Soon after I left Dublin Henry MacManus went to London, bent on doing for Ireland what Wilkie had done for Scotland. His ambition was not altogether a hopeless one. His training as an artist was indeed incomplete, but he had the inspiration of an artist, and he caught the character of the Irish peasant in all his moods with a fidelity which suggested Griffin or Carleton. Fostered by success he might have become a notable painter of national manners. But nobody in London, it seems, wanted Irish pictures unless they were flavoured with burlesque.
"I thank you, my dear Duffy (he wrote from his new home), for the notice of me in the Vindicator, in which I recognise the friend of my youth. I had need of such a cordial. Body o' me, man, we have entered on the busy arena of life, to tread or be trodden on, and mine is the spirit of that ugly customer Anteus whom our early friend Hercules met on his rambles. I never suffer an unjust defeat but I get a new strength, when the wound heals. I recently got back a rejected picture from the Royal Academy. I had worked on it for six months, and I expected it would tell well for me in London as the painter of Irish subjects. It was the 'Hedge School' which you saw on the easel. For success in London I ought to have copied the modern English school, with just a reaping-hook, a cotomore, a shillelagh, and perhaps a peck of potatoes in the corner for local colour. Then the Cockneys would have understood it; but, being true and natural, it produced the same effect among them as the appearance of an actual Irish peasant would do at Almack's. I read you constantly, but you must not be surprised that I do. not agree with all your politics. It is not with your work, but with yourself my wishes go."
MacManus did not realise his design of being the interpreter of Irish life to England; but in his own country he became in time one of the leaders of the Royal Academy in Dublin, and in the end Master of the National School of Design. He had ambition and gifts for a greater career; but Art, which prospers only in a rich soil, had few patrons and small public sympathy in Ireland.
