Tuesday, April 25th, 1916, was filled with sunshine, in token of the
summer that was on the way, while a keen wind from the north came in
reminder of the winter that was passing. The winter had been bad, and
the spring but poor, so that work on the land was delayed, and there
had been no fishing for the year. Yet these things had not served
me ill, for I had been tied all hours with a book overdue with the
publisher. For some months I had been struggling with Calendars of
State Papers, in which in their introductions English editors revealed
so candidly the prejudice that marked their work. So that I waited
about the house during the morning, loth to begin work, and listening
to the voices that came up from the land. The spring work was in full
swing. Voices of men, voices of women, and the barking of dogs, flowed
over the land pleasantly. Nothing seemed further removed from the day
and its work than the noise of war.
Moreover, the post was late. This was another excuse for keeping
from the desk. I looked along the half mile of the road till it bent
behind the heath, looking for the rider on the horse that was our only
connection with the big world.
It was not till some hours after noon that, looking along the road for
the post that was so unaccountably late, I saw a friend making her way
toward the house on her bicycle. As she came nearer and dismounted I
could see the traces of tears on her cheeks, and wondered.
“The post is very late,” I said.
“There is no post,” she replied, “but there’s terrible news. There has
been fighting in Dublin. They say Dawson Street is full of dead and
wounded men. The Volunteers hold the General Post Office, the Bank
of Ireland, and a number of buildings all over Dublin. They’ve been
attacking the Castle, but I cannot find out what happened there. The
soldiers are attacking them everywhere with machine guns, and they say
the slaughter is terrible.”
The mountains stood in the sunshine, calm and splendid, with a delicate
mist clothing their dark sides softly. The sea stretched out to the
western horizon, its winter rage laid by, the sun glinting in the waves
of the offshore wind like the spears of a countless host, and the
islands of the bay, from Clare to Inish Bofin, lay in its waters like
wonderful jewels that shone in the sun. Into this world of delicate
beauty came this news, this tale of yet another attempt to win for a
land so beautiful the freedom that other lands knew. It was not strange
that the mind found some difficulty in adjusting itself to perceive a
tale that came like a stream of blood across the day.
A week or so before, I had had a letter from Sheehy Skeffington telling
me that the situation in Dublin was very strained. The constraint of
the Censor was over the letter, and so little news was told. One knew,
of course, that Dublin Castle was only looking for a chance to seize
the Volunteer leaders, and one knew that the Volunteers were stiff
and pledged to the utmost resistance. And Sheehy Skeffington’s letter
conveyed little more than that the situation was daily becoming more
and more strained.