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THE LIFE STORY OF AN OLD REBEL
BY JOHN DENVIR
AUTHOR OF "THE IRISH IN BRITAIN" "THE BRANDONS" ETC.
DUBLIN SEALY, BRYERS & WALKER 86 MIDDLE ABBEY STREET 1910
[Illustration: John Denvir]
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I.--Early Recollections--"Coming Over" from Ireland
II.--Distinguished Irishmen--"The Nation" News-paper--"The Hibernians"
III.--Ireland Revisited
IV.--O'Connell in Liverpool--Terence Bellew MacManus and the Repeal
Hall--The Great Irish Famine
V.--The "No-Popery" Mania--The Tenant League--The Curragh Camp
VI.--The Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood--Escape of James
Stephens--Projected Raid on Chester Castle--Corydon the Informer
VII.--The Rising of 1867--Arrest and Rescue of Kelly and Deasy--The
Manchester Martyrdom
VIII.--A Digression--T.D. Sullivan--A National Anthem--The Emerald
Minstrels--"The Spirit of the Nation"
IX.--A Fenian Conference at Paris--The Revolvers for the Manchester
Rescue--Michael Davitt sent to Penal Servitude
X.--Rescue of the Military Fenians
XI.--The Home Rule Movement
XII.--The Franco-Prussian War--An Irish Ambulance Corps--The French
Foreign Legion
XIII.--The Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain
XIV.--Biggar and Parnell--The "United Irishman"--The O'Connell Centenary
XV.--Home Rule in Local Elections--Parnell succeeds Butt as President
of the Irish Organisation in Great Britain
XVI.--Michael Davitt's Return from Penal Servitude--Parnell and the
"Advanced" Organisation
XVII.--Blockade Running--Attempted Suppression of "United
Ireland"--William O'Brien and his Staff in Jail--How Pat Egan kept the
flag flying
XVIII.--Patrick Egan
XIX.--General Election of 1885--Parnell a Candidate for Exchange
Division--Retires in favour of O'Shea--T.P. O'Connor elected for
Scotland Division of Liverpool
XX.--Gladstone's "Flowing Tide"
XXI.--The "Times" Forgeries Commission
XXII.--Disruption of the Irish Party--Home Rule carried in the
Commons--Unity of Parliamentary Party Restored--Mr. John Redmond becomes
Leader
XXIII.--The Gaelic Revival--Thomas Davis--Charles Gavan
Duffy--Anglo-Irish Literature--The Irish Drama, Dramatists, and Actors
XXIV.--"How is Old Ireland and how does She Stand?"
~THE LIFE STORY OF AN OLD REBEL~
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.
EARLY RECOLLECTIONS--"COMING OVER" FROM IRELAND.
I owe both the title of this book and the existence of the book itself
to the suggestion of friends. I suppose a man of 76 may be called "old,"
although I have by no means given up the idea that I can still be of use
to my country.
And a Rebel? Yes! Anything of the nature of injustice or oppression has
always stirred me to resentment, and--is it to be wondered at?--most of
all when the victims of that injustice and oppression have been my own
people. And why not? If there were no rebels against wrong-doing,
wrong-doing would prosper. To an Irishman, who is a fighter by
temperament, and a fighter by choice against those in high places, life
is sure to provide plenty of excitement; and that, no doubt, is why my
friends have thought my recollections worth printing. The curious thing
is that my share in the struggle for Irish self-government has been
almost entirely what I might call outpost work, for I have lived all my
life in England.
Indeed, it seemed but a stroke of good luck that I was born in Ireland
at all. My father (John, son of James Denvir, of Ballywalter, Lecale)
came to England in the early part of the last century, and settled in
Liverpool, where my eldest brother was born. It was during a brief
period, when our family returned to Ireland, that I and a younger
brother were born there. My father was engaged for about three years as
clerk of the works for the erection of a castle for Sir Francis
Macnaghten, near Bushmills, County Antrim. This must be one of the least
Catholic parts of Ireland, for there was no resident priest, and I had
to be taken a long distance to be christened. There was a decent
Catholic workman at the castle, James MacGowan, who was my god-father,
and my Aunt Kitty had to come all the way from "our own place" in the
County Down to be my god-mother.
Brought to England, my earliest remembrances are of Liverpool, which has
a more compact and politically important Irish population than any other
town in Great Britain.
Anyone who has mixed much among our fellow-countrymen in England,
Scotland and Wales knows that, generally, the children and grandchildren
of Irish-born parents consider themselves just as much Irish as those
born on "the old sod" itself. No part of our race has shown more
determination and enthusiasm in the cause of Irish nationality. As a
rule the Irish of Great Britain have been well organised, and, during
the last sixty years and more, have been brought into constant contact
with a host of distinguished Irishmen--including the leaders of the
constitutional political organisations--from Daniel O'Connell to John
Redmond.
I have taken an active part in the various Irish movements of my time,
and it so happens that, while I know so little personally of Ireland
itself, there are few, if any, living Irishmen who have had such
experience, from actual personal contact with them, as I have had of our
people in every part of Great Britain. As will be seen, too, in the
course of these recollections, circumstances have brought me into
intimate connection with most of the Irish political leaders.
My father came to England in one of the sloops in which our people used
to "come over" in the old days. They sometimes took a week in crossing.
The steamers which superseded them, though an immense improvement as
regards speed, had often less accommodation for the deck passengers than
for the cattle they brought over.
Most of the Irish immigration to Liverpool came through the Clarence
Dock, where the steamers used to land our people from all parts. Since
the Railway Company diverted a good deal of the Irish traffic through
the Holyhead route, there are not so many of these steamers coming to
Liverpool as formerly.
The first object that used to meet the eyes of those who had just "come
over," as they looked across the Clarence Dock wall, was an effigy of
St. Patrick, with a shamrock in his hand, as if welcoming them from "the
old sod." This was placed high upon the wall of a public house kept by
a retired Irish pugilist, Jack Langan. In the thirties and forties of
the last century, up to 1846, when he died, leaving over £20,000 to his
children, Langan's house was a very popular resort of Irishmen, more
particularly as, besides being a decent, warm-hearted, open-handed man,
he was a strong supporter of creed and country.
I am old enough to remember hearing Mass in what was an interesting
relic in Liverpool of the Penal days. This was the old building known to
our people as "Lumber Street Chapel." Of course, the present Protestant
Church of St. Nicholas (known as "the old church") is a Catholic
foundation. Lumber Street chapel was not, however, the first of our
places of worship built during the Penal days, for the Jesuits had a
small chapel not far off, erected early in the eighteenth century, but
destroyed by a No-Popery mob in 1746. St. Mary's, Lumber Street, too,
was originally a Jesuit mission, but, in 1783, it was handed over to the
Benedictines, who have had charge of it ever since. Father John Price,
S.J., built a chapel in Sir Thomas's Buildings in 1788. I can recollect
this building since my earliest days, but Mass was never said in it
during my time.
Lancashire is the only part of England where there are any great number
of the native population who have always kept the faith. I once spent a
few weeks in one of these Catholic districts. My employer had an
alteration to make in the house of a gentleman at Lydiate, near
Ormskirk. I used to come home to Liverpool for the Sundays, but for the
rest of the week I had lodgings in the house of a Catholic family at
Lydiate.
There was an old ruin, which they called Lydiate Abbey, but I found it
was the chapel of St. Catherine, erected in the fifteenth century. The
priest of the mission had charge of the chapel which, though unroofed,
was the most perfect ecclesiastical ruin in Catholic hands in South
Lancashire. During the time I was at Lydiate there came a Holiday of
Obligation, when I heard Mass in the house of a Catholic farmer named
Rimmer. This was a fine old half-timbered building of Elizabethan days,
and here, all through the Penal times, Mass had been kept up, a priest
to say it being always in hiding somewhere in the district.
The priest in charge of Lydiate at the time I was there told me he was
collecting for a regular church or chapel, and hoped soon to make a
commencement of the building. Some years later he was able to do so. Our
church choir at Copperas Hill, Liverpool, was then considered one of the
best in the diocese. The choirmaster and organist, John Richardson, was
a distinguished composer of Catholic church music, and held in such high
esteem that, for any important celebration, he could always secure the
services of the chief members of the musical profession in and about
Liverpool. In this way, on one occasion Miss Santley came to help us.
She was accompanied by her brother, then a boy, who has since risen to
the highest position in the musical world--the eminent baritone, Sir
Charles Santley.
St. Nicholas' was, as it is yet, the pro-Cathedral of the diocese, and
whenever a new church had to be opened, or there was any important
ceremonial anywhere in Lancashire, our choir was generally invited. In
this way I was delighted to go to the opening of the new church at
Lydiate, so that I was taking part in the third stage of the Catholic
history of the diocese--having said a prayer in the old ruin, and
attended Mass in Rimmer's, and now assisting at the solemn High Mass at
the opening of the Church of our Lady, not far from the old chapel of
St. Catherine.
At the time I went to Mass in Lumber Street Chapel, Liverpool, which is
nearly 70 years since, there were but four other _chapels_, as they were
generally called then, in the town--Copperas Hill (St. Nicholas'), Seel
Street (St. Peter's), St. Anthony's and St. Patrick's. It must have been
a custom acquired in the Penal days to call the older Catholic places of
worship rather after the names of the streets in which they were
situated than of the saint to whom they were dedicated. During the
Famine years the bishops and clergy must have found it extremely
difficult to provide for the tremendous influx of our people. I have
seen them crowded out into the chapel yards and into the open streets;
satisfied if they could get even a glimpse of the inside of the sacred
building through an open window. I see by the Catholic Directory there
are at the time I now write thirty-nine churches and chapels in
Liverpool. The schools have increased in a like proportion.
The progress in numbers, wealth and influence of the Irish people may
be pretty well marked by the gradual increase in the number of churches
and schools, which have been built for the most part by the Irish and
their descendants. All honour to the noble-hearted, hard-handed toilers
who have contributed to such work, and greater glory still to the humble
men who, after a hard week's work in a ship's hold at the docks, or
perhaps in the "jigger loft" of a warehouse eight stories high, turn
out every Sunday morning to act as "collectors," and go in pairs from
door to door, one with the book and the other with the bag in hand, to
raise the means of erecting the noble churches and schools that
everywhere meet our view in Liverpool to-day.
With regard to the social position our people occupy in Liverpool, there
have been many Irishmen who have come well to the front in the race of
life, some of whom have occupied the foremost positions in connection
with the public life of the town. On the other hand; a large number of
our fellow-countrymen in Liverpool are by no means in that enviable
condition. Many of them have set out from Ireland, intending to go to
America, but, their little means failing them, have been obliged to
remain in Liverpool. Here they considered themselves fortunate if they
met someone from the same part of the country as themselves to give them
a helping hand, for it is a fine trait in the Irish character--and
"over here in England" the trait has not been lost--that, however poor,
they are always ready to befriend what seems to them a still poorer
neighbour. Those who have lived here some time are glad to see someone
from their "own place," and, amid the squalor of an English city, the
imaginative Celt--as he listens to the gossip about the changes, the
marriages, and the deaths that have taken place since he left "home
"--for a brief moment lives once more upon "the old sod," and sees
visions of the little cabin by the wood side where dwelt those he loved,
of the mountain chapel where he worshipped, of a bright-eyed Irish girl
beloved in the golden days of youth. These and a host of other
associations of the past come floating back upon his memory, as he hears
the tidings brought by Terence, or Michael, or Maurya, who has just
"come over." It often so happens that, from the very goodness of the
Irish heart, the newcomers are frequently drawn into the same miserable
mode of life as the friends who have come to England before them may
have fallen into.
Irish intellect and Irish courage have in thousands of cases brought our
people to their proper place in the social scale, but it is only too
often the case that adverse circumstances compel the great bulk of them
to have recourse to the hardest, the most precarious, and the worst paid
employments to be found in the British labour market.
In the large towns, in the poorer streets in which our people live, a
stranger would be struck by the swarms of children, and of an evening,
at the number of grown-up people sitting on the doorsteps of their
wretched habitations. John Barry once told me that a friend of his
asked one of these how they could live in such places? "Because," was
the reply, "we live so much _out_ of them." The answer showed, at any
rate, that their lot was borne cheerfully.
Nevertheless, there are Irishmen too--men who know how to keep what they
have earned--who, by degrees, get into the higher circles of the
commercial world, so that I have seen among the merchant princes "on
'Change" in Liverpool men who, themselves, or whose fathers before them,
commenced life in the humblest avocations.
Liverpool has, on the whole, been a "stony-hearted stepmother" to its
Irish colony, which largely built its granite sea-walls, and for many
years humbly did the laborious work on which the huge commerce of the
port rested. But, perhaps, in years to come Liverpool will realise the
value of the wealth of human brains and human hearts which it held for
so long unregarded or despised in its midst.