_Sunday, April 30th, 10 a.m._
Dearest G.,--When I closed my letter last night with the news that the
rebel leaders had surrendered I hoped to start this new letter in a
more cheerful strain; but while we were dining last night H. was rung
up from the Castle to hear that the whole of Sackville Street north of
the G.P.O. right up to the Rotunda was on fire and blazing so furiously
that the fire brigade were powerless; nothing could go near such an
inferno. There was nothing to be done but let the fire exhaust itself.
If this was true, it involved the loss of the Post Office Accountant's
Office opposite the G.P.O., the Sackville Street Club, Gresham and
Imperial Hotels, and other important buildings, and would have
increased H.'s difficulties enormously, as it would have been
necessary to build up the Post Office organisation again, with no
records, registers, accounts, or documents of any kind--at best a
stupendous task. However, fortunately this morning we hear the reports
were exaggerated. The Imperial Hotel, Clery's great shop, and one or
two others were burnt, but the upper part of the street escaped, and
the Accountant's Office and the Sackville Street Club were not touched.
This morning Mr. C, who has been H.'s great support all through this
trying time (his second in command being away ill), and several other
members of the staff are coming here, and with H. they are going down
to see what remains of the G.P.O. It is being guarded from looters,
as, from the enormous number of telegraph instruments destroyed, there
must be a large quantity of copper and other metal,--a very valuable
asset,--and also several thousand pounds in cash for payment of staff
and soldiers' dependants, besides heaps of other valuable property.
Here I must tell you how absolutely heroic the telephone staff have
been at the Exchange. It is in a building a considerable distance from
the G.P.O., and the Sinn Feiners have made great efforts to capture
it. The girls have been surrounded by firing; shots have several times
come into the switch-room, where the men took down the boards from the
back of the switch-boards and arranged them as shelters over the girls'
heads to protect them from bullets and broken glass. Eight snipers have
been shot on buildings commanding the Exchange, and one of the guard
was killed yesterday; and these twenty girls have never failed. They
have been on duty since Tuesday, sleeping when possible in a cellar
and with indifferent food, and have cheerfully and devotedly stuck to
their post, doing the work of forty. Only those on duty on the outbreak
of the rebellion could remain; those in their homes could never get
back, so with the aid of the men who take the night duty these girls
have kept the whole service going. All telegrams have had to be sent by
'phone as far as the railway termini, and they have simply saved the
situation. It has been magnificent!
The shooting is by no means over, as many of the Sinn Fein strongholds
refuse to surrender. Jacob's biscuit factory is very strongly held, and
when the rebels were called on to surrender they refused unless they
were allowed to march out carrying their arms!
As the book passes through the press, I learn on the one
unimpeachable authority that the story about Messrs. Jacob &
Co., however picturesque, is purely apocryphal.