Wheels Within Wheels

by Dervla Murphy

  I left Lismore on April 15, 1951, to spend three weeks cycling through Wales and Southern England – including, inevitably, five days in Stratford-upon-Avon. Some of the neighbours were aghast when they heard that I had taken off, alone, on a bicycle, to travel through what was little better than a pagan land. And they were even more aghast when they realised that my parents had encouraged me to commit this outrage.

  At nineteen I had never before left Ireland, apart from one Triple Crown excursion to Twickenham. (Where, having just finished Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third, I deserted my fellow-fans, after the match, to search unsuccessfully for Strawberry Hill.) I was fervently nationalist and anti-partitionist and therefore, in theory, anti-British. Honour required me to see Britain as a foreign country because my school history books had taught that the British were solely responsible for all Ireland’s past woes and present handicaps. Thus I was shocked to discover, as I cycled through Wales and England, that it was impossible to feel ‘abroad’. Half of me seemed ‘to belong’ in Britain. Having been in love with a quintessential Englishman for two years may have contributed to this. Much more important, however, was the fact that I had grown up by the light of Eng. Lit. To me the British were comprehensible and congenial (to my great annoyance) because their history and literature were mine, too, with modifications and additions. At times I found them as exasperating as they can find us; but they were never baffling, as we so often are to them. One knew what made them tick. Of course the Welsh and the English differed from me, but no more than a Welshman differs from a Scotsman or a Kerryman from a Dubliner. What we had in common went deeper than what divided us. Thomas Davis made many bigoted and stupid remarks, but he was right when he said, ‘A people without a language of its own is only half a nation. A nation should guard its language more than its territories – ’tis a surer barrier, and more important frontier than fortress or river … To lose your native tongue, and learn that of an alien, is the worst badge of conquest – it is the chain on the soul. To have lost entirely the national language is death; the fetter has worn through.’ In 1951, however, I was not yet ready to admit that an Ireland in every way independent of Britain could only be a mirage. It was too soon for me to analyse detachedly the Republican ideals and prejudices acquired from generations of militant Murphys. I therefore developed a form of cultural schizophrenia, with my nationalistic half resolutely remembering that Britain was ‘the ancient enemy’ (though already Mark and Godfrey had seen that eventually my ‘literary’ rather than my ‘political’ half would win). Indeed, the fact that the implacable nationalism inherited from my father was being threatened by the apolitical liberalism inherited from my mother made me even more aggressively Irish and proud of it. Not for many years would I be willing to recognise that Ireland’s uniquely close relationship with Britain is impervious to ‘constitutional re-arrangements’ – and that to admit this is not to be a shoneen (i.e. pro-British) but a realist.

  Happily my cultural schizophrenia detracted nothing from my enjoyment of Britain. I proved that I could cycle 100 miles a day without undue effort and I cut back on food to spend wildly in second-hand bookshops, sending a postcard home almost daily to announce that another parcel of ‘wonderful finds’ had been despatched. Every evening I met in my Youth Hostel congenial representatives of the Great British Public and a stimulating cross-section of early fellow-tourists from Europe and America. At Stratford I actually spoke to Professor Dover Wilson for ten minutes after a lecture on Richard II – undoubtedly the highlight of the whole trip. And there too I met four undergraduates who invited me to contact them when I got to Oxford and gave me an illicit glimpse of Balliol night life. In London I rivalled the most gluttonous of American culture-vultures and packed an improbable number of concerts, ballets, operas, museums and galleries into eight days. And everywhere I found the allegedly reserved English spontaneously kind and helpful – even talkative, if the stranger was prepared to initiate the conversation.

  My father never commented on the long article I wrote about Oxford on my return home, but it must have alarmed him, as a symptom of my drift away from the true-blue (or true-green) Republican tradition. In the course of it I wrote:

  Oxford is a state of mind more than a place. One may enter it with reverence, or in a tolerantly amused mood – those quaint British, with their slavish adherence to tradition – or with indifference; but no one can leave it without feeling that they have been through a most exhilarating experience. Its potent, subtle charm compels recognition – seizes you with a gentle fierceness – you may resist but finally you must surrender.

  Who can say what that charm is? (Perhaps all charm is merely a subjective quality and what constitutes Oxford’s spell for me would mean little to another.) It is a place of paradoxes, of illogical customs often initiated in the centuries that knew Chaucer or Shakespeare, yet still revered by all if somewhat imperfectly comprehended by many. Also it is a place of the wildest unconventionality and irresponsibility. Undergraduates who seem able to discuss anything from Industrial Relations to Japanese art will in a moment turn to playing a practical joke that I would have considered infantile at twelve. Which reminds me of a cat I saw in the Garden Quad at Balliol: a plump, elderly cat she was. Anywhere else she would have sat sedately in the sun, meticulously performing her ablutions, but there she gambolled under the chestnuts and elms in an abandoned manner, as though the imperishable youthfulness which is an essential ingredient of the Oxford atmosphere had permeated her matronly body. For although the centuries have flowed over Oxford, have deposited there learning and beauty and dignity, they have not eroded her youth. How could they, when every year brings a fresh stream of undergraduates, high-spirited, enthusiastic, carefree, bearing the fragile ideals, the crazy theories, the irrepressible gaiety and optimism of the very young. They make of the ancient University of Oxford a Peter Pan among cities.

  In a sense Oxford seems strangely un-British, though the cradle of so many of England’s finest minds and traditions. I pondered long on this. Is it because it came into being long before what Belloc defined as the ‘consciousness of nationality’ developed? And so it retains a medieval attitude which allows the more important things of the spirit and the mind to predominate over political or racial conflicts or characteristics. And yet – such is the many-sidedness of the place – you feel there that you have your finger on the very pulse of England, that pulse which has beaten steadily whatever ills have afflicted the body of the nation. It is of Oxford that Englishmen may justly boast – not of Empires, or factories, of athletes or inventions – but of this quintessence of all that is best in the English, and the European, heritage.

  There was an underlying sadness about my reaction to Oxford, though at the time I firmly refused to dwell upon this. I had never regretted leaving school at fourteen, but now, suddenly, I saw that university was another matter. During those few days and nights of innocent though often rule-breaking fun with my young Balliol men and their girlfriends – it was during the Eights Week – I found myself in a world where I naturally belonged. Or could have belonged, in other circumstances; as my article reveals, it would have been too late, in 1951, for me to adapt to that world even had I then been free to do so. I was only nineteen – younger than all my new friends – yet I felt considerably older than they were. I wholeheartedly enjoyed their companionship, as I still would, but they made me realise that, having never known what it was to be without adult responsibilities, I had skipped a whole stage of youthfulness.

  For someone who had spent most of their nineteen years within a thirtymile radius of Lismore, those were three seminal weeks. They also provided material for my first published writing, apart from childhood competition essays. I sold three long articles, on my impressions of Stratford, London and Oxford, to the old monthly Hibernia – which had nothing in common with the present-day journal of that name. Each earned me two guineas and it was most gratifying to see my work in print and to be
paid sixteen weeks’ pocket-money for enjoying myself. Yet the thrill was less than might have been expected. I had never wanted to be a journalist, freelance or otherwise. I was not a 100-metre, or even a 1,500-metre, writer; the marathon was my distance. And in the foreseeable future there was no possibility of my being free to do a book-length journey.

  A year later I set out on a five-week continental tour, taking time-saving trains from Fishguard to Dover, en route for Belgium. And next day, in a First World War cemetery, on a vibrant spring afternoon, I passed one of those unforgettable hours which in retrospect are seen to have been milestones in one’s development.

  I was alone in the April sunshine among all those small, neat, green graves – British graves. And the sadness of that waste utterly overwhelmed me. Most had been my age, give or take a few years. Had they lived they would have been little older than my parents. But they had died – for what? For King and Country, for the defence of small nations, for the end of all warring, for a lot of platitudes. If this was nationalism in action, did it make sense? German nationalism, British nationalism, French nationalism, Irish nationalism – all decked out in flowery phrases, glorifying death, urging young men on to slaughter each other. The occupants of these graves should since have enjoyed some thirty-five years of life, as I was even then enjoying the sun and the breeze and the few white clouds in the wide blue sky above Flanders. And it didn’t matter to me that they were British; I could only think of them as humanity squandered. At twenty I was tough and my blood was the blood of fighters. Yet I wept that afternoon. I could see no point in the waste and the grief and the pseudo-heroism cultivated by each country’s leaders. How could any nation that claimed to be civilised fight such a war? I decided then that nationalism (as distinct from patriotism) is an affliction which humanity needs to be cured of as soon as possible.

  Walking back to my bicycle, I felt a sudden anguished embarrassment on my father’s behalf; and a contempt for him that humiliated me because it reeked of disloyalty. He could not have reacted as I was doing to all those graves. I had grown up, but he hadn’t. I was too young to understand that ‘growing up’, in this sense, was immeasurably harder for his generation, whatever their nationality, than for mine. At eighteen he had entered an English jail to spend three years sewing sacks for the post office, wretchedly fed and crawling with lice. And now I wonder how soon I would have ‘grown up’ had I endured a similar experience.

  From Flanders I cycled to Bruges, Antwerp, Brussels, Luxemburg, Maastricht, Aachen, Bonn and so up the Rhine – which greatly disappointed me – to Mainz. There I spent a weekend with the Hilckmanns, whom we were to have visited in August 1939. Then on to Heidelberg, Rothenburg, Biberach, Regensburg, Creglingen (where Riemenschneider’s Marienaltar excited me more than anything else on this trip), Munich, the Black Forest, Strasbourg and across central France. In Paris I spent four days feeling euphoric, except when I was kidnapped one night by White Slavers in the Place de la Concorde on my way back from the Opera to my left-bank doss-house.

  It was midnight as I crossed the Place de la Concorde and when a large car pulled up just ahead of me I ignored it, assuming that some lustful male was in search of willing prey. Then a pleasant-looking woman beckoned me and, speaking in English with only a slight accent, warned me that it is very dangerous for girls to walk alone in Paris after midnight. ‘Where are you staying?’ she asked. ‘You are taking a terrible risk. My husband and I would like to take you to your hotel.’ I was too touched by this solicitude to point out that I enjoyed walking around Paris in the middle of the night. And because it would have seemed churlish to refuse such a kind offer I slipped into the back seat, explaining that I was lodging just off the Rue St Jacques.

  It struck me as rather odd that my protectress left the front seat to sit beside me, but I became suspicious only as we passed Notre Dame. As I began to protest that we had missed our turning my companion switched on an electric torch and opened a large photograph album which she laid on my knee. ‘Look at those, my dear,’ she said. ‘We’re just going to take you home for a little fun and a drink – some champagne, you would like? And then within an hour you shall be safely home in bed.’

  While she was speaking I had been staring at the album with a mixture of horror, terror and nausea. I had never before seen pornographic photographs – or, indeed, even heard of them. Noticing my expression, the woman’s voice changed. ‘Look at me!’ she said sharply. I looked up at her and she ordered, ‘Keep on looking – don’t move!’ Terrified, I kept on looking; she was pointing one finger directly at my eyes and gazing fixedly at me by torchlight. When I realised that she was trying to hypnotise me I swung away and groped for the door-handle – though we had crossed the river and were travelling at some 40 mph up the Boulevard de la Bastille. Her voice changed again. ‘You mustn’t be afraid,’ she soothed. ‘We are going to have a nice party for only a little while. We are so fond of young people and we have no children for ourselves.’

  I sat for a moment, calculating fast. If I tried to escape at this speed I would probably be killed. If I waited for the car to stop at its destination I would certainly be overpowered by both my captors. How often had I put the hero of an adventure story into just such a dilemma! But always I provided someone to rescue him – or at least staged an earthquake for the purpose – and there was no one to rescue me, nor any likelihood of an earthquake in Paris.

  There were, however, two policemen standing in the Place de la République refereeing an argument between a taximan and his fare. As I reached again for the door-handle my ‘protectress’ grabbed me by the wrists. But at that age I had the strength of a young ox and very few women could have restrained me. Here we had to slow down almost to walking pace – traffic was streaming from the nearby railway stations – and when I had made it clear that I intended to escape the car stopped. As I scrambled out it half-turned and raced away down the Avenue de la République.

  Had I been able to afford it I would have taken a taxi back to the Rue St Jacques because my legs felt extraordinarily wobbly. But I had just enough money left to keep me in food until I got home. So I walked, only pausing to buy a bottle of plonk for my nerves in an all-night lorry-drivers’ restaurant.

  My landlady – whose mother had been for three years my father’s landlady – did not believe that the kidnappers were professional White Slavers. Had they been, she said, they would not have shown me ‘dirty pix’ – at least at that stage – and would have drugged me as soon as I entered the car. In her view they were one of the amateur gangs who had recently begun to operate to supply brothels in – of all places – Soviet Central Asia.

  This was the first time I became aware of a curious personal inhibition which I have never been able to overcome. When we reached the Place de la République and I saw the policemen it would have been simpler to yell for help than to struggle to open the car door. But even had my situation been much more desperate I could not have done so. And in various other awkward situations I have experienced the same difficulty. Something very deeply rooted and stupid – I have no idea what it is – prevents me from calling out for help.

  Paris inspired another long article, also published in Hibernia, which omitted the White Slavers but vainly tried to convey the enchantment of that city – an enchantment not at all dependent, it seemed to me, on the way its citizens treated visitors, yet potent enough to make one feel drunk on fresh air. (Which was just as well, because by the time I had got that far I could afford little else.)

  This journey amazed our neighbours – mine was not a venturesome generation, as are the young of today – and it temporarily assuaged my wanderlust. Short trips to the continent were the most that could be expected of life so I derived the maximum satisfaction from the attainable and rarely, at this time, dwelt upon the unattainable. Yet down in the unconscious frustration and resentment must have been accumulating like pus. My lack of freedom inevitably galled more because I had proved how easy it was to travel very ch
eaply by bicycle, how little it mattered not being a linguist, how ready most people were to befriend a stranger and, above all, how well suited to wandering was my own temperament. Only domestic responsibilities stood between me and India.

  While in Britain and abroad I had, out of curiosity, attended various non-Catholic services instead of going to Sunday Mass. This may not seem world-shattering, but in an Irish Catholic context it is – even now, never mind a quarter of a century ago. My omission, if known throughout Lismore, would have revealed that I was at best Losing the Faith and probably had already lost it. As of course I had, without going through any phase of violent, scornful hostility towards Christianity, even in its Irish Catholic aspect. It was then, as it still is, my instinct to respect all religions and deprecate insults to any. But from the age of eighteen or nineteen I felt no further urge to solve the insoluble, or to belong to a community with common beliefs, or to worship in traditional ways. The untroubled conscience with which I ‘lost the faith’ perhaps explains my lack of hostility. It was an amicable arrangement, as far as God (or whatever) and I were concerned – for me a peaceful, natural and, in a sense, unimportant development. Irish Christianity is a peculiarly hypnotising and powerful force which can make many ‘deserters’ feel guilty, deep down, for a lifetime. But my parents had shielded me from the Church’s weapon of superstition and so, when the time came, I was free to ‘desert’ unscathed.

  There was, however, a certain irony here. My parents, who had unwittingly shown me the easiest route out of the Church, would have been shattered to realise that I had taken it. So for a few years I continued to attend Sunday Mass in Lismore, this being the only positive action necessary to deceive – and protect – them. Going to Mass bored me but did not then represent any betrayal of my principles, as it might have done had I become a militant atheist. I would have preferred to avoid such hypocrisy, but as my motive was good my conscience for a time remained clear. Then – while in Germany, discussing Bonhoeffer in the Hilckmanns’ garden – this attitude changed. I came home convinced that it was wrong to use any religious service merely as a convenience, however worthy one’s motives, and I never again went to Mass in Lismore.