Aughrim was three hours' train journey from Dublin, on a tiny branch line, and trains were few.

Until motors brought him (to his intense resentment) within reach, he was as inaccessible as if he had lived in Clare or Mayo.
So it came to pass that though he knew to the very core one typical district of Ireland, and was far more closely in touch with a few score of Irish peasants through their daily life than any of his leading associates, he was yet cut off by his own choice from much that is Ireland--and perhaps from much that was most important to him.

Political opinion is created in the towns, and he knew the Irish townsfolk, so far as he could manage it, only through his correspondence, and through those business visits to Dublin which he made as few as possible.
If his work had lain, where it should by rights have lain, in a ministerial office in Dublin, all would have been well.

As it was, the deliberate and extreme seclusion of his life in Ireland weakened his influence.

He was far too shrewd not to know this, and far too unambitious to care.