The Weekly Machen
In January 2024, The Weekly Machen charted Arthur Machen’s journalistic visit to Belfast with three articles he wrote for the Evening News. At the time, the fourth article remained elusive. Happily, it has come to light and is offered below. Due to his keen eye and gift of phraseology, Machen’s observations proved to be worth the search.
What I saw in Ulster
by
Arthur Machen
September 29, 1913
It is fair to give both sides of every question. I have been reading an article by a distinguished Liberal publicist and journalist on the Ulster difficulty, and these are the best things that he can say of the Ulstermen and their movement.
“The rankest hypocrisy and the most impudent claims for a noisy and greedy minority to rule over a majority”; “vulgar swank and bumptious impudence”; “noisy ruffianism”; “miserable bigots”; “disgraceful and blackguardly tactic”; “Belfast rowdies who ought to be knocked on the head”; “vulgar bullying”; “ill-conditioned ruffians.”
These phrases, we may take it, represent the official Liberal view of the position in Ulster; I will now give—not perhaps, the other side, since I have never reckoned myself a frenzied Protestant—but my frank impression of what I saw at Belfast last Saturday.
Belfast is a city of about 400,000 inhabitants—90,000 of these Nationalists—and is always a full place, with crowded, bustling streets. But early on Saturday the town began to put on a sort of market-day aspect, market-day on a big scale, with thousands of people coming in from all parts of the country. The broad pavements became more and more thronged as the morning went on, and the rain showers had no effect on the gathering thousands.
No Rowdyism
About one o’clock, the streets were deeply lined with a waiting and expectant people. Most of these were wearing all sorts of badges and buttons and ribbons in red, white, and blue, and the shops were full of such things. Big Union Jacks hung from the houses and drooped from the flagstaffs of the Town Hall; here was the green flag of Ireland, here the red lion of Scotland on its golden field.
I went up and down the broad streets, and in and out of the waiting crowds; I found them solemn, eminently well-behaved, grim-looking folks. Here and there I saw an eye with a “pawky” Scottish glint in it; but on the whole they looked a sort of people who would enjoy making money, and funerals, and long sermons on “faith, and good works, and free grace, and preforeordestination”—to use the phrase of Huck Finn. It was one of the most “respectable” crowds that I have ever seen; serious and sedate to a painful extent. All these people were out to celebrate the review of the Ulster Volunteers.
Some were going to watch the men marching through the streets, many were bound for Balmoral, the grounds of the Horticultural Show, where the review was to be held.
Many, I say. I should think there were at least thirty-five thousand spectators sitting and standing about the trotting ground, where the biggest Union Jack in the world—thirty yards long, they said—was twined about the mast at the saluting point.
The stands were chock-full of ladies and clergymen and city dignitaries, including the Lord Mayor of Belfast, and grave and reverend and responsible-looking personages. The space beneath the stands, and all about the square on every side, were packed with professional men and working men, and men who looked as if they knew how horses should be bred; with all Belfast. The rooftree of a long shed giving on the ground was an informal and crowded stand, and at last, this being filled, more spectators came and sat on the sloping roof itself, and sat so close and tight that they could not slide or slip; and so this vast dark mass of people waited for the appearance of their volunteers. There was no display of any kind or sort; a solemn gathering and assemblage solemnly awaited a solemn spectacle. I was in the thick of it all, and I can assert that the Pope’s name was never once mentioned.
For the background, the wild height of the Antrim mountains, with a grey drift of clouds passing slowly over their dark summits; beneath, a hot mist hanging about the woods in the valley, and the sun, appearing at last, shone brightly as it sank down low in the west.
A Tragic View
“And, after all, “ said a grave voice near me, “how can a pigmy fight a giant?”
He was speaking to a friend of mine, and I ventured to put in: “You think that Ulster is a pigmy and the rest of Ireland a giant?”
“I was not thinking of the rest of Ireland; I was thinking of the whole of the British Empire.”
I heard afterwards who this patronage was. I must not give his position; but I may say that it is an official and highly responsible one—under the British not the Provisional Government. And I note his remark because to him, it was evident, the situation was rather tragical and desperate than farcical and ridiculous.
A storm of cheers and the head of the long procession of volunteers entered the review ground. For an hour and a half, company succeeded company; bowler-hatted, dark-coated men marching in by fours, distinguished into four regiments by the red, blue, yellow, and orange badges on their arms. The despatch riders on their motor cycles flew in with a rush in a cloud of blue petrol smoke, clattering and rattling; and Belfast roared its applause at them.
On and on, and still on and on, the host of sombre men marched steadily into the ground, and took up their positions, till they had filled the whole place, and stood there dense in their dark array; eleven thousands of them, all of the Belfast Division of the Ulster Volunteers. From the ordinary spectacular point of view, it was nothing; no bright uniforms, no glitter of bayonets, only here and there the regimental colours. Nothing of a military spectacle; this unarmed army of partisans in their bowler hats and tweed caps and dark clothes.
A Critic’s Mistakes
Sir George Richardson and his staff galloped into the field, Sir George acknowledging the cheers with his riding whip raised in salute; then the word of command was roared out, a harsh trumpet blew its blast, and the cheering rose and fell and rose again with the noise of a mighty sea shattered on the pebbles of the shore. Sir Edward Carson was on the stand, facing the flagstaff.
Another ringing clamour from the trumpet; the host of volunteers advanced in admirable order. Every hat went off; three times they were raised in the air to three great cheers; the colours were uplifted; the band and all the people joined in “Rule Britannia” and “God Save the King.”
The cheering rolled and thundered and echoed from the hollows of the dark mountains; and the march past began.
I am sure that many of these volunteers have got the Pope on the brain; some of them, perhaps, have rioted in their day, though on this day of review they were under austere discipline.
Still, in any case, I think it is a pity for a distinguished Liberal politician to speak of them in the terms I have quoted.
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darklybrightpress.com 
Well worth the search and the wait – many thanks! And for the two links with all their contextual detail (with the “Ulster Volunteers” article linked to Carson’s supplementing them)!
In 1913, the “Saturday” to which Machen refers would have been 27 September, the day before the first anniversary of the 28 September 1912, “Ulster Day”, to which Edward Carson’s article refers (at least in the ‘Perpetual’ calendar I consulted, which also places 28 September 1912 on a Saturday). The are a couple fascinating references to Carson indexed in Volume 1 of C.S. Lewis’s Collected Letters – the first mentioning James Craig, who is identified as “chief secretary to Sir Edward Carson in opposing home rule” – and whose (Craig’s, that is) “house was about a hundred yards from Little Lea” where the Lewises lived. Richardson does not appear in the index, though the “Ulster Volunteer Force” does, three times – referring to passages of considerable interest!
The Lord Mayor of Ulster then is identified by Wikipedia as Robert James McMordie, in an article also full of interesting background. (He is not in that Collected Letters index.)
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Nice connection. I know that Lewis was from Ulster, but I am not knowledgable about his views on the Volunteers, or the Irish Question in general? Do you have any information on his point of view?
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I do! I’ll see if I can quote of few of those indexed passages, when I have a moment…
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The Wikipedia article, “Curragh incident”, tells a complex story of events in March 1914, when the Liberal government in London was about to make war on the Ulster Volunteers. In the midst of this Lewis wrote home to his father from school: the first letter I mention above, postmarked 22 March, where he begins “What a good thing the police did not turn up to arrest Craig.” Near the end he writes “Although the papers are full of it, the people here don’t seem to grasp the Ulster situation very much: one person asked me this morning if it was for home rule or against it that the volunteers were being formed.” The answer is ‘against’ and the Lewises seem to share this conviction.
The next reference Walter Hooper identifies as probably from 14 July 1916, nearly two years into the War, when Lewis wrote his father from where he was being tutored by Kirkpatrick, saying “This is big news from the front, though whether it will have any permanent effect or not, of course we can’t say. The Ulster Division – what there are of them now – must have silenced the yapping politicians for ever.” This presumably refers to the successes – and heavy losses – of the Division (made up largely of members of the Ulster Volunteer Force) in the Battle of the Somme. The Wikipedia article, “36th (Ulster) Division”, includes that the Division suffered “in two days of fighting 5,500 officers and enlisted men killed, wounded or missing.” Hooper writes in a footnote “they had now forced the War Department to accept them as an integral part of the British army.” Obviously no dangerous rebels – but very much loyal to the death.
The next reference is from Lewis (now Second Lieutenant) to his father on 29 July 1918 from Bristol where he was convalescing from the wounds he had received in April. Hooper has a footnote that his father was trying to get him “into the Ulster Volunteer Force hoping this way to get him transferred to Ireland.” Lewis notes he is near the end of the “two months convalescence” the Medical Board gave him, and says “The great danger about this change would be that of getting the reply ‘If you are so anxious to move, we will have you boarded at once and discharged from hospital.’ Such a procedure would of course hasten my return to France” – and the dangers of active combat duty. “It appears however that in this hospital, if you are quiet and inoffensive and keep yourself well out of the notice of the authorities, you may be often left for several weeks after your time.” In the event, he was transferred to an army camp on Salisbury Plain for further convalescence – which continued until the Armistice on 11 November.
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Very informative! Thank you for this peek into Lewis’s situation. Though the conflict is understandably confusing to Americans, this shows that it also was confusing for the average British reader. Strange and dangerous times!
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