Rebels

by Peter De Rosa

  ‘Hate’ was not a word much used at funerals. But it struck a chord: forgiving wrongdoers is good, forgiving wrongdoing is unforgivable.

  Pearse’s eyes were closed now, as though his speech came from the very depths of his being.

  This is a place of peace sacred to the dead, where men should speak with all charity and with all restraint; but I hold it a Christian thing, as O’Donovan Rossa held it, to hate evil, to hate untruth, to hate oppression, and hating them, to strive to overthrow them … Life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.

  At this, even grey-haired warriors strove to check their tears.

  The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything and provided against everything – here Pearse threw back his head, like a blackbird in full-throated song – but the fools, the fools, the fools! – they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.

  After a deep silence came a new sound in an Irish cemetery: round after round of applause. They cheered O’Donovan Rossa and O’Mahoney, Stephens and O’Leary; they cheered all the Irish rebels that had ever been.

  Finally, came the command to the escort. ‘Load, aim, fire!’ A volley rang out over the grave, followed by the Last Post played by Bugler William Oman of the Irish Citizen Army.

  Clarke kept his eyes skinned, hoping that Crown forces would try to disarm the escort, thus precipitating a conflict.

  Nothing happened. Not even an RIC stenographer was present. Birrell and Nathan, damn them, were obviously playing a waiting game. No matter, a fool could see the Volunteers had the country behind them.

  The crowd dispersed.

  Pearse walked the long way home alone and sat quietly in his study at St Enda’s. He was now in the forefront of the movement. From that day on, there was no turning back.

  Nathan’s report on the funeral reached an unimpressed Birrell on the 3rd. In reply, he said of Rossa, ‘I do not suppose anybody in the whole concourse cared anything for the old fellow, who never cared for anything at any time.’

  It was one more sign that Redmond’s constitutional Home Rule stance was less and less popular. Birrell, therefore, agreed with Clarke on one thing: Republicans and the forces of revolution were in the ascendant.

  *

  Next day, Tom Clarke went west to Limerick to visit his old prison mate.

  John Daly still ran his bakery from his wheelchair. Though he was old now, completely bald and with a huge straggly beard, he still had a glorious twinkle in his eyes and a brain as sharp as ever.

  Clarke gave him a glowing report of the funeral.

  ‘What about the September rising, then, Tom?’

  ‘Delayed. Without German arms, we should have to confine the fighting to Dublin which would be a pity. If only we could get someone in there to give Casement a hand.’

  ‘Well, Tom,’ Daly said, ‘we both know the right man.’

  They sent for Bob Monteith, whom Nathan had banished to Limerick and who was helping to train the local Volunteers.

  Without hesitation he said, ‘I’ll go, provided my wife and kids are taken care of.’

  Clarke assured him, ‘There’s no question about that.’

  First, Monteith had to travel to the States. He had no difficulty obtaining an exit permit. Nathan was pleased to get rid of him.

  A few days before his departure, he went to Dublin to say goodbye to his family.

  His thirty-four-year-old wife, Mollie, was a remarkable woman, beautiful and intelligent.

  ‘I’ll soon make arrangements,’ he said, stroking her auburn hair, ‘and you can follow me across.’

  He embraced all his children warmly, but he could not hide a special fondness for Pat and little Vie.

  He landed in New York on the morning of 9 September. On Ellis Island, an immigration official asked, ‘Where’s the Atlantic Ocean?’

  ‘I’m glad to say,’ he replied, ‘it lies between here and England.’

  His first call was on John Devoy at his office in Lower Manhattan.

  Having prepared a home for his family at 137th Street in the Bronx, he concentrated on getting to Germany. An American passport was out of the question in view of his anti-British record.

  He had long talks with Devoy and did not take to him. His value to the cause was beyond dispute but did he have to be so autocratic?

  Something else annoyed him: Devoy seemed to have no respect for Sir Roger Casement.

  *

  Casement was at Ammer See, vacationing with the family of Dr Charles Curran, an Irish-American whom he had met in Munich.

  He glanced at the calendar. It was 13 September. The date meant something to him. Why? Then he remembered.

  It was on 13 September 1848 that John Mitchel, a Protestant, an Irishman and an eternal diarist like himself, wrote a memorable passage in his diary.

  Mitchel was in exile in Bermuda, under endlessly azure skies, no rain for weeks, with white moon-blinding rocks about him, and thinking, as was Casement now, of the misty mountains and rain-drenched grass of Ireland.

  He hunted out his slim volume of Mitchel’s Jail Journal, almost as precious to him as À Kempis’s Imitation of Christ which he kept by his bed. He opened it and read:

  This thirteenth of September is a calm, clear, autumnal day in Ireland, and in green glens there, and on many a mountain side, beech leaves begin to redden, and the heather-bell has grown brown and sere: the corn-fields are nearly all stripped bare by this time; the flush of summer grows pale; the notes of the singing-birds have lost that joyous thrilling abandon inspired by June days, when every little singer in his drunken rapture will gush forth his very soul in melody, but he will utter the unutterable joy.

  Casement paused. The beauty of Mitchel’s words, the intensity of the images he conjured up, were too much for him. Tears streamed down his cheeks and moistened his grey-tinged beard as he remembered Ireland.

  In Ireland, Pearse was now using his cover as the Volunteers’ Director of Operations to extend plans for the rising beyond Dublin.

  He visited Austin Stack in Tralee. Knowing Stack’s family history and his reputation as a leader, he appointed him Brigadier of the big Kerry division.

  ‘And, by the way, Austin, you’ll need extra arms.’

  A few days later, Kerrymen went en masse to Dublin for the All-Ireland Final. Stack had arranged for rifles and ammunition to be picked up at The O’Rahilly’s place, 40 Herbert Park, Dublin.

  After the match, supporters packed the arms into beer crates and covered them with Kerry scarves and favours. When the train reached Tralee, ‘drunks’ were detailed to distract the RIC; a few mascot-dogs played their part by barking at their heels. The jostling, singing supporters provided cover to get the arms to a safe place.

  Soon after this, Pearse sent Dermot Lynch, one of the Brotherhood, to Kerry. He asked various IRB men where was the best place to land and distribute arms in the west. Limerick was fine but, they all agreed, the best harbour was Fenit in Tralee Bay.

  Lynch reported back to Pearse and McDermott who had just been released from Mountjoy Prison.

  Now that Tralee had assumed major importance in IRB thinking, Pearse summoned Stack for a long interview at St Enda’s. He told him in the almost bashful way he had that the IRB had now scheduled a rising for Easter 1916.

  ‘Hopefully, Austin, the Germans will provide us with arms. If so, they are likely to come ashore in Tralee Bay. In which case, your job will be to land and distribute them.’

  ‘May we have more details, sir?’

  ‘Unfortunately, I cannot give them as yet.’

  Stack asked, ‘Are you hoping the Volunteers will rise all over Ireland?’ Pearse nodded. ‘Beginning here?’

  ‘Correct. We shall seize Dublin and declare
a Republic.’

  Pearse’s matter-of-fact tone completely underplayed the audacity of the enterprise.

  ‘Once the north, south and west have consolidated, all Volunteers will head for Dublin where British fire-power is bound to be concentrated. One final warning. It is vital to keep this secret until the very last minute. If you have to confide in others, give the least information to the least number of people.’

  A distant bell sounded. Pearse struggled into his gown.

  ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to take my boys for a history lesson.’

  Monteith, happy that his family had joined him in New York, now concluded that the only way to get to Berlin was the oldest.

  Devoy had reached the same conclusion. Amid the usual welter of papers in his unaired office, he said, ‘Being a stowaway is damned dangerous, Bob. If you want out, that’s fine by me.’

  ‘Hell, no!’

  ‘I thought you’d say that,’ said Devoy, with a twisted grin. ‘That’s why I asked someone over to talk us through it.’

  He pressed a buzzer and in walked Adler Christensen.

  After introductions, Christensen started telling Monteith in his strongly accented American what a great man Casement was.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Devoy butted in, scratching his grizzled chin. ‘Just tell us how we get Bob here to Germany.’

  ‘First, sir, I book a cabin on a neutral ship to Copenhagen. This gentleman can hide under my bunk.’

  ‘And if someone sees me, the steward, say?’

  Christensen rubbed a greasy forefinger over his greasy palm. ‘Never fails.’

  Devoy’s cold eyes shone. If this worked, it would open up a whole new channel for Irish-Americans to join the Brigade.

  ‘Right,’ said Monteith, the most practical of men, ‘you’ve got me on the boat. How do you propose to get me off?’

  ‘You won’t need a passport because we’ll choose a ship that only puts into neutral ports.’

  In spite of considerable doubts, Monteith and Devoy had no choice but to trust him.

  The 29th was Pat’s second birthday. Monteith took Mollie and his two girls to a 3rd Avenue photographer. In the studio, Mollie, in a long dress and broad feathered hat, was seated. The girls in linen caps stood next to her, Pat on a small round table on Mollie’s right, Vie on her left.

  When Monteith went to pick up the pictures, he kissed them and put them in his wallet. When he left the States, he wondered, would he ever see his loved ones again?

  September came and went, and in Ireland nothing stirred. Connolly had set his heart on an autumn rising. He had several reasons to be depressed, as he told Bill O’Brien and the Countess Markievicz, in whose house he lodged.

  In the first place, international socialism had failed. Everywhere in Europe, socialists were fighting the capitalists’ war against their fellow socialists.

  Second, he despised the Irish Volunteers.

  ‘They have absolutely no idea what they want a rising for,’ he fumed, his seal-like eyes blazing. ‘They empty out a barrel of rotten apples and fill it with rotten pears. All they’re good at is sermons over the dead. No guts for a fight.’

  His companions were used to this. They let him go on.

  ‘Take MacNeill. He wants every shoe-string in place before he sanctions a rising.’

  ‘You’ve hit it on the chin, old bean,’ the Countess said, in her squawky voice.

  ‘There’s only two places where such revolutionists exist.’ The Countess joined him in saying, in a sing-song fashion, ‘On the stage of comic operas or the stage of Irish politics.’

  Bill O’Brien put in tentatively, ‘We have to be better prepared, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Connolly snorted. ‘You need a leap in the dark for an insurrection. If MacNeill’s old fogies won’t take that leap, by God, the Citizen Army will.’

  Countess Markievicz clapped her hands in support.

  ‘Time for manoeuvres,’ Connolly snapped.

  His idea of soldiering was in the best Gilbert and Sullivan tradition. He, his Chief of Staff, Michael Mallin, and the Countess Markievicz called out the Citizen Army at short notice.

  When the Countess asked Connolly what the target was, he replied: ‘The Castle.’

  ‘I say,’ she said, ‘how absolutely spiffing.’

  The Castle meant different things to different people.

  To the Anglo-Irish, it meant the rule of law, the defence of their long-held lands and privileges.

  Not long ago, the Countess and her giant Ukrainian husband, Casimir, had been automatic invitees to the big Castle occasions like the St Patrick’s Day Ball. Dressed in ermine and silk, dripping with diamonds, she had been borne in gilt carriages to banquets where she flirted with generals and politicians.

  Now she saw the Castle as the embodiment of seven centuries of British tyranny, a machine for governing Ireland against her will.

  Connolly, whose background was the antithesis of the Countess’s, was the first man she had come across who believed implicitly in the equality of women. He had commissioned her in the Citizen Army. With her usual enthusiasm, she had told the youngsters, ‘Now, my old darlings, pawn your shirts, if need be, and buy yourself a gun.’ ‘Yes, Madame,’ they said, quite used to her weird way of talking.

  Madame herself took pains to look the part in her immaculate dark green uniform and a slouch hat pinned on one side with the Red Hand badge of Labour. She wore riding breeches, though she covered them with a long dress, and carried a rifle as she marched that early October night through a gas-lit Dublin to do what no Irish rebel had yet succeeded in doing: take Dublin Castle.

  James O’Brien of the DMP, a constable with greying hair and kindly face, stood at the Gate of the Upper Yard. He peered through the fog and, recognizing his attackers, held up his hands in mock surrender. He was used to civilians parading with arms now that the Volunteers had promised to defend Ireland against German invasion.

  ‘Don’t shoot, Count-ess,’ he pleaded.

  The Citizen Army accepted his surrender and retired to Emmet Hall in Inchicore, followed by the Castle’s secret police. The G-men stayed outside all night in a downpour, while the Citizen Army celebrated their historic victory with tea and buns and sang blood-thirsty songs the Countess had composed, the favourite being, ‘The Germans are winning the war, me boys.’

  The day before he left for Germany, Monteith lunched with Devoy who lectured him on what happened to men who let Ireland down.

  ‘All found dead,’ he said, in his dry, hollow voice. ‘One whoreson failed through drink, another cos of a woman, another cos of a bribe.’

  Monteith beckoned the wine waiter, saying to Devoy as he did so, ‘I love a drink, myself.’ To the waiter: ‘A bottle of Chablis.’ Back to Devoy again. ‘And, to be honest, this whoreson loves all women. But none of them enough to make me sell out my native land.’

  The waiter returned and filled his glass, then tried to do the same for Devoy but he put a wrinkled hand over the top.

  Monteith raised his glass, ‘To wine, women and – old Ireland.’ That put a stop to Devoy’s warnings.

  They went through the schedule for the last time.

  Monteith was to sail from Hoboken, New Jersey, to Copenhagen. The ship was scheduled to call only at the neutral ports of Christiansand and Christiania.

  The next evening, 6 November, Monteith said goodbye to his children at their home on 137th Street.

  His own two girls were too small to understand but to Florrie, now sixteen, he whispered, ‘I want you to stay with your mother until I come back.’

  ‘How long will that be, Daddy?’

  For a long moment, he stroked her shoulder-length blond hair. ‘Maybe soon, Florrie, maybe never.’

  After a last hug of the children, he left with Mollie. They took in a Broadway theatre followed by supper but were too sad to enjoy it.

  Monteith was a perfectionist who reduced his risks to a minimum. British agents mig
ht be tailing him even now. At Hoboken, as rehearsed, he shook Mollie’s hand casually and spoke to her in a cool voice to stop himself breaking down, ‘Goodbye. Be seeing you.’ Without a backward glance, he went to his hotel.

  In the morning, he met Christensen on the quay and, carrying his suitcases for him, went on board the SS United States. The cabin was tiny. He slipped under the low bunk and pulled the cases around him.

  At about 1.30 in the afternoon, he heard someone inspecting the cabins. An official peeped in and locked the door after him. So far so good, except there was a lot of dust under a bunk not swept in years. He was dying to sneeze.

  Half an hour later, it was anchor’s aweigh. He crawled out, stretched his limbs and looked through the porthole at the Statue of Liberty, as the boat manoeuvred in the river.

  The sea was rough and he was soon sick. He kept his heaving to a minimum so as not to make a noise. When a steward popped in to make up up the bunk, he saw two boat-like boots a few inches from his nose and prayed he wouldn’t throw up all over them. What annoyed him most in those first few days was the sound of endless tangos being danced on deck.

  On the eighth night, around 11 p.m., Christensen burst in and whispered hoarsely, ‘A British cruiser. Taken us in charge.’

  In spite of their neutrality, the British sent a prize crew on board and escorted them through Scottish waters into Kirkwall in the Orkneys.

  A shaky Christensen wanted Monteith out. He distracted the searchers, sometimes with come-hither winks, before signalling ‘All Clear’ and Monteith tiptoed to a cabin already checked. He quickly memorized where everything was and unscrewed the bulb so that anyone inspecting the place would be in pitch darkness.

  Christensen supplied him with sandwiches and water and left him to slide under another dusty bunk.

  At Kirkwall, passengers and crew disembarked for questioning. Mail bags were seized, letters read, phonographs played.

  One night, a voluble drunk came into the cabin, lurched into the bunk and started snoring gustily. The bunk’s wires practically touched Monteith’s twitchy nose. Worse, as the night cooled, the ship’s steam heat was turned on. Wedged up against scalding pipes, his clothes scorched and blisters formed on the entire right side of his body.