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Thackeray once hinted that fellows of Trinity College gave their guests beer to drink. Many hard words have been said of him ever since by members of Dublin University. I have no wish to have hard things said about me; so I explain myself carefully. McNeice's luncheon was an eccentricity. It is not on cold ham solely, it is not on stale bread ever, that guests in the Common Room are fed.
Then he told Conroy the story of Gideon McNeice's life as far as he knew it at that time. It was a remarkable story, but not yet, as it became afterwards, strikingly singular. Gideon was the son of Ebenezer McNeice, a riveter in one of the great shipbuilding yards in Belfast.
He was quite prepared to substitute some other form of government for our present Imperial system if either the King, his representative the Lord Lieutenant, or the Parliament of Westminster, showed the smallest inclination to consider the feelings of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. It was thus that Bob Power, who was by no means a fool, described McNeice's character. Conroy was interested.
This surprised me, because all the last consignment of gold fish had died, and there was nothing in the pond to look at. I told Bob about Godfrey and the letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. His reception of the news was even more disappointing than McNeice's was. He neither laughed, as I hoped, nor even scowled.
Partly it was the result of the contempt he learned to feel for Englishmen while he held his leading position in London society. With McNeice's violent Protestantism he never can have had the smallest sympathy. His ancestors were probably, almost certainly, Roman Catholics. If he professed any form of Christianity it must have been that of some sect unrepresented in England.
He had certainly given Lady Moyne a handsome cheque. He was financing McNeice's little paper in the most liberal way. He had, I suspected, supplied Crossan with the motor car in which he went about the country tuning up the Orange Lodges. It seemed quite likely it was his money with which Rose's young man bought the gold brooch which had attracted Marion's attention.
I suppose this violent hatred of an inoffensive class of men was partly the result of McNeice's tremendous Protestantism. The poet Milton, I think, felt in the same way about the prelates of his day. Partly it may have been the expression of his naturally democratic temperament. Bishops like to be called "my lord" by servants and clergymen.
It must not be supposed that he had the smallest sympathy with the unfortunate Irish aristocracy, who, having like the Bourbons failed either to learn or to forget, still repeat the watch-words of long-past centuries and are greatly surprised that no one can be found to listen to them. Gideon McNeice's Unionism was of a much more vigorous and militant kind.
A lively discussion ensued as to whether a "Hill-sider" some one discovered that picturesque description of O'Donovan could become a militant Unionist. The text from the prophet Jeremiah about the spots on the leopard was quoted several times with great effect. McNeice's name was not mentioned, nor was Conroy's. We may suppose that his connection with the University saved McNeice.
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