Hard luck on the North of Ireland Tourist Board. After the huge publicity they must have got from those pictures of the Prince of Wales sitting at the Causeway in the Giant's Chair, Drumcree and so on has scared many people off. Hotels, B and Bs, and all the structures of tourism will have felt the shock effects. On the south side of the Border, too.
There have been famous English visitors to the Causeway before, him, of course. Dr Johnson wasn't at his best when he replied to the line given out to him by his feed man Boswell.
"Is the Giant's Causeway worth seeing? The Doctor's reply was worth seeing but not worth going to, see." And Thackeray in his Irish Sketch Book of 1842 gives us a line larky, Punch like account of his encounters with the natives and the scene.
Often the illustrations in this edition lent by a teamed friend which dates back to 1879, are the best part of it. One such shows a boat standing almost perpendicular in the dip of a huge wave, with four men in the bow pulling hard at the oars while two gentlemen, of whom Thackeray is one, sit, holding on tight, but with aplomb, for they are still wearing their top hats.
It is at this point that the writer asks "But where, if you please, is the Causeway?" Says the main boatman "That pier which you see jutting out into the bay, right ahead." To which Thackeray in not unJohnsonian mood replies "Mon Dieu! and have I travelled a hundred and fifty miles to see that?" And he declares that "upon my conscience, the barge moored at Hungerford market is a more majestic object, and seems to occupy as much space." Of course, the Causeway stretches a great distance as Thackeray does admit a bit later. He goes on to write of the sensation of awe and terror which the hour's walk occasioned . . . "it looks like the beginning of the world, somehow the sea looks older than in other places . . . When the world was moulded and formed out of formless chaos, this must have been the bit over a remnant of chaos!" Then, being Thackeray he adds "Think of that! It is a tailor's simile. Well, I am a Cockney I wish I were in Pall Mall!" And that is only one part of Antrim. To many, the county most worth visiting, especially for its northern and eastern coasts.
Good days will come again.