Irish History'The better the diarist, the bigger the fool" falls down like most generalisations, but it has enough truth to govern most cases. Charles Hart (1824-1898) may well be Young Ireland's closest approximation to Bertie Wooster, despite fierce competition.
His Jeeves was presumably his brother-in-law John Blake Dillon. Yet Dillon only became comprehensible with the appearance of Brendan Ó Cathaoir's masterly biography 13 years ago, whereas this diary which he now edits would have made any reader perfectly acquainted with its author whenever it was read. Hart is transparent, in any meaning of the word.
It is a splendid contribution to the Irish Narratives Series which enlivens Irish history far beyond the capability of most historians. Hart sneers at poor Michael Doheny (one of the very few Young Irelanders to speak the Irish whose revival they so ringingly demanded) for drunkenly treating New York Bishop Hughes "with a rude and vulgar familiarity", yet Doheny's The Felon's Track on his flight from the Young Ireland rebellion seems unconsciously parodied in Hart's strictly upmarket version.
As Ó Cathaoir asserts in one of the finest, hard-bitten openings to an editorial introduction you could ask, Hart in 1848 "expected the famished people to fight, while he went to the US . . . a gentleman . . . whose circumscribed middle-class existence separated him from the harrowing lives of the Famine refugees . . . he took a room in the Astor Hotel, whereas they streamed into ghettos like the Five Points intersection". It is horribly evocative of Young Ireland realities, much more so than either Doheny or Dillon, who were too real themselves to be representative. But Hart mirrors the movement, in mentality, all the more because he did so little.
The highest point is his pleasure on learning that William Smith O'Brien told the Widow McCormack he would pay for her children if they were burnt to death when he assailed policemen in her house "which proves that he did not sacrifice the chance of striking a blow for such a contemptible reason as was falsely said". Hart is a fascinating instance of the deep root class distinction had gained in the Catholic Ireland of his time, whence we can see how snobbery garnished Young Ireland's dislike of O'Connell. One feels Hart would have been quite sympathetic about danger to little middle-class children.
Like many wildly unthinking murderous philanthropists, Hart seems decent, if a bit patronising, when meeting people individually. He seems to have enjoyed talking to African-Americans, in pleasant contrast to Mitchel's negrophobia. He is a good observer of Americans, showing far more judicious superficial judgements than English writers of the day. He has some startling perceptions, such as finding John C. Calhoun sounding "in accent like an Irishman", which somehow explains Southern intransigence much better. He paints a vivid picture of a presidential inauguration, although his editor has probably misread his bad hand writing in rendering the presidential nickname "Old Jack". General Zachary Taylor was widely known as "Old Zach".
That and a mis-spelling of the editor's own name (page 92, footnote 33) are the only solecisms in this admirable edition of a fascinating window on the gentility of Young Ireland.
Owen Dudley Edwards teaches History at the University of Edinburgh and was co-editor of Hugh MacDiarmid's New Letters (2001)
Young Irelander Abroad: The Diary of Charles Hart Edited by Brendan Ó Cathaoir (Irish Narratives Series edited by David Fitzpatrick) Cork University Press, 100pp, €15