Early Days (1862-72)

Chapter I*

Early Days *(1862-72)

In 1862 (when I was seven) my father left Bantry, Co. Cork, on being appointed Clerk of Union at Lismore, Co. Waterford. The retiring clerk, J. C. Hennessy, had been promoted to Waterford Union because of a tragedy which afterwards became the plot of a novel. In outline the story ran that the wife of Richard Burke, Clerk of Waterford Union, sickened and died about 1960. Her burial at the family graveyard, Kilsheelan, Co. Tipperary, was attended by the husband, who in apparent sorrow stayed that evening with her sister. Their converse meanwhile was friendly, yet in the”dead waste and middle of the night “the sister thundered at his door, “Get up, you murderer, you poisoned my sister! Get up! Get out!”

A dream, according to the whispers of the village, had inspired her. Burke tried to pacify the woman, but the only answer she made was: “Get out of my house! You killed my sister!” Then without giving him time to dress, she bundled him into the street.

In his night-shirt Burke made his way to the police-barracks, and was there accommodated till day broke. Then the sister accused him to the police of the murder of his wife, and demanded that the body should be exhumed. This was duly reported to Dublin Castle, but Burke was not arrested. Inquiries, however, were set afoot, and the Government gave permission to open the grave so that an inquest might be held. The husband nonchalantly attended the Coroner’s inquiry. He drove to it from Waterford in a hired car, and the driver related that, where a view of the River Suir met his eyes, he declaimed, “Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,” at full length.

At the inquest the doctor declared his suspicions, but medical knowledge as to poisons was not then exact. As he was unable to pronounce positively on the cause of death, the stomach was removed and sent in a jar to the Cork Queen’s College. There the analyst put the jar into the laboratory, but before he could examine it, the place was burnt down. To rebuild the laboratory a vote of

Parliament was necessary, and the British Treasury was not to be hurried. When the delay in providing money ended, workmen set about clearing the foundations, and a pickaxe struck a jar in the d*ébris *which emitted a peculiar sound. It was lifted out, unbroken, and the analyst identified it as the jar sent to him the year before containing the stomach of Mrs. Burke.

On examining the contents he certified that arsenic was present in the stomach in fatal quantities, and after a long delay the Tipperary coroner reassembled the jury

Meanwhile the police learnt that Burke had been friendly with a nurse in Waterford Union. They also heard from a pauper-assistant there that he had been seen to take a white powder from a vessel on the shelves of the pharmacy. So the Coroner’s jury brought in a verdict of wilful murder against him, and Burke was arrested and put on trial before Baron Deasy at Clonmel Assizes in 1862. Confident of acquittal, he issued invitations to his friends to dine with him at an hotel in Waterford after the trial. Nevertheless, Burke was found guilty. Thousands flocked to see him hanged. His execution made the vacancy in the clerkship of the Waterford Union to which the Lismore Clerk, Hennessy, was elected. The coming of my father from Bantry to take the latter’s place brought me as a child to Co. Waterford.

In Lismore the people prospered under the liberal Dukes of Devonshire, while the impressions I carried from Bantry were those created by the stories of the Famine of 18464. My father’s lips trembled when he recalled their horrors.

The graveyard of the Abbey of Ardnavraher, Bantry, holds two “pits” wherein lie the uncoffined remains of hundreds of hunger stricken men, women and children. Carts with a sliding-base brought the dead from the Workhouse or wayside to the Abbey. “False bottoms” in the carts were drawn out to let the bodies fall into the pits. One of the carters, being short of a corpse for his load, was said to have become so callous that he ordered a man dying in the workhouse to come with him, saying, “You’ll be dead before you’re down.”

Fever followed famine, and smote the survivors. My grand-mother told me that on her sister’s farm near Skibbereen every living thing, even the cattle and poultry, became infected, and perished. The poor-rate (of which the landlord paid half) rose to 20s. in the pound. A. M. Sullivan (at that time a Relieving Officer) vouched that Lord Bantry’s agent, Paine (chairman of the Board of Guardians), would not admit any woman to the workhouse unless, by lifting her skirt, she could uncover a shank shrunk from hunger. A fellow-guardian, John Shine Lalor, described him in the Cork Press as “the thermometer of misery and weighmaster of starvation.” Yet, far from being cruel, he strove merely to prevent his employer being swamped by rates.

The Government dissolved the Bantry “Guardians,” and in their room appointed “Commissioners.” One of these, Dr. Willis, when the death-carts finished their dreadful circuits, made the woodwork into crucifixes. He gave one to my family, and on the back is inscribed:

During the frightful famine-plague which devastated a large proportion of Ireland in the years I846-7 that monstrous and unchristian machine, a “sliding coffin,” was from necessity used in Bantry Union for the conveyance of the victims to one common grave. The material of this cross-the symbol of our Redemption-is a portion of one of the machines which enclosed the remains of several hundreds of our countrymen during their passage from the wretched huts or waysides where they died to the pit into which their remains were thrown.

In August, 1849, Lord Macaulay wrote (Trevelyan’s *Life, *p.531):

“From Limerick to Killarney, and from Killarney to Cork, I hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. Hundreds of dwellings in ruins, abandoned by the late inmates who fled to America - the labouring people dressed literally, not rhetorically, worse than the scarecrows of England, the children of whole villages turning out to beg of every coach and car that goes by. I cannot mend this state of things, and there is no use in breaking my heart about it. I am comforted by thinking that between the poorest English peasant and the Irish peasant there is ample room for ten or twelve well-marked degrees of poverty. As to the political agitation, it is dead and buried.”

During the famine my father, at 18 years of age, was appointed to control relief-measures under the new Poor Law Acts, and became Clerk of the Bantry Union

My grandfather, Thomas Healy, of Donaghmore-O’Healy, near Macroom, Co. Cork, had settled in Bantry as a teacher of Greek and Latin 50 years before. His sons learnt from him that their family had been despoiled under the Penal Laws by a relative who, to obtain their property, turned Protestant. A bronze shrine or reliquary (Mishact) which contained the hand of Saint Lachtin, patron of the clan (now in the National Museum, Dublin), had been in the guardianship of his people.

My father married an O’Sullivan, sprung from Murty Og, whose slaughter is bewailed in Callanan’s dirge, and is noted by Froude.

His children had a Spartan upbringing. My mother died when I was four and my grandmother kindled our minds with stories of her forbears.

My father cherished the Greek saying, “Let your body fit lightly round your soul.” He heard Mass daily, taught us a little Latin, played the violin with taste, recited Homer, and declaimed the sonorous cadences of St. John’s Gospel so often in the original that we knew its opening words-all the Greek we ever learnt.

In politics he adhered to the ‘forty-eight men, and thought Daniel O’Connell “a bit of a humbug.” His son will be forgiven for thinking of him in the terms which St. Jerome applied to Nepotian as one who “by assiduous reading and daily meditations - pectus suum Christi fecit bibliothecam.”

I “finished my education” at 13 years of age, after some schooling in Fermoy with the Christian Brothers. To Dublin I went in 1869, where I stayed for two years with T. D. Sullivan, the song-writer of the *Nation, *who had married my aunt. His brother, A. M. Sullivan, owned the *Nation *and *Weekly News. *Rhymes which I sent in anonymously were accepted by one of his papers.

A boyish note to my father runs:

Dublin,

13th *October, *1869.

“I was at an amnesty meeting on Sunday at Cabra, near Dublin, and not less than 100,000 people present. All the trades were there with their banners, up to 30,000. T. D. S. says it was as great a meeting as took place in “Repeal’, times. Butt and George H. Moore, M.P., spoke.

I went to the opera on Saturday. It was the last night, and Tietjens’ “benefit.” There was a crush getting tickets. After a deal of pushing and kicking I got one. Such a house, crammed from top to bottom. My shirt and the sleeves of my coat were wet with perspiration. The “boys” from the gallery let down with a rope a splendid basket ornamented with flowers containing a dove and an address to Tietjens. This she read amid “thunders of applause.” When the opera was over they dragged her carriage to her hotel.

The arbitration between A. M. Sullivan and Richard Pigott went on yesterday. G. H. Moore and Butt were the arbitrators. They will give their decision to-day.”

A. M. Sullivan had asked me to carry some volumes of the *Nation, *containing refutations of Pigott’s libels on him, to Butt’s house in Eccles Street. The future forger of the Parnell letters in 1887 met his first check in 1869 at the hands of Butt and Moore.

When I came to Dublin the Sullivans were grieved sorely over the defeat of John Martin (of ‘48 fame) as candidate for Co. Longford. Martin was nominated in his absence in America, against Lord Greville’s son, but the franchise being high, and the Ballot Act unpassed, he was beaten. His supporters were dubbed “Garibaldians” and “Mazzinians” by the local orthodox. The Irish bishops were in Rome at the Oecumenical Council, and most priests supported Greville. After Martin’s defeat, the *Weekly News *published a “roll of honour,” in which the names of the 411 farmers who voted for Martin were set out. As the tide of Nationalism swelled up, it used to be “£50 in a girl’s fortune” if her father figured on the roll - i.e., her marriage portion was swollen by an invisible £50.

In 1892, being in Longford, I asked Dr. Atkinson (whose brother was a priest) if any “Martinite” survived. He took me into the country and pointed to a house where an old man was thatching his roof. “That’s a Martinite,” said he, and asked the rustic to come down. As he climbed off the ladder I greeted him with, “I hear you voted for Martin?” Holding his hand a couple of feet above the ground, he exclaimed, “Woted for Martin! I woted for Martin with priests leppin’ that height off the flure.” Yet the pluck of a curate, Father Kit Mullen, got Martin elected for Meath in 1871. That victory was the first “milestone” in the history of the latter-day Nationalist movement.

On a Sunday in 1871 Martin unveiled the statue to Smith O’Brien, on O’Connell Bridge, Dublin. I went with him and A. M. Sullivan to the *Nation *office after the ceremony, and heard Sullivan warn Martin that Father Mullen could not speak for the Meath priests. Yet Martin won.

After Martin’s election a vacancy in Limerick City occurred, and Isaac Butt, once Tory member for Harwich, became a candidate. Daniel O’Connell had prophesied of Butt in the ‘forties, when he championed the Act of Union, that he would become an advocate of “Repeal.”

Butt was needy, and the law enforced imprisonment for debt. On the Saturday before the election in Limerick he came to T. D. Sullivan’s house in Dublin for refuge. I opened the door, and Butt asked for “T. D.,” who was out. At his request I took him to the sick-room of Mrs. Sullivan, who had just become a mother. There the great lawyer sat to elude pursuit, saying kind words to my aunt. When “T. D.” came in he got his fare to Limerick. His creditors sent *latitats *to the sheriff to arrest him, and these he evaded by crossing the Shannon into Co. Clare. Before a warrant to the Clare Sheriff could be made out he was returned unopposed. Such were the beginnings of the Home Rule movement.

A room in Butt’s residence in Eccles Street was inset with Handel’s organ, used when the first performance of the “Messiah” was given for the benefit of Mercer’s Hospital.

Butt’s *Plea for the Irish Race, *and his works on the Land System, were the output of genius.

Memories of Butt’s spacious advocacy will long survive. He got a verdict with £270 damages in the case of a Protestant chaplain, who (before the “Irish Church” was disestablished in 1869) sued his patron - a well-known peer, for using the word “No.” The slander imputed was that the chaplain asked his host at dinner, “Shall I say grace, my Lord?” To which the reply was, “No.” Then the peer said grace himself. Butt swayed the jury into finding that this imputed unworthiness in the clergyman to perform an ordinary function of his office.

Afterwards he acted for a solicitor named Barry, whom the Court of Common Pleas sought to “attach” after an Election Petition at Youghal in 1869. Judges Keogh, Lawson and Morris, on their own initiative, because a newspaper published a speech of Barry criticizing a decision of Judge O’Brien in unseating Weguelin; M.P., issued a citation to compel Barry to answer for his words. Butt shamed the Court into abandoning the process. His speech became a classic.

“You are grounding here a process to destroy a man on a statement behind his back, and made to his judges in chamber. It violates every principle of British law. I don’t care whether it comes from judge or officer. Any judgment founded on that evidence will bring this Court into contempt. Such a judgment will go forth without authority and come back without respect. Of a judgment founded on that evidence, the least that will be said is, that it is an indictment without an accuser, a sentence without a trial, and a conviction without evidence. The public will say that, and I warn the Court against it. Where are you to stop? Do you think your judgment of to-day won’t be canvassed? If another attorney goes up and speaks disrespectfully of you, and if some judge whispers to another judge that he appeared for Mr. Barry because he ran up to the Library, as gentlemen have done here, three or four times to-day, and therefore, we may assume that he is the attorney in the case, are you to commit him? Or if I left this Court and spoke disrespectfully of you, would your Lordship commit me? By taking this course you are abandoning judicial status, and placing yourself on a tower from whence you are looking out for insults, and as in the case of every one who looks out for insults, there will be abundance of them offered, You had no right, without evidence, to put Barry to answer anything. One of your orders has been misrecited in another. You have not at this moment a particle of evidence upon which you can rest the grounding of this highly penal order. I say again that it was not “professional misconduct.” The Privy Council decided that “contempt of Court” was not “professional misconduct”; and whatever power you have to deal with” contempt” you have no power to deal with “professional misconduct” under the guise of “contempt.” I point out the inconvenience with which this proceeding is surrounded. It affects my liberty, and the liberty of every man in the country, and if persevered in, it will gather round any offence that may be in it, the sympathy of every man who hates arbitrary power. I hope I have not gone beyond my duty in suggesting these things. I know that the truest reverence for authority is often manifested by boldly remonstrating when it is going wrong:-

“Be Kent unmannerly when Lear is mad.”

The ingredients which spiced this protest found general acceptation. Keogh had been M.P. for Athlone in 1852, and vowed with an oath that he would not take office unless the Land Bill of Sharman Crawford (an Ulster member) was passed by the Government. He threatened the landlords that “Winter with its short days and long nights is coming.”

Yet he accepted the post of Solicitor-General, and having to stand for re-election in Athlone, gave each voter half a ten-pound note, with a promise of the other hall when the vote was registered. Open voting was then the law, and Keogh, when elected, left his constituents to “compare notes” (or half-notes). The bribees, therefore, only received £5 each. This device was much admired by wooers of rotten boroughs in the mid-Victorian epoch. A property qualification also existed for M.P.’s, and Keogh never forgot his obligation to a London tailor who provided him with the “fee simple” out of his own estate.

He was a man of genius, with a country to sell. His appointment as judge discredited parliamentary representation and engendered the Fenian movement. In Ireland, history is embodied as to the Union of 1800, in the word Castlereagh; the names Cromwell and William of Orange combine the hatreds of preceding centuries, and the word ” Keogh” summarizes the worst memories of the Victorian epoch.

As Judge, he sentenced a Cork shoemaker to penal servitude in 1867, for taking part in the “rising” of that year. Jeering at him from the Bench, he cried out, “Do low fellows like you think to sever Ireland’s connection with the greatest Empire in the world?” From the dock came the answer, “Humble, my Lord, but not low!” The shoemaker’s reply thrilled hearts which his doomsman could never pierce. It embodied the spirit of the French peasants’ protest, ” *Nous sommes rustiques mais nous ne somines pas rustres,” *and was one of the influences which won Butt to the National Cause.

Keogh’s ill-standing even with Conservatives appears from a comment in their organ, the *Irish Times, *in 1872.

Father Healy, P.P. of Little Bray, used to dine with Keogh weekly, and he once complainingly asked, “Have you heard the latest lie about me?”

“No,” said the priest.

“Well, they pretend I am going to change my religion.”

“Good,” said Father Healy, using the Anglo-Irish idiom, “I hope it’s a Catholic you’ll become. Keogh had been bred a Catholic.

Charles Dawson, M. P., when High Sheriff of Limerick City, told me that at a sultry summer assize there, Keogh ascended the Bench with nothing on save his robes, in the pocket of which lay a copy of Horace,

On a “Judges’ night” in Cork, Keogh retired from the Bar dinner with his fellow-Judge, but came back alone, crying, “Boys! The Judge has gone to bed, and Billy Keogh has come back.”

He cut his throat at Bingen, on the Rhine, in 1878. Relatives wished to bury him in Ireland, but the Government got word that if his coffin reached Dublin it would be seized and thrown into the Liffey at O’Connell Bridge. His remains, therefore, lie in German soil.

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