Irish Crystal

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “But your clan does not have to pretend that they’re literate and refined and civilized …”

  “They certainly don’t.”

  “And they don’t know everything about the Church either, and his rivirence a priest.”

  Nuala Anne always treated my brother with a lot more respect than that to which he was entitled.

  “The Currans try too hard,” I said.

  “And themselves a long way from the bogs, unlike some other folks I know.”

  We laughed. Nuala would admit, at least on occasion, that she could play the Connemara peasant lass role to the hilt.

  “Sure, ’tis who I am, isn’t it now?” she’d laugh.

  I note that she did not say anything that night about how the Currans would be involved in our search for spies. She argues that I had set her on fire and her dark side always tunes out when that happens. Later we would know that the spies were closing in on them.

  As we climbed the steps to our front-door entrance, she sighed very loudly.

  “The screwing should be solemn high tonight, Dermot love, shouldn’t it?”

  “Long and slow and sweet?”

  “With lots of fooling around.”

  “I understand.”

  The kind of lovemaking which ought to produce a fourth child.

  7

  Ireland has always been a violent country, but most of the people are not violent. That, my nieces and nephews and grandnieces and grandnephews, is something you have to understand. In the old days the kings were always fighting with one another over land and cattle. Anyone who had a hill and ten head of cattle was a king, don’t you see. So they and their retainers would go out each spring to fight with one another and the rest of the country paid them no heed. Even the warriors were not good fighters. That’s why when Strongbow and the Normans came they took over the country so easily, then became Irish, just like the Danes before them did. When the English came over under Elizabeth and Cromwell and King Billy along with Scotch settlers, it was different. They had no intention of becoming Irish. They decided to convert some of us, the lords and that sort, and kill off the rest of us. God knows, they almost succeeded. The result was that there was always an element of lawlessness out in the countryside, groups like the Defenders, and the Whiteboys, and the Ribbonmen, which are still with us today, even here in my parish. They’re part bandits and part Irish patriots. When a “better class” of people come along and want to drive the English out—there will always be such people on this island until the English leave—the rough men in the countryside are only too happy to join in the mayhem—and maybe kill a few hundred Protestants as part of the game. Maybe they’ll lock them in their churches and burn the churches down, just as some fine Catholics did here in Wexford during the ’98.

  It was different at the turn of the century. The French Revolution had set Europe on fire. Books by French writers spread all over the continent. Lord Edward’s mother, the Duchess of Leinster, tried to raise her children according to Rousseau, hired a Scotchman as their tutor, and was unfaithful to her husband with him. The First Duke of Leinster himself (and the twentieth Earl of Kildare as he also was) like a lot of our lords in those days had put himself into debt building a new house for himself in Dublin. That’s the way things were in those days: the whole world was falling apart.

  England was fighting the Revolutionary Army and not doing well against it. So the people who wanted to drive the English out of Ireland thought that was the time to strike, especially if they could get some help from the Frogs, whom to tell you the truth they disliked almost as much as the English. These would-be leaders were men who could read and write and many of them had been to university, which meant they were different from most of the rest of us. They were also Protestants, though their ancestors had been Catholic. Most of them were not very good Protestants. They had become deists, one God at the most if you take my meaning. Poor Bob Emmet was devout, not that it did him much good.

  Well, they founded a group called the United Irishmen, which included Presbyterians from the North, and Protestants from Dublin, and Catholics from the countryside. They may have had two hundred thousand members by the ’98 but not many of them knew much about fighting, much less organizing an army, things which the English, to give the devils their due, were good at, though the Americans had beaten them pretty badly.

  The poverty and misery of the Catholic poor was even worse than it is now in America. You won’t be able to imagine the dirt, the filth, the smell, the sickness, the disease, the misery of ordinary people. Around Stephen’s Green you see some of the most elaborate homes in the British Isles and hidden behind them, some of the worst hovels. Disease spreads from the poor to the rich. Parents are reluctant to become too attached to a newborn baby because the chances are at least even that the child will die before its second birthday. Intelligent and lively young people die of tuberculosis before they’re twenty-five, as did my poor love Sarah. Life is short and ugly. Yet the rich Protestants in Dublin live in splendor and luxury and gross immorality. It could not have been much worse during the black death.

  The United Irishmen, and most of their leaders Protestants, were against the oppression of Catholics, which was a novel idea in those days. French revolutionary convictions about equality overcame their religious prejudices. The Irish parliament, which met in a big ugly building on College Green, was completely crooked and corrupt and controlled by maybe fifty families at the most. Dublin Castle, with the viceroy (the Lord Lieutenant) and the First Secretary, was the center of English rule and often fought the Parliament. However, they were not eager to permit Catholics into it because that would cause real trouble.

  The United Irish reckoned that if they could time a rising at the same time the French would land troops in the west, they could take over the country. They might have been right. When the French finally got a small force ashore in County Mayo a year after the Rising, they beat the English in a battle at Castlebar before Lord Cornwallis got a large enough army out there to rout them. The Mayo people, however, did not trust the French and did not rise. What would have happened if they had come a year earlier, we’ll never know. The truth is that the French never quite got into the game. Their ships always had a hard time finding Ireland after they sailed from Brest. So the theory that the French would come to the aid of Irish freedom just as they did twenty years before come to the aid of American freedom didn’t work out.

  We even had our George Washington in Lord Edward.

  Before I tell you about him I must tell you more about the spies. Dublin Castle had spies everywhere, a few of them were loyalists to the crown, a few others were threatened with prison if they didn’t cooperate, and most of them eager for money. Magan demanded and received four thousand pounds for betraying Lord Edward.

  There were few things that the United Irishman planned or did that the Castle didn’t know about. The English weren’t completely prepared for the Rising and didn’t have the troops they thought they needed to fight it, but they knew it was coming. You could hardly have a meeting of ten United Irishman without two of them being traitors. Even the lawyers who supposedly represented United Irishmen were spies. McNally, Bob Emmet’s lawyer during his trial (because that bastard John Philpot Curran refused to represent him), reported directly to the Castle.

  Why would men betray their friends and neighbors and colleagues, you might wonder. Like I said earlier in this long letter, money was the main reason. Even if a man didn’t need the money, the chance of making more was irresistible. Whatever chance the ’98 had was swept into the sewers of the Liffey when Magan betrayed Lord Edward.

  He was supposed to be the George Washington of Ireland. He was a tall, handsome, gracious man—all the Geraldines were that if nothing else. He had served in a regiment in the American colonies during the war and had returned to Canada in command of a regiment. He had traveled across the Canadian wilderness and explored down the Mississippi River to New Orleans (sleeping with an I
ndian woman on the way). Like all his kind he was an immoral man. He stole the wife of the playwright Richard Sheridan and had a daughter with her—both of whom later died. He frequented the gambling dens and the whorehouses of Paris and was notorious for his immorality both in London and Dublin. He fell in love finally with Pamela, the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Orleans (who called himself Philip Egalité during the Revolution but lost his head just the same), married her, and brought her back to Ireland just before the Rising. His family hated her of course and did their best to separate her from her two children after he died.

  If you were a leader of the United Irishmen in those days, you had to go to France to seek help from the damn Frogs, whether it be the leaders of the Revolution, or the Directorate which took over and brought some order, or Bonaparte. They all made promises. Invading England through Ireland sounded like good strategy. Yet they were skeptical of the claims of men like Lord Edward and Wolf Tone. Would the Irish people really rise when French troops landed? Looking back on it, they had reason to be dubious. We never did like the Frogs. The one time the French ships were able to find a shore on which to land enough troops to win a battle, most of the local Irish did not join in.

  Yet through all those years the plan invariably was that the United Irishmen would rise at the same time the French landed. The wish being the father of the thought, the landings were always expected momentarily. Both the ’98 and the ’03 began when they did because our brave leaders expected Frogs on the beach the next morning. I’m still astonished that intelligent men could so completely deceive themselves. At the end of the day both of the Risings happened because the leaders thought at the last minute a rising would convince the French that the Irish were serious about revolution.

  In fact, most of us were not. Those of us who were had little notion of how to do a revolution. However, as the winter of ’97 turned into the spring of ’98 the countryside was restless, both here in Wexford and up in Kildare. Even some of the Presbyterian merchants in Belfast were ready to go.

  I still remember the excitement of the time, the rumors and the counterrumors you would here on every street corner, the Yeomanry (brutal Protestant militia) swaggering through Dublin with the curses of Dubliners following after them, reports of French sails off Waterford and Kinsale, anxious and intense discussion in the pubs, important Dublin men reporting to their friends what the Castle was doing, whispers in the night for fear the spies might be listening—which they were more often than we thought.

  I’m angry as I think about it, angry at Lord Edward—whom I adored in those days—and his colleagues for being fools, angry at the spies who betrayed them, angry at the English who had no right to be in our country, and angry at myself for yielding to the enthusiasm and the folly.

  I was on the fringes of the Rising. I carried messages back and forth. Yes, I knew Lord Edward and worshiped him, as did everyone who knew him. His father, the late First Duke of Leinster was an irresponsible spendthrift and a cuckold. His brother, the current duke, was a bungling incompetent, barely able to read and write. But in Lord Edward, the bloodlines of the Geraldines ran true.

  He walked through the streets of Dublin in those days, his head high, a smile on his face, like he was already the Irish George Washington. You could see him on the steps of the Four Courts where they did the legal business of the country, or in front of the House of Lords in casual conversation with his colleagues. His smile, his wit, his charm disarmed everyone, perhaps even the Castle spies who followed him wherever he went.

  The countryside was restless. Almost every day we heard reports of random violence out in the counties, particularly down in Wexford. Catholics were already killing Protestants and Protestants striking back with more murders. Young romantic that I was I waited eagerly for the explosion.

  I met Bobby one morning in March as he trudged across the Green. I had no idea whether he was involved with the United Irishmen. We chatted briefly. He gave away nothing.

  “Will there be a rising, Bob?”

  “Who can say?”

  “I’m told that Lord Edward has appointed adjutant generals in all the counties.”

  He sighed.

  “That is as may be.”

  “And that battle plans are all prepared.”

  “So it is said.”

  “On the day of the Rising, the mail won’t leave Dublin. That will be a signal to the rest of the country.”

  He merely sighed and asked me to give his respects to my family.

  We were both little more than children. I was caught up in the exuberance of youth, Bob steeped in the caution, I thought then, of old age.

  In the event, he was deeply involved in the Rising. But he left no footprints. Neither the Castle, nor his own family, nor most of the United Irishmen knew that “young Emmet” was a key conspirator. After it was over, he was the logical one to emerge as the leader of the next effort, though he was barely twenty years old.

  Impulsive and generous, Lord Edward had made friends with a young Catholic named Thomas Reynolds and invited him into the conspiracy. Reynolds at first was eager to join, then had second thoughts about what might happen to him if he were captured. He changed sides and provided the Castle with the detailed plans for the Rising.

  In May the Castle issued orders for Lord Edward’s arrest. Everyone in Dublin knew that a rising was coming and that Lord Edward would lead it. Wild rumors spread that there were two hundred thousand men in arms all over Ireland who would attack at his word. After the Castle issued an order for his arrest and despite the work of scores of informers, they could not find him. Almost like a ghost, Lord Edward strolled the streets of Dublin and met with his fellow plotters whenever he wished. The legend grew rapidly.

  Despite his audacity and his apparent optimism, he was privately, as I had reason to know, growing more dubious about the project. He had no confidence in the French. His “generals” were not trained military men. He did not trust most of his troops. He was uncertain how large the Rising would be. Only in Wexford and perhaps in Kildare could he be confident of reliable fighters and even in those counties there was no unity of command. Only some local priests like Father John Murphy in Wexford had any leadership instincts.

  “A revolution led by priests,” he said with a sigh in my presence. “I supposed it is always that way in Ireland. What need does this island have for Norman lords like my family.”

  8

  “Poor dear men,” Nuala Anne said, closing the manuscript. “I know what’s going to happen, but I still hope and pray that it doesn’t.”

  “It’s two hundred years late to pray for them.”

  “God doesn’t pay any attention to time … The priesteen escaped to write about it, didn’t he?”

  I was not altogether sure that God didn’t pay attention to time, even if he lives in eternity. However, my wife, typical West of Ireland mystic that she was, believed that boundaries of time, like all other boundaries were permeable. She may well have imagined herself to be on Stephen’s Green that morning that our author had encountered the mysterious Bob Emmet.

  However, I was not going there. I did not want to find out.

  It was early afternoon. Socra Marie was in nap mode. Danuta, our Polish housekeeper, was resting her eyes. Ethne was in the exercise room, working herself into the physical condition that Nuala insisted was necessary before marriage. “And don’t ever let yourself get out of shape after you’re married,” me wife had insisted.

  The dogs were pacing around restlessly, their own snoozes interrupted by the crackle of lightning and boom of thunder. Perhaps a perfect time to read about Dublin’s fair city in 1798, a city that wasn’t fair at all.

  “Do you still feel that there are spies around us?” I asked her.

  “Pardon, Dermot love?”

  She startled, as though I had wakened her from a daydream.

  “We’re hunting modern spies, aren’t we?”

  “’Tis true.”

  “An
d who are they?”

  “Well”—she reordered her stack of books—“let’s consider it logically.”

  I didn’t know that logic applied in the world of the fey.

  “First there are them nine-fingered gobshites who are denouncing immigrants to Homeland Security.”

  “Why would they be interested in us?”

  “I’m still an immigrant, Dermot.”

  “You have a green card.”

  “Do I now? Weren’t they after taking it when they seized my citizenship application? Couldn’t they come in here this afternoon and remove me out to O’Hare and send me back to Ireland?”

  “They’d never do that to you, Nuala Anne. You’re not a Muslim.”

  “You can’t tell what them fockers might do and your man not president anymore.”

  It had required presidential action to retrieve her green card the last time. I resolved to call my sister, Cindy Hurley, about forcing the citizenship papers out of the bureaucrats at Homeland Security.

  “Then,” she went on, “there’s your man across the street who sent the police to lift our doggies.”

  At the word “doggie” both the hounds moved to her feet and curled up for protection from a thunderbolt that seemed to hit the rectory across the street.

  “We coped with that easily enough.”

  “But, Dermot love, there are people out there who don’t like us.”

  Clad in black jeans and a black leather jacket against the fierce April winds, she had walked the dogs, now on a leash, over to school with the children the morning after our dinner at River House. She was very careful to keep them on the parkway and off the parish property. The kids had swarmed over to make their obeisance. Mutts hugged, kissed, shook hands, and rolled over despite the mud. As I watch, a police car pulled up.

  That miserable bastard!

  I had dashed down the stairs and across the street, wearing only my red-and-gold Marquette gym suit.