These more fortunate times soon came to an end—for me at least. So long
as they lasted they were not intolerable; and the various funds in aid
of prisoners, and the companies of our fellow-countrymen and women
(chiefly women!) who came to visit us, made captivity as amenable as
it could be made. But one morning I was summoned to the Commandant’s
office, and informed that I and some fifty others were to be sent that
day to an internment camp at Frongoch in Wales. We were to be the
first to arrive, and we were to take charge of the camp and order and
regulate it for the remainder of the Irish Prisoners of War, who would
arrive in detachments from Stafford, from Knutsford, from Perth, from
Glasgow, from Wakefield, from Wandsworth, and from Lewes.
Such were the orders, and we were to be ready to leave in an hour’s
time. But I had what H. P. afterwards chaffingly alluded to as my
“strategic illness.” Never till then did I admire the amazing insight
and foresight of Dublin Castle.
* * * * *
I was in fact covered from head to foot with the proof of their
perspicuity. And as a result all the detachments to Frongoch from
Stafford were held back for three weeks to cover the period of
infection.
Thus I spent nearly a fortnight in hospital in the company of
an R.A.M.C. corporal who was isolated with me. He had been a
Northumberland mines inspector, and we discussed the working of mines,
their proprietorship and profits, and the virtues of Trades Unions.
Sometimes my friend the sergeant came and stood out of sight, and
beyond infection, behind the door. He informed me that it had been
discovered that I had written a book on Shakespeare, and that I was to
be treated with respect accordingly. He seemed to be somewhat amused at
this. But my corporal snorted with northern scorn, and declared that if
I could not be treated with respect as a man, I should not be treated
with respect as a man who had written books. So, with one hand, one
touched both ends of English society.
When I rose I was informed by the Commandant that I was not to rejoin
the others. Since I had been ill, it appeared, instructions had been
received that I and another were to be isolated. That other (H. P.)
was already in a cell in the Crescent, where I was to be taken. He
and I would be allowed to speak to one another whenever the staff
arrangements permitted of it; but never, under any circumstances, were
we to be allowed to communicate with the others. And, at the same time,
he handed me my official order of internment, stating that according
to regulations drafted for dealing with “aliens,” I was to be interned
because I was “reasonably suspected of having favoured, promoted or
assisted an armed insurrection against His Majesty.”
It was easy to see a craftier hand than that of the War Office at work
in this. Yet, by isolating us they magnified us: a result, indeed, that
the smallest wit could have foreseen. We were exercised together in
the afternoon; and when, the first day, we passed within sight of the
others they hailed us unitedly from the distance. Thereafter we were
not permitted to pass within sight of them.
The rooms into which we had been put had been designed for consumptive
prisoners, and contained bracket beds attached to the wall. The walls
were plastered and smooth, and painted in a pleasing combination of two
greens. Little things; but what they meant to anyone who had to spend
his day sitting in a small cell! What chiefly delighted me, however,
was the blanket on my bed. It would have given joy to a Red Indian
chief. Its colours were green, claret, and yellow. It lay on my bed
like a spread cockatoo. Life could not be drab with that to look upon.
Moreover, I had books, and I was allowed foolscap on which to write.
So with books, pen and blanket, the days passed with as much ease as a
prison could give. For, strangely enough, though the severity of our
condition had been much relaxed, the presence and the effect of the
system remained. Books that demanded any thought in the reading were
avoided; the mind seemed incapable of the effort they demanded; as soon
as a page were read it passed from the memory, and the mind became
once again a blank. One rebelled against this at first, and sought to
conquer it; but when the will demanded an effort, the brain replied
that such efforts were for another, not for this world, that the soul
could not realise itself in a world that had been wrought as nearly as
possible to resemble a vacuum.
A sergeant had been placed in charge of the two of us, a grown child
of a man, with all a child’s shrewdness and sharpness, and from him
we received many friendly acts in spite of the fact that he seemed
constantly to live in fear of some judgment that would alight on him.
He would take me into H. P.’s cell for conversation, and he came to
the tolling of the gong without a murmur or complaint. And for twenty
minutes each day I saw my wife at the iron gate—who, in truth, lived
her days at that gate.
Then one day Father Moore came into my room and sat on my bed, with the
tears in his eyes. “They’re taking the men away from me,” he said. The
dear man was heart-sore at the parting that now began. Every few days
saw the men leaving in batches of fifty to a hundred on their way to
Frongoch. Sometimes from a distance we could see them going. More often
we had to rely on news brought us from our sergeant. The final stage of
our journey was to begin; for we nothing doubted that our destination
was to be the same as theirs—Frongoch, from which place no good reports
came.
It was not till they had all gone, and we had had the long desolate
prison to ourselves for over a week that we were informed that we were
not to go to Frongoch, but were to be removed to Reading Jail. The
others having gone, and the fear of our contamination removed, we had
been permitted the run of the prison; and quite probably we were the
only prisoners in all time who paced alone a long prison that echoed to
our steps. The effluence of many thousands of prisoners was about us;
and we entered the cells to find the names they had scratched and to
reconstruct their history.
Then one morning, July 10th, we were marched out under yet another
sergeant’s guard for Reading Jail.