the "Nation"
newspaper. There are passages in Lover's novel of "Rory O'More" and
his "He Would be a Gentleman" that show he was a sincere lover of his
country. I agree in the main with what the "Nation" said of him in
1843--"Though he often fell into ludicrous exaggerations and
burlesques in describing Irish life, there is a good national spirit
running through the majority of his works, for which he has not
received due credit."
One of his stories, "Rory O'More," achieved universal popularity also
as a play, a song and an air. In it there is a passage which, when I first
read it, I looked upon as an exaggeration, and as somewhat reflecting
upon the dignity of a great national movement like that of the United
Irishmen. Lover brings his hero, Rory, into somewhat questionable
surroundings in a Munster town--intended for Cork or some other
seaport--to meet a French emissary. One would think that a struggle for
the freedom of Ireland should be carried on amongst the most lofty

surroundings. But I found in after life that the incidents described by
Lover were not so exaggerated as might be supposed, for, as "necessity
has no law," during a later revolutionary struggle we had often to meet
in strange and unromantic places, as I shall describe later, for most
important projects.
Lover's wit was spontaneous, and bubbled over in his ordinary
conversation with friends. An English lady friend, deeply interested in
Ireland, once said to him--"I believe I was intended for an
Irishwoman." Lover gallantly replied--"Cross over to Ireland and they
will swear you were intended for an Irishman."
A famous Irishman, whom I saw in Liverpool when I was a boy, was
the Apostle of Temperance, Father Mathew.
At