THE WAR of Independence effectively ended at noon on July 11th, 1921, when the truce came into effect. The feeling of relief, and cautious optimism, is still palpable from the contemporary newspapers as curfews, restrictions on rail and other travel were lifted, and IRA men emerged from the shadows to act as liaison officers with the British army to monitor the agreement. A flavour of the mood is caught by this piece, by C.H.B., on a visit to St Stephen’s Green:
Now that the atmosphere of peace is, as it were, oozing from every pore and the cautious pedestrian abandons the sound Napoleonic tactics of taking two looks back for every look forward, it behoves every patriotic citizen of Dublin to take at least one walk through St Stephen’s Green and see with what skill the lapidaries have burnished that emerald set in old gold; that Eden bower in which the ghost of Mangan walks, and the Egyptian goose, poised on one contemplative leg, outstares the unwinking windows of the Friendly Brothers Club.
The Israelites in Egyptian bondage are alleged to have complained because they were compelled to make bricks without straw. Most of us know more about throwing bricks than making the, and the precise part played by the straw in the process has often puzzled us. But we all know what it means to try to keep the garden going without water, and we can dimly imagine the effort involved – to say nothing of the subterfuges to which recourse must be had – to keep whole vistas of floral beauty fresh and lovely to the jaded and heat-weary eye . . .
I cannot leave the Green without a word about the artificial fowl. I regret to observe that the artificiality is fast departing, that the all-pervading mallard is rapidly ousting the exotic denizens from their pride of place. My particular friend, the bifurcated teal, is no longer to be seen, and I also missed the little scaup. Only the shelducks seem to hold their own.
I am told that aquatic fowl are not to be come by these days, but I cannot help thinking that a philanthropist who wanted to go down to posterity as a beautifier of his capital city could do something. Anyhow, if the philanthropist will produce himself, I will undertake to produce the ducks.
Meanwhile the purging process might begin. There is an ancient custom by which a haunch of venison from the lowing herd in the Phoenix Park is presented annually to certain distinguished office-holders of the Irish Government. This keeps the deer from overflowing on to the Polo Ground, and gives the office-holders in question, like Father William, a muscular strength in the jaw that enables them to fight the battle of official life with irresistible vigour. The custom is a good one, and it occurs to me to reduplicate it in the form of, say, a brace of wild ducks per annum to this writer, might crystallise into one of the most appropriate, as well as one of the most ancient, of our civic rites.
Just as I was leaving the Green I caught a glimpse of some tall red lilies growing by the water side. They took me back to California, where in other days I have feasted my eye on whole meadows of such lilies . . . Those are the little things that really matter in life – provided, of course, that we continue to reverse the Napoleonic maxim, and take two looks forward for every time that we look back.
I have no doubt that somewhere in St Stephen’s Green, below the waterfall (which was actually falling today) or among the rainbow flowers or tender foliage, there is a thought for everyone that will take them, in happy forgetfulness of the present, either into the pale, but lovely twilight-land of memory or forward to the bright and splendid Orient of things to be.