Wheels Within Wheels (4 page)
Read Wheels Within Wheels Online
Authors: Dervla Murphy
The earlier letter about the Treaty, in which Pappa had ‘tried to put the best face on it’, was written on December 8, 1921, and began:
May God save and prosper the Free State of Ireland! You have no doubt heard the good news that a settlement has been agreed to between the English and Irish nations. It is not quite all that we had hoped it would be, but it is very good indeed and very much better than anything which seemed within the bounds of possibility a few years ago. And we have to thank you and the comrades with whom you fought for the magnitude of the victory. We have not succeeded in establishing an Irish Republic for a united Ireland, it is true. But we have got the real substance and can afford to wait a bit for the name. The sovereign independent Free State of Ireland will be in actual existence within a month and you will be coming back to live in that Free State which your courage and sacrifices have helped to create. So rejoice and be exceedingly glad. Let no disappointment cloud your joy or diminish your legitimate pride in what has been accomplished. On your return I shall explain fully to you the real value – as distinct from the paper value – of what we have won. I believe that the convicts will be released as soon as the Treaty has been ratified by An Dail and the English Parliament and that will be, probably, within a week.
I have asked Mamma to send you on the biggest portmanteau in the house. Cord up all your books, make sure they are fastened securely and bring them all home safely.
What had caused Pappa to change his attitude towards the Treaty so radically within exactly one week? ‘Putting the best face on it’ for a son in jail is not a sufficient explanation. Did the real ‘substance’ referred to on December 8 prove after all insubstantial? And was it in some way connected with the negotiations which Pappa had been conducting with the Vatican on behalf of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic? I have been able to find no answer to this question in the vast accumulation of letters and papers now in my possession.
The convicts were not released before Christmas and on December 23 Pappa wrote to his ‘beloved son’:
The Dail has not been able to make up its mind about the Treaty and last evening decided by 77 votes to 44 to adjourn its consideration of the matter to 3 Jan. So this means an end to all our hopes of having you home for Christmas. Poor Feargus! It is too bad, indeed; but never mind, my dear son, there is a good time coming and this is, I hope, the last big trial of the kind which the providence of God will permit to be inflicted on you. So keep up your heart and laugh English prisons to scorn. We were disgusted to hear that two extra days have been imposed on you for something which happened in Mountjoy before your transfer to Wormwood Scrubs. This is typical of English
meanness
, but let it pass. I was going to bring the matter to the attention of the IRA liaison officer, but on second thoughts I decided not to!
The handling of the position created by the Treaty did no credit to the Dail: they have spent too much time discussing the pros and cons of theoretical points instead of addressing themselves to practical affairs. However, no human institution is perfect and perhaps we expected too much of our representatives. Opinion is settling steadily in favour of ratification and, although nobody is madly in love with the Treaty, there seems to be nothing else to do in the present circumstances but to accept it.
Four days later Pappa was writing again:
It will be fine to have you home for New Year’s Day! You will see the first sun of 1922 shining on the slopes of Kilmashogue and lighting up the top of the Three Rock and flecking with light and shadow the little trout stream out of which you so often fished a breakfast for yourself and Kathleen. And a good deep draught of our sweet Irish air will soon make the blood again run freely and warmly in your veins.
We are going down to Malahide this evening to see Cathal Brugha: he is greatly upset about the Treaty and thinks it ought not to be accepted on any account. Things are looking particularly ugly just at present. A double crooked game is being played against us and I should not be surprised if the Conference broke up this week.
The Irish Bulletin
got hold of a secret circular issued by the RIC Divisional Commander in Belfast organising a secret Orange army – and has published it! Of course the Cabinet will repudiate it but there it is and very significant, too. In addition the British Govt. is hastily pushing on the Partition Act arrangements to give Belfast full powers and in order to do so is committing all sorts of illegalities and riding
roughshod
over its own precious Act. So we are by no means within sight of a settlement yet. ‘Ulster’ has now been paraded on stage and the marionettes wave their wooden arms and shout ‘No surrender!’ in the approved Orange style. Of course in this case the benevolent English Govt., anxious to do its best to effect a settlement, finds all its efforts thwarted by the irreconcilable quarrels between Irishmen themselves. What can you do with a hopeless people like this except keep a tight grip on them to prevent their killing each other? If Irishmen could only come to some agreement among themselves and tell the British exactly what they do want – there would be no trouble at all. Everything that a united Ireland asked for would be granted on the spot! And so the old game goes merrily on – just for the moment. But the curtain is about to be rung down on this tragi-comedy and to be rung up on a different style of drama presenting some very novel features.
[Alas! Pappa was wrong there: contemporary Northern Ireland proves
how
wrong. The equivalent of his next paragraph has appeared
with monotonous frequency in Irish newspapers during the past decade.]
There has been great trouble in all the internment camps since the truce. Conditions grow worse instead of better and the boys are having a rotten time. In Ballykinlar especially the British have gone out of their way to be nasty. They shot Alderman Tadgh Barry the other day just as he was waving goodbye to some released internees. A sentry pretended to think that Tadgh was trying to escape and shot him dead. There was great grief in Cork and great indignation everywhere. Friday and Saturday saw a very impressive funeral, the cortège coming from Ballykinlar by motor and being received by Volunteers and big crowds on the way down to Dublin.
We had a great day at the National University on Saturday when we installed President de Valera as Chancellor. It was a splendid turn-out with the Chancellor himself of course the most striking figure. He wore a robe of black velvet with rich gold trimmings and looked like both a ruler and a scholar; his tall figure and his thin ascetic face were fittingly set off by his magnificent robes. We gave him a great reception – and no mistaking its significance! What an extraordinary revolutionary change has the National seen! Who would have dreamed, a few short years ago, that an unknown and despised BA would on Saturday have been installed with great pomp and ceremony as Head of the entire university! Time! thou bringest mighty revenges! The IRA furnished a guard of honour and Kathleen, as Captain of the University Company of Cumann na mBan, mustered her sixty-five hefty cailin who made an impressive display. She also read an address in Irish to the Chancellor, who replied in Irish. Except for one speech, all the proceedings were conducted either in Latin or in Irish. The doctors’ gowns with their various colours ‘brightened up the scene’ wonderfully. I was resplendent in a scarlet gown with maroon sleeves and a maroon hood lined with green silk. Next to the Chancellor’s, it was the best robe in the show!
Everybody is looking forward to having you home, including Bob and Whiskers who are purring beside me at the thought. I hope you got the portmanteau and that you will find it big enough for all your books.
Fondest love from your own affectionate
Pappa.
Throughout his time in prison my father had received from Pappa as many letters as were allowable, some covering more than twenty foolscap pages and few less than ten. Each included a detailed account of the latest political developments and an assessment of how Dubliners of every shade of opinion were reacting to them. Pappa also occasionally reminded his son that ‘the average Englishman is a decent enough fellow’ – from which rather unexpected comment one may deduce that my father’s letters (now lost) were betraying that obsessional anti-English bias which he was never to outgrow. Pappa was too kindly to condemn any race completely; therefore his hatred of British rule in Ireland led him to draw a not very convincing distinction between ‘the average decent Englishman and the governing mind – for that is the only mind that finds expression in the country’s corporate institutions – and it is a strange mixture of Saxon dullness and Norman cruelty’. So much for his faith in British democracy.
These letters give a wonderfully vivid picture of contemporary life in Dublin. Repeatedly 18 Garville Avenue was raided, sometimes when the house was empty, and once the British troops helped themselves to £5 10s. 0
d
. which Pappa had imprudently left in a wallet in his bedroom. He got no satisfaction when he wrote to the CO complaining that the maid and the gardener could not be paid that week unless the money were restored. This was literally true – not a sob-story – and after the gardener had left in a huff there are some wry references to Mamma’s unsuccessful attempts to replace his labours with Pappa’s. Soon after, Maria, the maid, also left to get married and was replaced by ‘Mrs Bruagh’s maid, Agnes, who plays the melodeon beautifully and often entertains us in the drawing-room. She remembers you well: she says you are a nice young gentleman and not a bit proud as you spoke to her kindly one day when she was out with the Bruagh children.’ So much for attitudes towards servants sixty years ago.
The burning of the Customs House and the various reactions of Dubliners to that event are graphically described; Pappa’s own reactions were – as he admitted – very mixed. Then on June 1 he writes:
In Dublin now it is positively dangerous to walk the streets. Not a day passes without four or five ambushes taking place. You are walking
down say, Nassau St, when suddenly you hear a terrific explosion followed by a volley of rifle shots; you look round and see people rushing into shops, others lying flat on the ground, others running up the side streets! Trams tear along madly; horses gallop away from the cab-stands, women shriek, bullets whistle round your ears, bomb splinters are flying, wounded people lie about groaning – ‘oh! what a lovely war!’ – and for a quarter of an hour you have a lively time of it. Scenes like this occur every day here in all quarters of the city. A girl was shot dead in Trinity College Park last week during a cricket match; and two men who were sitting on a wall at Clontarf were shot at and died a few hours afterwards. The why or the wherefore of these latter happenings never appears, but all sorts of rumours are flying round – many of them of the most contradictory kind. It is easy enough to see the
raison d’être
of the ambushes, but the other occurrences are terrifying and mysterious. Twice this week the tram on which I was travelling was held up by the English and all passengers (male) searched. On last Sat. at the corner of Harrington, Camden and Richmond Streets you could see four long lines of trams held up for searching purposes while groups of soldiers occupied the streets and stopped all vehicles – rifles at the ready and bayonets fixed, while officers nervously brandished revolvers and held them under the noses of all and sundry including women and children. The searching would make a cat laugh – I could have had half a dozen revolvers and a few bombs on me without the slightest risk of detection. And all that is achieved by this ferocious display is to delay and irritate everybody, to dislocate traffic and business and to call down curses – not loud but deep – on the stupid military. But the situation is not without its humorous side: it is delightful to listen to the former
red-white
-and-blue people – the bigoted Unionists – the erstwhile ‘God Save the Kingers’, expressing their views on the present régime. My word! haven’t they changed! To hear them would do the heart of any Sinn Feiner good!
However, normal life continued too, as it does today in Belfast, and most of Pappa’s letters were devoted to descriptions of family outings, new plays, art exhibitions, bridge marathons, poker parties, long hikes in the Dublin and Wicklow mountains, cricket matches, croquet contests
on long summer evenings, moonlight bathing parties at Greystones and gossip about friends and neighbours. The family news mainly concerned Conn, my father’s ne’er-do-well younger brother, who when not in jail for political reasons was a constant source of anxiety lest he might end up there for non-political reasons. And there were many speculations about Kathleen’s many admirers – which she should retain for further consideration and which she should discard without delay.
Some news items have a very modern ring: ‘The strike of the
Rathmines
Council workmen is still on and we are without light and without ‘bin-men’. As for the first we don’t miss it for we have daylight till 11; but not being able to get rid of ashes and house rubbish is a bit of a nuisance. And the fun of the thing is that the dispute about hours is settled and the strike is being continued solely for the wages which were not paid during the time of the strike: workmen now want to be paid even for striking.’
Despite Pappa’s horror of Partition, his references to the North all indicate that even in 1921 the average Dubliner felt it to be an alien place. On May 2 he wrote:
I was in Belfast on April 20 and 21 lecturing on ‘Ancient Irish and Ancient Greek Education’. I had little opportunity to find out anything as I know practically nobody there, but I heard one important item of information from a ‘big business’ source – over 60% of those employed in the linen trade are out of work, the American trade has almost entirely ceased, there are big stocks on hand which can find no purchasers though they are being offered at prices slightly lower than the present cost of production. The boycott is telling very markedly. Otherwise the town seemed to me just as it was when I last visited it five or six years ago. It seems to have learned nothing and to have forgotten nothing. For instance I saw two lorry-loads of young fellows apparently returning from an excursion – probably factory hands – each lorry had a Union Jack floating over it; the Union Jack floated too over that monstrosity in architecture known as the City Hall. King William on a white horse crossing the Boyne is still their beau ideal and to shout ‘To Hell With the Pope’ and to stone the ‘bloody papishes’ is still the chief duty of a ‘loyal’ Belfast citizen. They still live
in the Ireland of 15 years ago and are unaware of the avalanche which is about to descend on them.
Belfast is an uninteresting place – it has only one fine street, the rest being either monotonous replicas of rows of workmen’s cottages or dingy terraces of a would-be suburbia. The energy which I noticed on my last visit was replaced by a good deal of listlessness – owing to the ubiquity of the out-of-works, I suppose. Anyway I was very glad to get back to good old Dublin. I may have to go up again in a week or a fortnight – but I hope not.