Ireland: A Social and Cultural History 1922–2001

In 1925 an American journalist travelled throughout Ireland and in his volume of observations managed a greater optimism about the country’s cultural future than Russell could achieve as the 1920s progressed. He wrote in hope, recognizing, however, that cultural life in Ireland depended much on isolated individuals:

At Enniscorthy it came to me very conclusively that scattered all about Ireland there is a small, highly-educated intellectual middle class which does not coincide with the moneyed people nor with the fox-hunting people at all – a class which, quietly living its own life and unobtrusively going its own way, is not often observed by the stranger. Nevertheless, it adds a very necessary leaven to the mind-life of Ireland, and it does not, as one of the ladies at the hotel said of herself “live to bloom unseen.” For those good and excellent people scattered over the face of Ireland, whose habits of mind force them to a certain solitude, may accept as a rather enheartening certainty the thought that when they sit alone playing Wagner instead of bridge or reading Joseph Conrad instead of someone’s palm, they are taking a place with honor in the community life of their country. There will be shy people at the gate to listen, and there will be those in the library to receive the book. Ireland will grow slowly into its new life…and there will be an increasing number of those who will look up eagerly toward better things.41

Some of what follows in this book reflects on the experience of such solitary people and on their work to generate cultural and intellectual revival. Their experience did not bear out the confidence of this prophecy. The repressiveness, conservatism, and deprivation of Irish life in general, like the country’s economic poverty, did not, unhappily, admit of such inevitable amelioration.