The ' 1169...' crew are back in Dublin - physically , at least , if not mentally ! The weather still feels 'holiday-ish' , deadlines remain something we left behind us in early July , but ....... in the most definite yard-stick that 'normality' is closing-in fast : the spending money has been spent !
As a 'holding-post' until such time as we properly re-organise ourselves , we re-publish a 'Letter to the Editor' of 'The Freemans Journal' newspaper , dated July 9 , 1806 , from a person who signed themselves 'Nemo' . This letter was penned three short years after Robert Emmet's insurrection had failed and gives a flavour of what 'Nemo' sensed was to come .......
' Pray Mr Freeman , are you not misinformed with regard to the Fete Champetre , which her Grace the Duchess has proposed to give in the Phoenix Park , ten or twelve days hence ?
700 NOBILITY AND GENTRY ! Ah! Be easy , Mr. Editor , you are joking , sure , clever as you suppose yourself , you will not go it that way on us . Seven hundred nobility and gentry - 700 fiddle-sticks . Why man , you might as well tell us that 700 of Napoleon's legion of Honor , with their Ladies , were to breakfast with our Viceroy , as to satyrise the IRISH Nobility and Gentry , by supposing that 700 of them could be collected in dirty Dublin , while London , with all its glories expanded to their view .
Do you think , Sir , they are so destitute of taste , so Gothic in their preferences , so Antideluvian in their habits , so vulgarly Irish in their feelings , as to show partiality to the country which contains nothing belonging to them but their DIRTY ACRES ?
Yours ,
Nemo . '
It comes as no surprise to some of us that they had their 'Yes men' then , and their 'Nemo's ' as well !
Back soon .......
