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The Cultural Analysis of Leisure: Tourism and Travels in Co. Donegal We travel hopefully, drawn towards our holiday destination by the promises in the posters and brochures. Here Angela Mehegan looks at the background behind some early examples of tourist enticement in Ireland. Travel, tourism and leisure are all part of a complex set of social and cultural relationships. They are tied into the ideological concepts of time, respectability, health and conspicuous consumption. The profile of the participants in organised leisure and their quest for imaginative pleasure-seeking provides an insight into the way tourism functions as an agent of social exclusion. The premise on which this article is based is that tourism in Ireland, at the turn of the century, was a microcosm of international tourist developments, and by the construction of a specific set of identities reflected the values, aspirations and renewed sense of authority of a largely middle-class clientele. The study, therefore, of attitudes to travel and tourism in Ireland provides an insight into how the railways responded to the fluctuating patterns of communal leisure, and the means by which Ireland became a commodity in the exchange between host and guest. The hosts were presumed to be members of the entrepreneurial middles classes who owned the railways, hotels, steamships, travel agencies, and other commercial enterprises. The desired guests belonged to the Scottish and English middle classes who turned to Ireland as a terra incognita, in search of diversion outside of their normal daily existence. This transaction and the visual systems that promoted it opened up multiple possibilities for the evaluation of Ireland and its regions as a tourist destination. The travel poster as a carrier of local and national constructs was one of the means by which this tourist exchange was negotiated. In the context of tourist myth-making, one of the most enduring stereotypes of Irishness has been the association of Ireland and the Irish people with the land. This concept served to package Ireland as an unpopulated, rural arcadia. However, as this study of the strategies of the railway companies, and other service providers indicates, even the most peripheral of destinations, like Co.Donegal, had a bustling and thriving tourist industry, which involved the passage and engagement of large groups of people with the land. It was an industry that was built on a carefully fabricated set of perceptions that ensured that tourism was a selective filtering process that reinforced class hierarchies. One of the most effective means by which this was achieved was through the promotion of designated sites in the popular medium of the railway poster. Travel posters offered an array of vistas and potential experiences to the tourist. They were structured to impart the maximum of information in glorified colour by offering vignettes of 'place-images' that served to heighten the allure of each region. Jill Steward refers to the allocation of specific characteristics to designated spots as the construction of 'place-image'. 1 She uses the concept of 'place-image' to refer to "both the features associated with a place, and the metonymical icons for its associated qualities, and the connotations which these have for visitors or potential visitors." 2 The application of a specific set of conditions for each location ensured that each traveller understood and responded to the experiences on offer. As the railways in Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century were largely an extension of existing English lines, the same methodology was employed in the visual format of the posters. From the 1890s, the standard structure for early railway posters was a grouping together of a composite of small scenes and views of the sights that were deemed attractive to the potential traveller. These traditionally reflected the territorial boundaries of each railway line, and acted as visual signposts to the sights on offer. The only difference was in the choice of images that were acceptable to the English traveller. An example of this type of visual format can be found in posters issued by the Donegal Railway Company, entitled The Land of Tyrconnel and the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway, entitled Wilds of Donegal . The authorship of these posters is unknown, as quite often artists were unwilling to be associated with such a dubious art form.
In each of the vignettes that make up the composite imagery of these posters, a different experience was offered to the potential traveller. For instance, ancient archaeological remains enticed the traveller to Glencolmcille, while bathing and fishing were offered in Portsalon. In Rosapenna, golfing, shooting and fishing were available to all those who wished to stay at the magnificent hotel. This form of branding or naming of particular areas is, as McCannell states, the first phase of 'sight sacralization' in the ritual of tourism. The 'naming phase' is followed by 'mechanical reproduction' and it is "the mechanical reproduction phase of sacralization that is most responsible for setting the tourist in motion on his journey to find the true object." 3 The layout and organisation of the posters was loaded with inbuilt codes that directed the tourist through unknown and presumably unexplored sites. This paternalistic structuring and ordering of space was designed to reassure yet control the new participants in leisure, the aspirant middle classes. Therefore the act of seeing was class-determined, and the way in which the sight was constructed anticipated the gaze of the sightseer. According to John Urry, "The gaze is constructed through signs, and tourism involves the collection of signs." 4 The signs therefore in the Donegal posters reinforced the social rank of the traveller. John Taylor also acknowledges the hierarchies in-built into the act of seeing in outlining three categories of tourist behaviour:
Travellers practise the gaze, which is contemplative and penetrative; tourists glance, which is accumulative but shallow; and trippers see everything (if they see at all) in disconnected blinks, blurs or 'snaps'. 5 The use of a predominant landscape motif in travel posters suggests the type of consumer that each area seeks to attract. It was the gaze of the traveller that was solicited in the devices used by the Donegal posters. The cameos of framed landscapes in both the Land of Tyrconnel and Wilds of Donegal poster were symptomatic of the way in which landscape as a genre was understood in the late nineteenth century, in both England and Ireland. These images fed into Irish national preoccupations with reclaiming the integrity of the precolonial past, yet also served to align the traveller with nineteenth-century English attitudes to the sublime and the picturesque. In Donegal the land, as in most of Ireland in the nineteenth century, was the sign of political control. Landscape was a contested site that generated deep-rooted divisions and territorial confrontations. Therefore, the use of the landscape motif in the construction of identity reverberated beyond the immediate visual impact of the scenic spots. The fact that much of the imagery depicts Ireland as an empty space "which has been hollowed out for the potential consumer as an acceptable commodity" 6 , indicates that the peasant, the natural inhabitant of the rural arcadia, has been airbrushed from the visual constructions of place in Ireland and in Co. Donegal. Nevertheless it was, according to David Brett, "through picturesque subjects that rural life was re-imagined for city dwellers and the idea of national scenery was conceived." 7
The isolated landscape of Ireland represented the foil to the industrialized cities of England; unspoilt, remote and unpopulated, and in the context of the aestheticizing of the tourist imagination, signified Ireland's difference from England. This was a powerful invention, as it provided a means by which difference could be commodified for tourist consumption. Therefore, in the context of tourist travel, Donegal was perceived as an empty space, which had imperialist and colonial connotations. 8 Donegal occupied the same peripheral status as areas such as Scotland and Wales within the mind-set of the English tourist. 9 Its physical inaccessibility was, paradoxically, part of its attraction. There was no doubt in the minds of the agencies charged with the promotion of Ireland as a tourist destination, that the desired traveller should come from the Scottish or English middle classes. A letter in the Londonderry Sentinel in 1893 reflected this aspiration. The author recommended
To get to work at once, by having collectors appointed and having a good poster done showing views of such places as the City Walls, Moville, Portsalon, the Ness etc., and to have this put into the hands of a good advertising agent to have posted in some English and Scotch towns..... I am certain if this was taken up properly, the different railway companies would only be too glad to assist. 10 The inclusion of Londonderry as the dominant feature at the top of both posters also determined the preferred route of the tourist. Steamers sailed directly from Heysham to Derry and the guidebooks reinforced the link with the British mainland by minimising the arduous nature of travel to the wilds of Donegal. According to Edgar Shrubsole, a gentleman could leave the bustle of London, and awake the next morning, overlooking the glorious splendour of Sliabh League. 11 The use of the unpopulated landscape was also a factor in reassuring English travellers that Ireland was not an unstable entity that threatened the security of the unsuspecting tourist. Mr. Crossley, editor of the Irish Tourist , was at pains to point out that the popular notion that "there exists a wide-spread impression amongst English people that the inhabitants of the Emerald Isle are only half-civilised," 12 was unclaimed and untrue and the tranquil scenes of picturesque landscape acted as indisputable evidence. Donegal was not, however, devoid of human activity. For instance the reports of Mr. Gahan for the Congested Districts Board, in 1892, refers to the appalling distress at Glencolmcille. "The houses are, as a rule, very dirty inside, no effort being made to keep them clean, the farm stock having admittance at all times." 13 The image of Glencolmcille in the Land of Tyrconnel poster avoids any reference to the real conditions of the indigenous population. While the majority of vignettes of place emphasised the unpopulated land, the reality was that the main income of the Donegal Railway was derived from third-class traffic. 14 Day trips and excursions were advertised regularly in local newspapers. Yet the emphasis on the pursuit of leisure, that took time and effort, was the main commodity on offer in the Donegal posters. The participants who had the time to climb to the top of Sliabh League aligned themselves with the category of traveller whose gaze was "contemplative and penetrative." 15 In doing so, they endorsed their position within the fluctuating social groupings of the late nineteenth century. An example of the type of regular excursions that took place was referred to in an article in the Londonderry Sentinel in 1892, which outlined the excellent facilities provided by the railway and steamboat companies. Moville, Buncrana, Portsalon and Portrush "all shared largely the patronage of the excursionists...and many people in the outside districts joined the shop-assistants and business people at the seaside." 16 Yet little or no evidence of working-class diversion is referred to in the images. Instead, the sites of exclusive private entertainment were promoted as the desired location for potential travellers to Donegal. According to Kevin Meehan, "Tourism can be typified in some respects as the experience and consumption of place." 17 Thus, the choice of place and its image became central to the construction of class-bound leisure. The cameo of Rosapenna included in the Wilds of Donegal poster is dominated by the splendour of the hotel. The photograph used to promote the hotel was from the collection of Robert Welch, a Belfast photographer, who was a regular visitor to Donegal. The hotel was built by Lord Leitrim on his private lands, consisting of imported timber, and constructed by workmen shipped from Scandinavia specifically to oversee the erection of the building. 18 The hotel offered to the traveller the ultimate in holiday experience. Edgar Shrubsole's description of the hotel serves as an insight into the privileged conditions of travel in the early years of the new century:
The drawing room at Rosapenna Hotel is a bright and cheery apartment, tastefully furnished, and overlooks the Bay, with Muckish Mountain a prominent feature in the distance. The smoking room is an ideal one, and three spacious dining rooms enable one to enjoy the well-chosen menus amidst most attractive surroundings. The billiard room is large, airy and well-lit; the table is an excellent one. The private sitting rooms are bright and daintily furnished and kept scrupulously clean. A first-class chef has charge of the kitchens and the wine cellar is beyond reproach. Nothing in short is wanting to promote the comfort of visitors or enhance their pleasure or sport while staying at this liberally conducted establishment. 19 Escapism, luxury and, above all, privacy were the attractions offered to the Victorian visitor at Rosapenna. This had implications for the relationship between public and private space, and the profile of the type of tourist that was expected to patronize such a hotel. 20 The golf course was particularly spectacular, as it encircled the hotel and effectively cut the building off from public intercourse. Shooting, fishing and therapeutic sea bathing were the other main pastimes, and in each the question of private ownership and social control was an issue. The selective nature of its leisure activities was an indicator of the "middle-class infiltration into the exclusive leisure world of the aristocracy." 21 According to Trollope, the British constituted the largest and wealthiest leisure class that any country had ever seen, and, as part of its identity was gained from its possession of leisure, then the "spending of that leisure in exclusive and status-enhancing settings was of paramount importance." 22 Exclusive ownership of fishing and shooting rights by landlords ensured that the conditions of tourist activity were dictated by the gentry, and only partially appropriated by the emerging middle-classes on a paying basis. The fishing at Rosapenna was under the control of the landlord, and available to the visitors on application of a licence. However, "After July it is reserved by Lady Leitrim." 23 This preoccupation with physical activity by the upper class was, as Thorstein Veblen suggests, an attempt to mimic combat, cunning and physical skill. Hunting, fishing, and shooting replicate, amongst the inherited leisure classes, the age of prowess and predatory life. 24 The acceptance of these attitudes by the middle classes was the price of admittance into the hermetic world of the landed gentry. For the landlord class, the establishment of exclusive pleasure retreats can be understood as a last-ditch attempt to preserve the enclosed, hot-house environment of shooting and tennis parties that was under threat. The retention of powers over the land acted as an effective filtering system, and depended on middle-classes complicity and vanity to exclude all that was undesirable. In Ireland, the retreat by the landed gentry to exclusive, enclosed private spaces had particular relevance against the backdrop of the threat of Home Rule and the establishment of tenant rights by the Land League. Despite this, the proprietors of the Rosapenna Hotel were anxious to attract all walks of life to the hotel: "they had to aim at attracting into Ireland a varied class, including the commercial man, the sportsman, the seeker of pleasure, the seeker of health, and the sightseer." 25 This exchange between host and guest was, as far as Mr. McCraith was concerned, an illegitimate one as "No brogue, on lips of guests, or host, or servants, disturbs the ear." 26 Thus, the predominant condition of tourist activity in Co. Donegal at the turn of the century, reinforced by the imagery of the railway companies, was that tourism was only available to those who had both the time and the means to participate in a form of leisure that was exclusive and self contained. Angela Mehegan is a lecturer in History/Theory of Art and Design at the Institute of Technology, Sligo. 1 Jill Steward, Tourist place-images of late imperial Austria , in Robinson, M., Evans, N., and Callaghan, Paul (eds), Tourism and Culture: Image, Identity and Marketing, Towards the 21st Century Conference Proceedings , University of Northumbria at Newcastle, 1996, pp. 231-250
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