The Rebels of Ireland (116 page)

Though indeed, she discovered, as she pulled back the shawl, she needn't have bothered, since somewhere upon that journey, Daniel had departed.

On the twenty-fifth of November, Stephen Smith looked out upon the cold, wet streets of Ennis and decided that he would not stay there. He had arrived the evening before and stayed the night at the house of Charles O'Connell. His host had profoundly depressed him.

“At the workhouse now, the guardians are in the ludicrous position of begging the government to give them more relief money, for they are completely without funds. At the same time, they have just had a demand from the government for the repayment of the loan contracted earlier in the year for your working parties and soup kitchens. They won't pay it, of course. But all the same, at such a time, even to be asked…”

No, Stephen thought, he would not linger here. His work in Limerick had been worthwhile, but what he could do had been com
pleted. It would be continued, very effectively, by other hands. He was going back to Dublin. In fact, he couldn't wait to be gone. But before he could leave, there were some hours to kill. He might as well go round the place, however depressing. As he started to walk, he found himself wondering what had become of the Maddens.

As she stood outside the door of the cabin, staring out at the grey nothingness of the sky, and aware only now of the nothingness of her heart, she did not even notice him coming. Only when he stood before her did she realise that he was addressing her. He was asking after her sister, and after Daniel.

“She has left, Sir, but I can't tell where she is. I do not know at all,” she answered stupidly.

“And little Daniel.”

“He is dead, Sir. Yesterday.”

“I am sorry. I am sorry for your trouble.” The formula. She bowed her head in nerveless acknowledgement, glanced at his face, which she had seen in her mind's eye so many times before, and stared out at the sky again. Meaningless. “What will you do?” he asked.

“I? Do?” It had not occurred to her. What was there to do? Was there any point? There was no point.

“Will you stay here? Have you a place to go?”

“I have nothing,” she said, as though in a daze. “All that I had is gone. I have nothing left at all. But it does not matter.”

She was only vaguely aware that he was silent, that he was considering, hesitating.

“You cannot stay here like this,” he said at last. “You had better come with me.”

“I?” She frowned, not comprehending. “Where?” Would he take her to the workhouse?

“To Dublin,” he said.

 

VICTORIA

1848

 

F
EW PEOPLE
would have disagreed that, in listing the many pleasant features of Dublin, the canals must be included. Begun late in the previous century, they enclosed the Georgian centre city like two embracing arms. To the north, the Royal Canal swept from the docks beyond the Custom House, up round the Mountjoy estate, and out to the west above Phoenix Park; from there it proceeded across the country, mile after mile, away into the Midlands until at last, over eighty miles away, it joined the huge Shannon river system. By this means, you could nowadays ship goods on barges from one side of Ireland to the other. On the south side of the Liffey, taking its origin from the docks by Ringsend, the Grand Canal, despite its name, was an intimate affair, passing between grassy banks where willow trees grew, in a slow and almost imperceptible curve until, two miles west of St. Stephen's Green, like a man who has enjoyed a delightful rest cure, it decided it must now strike out, boldly, in a straight line, westwards across the fertile Liffey Plain.
Along its banks, from wooden lock to wooden lock, a charming suburban towpath ran.

And it was in a neat but capacious brick house, overlooking its grassy banks, that the Tidy family lived. Samuel Tidy and his wife had been married for fifteen years now. They had five children, the youngest of whom was a baby. They were industrious, modestly prosperous, and contented. In their house, as you might expect in a Quaker home, there was an atmosphere of easy quiet that was restful, and healing.

At least, so Maureen Madden found it.

By good fortune, when Stephen Smith had come to them in December of 1847 and said that he was looking for a position for a woman from Clare, they had still one extra bedroom in the house. “I was thinking of asking Lord Mountwalsh,” he'd explained, “since between his Dublin and Wexford houses he has such a large establishment. For she certainly can't stay in my lodgings with me. But then I thought I'd mention it to you, too. I have rented a room for her in a house nearby for the present.” After a long discussion between themselves, Samuel Tidy and his wife had decided that, for a couple of weeks, they wanted Maureen to remain in her lodging. There had been numerous cases of people coming into Dublin from afflicted areas and bringing disease with them. “We must protect our children first,” the Quaker reasonably explained. But after that, they had agreed to take her in. “She can help me with the children,” Mrs. Tidy had said. “I'm sure there will be plenty for her to do.” Apart from her board, she would also receive a modest salary.

For Maureen, this change in her circumstances had been so unexpected that for several weeks she had gone through her life as if in a dream. The Quaker family lived in a simple manner. They ate with their children, and they decided to treat her as a sort of governess. Indeed, she soon gave evidence that she was able to teach the younger children their letters, and a good deal more besides. “She has excellent self-control,” Mrs. Tidy told her husband approvingly.
“She's quiet and clean. I'm really very pleased we took her in.” And though the winter gave her no chance to lose the paleness that had afflicted her, by the spring Maureen had put on enough weight to fill out her face and body to their normal condition; she no longer looked gaunt, even if she was still a little subdued.

Early in June, Tidy took a house by the sea for ten days. She returned from this family holiday with some colour in her cheeks and an altogether more healthy air. “I'm so glad she looks better,” said Mrs. Tidy. “I'm growing fond of her.”

During these months, the family had not seen Stephen Smith. Shortly after his return in December, he had consulted with the Earl of Mountwalsh about what to do with himself, and the earl had responded by employing him on a series of commissions. These had taken him to Wexford, the west, and once to London. Not until late June did he send a note to Tidy to let him know that he was in Dublin and asking if he might call.

Maureen was occupied with the children when he arrived. There was much to talk about meanwhile.

The Famine was having some remarkable effects upon Dublin. The countryside around the capital was one of the least afflicted upon the island. But from farther afield, a stream of people from other parts had been making their way to Dublin in the hope of emigrating, or at least finding shelter. And to a large extent, Dublin had risen to the challenge. Churches and charities, not least the Quakers, of course, had ensured that the arrivals were fed. There was even a large soup kitchen feeding huge numbers in fashionable Merrion Square. Nor had there been any lessening in the numbers arriving. Tidy was glad that Maureen was not in the room—since it might have been painful for her to hear—but he told Stephen now that the wave of evictions in Clare and Mayo had, if anything, increased from the year before.

“The situation you saw in Clare when you left has continued unchanged except that the government has been forced to feed the able-bodied, too. Our best figures are that in Ireland as a whole, at
this moment, there are eight hundred thousand on outdoor relief, and nearly half of those are able-bodied. I cannot tell you how many people are at the point of starvation, because nobody knows and nobody wants to know. But it is normal in any western workhouse that there will be fifty, eighty, even a hundred deaths, children mostly, every week.”

“And the potato crop?”

“Twice as much is planted this year as last—though that is still less than half the acreage in the days before the blight. We shall have to hope for a good harvest.”

“What is remarkable to me is that there are not more people sleeping in the streets here. Where do we put them all?”

“That I can tell you easily. In the big houses that were the glory of Dublin in the old days, before the Act of Union. I walked over to the north side the other day, Stephen,” he went on. “Up Sackville Street and round by Mountjoy Square. In street after street, I saw those big terraced houses—which once housed a single family and were afterwards turned into apartments—now turned into tenements. Often, you will now find an entire family occupying a single room. I dare say, at that rate, that we have enough brick and mortar here to shelter most of the population of Ireland. In squalor, of course.”

They had just finished this discussion when the younger children, accompanied by Maureen, came into the room.

She was dressed in a simple cotton gown lightly trimmed with lace. Her hair was parted and drawn back, but there was some curl in it, and a slight sheen, from regular brushing, that he had not seen before. He advanced to meet her and smiled.

“Why, Miss Madden, you are looking uncommonly well.”

And though she did not mean to, she blushed.

He realised his error at once. A woman such as herself would be entirely unused to compliments. He must be careful not to pay them, except in the most general way, in future.

After some polite enquiries after her health and that of the children, he told them all that he had a piece of news.

“I must ask you to rejoice with me. After entrusting me with some commissions—no doubt to see how I did—Lord Mountwalsh has offered me a position as his business agent. His former agent is old and was anxious to hand the burden on. I must say, it's uncommonly good of him, and it would be hard to imagine a better employer.”

They all congratulated him warmly.

“Where will you reside?” asked Tidy.

“There is an agent's house down at Mount Walsh. But he will require me to make frequent visits to Dublin. His affairs, as you know, are extensive.”

“You will promise to visit us when you are here, I hope,” said Tidy.

“Indeed I shall,” said Stephen, giving them all a smile.

It was not until that night, as they sat in bed together, that Mrs. Tidy remarked softly to her husband: “Did you notice something when Stephen was here?”

“I think so. You are speaking of Maureen?”

“She loves him.”

Tidy sighed, but said nothing.

Stephen saw the telescope in August. He was on his way back from County Clare.

If anything confirmed for him the rightness of his decision to abandon politics, it had been the events of the last few weeks. With the Liberator gone, the confusion amongst the Repeal party had only grown worse. The Young Ireland men had found a rallying cry, however. The Famine was the fault of the British, they declared. And that armed revolt was the answer. It was everything his old master had tried to avoid. It was also futile. And, of course, they hadn't the least idea what they were doing. If Emmet's revolt had been a tragedy, this was a farce. Indeed, there hadn't been a revolt. But at the end of July, feeling they must do something, some of the Young Ireland leaders had tried to rouse some villages in Tipperary.
The Tipperary men had asked for food but declined to revolt, and a few dozen of the political men had had a brief fight with the local police in a small field. Hearing of it, Stephen had felt saddened.

His visit to Clare had been depressing. Having almost disappeared the previous summer, the potato blight had returned. More than half the crop had been ruined. There would be no letup, therefore: the sad regime of starvation and chronic disease would continue for yet another year. If he had not already been hardened by what he'd seen before, it might have been more than he could bear. Or perhaps—he admitted it frankly to himself—the fact that he'd saved one person, and brought her to Dublin, was enough to ease his conscience now when he saw thousands more who were probably going to die.

But there was also the question of the land. It was not only the poor who were being dispossessed now. The process had gathered a terrible impetus of its own. Cottagers could not pay small farmers. The small farmers could not pay the larger farmers from whom they had sublet; the farmers could not pay the landowners. And many of the landowners, it turned out, were so deep in debt that they were now being forced to sell up. “If this goes on,” Lord Mountwalsh had told him, “a large part of the west is going to be for sale.”

The question was, what should the Mountwalsh estate be doing about it?

“The government in London wouldn't be sorry to see the western landlords go,” the earl had continued. “They believe that most of them are feckless and irresponsible, that they should never have let the countryside get into the condition that gave rise to this Famine, and that they have been shamefully unwilling to help their own people. I can't say, insofar as it goes, that I would disagree.”

“The British are equally at fault,” Stephen pointed out, “in refusing to recognise that the problem is too big for a local solution.”

“Indeed, and history will so judge them. It is truly remarkable to me that, even now, the English can be so utterly ignorant of a country that lies so close to them, and with whom they have so many ties. Any
way, what they are thinking now is that, as soon as the western landlords collapse and sell up, they can solve the problem by turning the place over to honest yeomen farmers, who will look after it better.”