O’Donovan Rossa was not the greatest man of the Fenian generation, but
he was its most typical man. He was the man that to the masses of his
countrymen then and since stood most starkly and plainly for the Fenian
idea. More lovable and understandable than the cold and enigmatic
Stephens, better known than the shy and sensitive Kickham, more human
than the scholarly and chivalrous O’Leary, more picturesque than the
able and urbane Luby, older and more prominent than the man who, when
the time comes to write his biography, will be recognised as the
greatest of the Fenians--John Devoy--Rossa held a unique place in the
hearts of Irish men and Irish women. They made songs about him, his very
name passed into a proverb. To avow oneself a friend of O’Donovan Rossa
meant in the days of our fathers to avow oneself a friend of Ireland; it
meant more: it meant to avow oneself a “mere” Irishman, an “Irish
enemy,” an “Irish savage,” if you will, naked and unashamed. Rossa was
not only “extreme,” but he represented the left wing of the
“extremists.” Not only would he have Ireland free, but he would have
Ireland Gaelic.
And here we have the secret of Rossa’s magic, of Rossa’s power: he came
out of the Gaelic tradition. He was of the Gael; he thought in a Gaelic
way; he spoke in Gaelic accents. He was the spiritual and intellectual
descendant of Colm Cille and of Seán an Díomais. With Colm Cille he
might have said, “If I die it shall be from the love I bear the Gael”;
with Shane O’Neill he held it debasing to “twist his mouth with
English.” To him the Gael and the Gaelic ways were splendid and holy,
worthy of all homage and all service; for the English he had a hatred
that was tinctured with contempt. He looked upon them as an inferior
race, morally and intellectually; he despised their civilisation; he
mocked at their institutions and made them look ridiculous.
And this again explains why the English hated him above all the Fenians.
They hated him as they hated Shane O’Neill, and as they hated Parnell;
but more. For the same “crime” against English law as his associates he
was sentenced to a more terrible penalty; and they pursued him into his
prison and tried to break his spirit by mean and petty cruelty. He stood
up to them and fought them: he made their whole penal system odious and
despicable in the eyes of Europe and America. So the English found Rossa
in prison a more terrible foe than Rossa at large; and they were glad at
last when they had to let him go. Without any literary pretensions, his
story of his prison life remains one of the sombre epics of the earthly
inferno.
O’Donovan Rossa was not intellectually broad, but he had great
intellectual intensity. His mind was like a hot flame. It seared and
burned what was base and mean; it bored its way through falsehoods and
conventions; it shot upwards, unerringly, to truth and principle. And
this man had one of the toughest and most stubborn souls that have ever
been. No man, no government, could either break or bend him. Literally
he was incapable of compromise. He could not even parley with
compromisers. Nay, he could not act, even for the furtherance of objects
held in common, with those who did not hold and avow all his objects. It
was characteristic of him that he refused to associate himself with the
“new departure” by which John Devoy threw the support of the Fenians
into the land struggle behind Parnell and Davitt; even though the
Fenians compromised nothing and even though their support were to mean
(and did mean) the winning of the land war. Parnell and Davitt he
distrusted; Home Rulers he always regarded as either foolish or
dishonest. He knew only one way; and suspected all those who thought
there might be two.
And while Rossa was thus unbending, unbending to the point of
impracticability, there was no acerbity in his nature. He was full of a
kindly Gaelic glee. The olden life of Munster, in which the
_seanchaidhe_ told tales in the firelight and songs were made at the
autumn harvesting and at the winter spinning, was very dear to him. He
saw that life crushed out, or nearly crushed out, in squalor and famine
during ’47 and ’48; but it always lived in his heart. In English prisons
and in American cities he remembered the humour and the lore of Carbery.
He jested when he was before his judges; he jested when he was tortured
by his jailors; sometimes he startled the silence of the prison
corridors by laughing aloud and by singing Irish songs in his cell: they
thought he was going mad, but he was only trying to keep himself sane.
I have heard from John Devoy the story of his first meeting with Rossa
in prison. Rossa was being marched into the governor’s office as Devoy
was being marched out. In the gaunt man that passed him Devoy did not
recognise at first the splendid Rossa he had known. Rossa stopped and
said, “John.” “Who are you?” said Devoy: “I don’t know you.” “I’m
Rossa.” Then the warders came between them. Devoy has described another
meeting with Rossa, and this time it was Rossa who did not know Devoy.
One of the last issues of _The Gaelic American_ that the British
Government allowed to enter Ireland contained Devoy’s account of a
recent visit to Rossa in a hospital in Staten Island. It took a little
time to make him realise who it was that stood beside his bed. “And are
you John Devoy?” he said at last. During his long illness he constantly
imagined that he was still in an English prison; and there was
difficulty in preventing him from trying to make his escape through the
window. I have not yet seen any account of his last hours: the cabling
of such things would imperil the Defence of the Realm.
Enough to know that that valiant soldier of Ireland is dead; that that
unconquered spirit is free.
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