V.

Later in the morning I heard the jingle of the warder’s keys, the

grating of locks, and the tramp of feet down the wooden passage

outside. Presently it came to my turn, and my door was flung open.

When I made no move, my warder appeared in the doorway with angry

countenance to ask me what I was doing.

“Am I wanted?” I asked.

“You’re to come out to exercise, and look sharp. If you’ve a coat

there, bring it with you, it’s raining.”

Through the small high window, ribbed with heavy bars and paned with

thick, dirty glass, it was impossible to say what sort of a day passed

by outside. The different texture of the twilight within was the only

indication.

I was taken to the big yard, and there, for the first time, I saw my

fellow-prisoners. There was an Excise Officer, two men whom I did

not know, and two Gaelic League organisers. One of these last, as I

entered the yard, threw up his hand in a Connacht salute, and greeted

me: “[Gaelic: Sé do ḃeaṫa, a ḋuine ċoir]” It was surely a strange

welcome to a prison yard; and the warder’s voice barked out across the

yard: “Stop that talking there.” I was instructed to keep my distance

from the others behind and before, and in silence we all walked round

and round the yard under a cold drizzling rain.

Afterwards I learnt that a large batch of Westport men had been sent to

Dublin two days before, and that the prison was now beginning to fill

up again. This, apparently, was the reason of the delay in my arrest.

The police could only arrest as the prisons gave them space.

* * * * *

For Ireland’s prisons were not able to keep pace with this new (and yet

not so very new) manufacture of criminals.

For an hour we marched round in silence; and then we were taken in for

our dinners. The two Gaelic League organisers had been appointed as

the prison orderlies. Warders never do any work, that being an offence

to the relative height at which they are placed; all work is done

by prisoners under their direction. Therefore, Sean Seoighe brought

me in my dinner; and when I in my ignorance asked for a knife and

spoon with which to eat it, he, on his week-old experience of jails,

passed quickly out into the passage to control his mirth, leaving me

to the astonishment of the warder, who asked me if I knew where I was.

The astonishing nature of my request seemed to rob the warder of his

asperity, for he went out in silence, leaving me to an old horn prison

spoon.

At three o’clock we were taken out again for exercise, and by that

time I had already fallen into prison craft. Old criminals, I was

told, develop it to such an extent that their communications with one

another, in the friendships they establish, become almost as complete

as in ordinary life, despite the close scrutiny under which they are

kept at all times. I can well understand it; for here were we, new to

the game, and without any experienced hand among us, bringing all our

wits to work in order to establish communication with one another—that

communication between man and man without which life is as unhealthy

as a standing pool. Our minds became cunning and crafty; the whole

being became watchful and alert for opportunities that had to be

caught swiftly as they passed, while the outward manner maintained a

deceptive innocence. The result was not conscious; or at least it was

only half-conscious; for a new kind of reflex seemed to be developed.

As we walked round the yard for instance, we timed our journey with

the warder, who walked up and down a small path by the prison wall.

The result was that we were walking toward the far end of the yard as

he walked away from us toward the prison door. Thus his back would

be turned just as we reached the most favourable part of our round,

and by that time the distances between us would have become reduced

as though quite naturally. It was a manœuvre that, ordinarily, would

have been difficult to execute, yet it was managed quite simply,

and, as it were, naturally. Then, as we passed round the favourable

bend—while the warder was walking away from us down his little path—a

swift conversation would proceed, in voices pitched just to reach the

man before or the man behind, and without any perceptible movement of

the lips. And by the time the warder had turned about we were slowly

finishing the bend with lengthening distances between us, erect,

and with calm faces forward. Thus we came to know who we all were,

where we were taken, the circumstances that attended our arrests, and

soforth. This play of wit became no small part of the daily life; and

the penalties that were involved gave spice to existence.

When we were taken back to our cells I had a fairly exact knowledge of

who my fellow-prisoners were, and who had been there before me, and

when they had been removed. One became part of a new continuity, and I

had a strange feeling as though I had been in prison for a long time.

Supper was taken at five, and consisted of prison cocoa and bread.

It was the last meal for the day, and the only thing left to do was

to wait for darkness. In Castlebar Jail the gas jet projects an inch

into the cell, and is never lit except during the winter months. For

though prisons are sometimes spoken of as reformatories of character,

yet elaborate precautions are taken to prevent suicide. Hence the horn

spoons. Hence also the rope or wire netting beneath the landings. Hence

the gas jet, for from anything in the nature of a bracket a man might

hang himself. And such precautions are very necessary. As I sat in

my cell waiting for darkness to come, I felt for the first time the

beginnings of the system on me. The blank, bare walls, the high, dark

window, the deathly silence outside, broken only by the occasional

tread of the warder, the jingle of his keys by his side, and the sound

of the cover of the spy-hole as he slid it aside to spy in upon me—all

these outward things joined, with the instant repression of every sign

of humanity, by communication with a fellow-prisoner, or by a word

with the warder, to produce a mental blank and a complete absence of

any part of the rhythm or colour of life. One never sees anything

resembling a smile on warders’ faces: they seem tutored to graveness

or sullenness, as though they wore masks, and the only human exchange

one can sometimes catch is through the eyes—a quick flash there will

sometimes let one know that this warder at least is still a man and

has yet not wholly become a machine. So one never sees flowers in

prison (save for one exception that I was to meet, where the exception

was rooted in literary history); and prison yards are always floored

with shards of flint or coal slack, or something very like ashes.

Colours are never seen, and I remember later with what extraordinary

joy I feasted my eyes on a blanket with which I was provided—crimson,

and yellow, and claret—a wonderful thing. Everything is toneless,

colourless, featureless, expressionless, noiseless (unless the noise be

the harsh voice of a warder) void and unhuman.

In the twilight that thickened in my cell I sat that first night

feeling these influences sink into my soul—or rather, I felt them

advancing toward me, with intent to blot out the thing that was I,

the personality that was my being, without which I was not. And I

was afraid, afraid as of some last obscenity. I have read those who

have recommended meditation before such a grey void, so to purchase

the final liquidation into the great everlastingly-flowing Nirvana.

To such, a prison can be commended. Such a philosophy has never

commended itself to me, to whom Life is meaningless unless it be for

the production and perfection of personality; and personality is

meaningless unless it be the utmost differentiation of mind, the utmost

liberty of thought and action, the utmost canvassing of desire and

will, without any regard to authorities and bans and interdictions,

or monstrous (literally monstrous) attempts at uniformity, imperial

or otherwise. And so I sat there on my stool beside my little table,

feeling the first pressure of a cold enormity muffling Life at every

turn, seeking to reduce me to the utter blankness that is its ideal.

The prison system protects itself by a number of contrivances against

the suicide of its victims; but suicide is indeed the logical outcome

of the system, it is its final perfection. When personality has been

so far repressed that it can make no demonstration of itself, neither

by voice nor signal; when personality looks upon faces that are as

expressionless as the white-washed wall and flint-strewn yard; when the

mind at last echoes the blankness it meets with a blankness as fitting,

and the outer world becomes forgotten, literally forgotten:—what

difference is there between such a state and the final quenching of the

spark of life in a body whose only value is that a soul inhabits it?

The last state is simply a logical completion of the first.

Thought? I had during my life conceived of prison as a place where a

man could in silence and solitude think out things. As I sat in my cell

that first night in prison I knew on a sure insight (what I was later

to prove) that this was all wrong. As though something spake it in my

soul, I knew that thought would become sluggish and slow, and finally

would not exist at all, until even the effort to recall the names and

faces of friends would be relinquished as too fatiguing. I knew that;

I divined it that first night instantly; and I was afraid. Some of the

others told me that they wept every night; and I understood it. But

when the darkness compelled me to make up my bed, I simply took off my

coat and collar and boots, and rolled the blankets about me as I lay

down, determined that I was going to make a fight for it.

The following morning, when the Chief Warder came to see me, I started

again on the rules and regulations. We fought long and hard; and

finally he granted me permission to get a daily paper and to smoke one

pipe a day. “Only,” he said, “you must smoke it outside, and you must

smoke it in a special yard by yourself where the smell of the tobacco

won’t annoy the others.” I agreed; and before he left me he took the

“Rules” from the wall and bore them away with him.

So I took my exercise that morning by myself, in the small yard between

the forks of the prison building. My pipe was presented to me, and my

pouch. When the pipe was filled, I was presented with a match, and I

was watched while I lit up. Then my pouch was taken away and the door

was locked behind me and I was left alone.

The yard was very small, and triangular. It had apparently not been

much used, for the flints lay loose upon the surface of the ground,

save for one little circle in the centre that had been trodden hard.

Two sides of the triangle were formed by the prison, the walls of which

rose sheer above me, cold and grey, with menacing barred windows at

regular intervals. On the third side a high wall of masonry made the

base of the triangle. The day was sunlit, but the sunlight could only

fall across a small corner of the yard. Two daisies were growing in

the centre of the circle: which I picked, and instantly regretted the

selfishness and vandalism of the deed.

I walked round and round, smoking my pipe; but when my pipe was

finished, the folly of my decision faced me. Here I was shut for

another hour on a floor of flints, surrounded by oppressive grey

walls that rose sheer above me, with nothing to look upon but walls

and floor, and high above me a patch of blue sky, across which clouds

sailed. Deeply I envied the other men their sight of one another, and

their craft and tricks to outwit the warder. I walked round and round

the little circle, first one way and then the other; and gave that

up. I tried lying down in the corner, where the sunlight fell; but

found flint shards not the most inviting of seats. And it seemed an

interminable time before the warder unlocked the door to unloose me

from what had become a refined form of torture.

Yet I did not admit defeat. As I came away, the Chief Warder offered

me another pipe in the afternoon, on the same terms; and I accepted.

But that was enough. The prison cell was better than that little yard,

flint-strewn, beneath grey walls and barred windows. When I came back

in the afternoon I took occasion to slip up the flap from the spy-hole,

unobserved; and the warder closed the door without noticing this. So I

was enabled to relieve the tedium of my cell by looking out. Opposite

my spy-hole was a window looking down into the yard that I had left;

and there, to my astonishment, I saw a hat passing round and round,

coming into sight, and passing out of sight. The hat just appeared

over a bar of the window, which hid the face of the wearer. A hat, and

no more; like a tantalising glimpse into another world; but something

about that hat struck me as familiar. It was astonishingly like the

hat of P. J. D., the editor and proprietor of “The Mayo News,” the one

paper that had refused to print any rumours during the week of the

Rising. Had he then joined me in jail?

That night when at supper I asked for the daily letter I had

been promised, the Chief Warder informed me that he had received

instructions from the military authorities that I was not to be

permitted any sort of communication with the outer world, by letter

or by visit. The previous day I had written to my wife saying that my

daily letters were to be a sign to her that I was safe and well, and

would show her where I was. I wish no man the hours I spent that night.