Evening Memories

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 6, 8 February 1923, Page 7

Evening Memories

(By William O’Brien.)

CHAPTER XlX.—(Continued.) With Mr. Dillon I was at one in this as, indeed, in all else, save for-his concern that the hard lot sholld have fallen to me. He was then, as he was for a good many years afterwards, a miracle of activity on the platform, a meticulous administrator of the Campaign funds, and, in more intimate intercourse, an even-tempered and restful friend. The Archbishop of Cashel, who summoned me to Thurles for a consultation on the subject, was divided between a keen appreciation' of the political advantages and a personal anxiety—it might truly be called anguish—which took the somewhat intimidating form of bringing tears to his eyes. His Grace’s final word was: “Well, I suppose it is foolishness. The wise men called the Cross foolishness, for that matter. Nobody can advise you but God!” The one disquieting counsellor was Davitt. “It is madness,” he cried, with the old thunder-cloud, seldom seen since his happy marriage, settling again on his forehead. “You’ll be beaten and laughed at, or you will be killed, and people will say it was your own fault. No man ever resisted prison rules that did not go down. Of all the Fenian prisoners, O’Donovan Rossa was the only one who made any resistance, and he might as well have beaten his brains out against the wall. It was years before anybody outside even heard that he had been for 33 days chained with his hands behind his back and forced to lap his food like a dog.” It was easy to reply that it was a very different thing for the Fenians buried in English convict prisons without a friend in broad England, but that we should have all progressive Britain, its most powerful statesman, and its press watching every move with a vital interest in our success; that every recent bye-election had filled the Unionists with dismay for British public opinion of their doings in Ireland; that with such a power on our side it would not be possible to bury prison tragedies out of sight and that even should the experiment fail as

badly as he predicted, it would only be the experiment of one man who had nothing to risk except a life, and that a life not too extravagantly valued by its possessor, Davitt’s objection was not to be shaken. But in truth he was a born frondeur, bound to be in opposition to every concrete proposal of action in hours of emergency, but, unlike the frondeurs, too generous not to admit his mistakes with an almost childlike simplicity as soon as his anticipations had been refuted by results. For. that reason, his colleagues had come to regard their great countryman with less confidence in his advice in practical affairs than affection for his charming personality.

. / Wilfrid Blunt, who saw much of Davitt during his time in Ireland, reported his experiences with a disconcert-

ing candor all his own, , He found (p. 279) that Davitt

“blamed as a false move” my visit to America; which, remembering his admiration for the doctrines of Henry George, is not to be surprised at; that when at a great meeting at the Rotunda at the moment of my Mitchelstown sentence, Mr. Blunt “urged the people not to remain quiet while O’Brien" was in prison, Michael Davitt, who was sitting behind me, plucked my coat tails and warned me that

I had said enough” ; (page 309), and that a few days after, Davitt told him “he was not inclined just now to be him*

self the martyr, as he is going next week away from Ireland. He talked, as I thought, ungenerously of O’Brien, who, he said, had brought his arrest on his own head, and he condemned his Plan of Campaign.” (p. 313).

Mr. Dillon was still more outspoken in lamenting Davitt’s critical moods during these perilous years; “Of Michael Davitt, he said he was playing a foolish game just now. He had quarrelled with O’Brien and himself about the Plan of Campaign, saying, that it ought to have been a campaign of No Rent. This was only because the Plan was not his own, and as a matter of fact it would have been impossible for Davitt to get anybody to go in for No Rent; the farmers would not have joined; it would have discredited Gladstone; it would have frightened people even in America; also it would have set the Pope against them at Rome. The absurdity of the thing was that in 1881 Davitt had been equally strong precisely against No Rent, when the No Rent idea was being brought forward.” (p. 291).

Mr. Blunt adds that “Davitt’s account, in his Fall of Feudalism, of his abstention from all personal part in the Plan of Campaign (viz., that it was owning to Parnell’s request to him to take no part in it) is different from this (statement of Mr. Dillon) and from all Davitt himself told me at the time.” What rendered his censorious temper less excusable in such a pass was that, when pressed by Mr. Blunt to say what alternative method he would recommend himself to cope with the Unionist-cum-landlord despotism in Ireland, he could only suggest that a Mr. Powderley, the head of the Knights of Labor in America, might be invited to make a speech-making tour of the country, a plan which might possibly win back the favor of Henry George’s friends, but was scarcely likely to incommode Mr. Balfour in his arrangements for dragooning Ireland. But all these small divagations were only the passing faults of temper of a man whom Parnell’s veto on Nationalisation of the land had left without any congenial programme of his own. The essential goodness of the man, as well as the state of health which largely accounted for his hasty criticisms, come out in an entry in Wilfrid Blunt’s Diary hotfoot upon the entry referring to my prosecutions; “I am sorry I wrote two days ago what I did about Davitt, for although, perhaps, founded upon a certain amount of truth, I have done him injustice. After writing my letters and calling on the Lord Mayor, I went down to Bally-

brack and dined with Davitt and his wife. . . It is easy to see by the cordial intercourse of all, and their plans for William O’Brien, that there is no real want of good feeling on Davitt’s part or any lack of harmony; Davitt, however, is really out of health, having had a severe attack of diarrhoea, and his sister tells me he only weighs ten stone, which, for a man of his height, shows serious evil. He will have to take a rest if he is to do work later when the troubles of the No Rent days are renewed; and Dr. Kenny recommends a voyage to Lisbon, and the Mediterranean,”

There is the man in a lightning flash : the sharp word of a moment forgotten, and the sure reaction to a largehearted generosity. Hence my not being dismayed by his discouraging advice in the ordeal before me; hence the undying popularity of his name with a race for whom, in a famous French phrase, the heart hath reasons which mere Reason knoweth not.

The test was not loing in coming. When the turnkey unlocked the door of ,my cell the morning after my arrival, it was to lay a suit of prison clothing on the stool, with the request that I should put the plank-bed standing against the wall and clean out the cell and proceed to perform my day’s task of unravelling a hunk of hempen rope which he threw on the floor. But the demand was made in the quavering voice of one who knew what the answer would

be, and the poor man’s face bore such a stamp of misery that, as happened in many a conjuncture to come, I was moved to keener sympathy with my individual 'gaoler than with myself. When, upon his report, the Governor visited the cell a few minutes after, it was with a face of still deeper gloom and, indeed, of terror which, but for the sake of the soft-hearted Cork Major himself, might have betrayed me into an irreverent laugh. “Is there no

chance of your changing your mind, . Mr. O’Brien he suggested in uhsanguine tones. “It will be a mere matter of form, and you may trust to me to give you as good a time as ever ydu had. in your life.” “My dear Major,

was tho reply, “it was not to have a good time I came here. You and I won’t fall out personally, whatever may happen but they have imposed an impossible job upon •you. In calling me “Mr. O’Brien ’ you have already broken Mr. Balfour’s prison rules as clearly as I mean to do myself. You see the thing can’t bo clone even by his own officers.” Ho shook his head with a gesture of despair. He said: “The city is gone mad; we will have the whole prison about our ears.” Ho mentioned that the Mayor, Alderman John O’Brien, who was a Visiting Justice, had warned him to give him notice whenever any attack was’ to bo made upon me, and told him unless he promised to do so that he intended to remain in the prison all day and nil night until the thing was decided. The prison Chaplain, Father Richard Barrett, who became one of the most treasured friends of my life, and who was a more resolute hothead than myself, was capable of anything. Even tho prison doctor, a Mallowman, Dr. Moriarty, was not to be relied upon. And there was a perfect mob of reporters about the gate. “I’ll chuck the job,” muttered the Governor, as in a soliloquy. “Let them get somebody else to do tlieir dirty work for them.” Then as an afterthought: “You mentioned in your interview that you only intended to make this fight yourself. Will you, at all events, ask Mr. Mandeville to make no resistance? I have had him placed in the next cell, so that you could talk to him through the openings above the cell doors. I will take care there shall bo nobody listening.” (To be continued.) •