Tourism, Landscape, and the Irish Character: British Travel Writers in Pre-Famine Ireland

Notes

Notes k k k k k Introduction 1. Quoted by Katherine Turner, British Travel Writers in Europe 1750–1800, 2. See also Hartmut Berghoff and Barbara Korte,“Britain and the Making of Modern Tourism,” 2. 2. Andrew HadQeld and John McVeagh, Strangers to That Land, 134. 3. James Johnson, A Tour of Ireland with Meditations and Reflections, 9. The arrival in Dublin was a set piece in many Irish travel accounts, and writers indulged themselves in comparing Dublin Bay to the Bay of Naples. Once they landed, however, they faced the chaos of the quayside, the Qrst sight of Irish beggars , the dirt and discomfort of the transportation into the city—all of which became part of the litany of tourists’ complaints. 4. William Makepeace Thackeray,The Irish Sketch Book: 1842, 240,italics added. 5. Ibid., 277, italics original. 6. Simon Gikandi, Maps of Englishness, 89. 7. See John McVeagh, Irish Travel Writing. McVeagh’s bibliography is arranged alphabetically by author. My tabulations are based, where possible, on the year a tour took place. For information on seventeenth-century travelers to Ireland, as well as excerpts from their works, see HadQeld and McVeagh, Strangers to That Land. 8. Richard Pococke, an Englishman, was a graduate of Oxford. Holding a variety of positions in the Church of Ireland, he traveled to various parts of Ireland in 1747, 1749, 1752, 1753, and 1758, visiting some places that would not become part of the tourist’s “beaten path” until well into the next century. His account of his 1752 tour was Qrst published in 1892, edited by George T. Stokes. His journals 201 and letters describing his trips around Ireland have been collected and edited by John McVeagh and published as Richard Pococke’s Irish Tours. Outside Ireland Pococke is best known for “discovering,” or at least popularizing, Chamounix in Switzerland. 9. See Toby Barnard, Making the Grand Figure, 52. 10. Carole Fabricant, “The Literature of Domestic Tourism and the Public Consumption of Private Property,”256. See also Ian Ousby, The Englishman’s England , 62. 11. Around three hundred big houses were built in Ireland during the eighteenth century. See the chart in Kevin Whelan, “Modern Landscape from Plantation to Present,” 69, Qg. 5. Construction fell off considerably after the Act of Union, which abolished the Irish Parliament in Dublin and sent its members to sit in Westminster in London. 12. Barnard, Making the Grand Figure, 27. For the Ascendancy’s obsession with building, see also R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland: 1600–1973, 190–93. 13. For the politics behind Lord Kenmare’s involvement in Killarney, see Luke Gibbons, “Topographies of Terror,” 29. 14. For the economic role of Irish proprietors, see Peter Somerville-Large, The Irish Country House, 177; Kevin Whelan, “Towns and Villages,” 187–90; Louis M. Cullen, The Emergence of Modern Ireland, 1600–1900, 39–60. 15. John Carr, The Stranger in Ireland, 210. See also Richard Twiss, A Tour of Ireland in 1775 with a Map, and a View of the Salmon-Leap at Ballyshannon, 654. For the grand jury road system, see David Broderick, An Early Toll-Road, 13–14; T. W. Freeman, “Land and People, c. 1841,” 255–56. It was not until the 1830s that the Board of Works took over the task of building new roads in Ireland. 16. This problem was solved when George Taylor and Andrew Skinner published their Maps of the Roads of Ireland, Surveyed 1777. The book displayed the major roads of Ireland in a series of strip maps. The fact that each map contained symbols for country seats, castles and ruins, churches, bridges, hills, and rivers and lakes suggests that the work was probably intended for the tourist as well as the traveling businessman. After a new edition was published in 1783, subscribers to the initial publication were invited to contribute information regarding their estates, nearby antiquities, and other features of interest. The result, The Post Chaise Companion—published as Traveller’s Directory through Ireland by James Dodd in 1801—appeared without maps in 1784 and was Ireland’s Qrst guidebook. 17. John Bush, Hibernia Curiosa, 158, 160. 18. See Twiss, Tour of Ireland. Twiss was born in Rotterdam, the son of an English merchant. Enjoying ample means, he devoted himself to travel and toured extensively in Europe before arriving in Ireland. His manner was so off-putting that even when he actually tried to compliment the Irish, he managed to offend them. 19. Although plagiarism was quite common in...