Chapter Four
In Dublin's Fair City
Sybil would, Tom assured her, find Dublin - presently (if not for much longer) the second city of the British Empire - to be a city of contradictions and immense contrasts. It was something, which everyone arriving for the first time in Dublin, whether from the surrounding countryside or from further afield, whether from elsewhere in Ireland or from abroad, noticed. It was something too, with which Sybil would have to come to terms very quickly.
And, before her very eyes, Tom vividly brought to life the city in which Sybil had now come to live.
He described the balls and lavish dinners given at Dublin Castle, the focal point of British rule in Ireland, along with the fashionable clubs on St. Stephen's Green, as well as the fine civic buildings. Here Tom mentioned the National Museum on Kildare Street and the Reading Room of the National Library, both of which, along with Marsh's Library in St. Patrick's Close, he knew well - which, of course, came as no particular surprise to Sybil.
There were beautiful parks such as the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, and, perhaps the most beautiful of them all, Phoenix Park situated in the west of the city, where they could stroll and saunter at their leisure, time and the weather permitting. Then there were leafy fashionable suburbs such as Blackrock, Monkstown and Rathmines, where one day they might live. There were theatres too, such as the Royal on Hawkins Street, the Tivoli, and even cinemas. The latter included the Volta which stood on the appropriately named Mary Street and to which, on hearing Sybil confess that she had never visited a picture house, Tom promised to take her, after they were married.
As an aside, Tom took great delight in telling Sybil that Mary Street itself was situated in one of the less fashionable parts of the city. Sybil retorted that would never do. When Mary and Edith came over to Dublin for their wedding in a month or so, Sybil could well imagine her eldest sister descending on the Dublin Corporation like one of the avenging Furies of Ancient Greece. Sybil had no doubt that Mary would imperiously demand of the civic authorities that the name of Mary Street be changed or else the area through which it ran be smartened up - immediately.
Given Mary's almost hysterical opposition to the whole idea of their marriage, and some of the more unpleasant remarks she had made about Tom prior to their departure for Ireland, Sybil had ceased to defend her eldest sister from Tom's jibes. Sybil had long since come to realise that what Mary knew of life outside the gilded world of Downton Abbey could be inscribed on the head of a pin. That said, she loved her sister dearly, and also knew, that if the truth be told, both Tom and Mary had a sneaking regard the one for the other. That if only both of them, equally stubborn in their own ways, could be made to see the wood for the trees, then they had every chance of getting along tolerably well.
But, alongside all the wealth and comfortable living there existed another side to Dublin.
The filthy, overcrowded, disease-ridden tenements north of the River Liffey, such as Henrietta Street, those which lay off the main thoroughfares, or else along the quays, teeming with disease, malnourished children, where life was desperate and precarious, where deprivation, poverty, and unemployment were an accepted part of daily life for those forced to live in such abject squalor.
Tom told Sybil that he had visited streets where, because of the unsanitary conditions, life expectancy for children was cruelly short. Where infant mortality was appalling, and where if disease and illness didn't kill you, then the sudden collapse of a tenement building, many of which were in an appalling state of disrepair, would undoubtedly do the job just as well. But as Tom readily conceded, such iniquitous inequalities could be found in any large city - London included - even if it still remained the case that in Dublin there were to be found the worst housing conditions of any city anywhere in Great Britain. It was at this moment that Sybil blanching at Tom's vivid description, stopped eating, resorting to merely toying with the small amount of food remaining on her plate, and stared down at the table.
At this precise point in time, Sybil and Tom were just finishing a welcome lunch. After all they had had nothing to eat since a hurried breakfast on the Munster several hours earlier, and were now sitting taking their ease in Bewleys, a café which Tom knew, on Westmoreland Street, just round the corner from Westland Row station.
After their late arrival in Dublin, having first reunited the English city gent in the First Class smoker with his umbrella, Tom sought out one of the bevy of uniformed railway porters, who met their train on Platform 1. Having satisfied himself that Sybil's trunk would indeed be delivered by horse drawn carrier the very next day to the address Tom had written down, both Tom and Sybil left the station.
They set off along Cumberland Street, heading north for the O'Connell Bridge over the River Liffey to catch an electric tram from Sackville Street out to Tom's mother's house in the Clontarf district of the city. Fortunately, the rain had finally ceased and a pale, wan sun set in a grey cloudy sky shone weakly down over the bustling metropolis. But, before they had gone very far, the savoury smells wafting out onto the street from several eating houses assailed their nostrils, making them both painfully aware that it was several hours since they had had anything to eat.
"Hungry, my love?" asked Tom.
"Most definitely" said Sybil. "Ah that smell. It's delicious". She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. "That ... that puts me in mind of Mrs. Patmore. And the kitchen back at Downton on baking day".
"Well, it's surprising how good rat can smell. Baked or stewed, but from personal experience, I have to say, stewed is best" said Tom with a mischievous grin.
"Stewed rat?" said Sybil aghast. "What the ..." then catching sight of his face, "Tom you're joking".
"Of course I am" said Tom with a laugh. "But I'm sure Mary thinks that's what we eat over here - that and boiled potatoes, all of us living in our one room slums, breeding like rabbits, plotting the downfall of the British Empire. Don't forget, you told me some of the choicer comments she made about me and Ireland. And when she and Edith come over for our wedding, for sheer devilment, I might take her out to tea in the Coombe area of the city – just to confirm her views of Dublin and the Irish".
"Why, is it that bad?" asked Sybil, genuinely interested.
Tom nodded.
"One of the worst districts in the city, but then I expect Mary doesn't even realise that London has its share of slums. There can't be many of those near your family's town house, I'll be bound".
Sybil, having put all thoughts of rat, baked or stewed, from out of her mind, continued to sniff the savoury smells wafting around them.
"My love, you most decidedly have a very fine nose" said Tom with a grin. "Come on, I know just the place where we can get something to eat -it's close by, on Westmoreland Street, just along from Trinity College, and isn't at all expensive. It might not be quite what you've been used to when dining out up in London, but you'll always find a warm welcome at Bewleys. Moreover the food is excellent and when I last ate there, there wasn't a rat in sight".
And indeed, Bewleys proved to be just as good as Tom had said it would be.
After their meal, laughing and joking, Tom and Sybil crossed over the Liffey by way of the O'Connell Bridge - Tom remarking with a wink to Sybil that the bridge also had been once named for the same Lord Lieutenant of Ireland who had given his name to the pier at Kingstown. They had just crossed the bridge and reached the southern end of Sackville Street, when Tom stopped abruptly and set down their two cases on the pavement.
Ahead of them, dominated by the towering Nelson Pillar, stretched Sackville Street, one of the city's most bustling thoroughfares, lined with expensive shops, public buildings, the luxurious Metropole Hotel and the General Post Office which adjoined it. But the scene which greeted Tom and Sybil on that June morning in 1919 was one of utter devastation.
As far as their eyes could see, on either side of Sackville Street, stretched the burnt out, blackened ruins of all manner of buildings. These shattered, silent sentinels bore mute testimony to the savagery of the fighting, which had taken place here but three years before during the Easter Rising in 1916. On one side, heavily out-numbered, hurriedly trained, and poorly equipped, had been those seeking to establish a free and independent Ireland. On the other, the British Army with its unlimited supplies of munitions and soldiers, the latter well disciplined and provisioned, fighting with an equal determination to keep Ireland as part of the British Empire and as one of the possessions of the British Crown.
As part of this violent confrontation, having come up against unexpectedly dogged and determined resistance, and to flush out their opponents holed up in the General Post Office, the British Army had resorted to the use of heavy artillery, here in the very heart of Dublin .The result was all too predictable, and the casualty rate, on both sides, appalling.
"Jaysus, will you look at this. Sybil, will y' just look! Look at what those bastards have done! I knew it had been bad over here, but to see it ... like this ..." Overcome with emotion, and having given vent, for him, to an uncharacteristic outburst of profanity at what now confronted them, Tom sat down abruptly on a shattered piece of masonry, his head in his hands, and wept.
While at that precise point in time, Dublin had no claim on Sybil's loyalty, to see the man she loved so deeply so overcome with grief, at that very moment, Sybil's heart went out to Tom. Heedless of the looks of other passers-by, not caring a fig for what her aristocratic family would have made of such a public show of emotion, Sybil knelt down on the rubble strewn pavement of Sackville Street, and put her arms about Tom's neck, holding him close, much as she had done on the deck of the Munster.
After a while, Tom's tears ceased to fall. Cupping his chin gently in her hands, Sybil raised his tear-stained face to hers, said simply:
"I know what you have seen today pains you my love, but this ... this was yesterday. We, my darling, are the future. Come, let's go and find the tram, and meet your family".