Jack McCann:-
An Irishman, St. Brendan the Navigator, may well have been the first to discover America but a first visit to North America is still a voyage of discovery for any Irishman/woman. To find a people constantly on the move (‘automobility’ is my name for the game) in search of new delights in their own vast country poses an immediate problem for a visitor from abroad: where does one begin? Baltimore was my starting-point, by chance rather than choice, and from that opening the New World was my oyster: and what pearls it produced!
Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbour is a national shrine, the defence of the Fort in 1814 inspired lawyer Francis Scott Key to compose ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, a shrine named for James McHenry, who was born in my own town of Ballymena on 16th November 1753. He was eighteen years of age when he emigrated to America. As a surgeon he saw service with the young Continental Army and later in public office was appointed Secretary of War by President George Washington. Yet so new is the New World that ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ did not become the official national anthem of the U.S.A., until 1931.
While James went his independent way, the McHenry family’s import business prospered in Baltimore, a town which apparently attracted Ulstermen. Back in 1745 two brothers, Thomas and John Stevenson, had arrived there from Londonderry. Both were doctors but while Thomas continued to follow his chosen profession John eventually turned to commerce and helped make Baltimore the main port for the export of flour. Of him it has been written that “all Baltimore, all Maryland in fact regarded John Stevenson as the true founder of Baltimore Town”. The Stevenson success-story must have made great reading in Ireland, particularly in Ulster; and we find another Ballymena-man, Alexander Brown settling in Baltimore about 1800. There he founded the oldest family banking business in the United States. His son George was treasurer of the group which in 1830 created the Ohio-Baltimore railroad. Back in Ballymena folk had to wait till 1848 before a railway reached our town.
Another Ulsterman, William Patterson from Donegal, had a thriving business in Baltimore: folk-memory recalls him as the father of Betsy Patterson. Beautiful Betsy married Jerome Bonaparte but was forbidden to set foot in France by her brother-in- law, one Napoleon Bonaparte! How then did she meet Jerome? The French presence on the American side during the Revolutionary War was formidable. Indeed James McHenry above was a close personal friend of the brilliant Marquis de Lafayette under whom he served as part of George Washington’s ‘military family’. French involvement in the War is immortalised in Archibald Willard’s great painting ‘The Spirit of ’76’ showing a dying French soldier raising his cap to salute ‘Old Glory’. An unexpected visit to Marblehead, Massachusetts enabled me to see the original of Willard’s famous picture.
Within comparatively easy reach of Baltimore I found places which a life-time ago had been threaded into my home-spun tapestry of American history. I could sing about John Brown’s Body before Lindbergh flew the Atlantic but I never dreamed then of a flight across the Atlantic which would lead me to Harper’s Ferry where John Brown fired ‘the shot that was heard around the world’, the shot that was to cost him his life though his soul went marching on. It was the end of the ‘twenties at Ballymena Academy when I learned the poem ‘Barbara Fritchie’ never imagining that I would one day visit her house in Maryland’s Frederick Town and re-live John Greenleaf Whittier’s verses about this American folk-heroine. In the ‘thirties the theme of a film ‘Ruggles of Red Gap’ was ‘what did Lincoln say at Gettysburg? And I learned the Gettysburg Address by heart. Little did I think then that I would stand on the spot where Abraham Lincoln spoke and with a lump in my throat repeat to myself his words “We here highly resolve that government of the people, by the people,and for the people shall not perish from the earth”. To our family-lore is now added a photo of myself, my son John Patrick, and his son John Patrick IV (American customs are catching) at the Lincoln Memorial.
Inevitably my interest in history and drama brought me to Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C., to see the very box in which Lincoln sat watching the play ‘My American Cousin’ when he was assassinated by actor John Wilkes Booth: and that was less than two years after his immortal speech. Remembering that Lincoln was once a small-town lawyer, a chance to learn something about a famous American lawyer was irrestible. So in Boston’s Colonial Theatre I was privileged to witness George C. Scott’s one-man presentation of the life of Clarence Darrow, a piece of theatrical history about a legal legend.
Only the memory of that man-of-theatre Arthur Miller could have taken me off the tourist-track to Waterbury. I just had to see the clock. Let Willy Loman the salesman in Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’ say it for me: ‘Then I went to Waterbury. Fine city Waterbury. Big clock city. Famous Waterbury clock’, and I have a photo of the clock to prove it. It was the Miller magic again, aided and abetted by my wife Peg, that led me to Salem, Massachusetts to see the setting for his great play ‘The Crucible’ and in the museum there to see a series of tableaux how the law was twisted out of shape in the trials or mis-trials of the so-called ‘Witches of Salem’.
In shape I liked Boston, found its centre-piece not unlike Dublin with Boston Common and the City Gardens resembling Stephen’s Green, where a body can relax while the city traffic whirls around. I sat on a park bench in mimed-meeting with the seated figure in bronze of James Curley probably the most remarkable of the city’s many Boston-Irish mayors; relaxed in the unique atmosphere of the Old Union Oyster House: and almost found myself rocking ‘The Cradle of Liberty’ in Faneuil Hall. Hurrah for Boston!
May I commend to any traveller with an interest in folk-history the American counterpart of our own Folk Museum at Cultra in the shape of Mystic Seaport in Connecticut with its streets, shops and ships preserved just as they were in the glorious days of sail.
In case you are wondering I did get to New York, thanks to my son John and his wife Maeve who took the wheel in turns, and I did see The Statue of Liberty and close-ups of the creations that go to make up the Manhattan Skyline; but my big moment was to see the old brownstone Algonquin Hotel where Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Alexander Woolcott and other literati used to sit and talk at the round table. By coincidence I was in Baltimore when the Dorothy Parker saga came to an end. One might say that for many years after her death her ashes were in Limbo, including a spell in a lawyer’s filing cabinet. It was the lawyer, realising that his own time was running out, who forced the issue that finally saw the Parker ashes laid to rest in Baltimore. The interment spot will be marked by a circular memorial in stone invoking the spirit of the round table.
Needless to say I also went to 1524 Hollins Street, Baltimore the home of the Sage of Baltimore, H.L. Mencken, until his death in 1973. Now a tourist attraction, it is also a centre for theatrical, literary and musical events, a focus for folk-history. What Mencken would have made of the Bush-Dukakis presidential election campaign which was on-going when 1 was there is beyond my imagination. However I venture to think that he would have agreed with me that only a people steeped in folk-history could have elected Ronald Reagan as president: and because Reagan was a folksy-hero the American people could forgive him his obvious mistakes, and allow him now to ride into that sunset, which is part of the American folk-story. They saw Reagan almost as an innocent among all those smart-ass politicians, a story-book president: and in story-books they all live happy ever after.
Say ‘America’ and the man in an Irish street thinks of skyscrapers, never of trees. Yet the Americans have planted thousands of square miles of woods particularly in New England. I was fortunate to be there in the Fall when trees were changing into their colourful going-away finery. Talk about Joseph’s Dreamcoat. On our return journey from Boston to Baltimore, we by-passed New York and I hoped to see the city from the west bank of the River Hudson. Didn’t. Imagine, if you can. New York screened off by trees! Our dull green new forests are monotonous by comparison.
I didn’t make it to Canada but shortly after I came back to Ireland I met two Canadian writers, Brian Dunn and Susan Halltt, who reminded me of Canada’s long-lasting link with Ballymena, The Eaton Stores. We discussed the Irish folk- history of the original Timothy Eaton and how it influenced him in his decision not to sell intoxicating liquor. I learned how Canadians are fast becoming Canadian, so fast indeed that Brian Dunn wonders is this the land in which he grew up?
Brian it was who talking of his legal training and of Canada’s great legal eagle John Robinette told me of the flashing red light used in the Supreme Court in Washington to warn advocates that the Court has heard enough. I think I see it flashing for me to stop.