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

Preface

ix Preface k k k k k I did not begin this study with full awareness that it would eventually embrace tourism, landscape, and the Irish character. The landscape came Qrst. When I lived in Ireland in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I became fascinated with the Irish landscape. Although I had long wanted to Qnd some way to work this interest into my studies, I lacked the requisite background in geology, geography, or environmental science , not to mention the Irish language, which encodes so much of the social meaning of the land. Eventually I realized that I could approach the subject by looking at how strangers like myself have reacted to it. The travel literature about Ireland seemed a likely source, and the midto late eighteenth century was a good place to begin, since it was during this period that landscape aesthetics expanded to include the concepts of the picturesque and the sublime. Coincidently, the last half of the eighteenth century saw the beginnings of Irish tourism. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Ireland’s basic tourism infrastructure was in place, and a considerable library of travel literature, most of it by British writers, had been produced. Most of the travel writers did, indeed, describe the Irish landscape. However, in many instances their real subject was the Irish people, especially the peasantry. In fact, to varying degrees, British travelogues written during the Qrst century of Irish tourism, roughly 1750 to 1850, were intended to increase Britons’ understanding of their sister island and further a sense of unity. This involved a fascination, one might say obsession, with the Irish character. While it seemed at Qrst glace as if land and people occupied separate spheres of the travelers’ attention, they were in fact closely linked in a variety of ways. The writers’ responses to the land often influenced how they evaluated Paddy’s character and vice versa. Historians have used travel literature as a valuable source for understanding pre-Famine Ireland. I, however, have tried to understand the travel writers themselves primarily within the context of tourism. Their itineraries, their habits of observation, and their interaction with the Irish were shaped, if not controlled, by the act of touring and the genre of the travel narrative. In that sense, British travel literature provides an interesting case study of the limitations of tourism and the travelogue as vehicles for promoting understanding between peoples. I am greatly indebted to the following good friends whose hospitality made the research for this book possible; Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Macdara Woods, Phyllis Gaffney and Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin of Dublin; Alf and Finnuala MacLochlainn of Galway; Owen and Bonnie Edwards of Edinburgh; and Kenneth Haag, formerly of Bloomington, Indiana. I want to particularly thank Dr. Christopher J. Woods of the Royal Irish Academy for sharing with me his bibliography on Irish travel writing. I am grateful to the librarians and staffs of the following libraries: the National Library of Ireland; the library of the Royal Irish Academy ; the libraries of the National University of Ireland at Trinity College , Dublin, and at Galway; the National Library of Scotland; the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington; the library of the University of Cincinnati; the Hamilton County Public Library in Cincinnati; and the Gary Library of the Union Institute & University, Montpelier, Vermont. My thanks also to Alf MacLochlainn and to my former colleague Preface x Dr. Carole Ganim for reading earlier versions of the manuscript. I especially want to thank my friend Kevin McHugh of Cincinnati, who took time out from his poetry to make valuable editorial suggestions for the Qnal draft. I am also grateful to Thomas Radshaw and James Rogers of the New Hibernia Review for permission to publish parts of my article “Into the West: Landscape and Imperial Imagination in Connemara, 1820– 1870,” which appeared in the spring issue of 1998. Finally I want to thank James S. Donnelly, Jr., and Thomas Archdeacon of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and also the staff of the University of Wisconsin Press, especially Gwen Walker and my copyeditor , Jane Barry, and my editor, Adam Mehring. Preface xi Tourism, Landscape, and the Irish Character ...