Redemption Falls
Page 51
Any Civil War source-list must include Shelby Foote’s masterpieceThe Civil War: A Narrative, and Ken Burns’ magnificent PBS documentary on the conflict. A chronology, by Don Harvey, of all the war’s engagements, is at http://users.aol.com/dlharvey.Redemption Falls is a work of fiction, taking license with historical and geographical fact, and making no claim to textbook reliability. More than a hundred thousand Irish immigrants participated in the war, but the Irish Brigade of these pages is not the famous 69th New York and Jeddo Mooney’s contingent is not based on any one real battalion. Students of Irish history will have noted that elements of James O’Keeffe’s curriculum vitae have echoes in that of Thomas F. Meagher (see the latter’sMemoirs, Comprising the Leading Events of his Career Chronologically Arranged, With Selections From his Speeches, Lectures and Miscellaneous Writings, 1892), but O’Keeffe is as fictional as everyone else in this novel and is not a camouflaged version of any real person. Well-researched works on TFM and his friends include Gary Forney’sThomas Francis Meagher , John M. Hearne and Rory T. Cornish, eds.,Thomas Francis Meagher ,The Making of an Irish American , Thomas Keneally’sAmerican Scoundrel , William H. Lamers’The Thunder Maker , Kirk Mitchell’sFredericksburg , Lenore Puhek’sThe River’s Edge , Reg Watson’sThe Life and Times of Thomas Francis Meagher and Richard S. Wheeler’sThe Exile . Other works on Irish combatants include Susan Provost Beller,Never Were Men So Brave: The Irish Brigade During The Civil War ; Frank A. Boyle,A Party of Mad Fellows: The Story of the Irish Regiments in the Army of the Potomac ; William J.K. Beaudot, ed.,An Irishman in the Iron Brigade: The Civil War Memoirs of James P. Sullivan, Sergt., Company K, 6th Wisconsin Volunteers ; Joseph G. Bilby,The Irish Brigade in the Civil War: The 69th New York and Other Irish Regiments of the Army of the Potomac; William Corby,Memoirs of Chaplain Life: Three Years With the Irish Brigade in the Army of the Potomac ; James P. Gannon,Irish Rebels, Confederate Tigers: The 6th Louisiana Volunteers, 1861-1865 ; Ed Gleeson,Rebel Sons of Erin: A Civil War Unit History of the Tenth Tennessee Infantry Regiment (Irish) Confederate States Volunteers ;Commanding Boston’s Irish Ninth: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Patrick R. Guiney, Ninth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry ; Lawrence Frederick Kohl, ed.,Irish Green and Union Blue: The Civil War Letters of Peter Welsh, Color Sergeant 28th Massachusetts Volunteers; Daniel George Macnamara, ed.,The History of the Ninth Regiment: Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, June 1861–June 1864 ; John Mahon,New York’s Fighting Sixty-Ninth: A Regimental History of Service in the Civil War’s Irish Brigade & the Great War’s Rainbow Division ; Kelly J. O’Grady,Clear the Confederate Way!: The Irish in the Army of Northern Virginia ; J. Vincent Noonan,Forty Rounds: An Irish Regiment in the Civil War ; Philip T. Tucker,The Confederate Irish .
Deepest thanks to my beloved sons, James (7) and Marcus (3), for tolerating their father’s absences during the writing of this novel, and for providing him with frequent demonstrations of the rebel yell. To them, the last hooraw.
† In the private archive of Prof. (Emeritus) J.D. McLelland, author of this footnote and of all others in this volume.
† Scored-out in the original MS. – J.D. McL.
† Letter written (in margins around newspaper sketch entitled ‘The Irish Ape Politicians’) in zaffre ink diluted in aqua regia, so that the characters are invisible unless the page is heated gently, in which case they appear in a turquoise tint. – J.D. McL.
† Italian. ‘My mirror.’
† ‘My double’, my reflection.
†† In fact the War had ended almost a week previously, with Lee’s surrender at Appomattox on April 9th. O’Keeffe is also unaware of the murder of President Lincoln, who died on April 15th, the day this letter was written.
† O’Keeffe may be alluding to the wartime policy that nurses must be ‘plain-looking’, ‘older than 30’ and ‘must not wear hoops or jewelry’. Lucia was notorious at St Mary’s Hospital, New York, for presenting for duty in a pair of men’s trousers. She was sent home immediately and ordered to change. She returned in a different pair of trousers.
†† O’Keeffe was stationed at Chattanooga, Tennessee, from December 1862 to April 1863. Lucia visited him there, briefly, at Christmas 1862. The visit was not a success.
† King Lear, Act iv, sc 1. ‘As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, – They kill us for their sport.’
† In fact, O’Keeffe had written to 32 publishers offering ‘American rights for ten years’ in his projected memoir, assuming it would be an extremely lucrative proposition. Twenty-two did not reply; there were nine rejections. A small house, Withers & Son, of Boston, Massachusetts, offered him a minuscule advance, for ‘all rights, in perpetuity’.
†† There follows a lengthy paragraph which O’Keeffe’s executors have requested the editor not to include. Its content is franker than many of O’Keeffe’s letters to Lucia, touching uninhibitedly, though very lovingly, upon their intimate life. The editor advances the view that such expressions are in no manner obscene but he has acceded to the executors’ wishes.
††† Here a bracketed sentence appears, which the executors have also requested be omitted.
† Spanish. Dawn of love.
††Hacendado : Spanish, the owner of a hacienda.
††† Italian: My star, my heart, my love.
† Unpublished. Dated ‘Summer 1865’, written on 15 sheets (recto and verso) of ivory foolscap notepaper, seven of which bear the heading ‘Steamship J.V. Gould: St Louis & Upper Missouri: First Class’. Probably a fair copy, since it includes no corrections. Lucia’s spelling, often idiosyncratic, has been standardized.
†Redemption Falls Picayune (laterRedemption & Edwardstown Epitaph ), September 1st, 1865; unsigned editorial probably by J. Knox Trevanion, Vigilante leader and secessionist agent.
† FromLook Away, Ye Men of Southern Pride: The Civil War Memoirs of Laurence O’Toole Carroll, Surgeon to the 17th Tennessee, The Confederate Irish Brigade , Memphis, 1894. (Acknowledgment is made to Mr Henry O’Toole Carroll for permission to extract from his late father’s work.)
† On the night before the Battle of Fredericksburg, ‘Soldier X’, an illiterate private born at Ennis Workhouse, County Clare, asked O’Keeffe for help in composing a letter to his wife at Brooklyn. It would be copied many times by O’Keeffe’s men (and by others) during the War. The version reproduced here was circulated with names and other details left blank. Four hours after mailing the letter, Soldier X suffered what an inquiry would subsequently term ‘a sundering of his reason, brought upon him by fear’. He left the camp at dawn and took his own life. He was 19 years old, a dockworker.
† FromA Monograph of My Aunt, Lucia-Cruz McLelland-O’Keeffe, with a selection of Her Photographs & thirty-two unpublished poems. By Professor (Emeritus) J. Daniel McLelland. New York, 1910. (Out of print.)
† From catalogue for ‘Sale of Important American Art’, Knoedler & Co., New York, February 1865. Author uncertain but probably F.R. Hildebrandt, Senior Auctioneer and Valuer. In his hand across the frontispiece appears the following note: ‘Dear Mrs O’Keeffe: We hope you are keeping well. You asked recently if we might have something on a musical theme for the General’s forthcoming birthday. We have nothing musical at present but I thought the Chapel might interest you, given the Gen.’s new position in the Territory, for which richly merited honor we all send warmest congratulations. When shall you leave to join him? We shall miss you very much. Kindly, FRH.’
† Probably ‘Wild Traveler’: a cheap unbonded whiskey then popular in the West.
† FromLaughter Roun’ de Ole Piano: Comic Irish & Coon Songs & Hilarious Recitations for the American Family Parlor , J. Grier Buckingham, ed., New York, 1866.
† FromA Cabinet of Cowboy Balladry & Campfire Patriotics , ed. John Fintan Duggan, Richmond, Virginia, ‘Confederate States of America’, April 1865. Author unknown, possibly Duggan himself.
† FromTraces of the English and Scottish ‘Child Ballads’ in the Songs of the Western Frontier , ed. Pr
ofessor Cleve Francis Jameson, Harvard, 1921.
† FromIrish Songs & Diversions to Learn by Heart , Minneapolis, 1878; Dublin, 1879.
† Gaelic, exclamatory. ‘In the Devil’s name.’
† The letter was censored by the prison authorities.
† This was the only one of Lucia’s poems to be published ‘below [her] initials’, so presumably is the one to which Martha Duggan alludes. The ‘abolitionist northern ragsheet’ in which it appeared (on October 7th, 1865) was theNew York Times . James Duggan, 19, was killed at the Battle of Shiloh/Pittsburg Landing, his brother, Con, 16, at the Wilderness.
† From an interview recorded in Pitman shorthand in 1924, when the subject was aged 81. Tierney, born to penniless Tipperary parents on a ship in New York harbor, became a gold billionaire in the Klondike. He had prospected near Redemption Falls from 1865 to 1867, where he lived in a bivouac and often begged, on one occasion having his life saved by Blackfoot Indians when he was lost in a blizzard on Great Smokecloud Mountain. The interview was conducted at Cashel House, his mansion in Edwardstown, which was said to be the largest private residence in the United States.
† A Norwegian.
† Original on display at the County Museum. (Replicas are sold to tourists as souvenirs.)
† Letter bequeathed to the editor, Prof. J.D. McL., by his aunt, Mother Anuncion of the Carmelite Order (Estafanía Maria McLelland) on her death in 1894. Written in Spanish (on official gubernatorial notepaper) in a cryptogram code devised by the sisters and two of their Toledan cousins in childhood. Lucia was able to write remarkably fluently in this cipher, even drafting some of her poems in it, as surviving MSS at the New York Public Library demonstrate. ‘Malinche’, a family nickname for my aunt Estafanía, is a crimson-petalled Nicaraguan flower, the jacaranda.
† Novia: a betrothed woman, a sweetheart. It can also mean a bride.
† Written on a noteblock of graph paper of the stamp used by the US Corps of Cartographers, these are the only pages remaining of what was perhaps a much lengthier document. It would be stolen from Winterton’s room at the Freundschaft Hotel on Christmas Morning, 1866 (possibly by Frieda Perlmann, a prostitute with whom he had passed much of the night), and later found in a midden-heap in the town.
† There follows a great deal more of this sort of material, in essence pointing out that the Mountain Territory is mountainous.
† Winterton’s empathy with the desire of certain of his fellow citizens to ‘go where one will’ may have been deepened by the fact that he had left gambling debts of almost twenty thousand dollars in New York at the time he wrote the journal.
† A curious sentence. The initials noticed by Winterton (and by others in the town) may have alluded to the wordsSic Semper Tyrannis (Thus always to Tyrants), said by some witnesses to have been uttered by the assassin John Wilkes Booth from the stage of Ford’s Theatre moments after shooting President Lincoln. The phrase is the motto of the state of Virginia.
† Possibly George Eliot, pseudonym of Mary Ann or Marian Evans (1819–80). Her novelSilas Marner , published 1861, featured a waiflike foundling boy. A copy was given by Lucia to Winterton as a gift during his recuperation at St Mary’s Hospital, New York.
† By far the strangest passage in Winterton’s journal. I have never been able to explain why Winterton represented himself to O’Keeffe as a non-combatant in the War. In fact, as a professional soldier from 1858, he had seen a great deal more combat than had O’Keeffe himself. There must have been a reason for such a calculated falsehood, but it is beyond me to know what it is.
† This sonnet appeared in the January 1864 number ofThe American Gentleman’s Monthly under Lucia’snom de plume . It aroused controversy among certain subscribers, not for its technical immaturity, but because some read the piece as being addressed by one man to another. As to the identity of the ‘friend unnamed’, I had been returning to the poem for many years before a wiser reader noticed the secret in its structure. To my wife, Ruth Ginsberg-McLelland, I am indebted for pointing out the fact that a downward reading of the first letter of each line is revealing. It would appear that the dear friend is not unnamed, after all.
† The adage with which Winterton is agreeing is: ‘A drunk man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts.’
† Document found in a search of Winterton’s clothing after the massacre at Fort Stornaway, January 1867. It had been sewn inside the brim of a hat.
† Presumably a stirrup.
† There follow two and a half pages of trigonometric calculation.
† ‘O+O Men’: a flag of convenience for Vigilantes of the locale. The origin and meaning of the term is unclear. A memoir published by Trevanion himself in 1895, while fervently denying that its author had been a Vigilante, is striking for its insider’s knowledge. He elucidated the name ‘O+O’ as standing for the Spanishojos y oídos – the eyes and ears. Others have maintained that the name contained a typographical warning, that the figures ‘O+O’ resemble a pair of watching eyes and a funereal cross. Whatever the characters meant, they were not something you wanted to see painted on your door.
† Signed ‘C.G. Carroll’ (Lucia’s then pseudonym). Unpublished. Written in pencil on sheet of cream pasteboard torn from pad manufactured for sketching. The title refers to a photograph of a dead Confederate at Antietam, made by Timothy O’Sullivan, son of New York Irish immigrants, a pioneer of American war photography. (He photographed O’Keeffe in April 1861.) The Chief Archivist of University College Dublin is gratefully acknowledged for permission to reproduce the manuscript.
† John Trevanion failed to present for questioning the following Monday morning. A marshal went to his home but nobody was there. A ‘suicide note’ was found at his place of work. Its author was seen in Montréal fourteen months later. He lived to ninety-three and died in his bed, having made a fortune from his memoirStrong-Handed Justice in a Wild Frontier (reputedly Queen Victoria’s favorite book).
† From the private archive of Professor J. D. McL. Five sheets of official gubernatorial notepape, written on both sides, in O’Keeffe’s handwriting, with the address of the residence scored out on each page except the first. Small burn hole in first page, possibly caused by cinder. Final ‘page’ is a shred torn from a flour-bag.
† This claim, often made privately by O’Keeffe to friends, has proven impossible to verify.
† Letter mailed in Fort Stornaway in the early afternoon of New Year’s Day, 1867. Robert Emmet O’Keeffe, known to many as Robert Boland, had drowned four months previously while swimming alone in Lake Comfrey. The inscription on his tombstone at St Anthony’s Church, Hobart, reads: ‘Robert Emmet O’Keeffe. Only son of James and Catherine. Gone home to his mother and sister. Pray for them.’
† Graffito found during renovations of a cantina in Suarez, New Mexico, 1887. Author unknown. Not McLaurenson. Much effort has been expended on analysing his marque. Some have read ‘MK1025’ as standing for ‘Men Killed: 1025’, the number of Union soldiers he claimed his gang had killed during the War. Others have seen the figures as a biblical reference. Mark, Chapter 10, verse 25 reads: ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.’