FENIANISM
I am quite aware the opinion I am about to deliver will cause great
surprise, but I give it after mature consideration, supported by all my
knowledge of Ireland.
It is this:--
The old Fenianism was politically of little account, socially of no
danger, except to a few individuals who could be easily protected, and
has been grossly exaggerated, either wilfully or through ignorance.
Matters were very different after Mr. Gladstone, by successive acts, of
what I maintain were criminal legislation, deliberately fostered treason
and encouraged outrage in Ireland.
Irish agitation would never have reached genuine importance unless it
had been steadily assisted in its noisome growth by the so-called Grand
Old Man, at whose grave may be laid every calamity which has affected
Ireland since it had the misfortune to arouse his interest, and the ill
effects of whose demoralising interference will bear fruit for many
years to come.
This is set down in sober earnest and in as unprejudiced a spirit as it
is possible for any sincerely patriotic--using the word in its true and
not in its debased meaning--Irishman to feel when he is thoroughly
acquainted with all the niceties of the national history for the past
sixty years.
I am far from saying that subsequent British cabinets have always
understood the Irish questions, but they are at least only reaping the
whirlwind where Mr. Gladstone sowed the wind.
I would broadly characterise as Fenian every Irish outbreak or
ebullition in the nineteenth century up to the time of the baneful
influence of the man who conducted the Midlothian campaign.
Half the tumultuous efforts of the earlier movements would have been
rendered ridiculous had it been possible to have them contemporaneously
examined by a few special correspondents. I can imagine the
representative of the _Daily Mail_ finding material for very few
sensational headlines in the Whiteboys Insurrection.
As for the tales of single-handed terrorism, these in Ireland did
nursery duty to alarm imaginative children, just as the adventures of
Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard or the kidnapping of heirs by gipsies
serve as stories to thrill English little ones.
Of course in 1789 to have killed three Protestants was counted a
passport into heaven in the vicinity of Vinegar Hill. But Father
Matthew's temperance crusade was worth more salvation to the nation, and
mere threatening letters count for nothing. I have had over one hundred
in my time, yet I'll die in my bed for all that.
My father-in-law had a pretty solid contempt for the Whiteboys--not the
original breed, but those who assumed the title in Kerry early in the
nineteenth century.
He was told that these miscreants had a plan to surround his house that
night and to shoot everybody in it, and at that very moment they were
confabulating at a certain farmhouse.
Refusing to be escorted or guarded, he made his way to that farm, and
walking into the kitchen, rated the lot of them in unmeasured terms.
Cowed and abashed they listened to him as he threatened the law, hell,
and the devil alone knows what beside. Finally, pistol in hand, he bade
them produce their arms and put them in his dog-cart.
This they actually did--for they had imbibed no liquor to give them
false pluck--and, with a final curse, he whipped up his horse and drove
away 'with all their teeth' to the barracks, where he left a very useful
arsenal, and was never troubled by one of them again.
To thus obtain complete immunity by sheer coolness is as much a matter
of personal magnetism as anything else. An instance of this, which
impressed me much, occurred in a coiner-ghost story told by Mr. T.P.
O'Connor, which I venture to quote.
'The hero was no less a person than Marshal Saxe. One night, on the
march, he bivouacked in a haunted castle, and slept the sleep of the
brave until midnight, when he was awakened by hideous howls heralding
the approach of the spectre. When it appeared, the Marshal first
discharged his pistol point-blank at it without effect, and then struck
it with his sabre, which was shivered in his hand. The invulnerable
spectre then beckoned the amazed Marshal to follow, and preceded him to
a spot where the floor of the gallery suddenly yawned, and they sank
together through it to sepulchral depths. Here he was surrounded by a
band of desperate coiners who would forthwith have made away with him if
the Marshal had not told them who he was, and warned them that if he
disappeared his army would dig to the earth's centre to find him, and
would infallibly find and finish every one of them.
'"If I am reconducted to my chamber by this steel-clad spectre and
allowed to sleep undisturbed until morning, I promise never to relate
this adventure while any harm can happen to you by my telling it."
'To this the coiners after consultation agreed. He was led back to bed,
and next morning ridiculed all spectral stories to his officers. It was
not until the world of coiners was finally broken up that he related his
experiences.'
In that story I wonder who went bail for the Marshal's truth. Veracity
and gallantry may not have gone hand in hand, or perhaps they were
affianced, and therefore took care not to come near one another.
Another sort of gallantry was noteworthy in what was known as Young
Ireland, for in 'the set' were several ladies, Eva, Mary, and Speranza,
all prone to write seditious verse. Eva was Miss Mary Kelly, daughter of
a Galway gentleman, who promised her lover to wait while he underwent
ten years penal servitude, and kept her word, marrying him at Kingstown
two days after his release. 'Mary' was Miss Ellen Downing, whose lover
was also a fugitive after the outbreak; but he proved unfaithful, and
she was one of the last I heard of who died of pining away. It used to
be much talked of in my young days. Perhaps now that it is not, it more
often occurs. 'Speranza' was Lady Wilde, a fluent poet and essayist, who
survived her husband the archæologist. One of her children inherited
much of her talent, but bears a chequered fame. I always thought the wit
of Oscar Wilde anything but Irish, and was always glad it possessed no
national attributes--unless impudence was one.
At one of his own first nights in London (I think it was on the occasion
of the production of _An Ideal Husband_ at the Haymarket) he was
summoned before the curtain by the customary shouts for 'Author,
author.'
He stood there for a moment amid the cheering, and then, in response to
cries for a speech, calmly took a cigarette case out of his pocket,
selected one of the contents, and, having very deliberately lighted it,
said:--
'Ladies and gentlemen, I do not know what you have done, but I have
spent a very pleasant evening with my own play. Good night.'
His brother, known as 'Wuffalo Will' among his friends, is the hero of
many stories.
Once he went up to a policeman and said:--
'Which is the way to heaven?'
'I don't know, sir; better ask a parson.'
'What do you think I pay taxes for? It's your business to be able to
tell me the way to heaven. As for the bally parsons, they don't
understand.'
A broad smile came over the constable's face.
'Were you asking where you could get blind drunk comfortably, sir?
because if so--'
And out came the hint with a wink.
Wilde was fond of that tale at one time.
The affair of ''48' was a farce. Stimulated by the French Revolution,
John Mitchel wrote rabid sedition, but received short shrift at the
hands of the Government, who arrested him, sentenced him to fourteen
years' transportation, and almost from the dock he was taken manacled in
a police van, escorted by cavalry, and put on board a steamer, which at
once put out to sea.
Smith O'Brien was the leader of this feeble insurrection. He had boasted
he would be at the head of fifty thousand Tipperary men. Instead his
army consisted of a few hundred half-clad ragamuffins, which attacked a
squad of police who took refuge in a farmhouse, and easily routed the
rabble.
Smith O'Brien proved himself an arrant coward. He hid in a cabbage
garden, and is still believed to have made his temporary escape from the
police in the habit of an Anglican sisterhood, of which his sister, Hon.
Mrs. Monsell, was Mother Superior.
The bigger outbreak was not a bit more serious. It was all trumped up by
the Irish in America, and their reliance upon help from American
soldiers was destroyed after the war. This agitation was the one known
as the work of the Phoenix Society, and the object was the separation of
Ireland from England and the confiscation of Irish property.
The leaders were James Stephens, who had nearly escaped being shot by a
policeman in the Smith O'Brien campaign, and that indomitable scoundrel
O'Donovan Rossa. It was at this time we began to hear of mysterious
strangers. In this case it was Stephens; later Parnell wrapped himself
in strange isolation; and subsequently Tynan, who was known as 'Number
One.'
Cork and Kerry were the chosen parts of Ireland for the new Fenianism to
come to a head, and a certain amount of enrolling and drilling did take
place.
I was then residing within two miles of the city of Cork, and one night
the Fenians came out and encamped all round my house, without offering
the slightest molestation or injury to anybody.
Two Fenians walked into the house of my stableman, about a quarter of a
mile from my own, and asked for food, saying they were ready to pay for
it.
The woman replied that she had no food in the house, but the breakfast
of her brother Charles, which she was about to take to him in the
stables.
They wanted to pay her a shilling for it, but she declined, and then
they went away quietly.
The principal outbreak was to be in Killarney, and they plotted to
attack the police barrack at Cahirciveen, because they had an ally in
the son of the head constable.
But a man in the town, to whom he had shown kindness, warned the head
constable of the attack, which in the end consisted of a few shots fired
by a ragged rabble of about three hundred, half of whom were
half-hearted, and the other half half-drunk.
The coastguards manned their boat and rowed off to a gunboat in the
harbour to ask for some marines; and the moment this was known to the
besiegers they dispersed. Some of them marched rather downcast towards
Killarney, and on the road they met a mounted policeman riding to warn
Cahirciveen of the attack which was to be made against the barracks, for
every movement of this silly rebellion was known to the Government.
They called on the man to stop and deliver up his despatches. He
declined to do so, and so soon as he had ridden on they shot him in the
back, wounding him badly.
He recovered, but was very shabbily treated by the Government, who only
awarded him a miserably small pension, a niggardly act which aroused
much dissatisfaction.
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Killarney, Doctor Moriarty, protested
strongly against the cowardice of the Fenians, who were afraid to face
one armed man, and waited until his back was turned before they shot
him.
However, as I have indicated, the Fenian movement was very
insignificant, and was known in all its aspects to the Government, which
dealt pretty roughly with it.
It is a singular fact that in the Fenian councils Killarney should have
been selected for the outbreak.
This is a town where nearly all the landed proprietors were Roman
Catholics, where there was a Catholic Bishop, a monastery and two
convents, while one half-ruined Protestant church sufficed to
accommodate the few worshippers who sat under a dreary, inoffensive
vicar on a very small salary. All reasonable folk, moreover, know that
Killarney is the town to which, more than any other in Ireland, it is
important to attract British tourists.
It was well known that some of the promoters and instigators of the
movement betrayed it before its very inception to the Government; and
Bishop Moriarty, from his pulpit, in his sermon alluded in no measured
language to those criminals who instigated the innocent peasants to play
a part in this mock insurrection, and then betrayed them.
He concluded:--
'It may be a hard saying, but surely hell is not too hot nor eternity
too long for the punishment of such villainy.'
Yet the whole of Irish history is disfigured by the poisonous trail of
the insidious informer.
I was in Kerry at the time of the Cahirciveen fizzle, in the
neighbourhood of Dingle, and it was rumoured that the insurrection was
to be general.
That was not my opinion, for I travelled on an open car by myself, with
a large quantity of money, and no other weapon than an umbrella.
It was a very different state of affairs in the distress caused by Mr.
Gladstone's legislation, for then I never travelled without a revolver,
and occasionally was accompanied by a Winchester rifle. I used to place
my revolver as regularly beside my fork on the dinner-table, either in
my own or in anybody else's house, as I spread my napkin on my knees.
And yet it is strangely difficult to see any other cause than Mr.
Gladstone's Acts for such ill-feeling.
As my sworn evidence, on which I was cross-examined in the Parnell
Commission, showed, I had only ten evictions in six years among two
thousand tenants.
I should like to ask, in what class of life is there not more than one
in twelve hundred that gets into financial troubles in a year?
In the insurance world such a ratio of claims to premiums would make a
perfect fortune to the companies.
The tenants were not associated with the Fenian movement at all, the
outbreak being solely confined to the townsfolk, which, in Ireland,
helped to make it a feeble affair. I did not know one _bona fide_ farmer
that was connected with the movement, and though the arms were mainly
smuggled in from America, mighty little hard cash came to the pockets of
any but the leaders.
Stephens was the original 'Number One,' and he was let out of Kilmainham
by the chief warder's wife. No one knew where he was to be found, but
the police, who were well aware that he was devoted to his own wife,
kept a strict watch on her, and eventually caught him through his
opening communications with her.
When the hue and cry was loudest, it was reported he had come to Cork to
foster the Fenian movement, and that he was disguised in feminine garb.
One day my wife found her steps dogged by a man in the most aggravating
way, for he followed her into three shops without attempting to speak to
her, his only desire being to shadow her, which he was doing in the most
clumsy manner.
I was away at Dingle for the day, so my wife went into the establishment
of the leading linen-draper, and sending for the head of the firm, asked
him to speak to the man, who was then pretending to buy some tape.
It turned out that he was a detective fresh from Dublin, who had taken
it into his head that she was Stephens, and was most apologetic, as well
as crestfallen, at his error.
Some time after this Fenian fizzle, my coachman saw a number of people
being chased by the police for drilling; and about two years later, when
I sent him to the Cork barracks on private business, he told me that he
there noticed some of the very people who had been routed by the
constabulary, but this time they were being drilled by the Government as
militia.
I have always had a theory that Ireland was created by Providence for
the express purpose of bothering philosophers, and preventing them or
politicians from thinking themselves too wise.
At the time when the Fenian scare was damaging Killarney as a tourist
resort, Sir Michael Morris--as he then was--was staying at Morley's
Hotel in London, and saw in the American paper lying on the table a
vivid account of how the Fenian army had attacked a British garrison,
and would have easily captured the stronghold had not an overpowering
force of English cavalry and artillery hurried up to deliver the
besieged.
Of course, the facts were, that in County Limerick several hundred
'patriots,' led by a man in a green calico uniform, attacked a police
barrack in which were five constables. Keeping as much out of range of
the constabulary fire as possible, they had exchanged a few shots when a
District Inspector of Police, who resided some eight miles off, arrived
with ten constables on a couple of cars, at the sight of which
stupendous relieving force, the whole corps of young Irishmen bolted.
Morris gave the waiter a shilling for the paper--and took it off his tip
at leaving, no doubt--and carefully treasured the journal until he went
to hold the next assizes at Limerick, when he found the bulk of the
attacking army in the dock before him.
When the D.I. was giving evidence, Morris asked him:--
'Where were the British cavalry?'
'What cavalry, my lord? Why, there was none.
'Oh ho,' says the judge. 'And where was the artillery?'
'Faith, my lord, there was as much artillery as there was cavalry, and
that would not get in the way of a donkey race.'
Then Morris, with appropriate solemnity, proceeded to read out the
newspaper account for the benefit of the audience. The whole Court was
convulsed with laughter, in which the prisoners in the dock heartily
joined.
After the trial was over, a parish priest came to congratulate Morris,
and said to him:--
'My lord, you have laughed Fenianism out of Limerick.'
[Illustration: Mrs. Hussey]