1921

by Morgan Llywelyn

  In the five years they had known one another, Ned had learned to appreciate Henry’s common sense and steadiness, bedrock qualities that had been missing in Ned’s life since his parents died. Henry, on the other hand, admired Ned’s fearless heart and reckless courage, his gift for passionate commitment. He was the younger brother Henry would have wished for.

  When Síle and Precious joined Ned, Henry had accepted them too. They had added a new dimension to his life. Ned regaled Precious with imaginative tales of myth and magic, yet to Henry’s surprise she preferred to sit at his feet listening while he read the daily newspapers aloud. In her curiosity about the world and its workings he saw his own youthful self reflected.

  Now Precious was on the other side of the country. They were all on the other side of the country.

  Sometimes Henry felt as if he were trapped in a glass bottle. He could see people and they could see him. He spoke and made gestures and they responded, but there was no touching. We’re born alone and we die alone, I accept that. But why, God, do we have to be alone in the middle?

  There was an option, of course.

  A wife of his own. The chance to repeat his father’s mistake.

  After work Henry occasionally visited a ramshackle farmhouse half-hidden in a stand of trees off the Kilrush road, a house whose female occupants earned their living by comforting lonely men. As he rode his bicycle back to town, he saw oil lamps glowing in cottage windows. Little boys and girls running home up rutted laneways. A young wife waving a greeting to her husband from an open door.

  Loneliness was a cold blue twilight.

  “FLOSSIE’S colt is still alive, much to our surprise,” Pauline wrote from Limerick. “He is nearly black and will be much larger than his mother. Mam has not bought a new pony, so we cannot use the cart. Alice has a face on her longer than a wet winter. I do not know what ails the girl. We need you at home, Henry. I do not understand why you persist in living elsewhere.”

  Ned’s letter arrived in the same post. “When will you be coming back to Dublin? I miss our conversations about politics and writing and everything else on God’s green earth. Precious chatters incessantly about her Uncle Henry, and of course Síle misses you too.”

  Henry stared at the page. Does she? Does she indeed?

  One explanation sufficed for both letters. Henry replied, “Clare is the place for me right now. Major William Redmond, John Redmond’s brother, was a member of Parliament for East Clare but has been killed in action at Messines. Sinn Féin plans to put forward a candidate for his seat. This particular by-election for a new MP could be crucial to the overall political scene, and I am lucky to be here.”

  Subsequently Henry wrote in the Champion, “By stubbornly and mistakenly referring to the Easter Rising as the Sinn Féin Rebellion, the British military has created a national image for Sinn Féin that the party never had before. A considerable amount of attention is now focused on the Sinn Féin candidacy of one Eamon de Valera, who is currently under life sentence in Lewes prison.

  “The exotically named Mr. de Valera was born in America of a Spanish father and an Irish mother. Raised by relatives in Bruree, County Limerick, he attended Blackrock College in Dublin and became a teacher of mathematics. De Valera commanded the Third Dublin Battalion during the Easter Rising and has the further distinction of having been the last commandant to surrender.”

  Under considerable pressure from America, on the sixteenth of June the British government declared an amnesty for the remaining 120 Irish prisoners and sent them home. Among them were Eamon de Valera; Eoin MacNeill, who had been the first chief-of-staff of the Irish Volunteers; and Thomas Ashe, who had commanded the Fifth Battalion in North County Dublin. During Easter Week Ashe and his second-in-command, Richard Mulcahy, had overpowered the Royal Irish Constabulary at Ashbourne in the most successful military engagement of the Rising.

  When the men reached Dublin, a hero’s welcome was waiting for them. Traffic was halted and all work suspended while they were driven in motorcars through throngs of cheering admirers. It was quite a different reception from the hostility Dubliners had shown the rebels immediately after the Rising. The mood of the people had changed.

  Constance, Countess Markievicz, and Tom Clarke’s widow Kathleen were also released from prison and arrived in Dublin later that same evening. Constance Markievicz in particular bore the marks of imprisonment. In her youth she had been considered a great beauty, with a tiny waist and a glowing complexion. Now she was as lean as a raw-boned boy. Her chiseled features were haggard, with great hollows beneath the high cheekbones. The clothes she wore could have come from a charity shop, and her gray-streaked hair was twisted into a careless knot. But she was indifferent to her appearance. A daughter of the Ascendancy, the so-called Rebel Countess had turned her back on a life of luxury to devote herself to the poor and downtrodden in Ireland. Not for one moment of her life would she regret it.

  The women took the Dublin & South Eastern Railway from the port at Kingstown to the Westland Row train station, and from there were escorted through the city in an emotional torchlight procession. But there were no incidents. As their commander-in-chief, the late Pádraic Pearse had demanded that Republicans behave honorably. A year later, they continued to obey.

  That night the hills of Ireland blazed with bonfires of celebration.

  Chapter Eight

  THE East Clare by-election campaign drew crowds of nationalists who were anxious to see the last commander to surrender during Easter Week, and equally passionate loyalists who still felt the tug of old ties with England. Most people expected some degree of violence. Irish politics was a blood sport. Arthur Griffith, founder of Sinn Féin, and Michael Collins, Joseph Plunkett’s aide-de-camp during the Rising, had been released from prison in December. Together with Thomas Ashe, they were soon campaigning vigorously on behalf of Eamon de Valera. Relatives of men who had served in the British army took offense; in a few places shots were fired. De Valera’s life was threatened if he showed his face in Clare.

  Reactivated Irish Republican Army units were employed for protection at Sinn Féin rallies. Additional members of the Royal Irish Constabulary—known as the RIC—were brought in by Sinn Féins opponents to keep the peace.

  Against de Valera the Parliamentary Party pitted a man called Patrick Lynch, who was well known in close-knit, provincial Clare. The party assumed a local man could defeat any outsider. Lynch, however, was a former Crown prosecutor. As so often before, John Redmond’s party misunderstood the feelings of the people.

  De Valera traveled to Clare by way of Limerick, where he stopped off to meet with Bishop O’Dwyer. Henry Mooney was sent to Limerick to cover the first days of the campaign. He sketched a word picture of the Sinn Féin candidate for his readers: “At first glance, Mr. de Valera presents an austere, even awkward, appearance. He is exceptionally tall and angular, with a long nose and sloping shoulders. Gaunt and pallid, with his hair still cropped from prison, he looks like a man who has seen the farthermost reaches of hell. His physical presence is compelling, however. In public he wears the uniform of the outlawed IRA, and the aura of the Easter Rising thus invoked lends him an almost mythical quality.

  “Mr. de Valera has a country man’s slow voice that forces people to listen. Although he is no orator, his speech is characterized by a natural dignity, a gravitas, which makes it is easy to understand why he became the unquestioned leader of the Irish prisoners in Lewes.”

  Sinn Féin established its Clare campaign headquarters at the Old Ground Hotel. Henry wrote to Ned, “It’s like having all my Christmases come at once. I need only go down one flight of stairs and through two doors and I’m at the heart of the action.”

  Soon he was a familiar sight at party gatherings; an amiable man in a gray suit and waistcoat and a bowler hat, chatting with everyone, interested in everything.

  He informed readers of the Champion, “Highly respected figures such as Countess Markievicz are making speeches on de Valera�
��s behalf. The candidate also keeps Eoin MacNeill beside him on the platform to heal the split in the organization between those who espouse the use of aggressive force to win independence and those like MacNeill, who think force should be limited to defense.”

  In his speeches, de Valera quoted from the Proclamation of the Republic. He reminded his listeners that the document had been ratified by the life’s blood of its signatories. “My allegiance was given to the government of the new Republic in 1916, and my allegiance will remain with the spirit of that government,” he repeatedly stated.

  He was also a man of strong faith. Henry observed, “No matter how many engagements the Sinn Féin candidate has, he never misses Mass.”

  The campaign heated up. The voice of the sea wind came closer; the roar of the crowd.

  Stones were thrown at both candidates. Broken glass was strewn along roads to damage the motorcars in which they were traveling. Fist fights broke out across the county.

  On the twenty-fifth of June a group of Sinn Féin supporters gathered outside the Old Ground Hotel and sang rebel songs.1 Henry leaned out his window to sing along. Seeing Sarsfield Maguire in the street below, he beckoned to him to come up and watch in comfort with a glass of whiskey in his hand.

  At first the rally was a jolly, good-natured gathering. Townspeople joined in the fun. Small children played dodge-’em around the legs of the adults. When constables insisted on cordoning off the area, the Sinn Féiners laughed. But when one of de Valera’s men began to make a speech, a swarm of women carrying British flags was allowed through the RIC cordon.

  Maguire pointed toward them. “Did you see that, Henry? The police deliberately let those women in to make trouble.” He was proved right immediately. They began waving the Union Jack and heckling the speaker. “Yez are all traitors, ye Fenian bastards!”

  The mood in the streets of Ennis turned ugly. In Jail Street some young men broke through the cordon and marched toward O’Connell Square, shouting “Up Dev! Up the Republic!” The police attacked them with batons. A local girl’s arm was broken, and a man was taken to the infirmary with a severe blow on the head.

  LAMENTABLE AND UNNECESSARY VIOLENCE was the headline on Henry’s report the next day.

  As de Valera campaigned around the county, he continually stressed the importance of democracy. In Killaloe he said, “Let Ulster Unionists recognize the Sinn Féin position, which has behind it justice and right. It is supported by nine-tenths of the Irish people. Ulster is entitled to justice and she will have it, but she should not be petted and the interests of the majority sacrificed to her. Give Unionists a just and full share of representation, but no more than their share.”2

  Morning rallies, afternoon picnics, torchlight processions. Men shouting “Up Dev!” Women applauding; young lads throwing their caps in the air.

  Someone gave the candidate a new nickname: “Jaysus, would you look at the Long Fellow—puts me in mind of Brian Bóru, towering head and shoulders over everybody!”

  “The Long Fellow casts a long shadow,” Henry told his readers.

  The tumultuous campaign reached a climax in Ennis at the end of June. Even before dawn, great numbers were making their way to the town. A contingent from Newmarket-on-Fergus came marching in behind a brass and reed band, only to find the narrow streets already choked with pony traps and wagonettes and donkey carts, bicycles and saddle horses and one or two rare motorcars.

  Late in the afternoon, a thousand supporters formed ranks outside the Old Ground to escort the Sinn Féin speakers to O’Connell Square. There they took turns addressing the crowd from a horse-drawn shooting brake. Henry was at the forefront of an audience that overflowed into every street and laneway, surging back and forth like the sea.

  When it was de Valera’s turn to speak, they fell silent. De Valera asked the voters of Clare to choose a man who had fought for Ireland’s independence and whose goal was representation for Ireland at the peace conference when the war was over. There Ireland would present her case to be recognized as an independent republic. He also promised that if elected, he would not take his seat in any British parliament.

  Henry reported every word.

  On July sixth the Parliamentary Party’s candidate publicly burned a copy of the Clare Champion in O’Connell Square.3

  July tenth was polling day.4 De Valera drew 5,010 votes to Lynch’s 2,035. People who had never voted in their lives came down from lonely cabins in the hills to cast their votes for one of the heroes of the Easter Rising.

  The next day Eamon de Valera was on his way back to Dublin to attend a funeral. Muriel MacDonagh, widow of Thomas MacDonagh, one of the executed leaders of the Easter Rising, had drowned in a bathing accident at the seaside village of Skerries.

  But the Sinn Féin Party was on the move. Victory bonfires blazed in Clare. Nationalists throughout Ireland were flying the forbidden tricolor. Arrests were numerous, and in County Kerry one man was shot dead by the police.

  Chapter Nine

  AFTER the tension of the campaign, Henry’s column provided some light relief. “For those loyalists among you who complain that we do not give the monarchy enough coverage, I am happy to announce that as of yesterday, July 17, 1917, the British royal family has changed its dynastic name. The news was confirmed by telegraph this morning. King George V. formerly Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, has renounced his German name and German titles for himself and his descendants. Hereafter he and his progeny are to be known as the House of Windsor, after Windsor Castle.

  “Obviously the change was undertaken to obliterate the king’s German origins in the light of public opinion resulting from the Great War. A sensible move it was too, worthy of His Majesty’s advisors. We loyally deny that they were influenced by Mr. H. G. Wells, who wrote a letter to the London Times describing the royal house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha as ‘an alien and uninspiring court.’ We also thoroughly condemn the member of Parliament who recently referred to the king as ‘a German pork butcher.’ ”

  Henry’s readers loved it.

  Frank sent Ned copies of the Champion containing the election coverage. Síle read them over his shoulder. He liked her to do that, putting her arms around him from behind and pressing her breasts against his shoulders as he sat in his chair. The white lilac scent she wore filled his nostrils. Sometimes he just closed his eyes and sat there. At peace. Being with Síle.

  “What sort of man is de Valera, Ned?”

  “I know him to speak to, but that’s about all; I wasn’t in his battalion. The men who know him well seem to have the highest regard for him, though.”

  Síle straightened up. “Are those the same men you meet after dark at Vaughan’s Hotel?”

  “Don’t ask me about them. That way, if you’re ever questioned by the authorities you won’t have to lie for me. I know how you hate lying.”

  “And I know it’s Michael Collins you’re meeting, so don’t deny it,” Síle asserted. “You’re as tight as a duck’s arse with your secrets and I won’t have it. I’ve been part of this from the beginning, remember? I was gathering information for Tom Clarke and the IRB before you ever enlisted in the Volunteers.”

  “Never say that where anyone might hear you.”

  “But it’s the truth.”

  “That truth could get you arrested, and what would I do then?” Ned reached out and pulled her onto his lap, squeezing so tight she could hardly breathe. “Ah, Síle, mo mhuirnin dilís.”*

  “Tell me what’s going on, please.”

  He did not answer, merely pressed his lips against her hair.

  She was furious with him for trying to protect her. She did not want or need protection; she felt very well able to look after herself. But she desperately wanted to share. There was no arguing with Ned, however. His stubbornness was legendary.

  A month after de Valera’s victory in Clare, the editor of the Kilkenny People nominated a Sinn Féin candidate to run in an election in Kilkenny.1 The newspaper was immediately suppressed by order of the gov
ernment, but the candidate, William T. Cosgrave—a veteran of the Easter Rising whose death sentence had been commuted—won by a huge margin.

  Raids on the homes of Republican sympathizers increased, as did arrests, most of them on spurious charges. Yet throughout the country men and women were flocking to join Sinn Féin clubs.

  Newspapers in England reported with alarm that the party was sweeping Ireland like a tidal wave. Redmond’s Irish Parliamentarians were in danger of being blotted out. One British paper, the Morning Post, suggested that the best response would be to enforce Irish conscription immediately.

  “It is not only Irishmen who are against conscription,” Henry informed his readers. “Since 1914 a number of English and Scottish conscientious objectors have fled to these shores. When caught, these ‘conchies’ are thown into Mountjoy Prison for refusing to kill their fellow man. Whose is the crime?”

  NED wrote to Henry: “Did you know Thomas Ashe is in Mountjoy? In August he was rearrested for making speeches ‘calculated to cause disaffection,’ as the government put it. Republicans in Mountjoy are treated worse than common criminals, Henry. Their beds and shoes have been taken away, and we suspect they are being beaten. They have gone on hunger strike as the only form of protest left to them.”

  Soon meetings on behalf of the Mountjoy prisoners were being held throughout the country. Sinn Féin clubs besieged the authorities with letters protesting the treatment of men whose only crime was wanting a free Ireland.

  No amount of protest saved Thomas Ashe. On the twenty-fifth of September he collapsed and died. According to witnesses at the inquest, his face and throat were covered with bruises. No one was willing to speculate on how he came by them. But he had been forced to lie on a cold floor for fifty hours, then force-fed, which in his weakened condition was sufficient to congest his lungs and stop his heart.