John Bulls Other Island | Page 9

patriotism in Bermondsey or the
Scotland Division of Liverpool, go further with you than all the facts
that stare you in the face. Why, man alive, look at me! You know the
way I nag, and worry, and carp, and cavil, and disparage, and am never
satisfied and never quiet, and try the patience of my best friends.

BROADBENT. Oh, come, Larry! do yourself justice. You're very
amusing and agreeable to strangers.
DOYLE. Yes, to strangers. Perhaps if I was a bit stiffer to strangers,
and a bit easier at home, like an Englishman, I'd be better company for
you.
BROADBENT. We get on well enough. Of course you have the
melancholy of the Celtic race--
DOYLE [bounding out of his chair] Good God!!!
BROADBENT [slyly]--and also its habit of using strong language
when there's nothing the matter.
DOYLE. Nothing the matter! When people talk about the Celtic race, I
feel as if I could burn down London. That sort of rot does more harm
than ten Coercion Acts. Do you suppose a man need be a Celt to feel
melancholy in Rosscullen? Why, man, Ireland was peopled just as
England was; and its breed was crossed by just the same invaders.
BROADBENT. True. All the capable people in Ireland are of English
extraction. It has often struck me as a most remarkable circumstance
that the only party in parliament which shows the genuine old English
character and spirit is the Irish party. Look at its independence, its
determination, its defiance of bad Governments, its sympathy with
oppressed nationalities all the world over! How English!
DOYLE. Not to mention the solemnity with which it talks old-
fashioned nonsense which it knows perfectly well to be a century
behind the times. That's English, if you like.
BROADBENT. No, Larry, no. You are thinking of the modern hybrids
that now monopolize England. Hypocrites, humbugs, Germans, Jews,
Yankees, foreigners, Park Laners, cosmopolitan riffraff. Don't call them
English. They don't belong to the dear old island, but to their
confounded new empire; and by George! they're worthy of it; and I
wish them joy of it.
DOYLE [unmoved by this outburst]. There! You feel better now, don't
you?
BROADBENT [defiantly]. I do. Much better.
DOYLE. My dear Tom, you only need a touch of the Irish climate to be
as big a fool as I am myself. If all my Irish blood were poured into your
veins, you wouldn't turn a hair of your constitution and character. Go
and marry the most English Englishwoman you can find, and then

bring up your son in Rosscullen; and that son's character will be so like
mine and so unlike yours that everybody will accuse me of being his
father. [With sudden anguish] Rosscullen! oh, good Lord, Rosscullen!
The dullness! the hopelessness! the ignorance! the bigotry!
BROADBENT [matter-of-factly]. The usual thing in the country, Larry.
Just the same here.
DOYLE [hastily]. No, no: the climate is different. Here, if the life is
dull, you can be dull too, and no great harm done. [Going off into a
passionate dream] But your wits can't thicken in that soft moist air, on
those white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on
those hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You've no such
colors in the sky, no such lure in the distances, no such sadness in the
evenings. Oh, the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heartscalding,
never satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming! [Savagely]
No debauchery that ever coarsened and brutalized an Englishman can
take the worth and usefulness out of him like that dreaming. An
Irishman's imagination never lets him alone, never convinces him,
never satisfies him; but it makes him that he can't face reality nor deal
with it nor handle it nor conquer it: he can only sneer at them that do,
and [bitterly, at Broadbent] be "agreeable to strangers," like a
good-for-nothing woman on the streets. [Gabbling at Broadbent across
the table] It's all dreaming, all imagination. He can't be religious. The
inspired Churchman that teaches him the sanctity of life and the
importance of conduct is sent away empty; while the poor village priest
that gives him a miracle or a sentimental story of a saint, has cathedrals
built for him out of the pennies of the poor. He can't be intelligently
political, he dreams of what the Shan Van Vocht said in ninety- eight.
If you want to interest him in Ireland you've got to call the unfortunate
island Kathleen ni Hoolihan and pretend she's a little old woman. It
saves thinking. It saves working. It saves everything except
imagination, imagination, imagination; and imagination's such a torture
that you can't bear it without whisky. [With fierce shivering
self-contempt] At last you get that you can bear nothing real at all:
you'd rather starve