The Outgoing Spirit - Across the Pond: An Englishman's View of America - page 30

One can contrast American cosiness about the family with certain traditional domestic at-
titudes in Ireland. In the nineteenth century, there was little romantic or sentimental about
Irish domestic arrangements. American families are important among other things because
they provide an emotional refuge from a harsh public world. The more cutthroat and an-
onymous social life becomes, the more one may expect a cult of domestic affections. In
traditional Ireland, by contrast, the domestic unit was locked directly into the socio-eco-
nomic world. This was known as the family farm. Relationships between family members
were governed among other things by economic necessity. Marriage was more a matter of
dowries and matchmakers than candle-lit dinners or erotic love. Many of the Irish were
lucky to get a dinner at all, candle-lit or otherwise. Fine feelings were for those who could
afford them. Sexual reproduction was geared to producing children who would work on the
land, as well as provide for their parents in their old age. Celibacy might be enforced on
those children who did not inherit the farm. Otherwise they might be compelled to emig-
rate, or become priests or nuns. Dividing a small farm between too many family members
raised the spectre of hardship and even famine.
Visitors to Ireland should remember that though we are all Irish in the eyes of God, the
Almighty designed the Irish nation with a specific purpose in mind, namely, as a place for
other people to feel romantic about. The Irish are adept at exploiting this role, though they
do not feel in the least romantic about themselves and would not be caught dead wear-
ing an Aran sweater or drinking Irish coffee. In fact, the country was recently thrown into
blind panic by a malicious rumour that Irish pubs might actually be coming to Ireland. The
Irish drink Guinness, of course, but Guinness is not really Irish any longer. The brewery is
owned by an international corporation. A number of things that seem to be Irish, such as
Irish stew or the founding of Dublin, are not Irish at all. The Irish might, however, engage
in such activities as singing “Danny Boy” or saying “Begorrah” (a word which nobody in
Ireland has ever been known to utter) simply to please the tourists, rather as lunatics in
eighteenth-century London would froth at the mouth and slash at their wrists when visitors
came to view them, only to resume their usual demure demeanour once they had gone.
It should be said, incidentally, that one key difference between the Irish and the British
is that on the whole the Irish like Americans, whereas generally speaking the English do
not. Ireland's affection for the United States is hardly surprising, given the loyal support
the country has shown its people over the centuries. In the years after the Great Famine,
whole villages in the west of Ireland would have sunk without trace had it not been for the
New York Police Department. It was the money its Irish officers sent back home which
kept them afloat. The distance from Dublin to Boston is in many ways shorter than that
from Dublin to London. Flying to the aid of a downtrodden, semi-destitute country stands
as one of the United States's great historic achievements, along with Emily Dickinson and
magnificent bacon. (These, however, are to be weighed against its lamentable ignorance of
the teapot, which is largely a consequence of never having owned India.) There are aspects