A Passionate Girl

by Thomas Fleming

  Soon after the continent became a brown blur on the horizon, we were hailed by a steam tug. “Manhattan ahoy,” shouted a man in the bow, wearing a gaudy checked suit. “Are you the ship with the Fenians aboard?”

  “What business is it of yours?” boomed Captain O’Hickey through his trumpet.

  “I’m Pickens of the Herald,” was the answer. “Let me come aboard. I’m here to get their story.”

  Captain O’Hickey came about as promptly as if Pickens had fired a shot across our bow. A rope ladder was flung down. Pickens leaped from the tug with the agility of a monkey and scrambled to the deck. He had a small, narrow face that seemed as innocent as a child’s until you noticed his eyes. They flickered like the eyes of a bird, up, down, around, missing nothing.

  “George Pickens is the name, folks,” he said “I’m here by order of my editor, James Gordon Bennett. I’ve been cruising back and forth every day for a week to get your story. Where’s the Fenian girl? This must be her, unless they’re making sailors a lot different from the standard model these days.”

  He gazed at me for a moment, then made a smacking sound with his lips, as if he were contemplating a good dinner. “I don’t know about your friends, but we’re going to make you famous.”

  We were totally amazed. “How do you know anything about us?” Michael asked.

  “The British papers wrote you up—or down, to be more exact. They arrived in New York by steamship ten days ago. We want exclusive rights to your story. How much is it worth to you?”

  “Worth?” I said dazedly. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll give you a hundred dollars each now and another hundred tomorrow if you promise to refuse to talk to any other reporter for twenty-four hours.”

  “That’s twenty pounds,” Michael said. It was a fortune in Ireland, more money than most farmers could clear in a year.

  “A hundred dollars U.S. currency, greenbacks of Uncle Sam,” Pickens said. He yanked a wad of money out of his pocket and began to peel off bills.

  “It’s a deal,” Dan McCaffrey said, and held out his hand. Pickens counted three bills, each worth a hundred dollars, into it. He turned to O’Hickey and handed him an identical bill. “I’d appreciate it, Captain, if you ignored any other ship that hailed you. These people are the talk of New York. A lot of other reporters will be looking for them.”

  We went into the main cabin, and Pickens asked us dozens of questions about our escape from Ireland. We told him the truth, and he was shocked by some of it. “The honest farmer betrayed you? I thought Ireland was united to a man behind the Fenians,” he said.

  He also seemed disappointed that neither Michael nor I had shot anyone. “You’re sure you didn’t use Dan’s gun, especially in the fight on the cliff?” Pickens asked.

  “Why should we do something so foolish? I’ve never fired a gun in my life,” I said. “Our lives depended on Dan making every bullet count.”

  “Ireland needs a Joan of Arc,” he said. “You could be it.”

  I was too astonished to answer him. He asked Dan what he thought of the Fenians’ chances of success in Ireland. Dan told him the dolorous truth. Again Pickens was annoyed. “Only ten thousand Fenians in Ireland? Over here they’re talking about two hundred thousand.”

  Pickens took me to the bow and sketched me on a pad he carried in his coat, reminded us of his promise to pay another three hundred dollars if we kept silent, and hailed his steam tug, which had been plowing alongside us while we talked. The moment he stepped aboard, the tug’s engines began pounding mightily; smoke gushed from its funnel, and it was soon far ahead of us on the way to New York harbor. We watched him go, not quite able to believe our good fortune, as it seemed to us then.

  “Three hundred dollars,” Dan said, looking at the bills in his hand. “That’s a good day’s pay.”

  “Don’t forget two hundred belongs to us,” Michael said.

  With icy contempt, Dan handed him one of the bills. He started to give me the other one, but I told him to keep it. Half jokingly, I remarked that they might not be real. I found it hard to believe Pickens’s story that we were the talk of New York.

  Captain O’Hickey was inclined to believe him. He said that the Herald was the biggest newspaper in the country. Its support could mean great things for the Fenians. The government of the United States trembled when the Herald attacked it. Michael and I found these ideas almost incomprehensible. Newspapers in Ireland attacked the government only at the risk of their existence. The idea of a newspaper having power was strange to us.

  By midday we were passing the Narrows, the headland that guards New York’s great bay. We paused there to let two quarantine officers board us. They were both Irish and asked in thick country brogues to see “the Fenian girl.” I was duly exhibited to them, to my growing bewilderment. The formalities of quarantine and inspection were brief. The Manhattan was a small ship, and we were the only passengers. Within the hour we got under way again for the inner harbor. Soon the city of New York was open to our view.

  It looked immense, squatting there on its island with the broad shining river streaming past. A thin cloud of light gray smoke hung above it, from burning coal that drove machinery in the factories. In winter, when furnaces consumed coal by the ton to keep the citizens’ houses warm, the cloud was often much thicker, Captain O’Hickey said.

  Suddenly, from a round fort on an island at the foot of the city, a cannon boomed. For the first time we noticed that there were a dozen boats cruising back and forth near the fort. Now they wheeled and headed for us. Most of them were sloops under sail. One or two had steam engines. As they drew closer, we saw that they were flying green flags, decorated with gold harps and sunbursts. Their decks were lined with men, many of whom fired pistols and rifles in the air. Pickens was right. We were being greeted like conquering heroes.

  Truth vs. Publicity

  Several boats ran alongside the Manhattan, and voices shouted: “I’m Wiley of the Tribune. I’m Case of the Sun. I’m Jones of the World.” But Captain O’Hickey, true to the promise that he had made to reporter Pickens, ignored the other newshounds and made steadily for his regular berth at Halsey’s Wharf in the East River. There, as the ship was nudged against the pilings by a waiting tug, we encountered another amazing scene. The wharf and the street beyond it were crowded with cheering people waving green flags. A brass band was booming out “The Wearing of the Green.” I found myself wishing mightily that I had something to wear besides my peasant rags.

  On hand to greet us were no less than the mayor of New York, the Honorable C. Godfrey Gunther, a barrel-shaped German, and sundry other politicians. With them were numerous Fenians, led by John O’Mahoney, a burly, deep-browed man with a full graying beard and long hair of the same color. The mayor made a speech, in which he claimed that all New York was waiting to welcome us. We were the vanguard of the Irish army of liberation that would soon rise to plant the green flag over an Ireland as free and prosperous as the United States of America. Although he was not of Irish blood, the mayor said, he was ready to enlist in that army and carry a musket in the ranks.

  I thought the mayor was vastly misinformed to call three fugitives an army of liberation. I was even more amazed to hear O’Mahoney say the same thing in a briefer speech. He added that the Irish were deeply gratified by the encouragement they were receiving from their “American brethren” to fight England, the enemy of both nations. We were then shepherded down the wharf to a carriage waiting in the street. All around us the immense crowd cheered, and the band blared out “The Wearing of the Green.”

  As we walked, a tall, very well-dressed man wearing a high black hat fell in step with me. “Your sister Annie sends her love and hopes to see you soon,” he said.

  “Where is she?” I said, much excited.

  “She lives at the Metropolitan Hotel. You may go see her there anytime.”

  “What is your name?” I asked.

  “Connolly,” he said. “Dick Connolly. I
’m Annie’s closest—friend.”

  He smiled in a knowing way, as if he expected me to understand something in the way he paused before saying “friend.” I understood nothing and simply thanked him. “I’ll come see her as soon as I can,” I said.

  “By all means do—soon. You’re famous, you know. We want to help you make the most of it.”

  At the carriage, reporters rushed upon us from all sides, shouting questions. O’Mahoney and the other Fenians shoved them away and said they would have to wait until we made our official report to the Fenian government. In the carriage, the first thing we heard from the Fenians was a denunciation of Mayor Gunther as a vote grabber. He was thinking about running for reelection, even though the Democrats no longer had any use for him, and he had come down to welcome us to improve his chances with Irish voters.

  “What did that fellow Connolly want with you, my girl?” John O’Mahoney said. He had a rough, blunt way of speaking that reminded me of my father.

  “He was telling me where I could find my sister. She lives in New York.”

  “Where?”

  “At the Metropolitan Hotel.”

  “Not the best address,” said the man sitting next to O’Mahoney. He introduced himself as Patrick J. Meehan, owner of the Irish-American, the city’s leading Irish newspaper. He was short and dapper, with brown hair slicked tightly on his wide head. Beside him sat a bigger man with a thick black handlebar mustache. He was introduced as Colonel William Roberts.

  “Why isn’t it a good address?” I said.

  “Never mind, my dear,” O’Mahoney said. “As a newspaperman, Mr. Meehan is naturally malicious. I prefer to think the best of every man and woman until I find out the contrary. For now let us celebrate your safe arrival.”

  “The devil with celebrations,” replied Meehan. “I want an interview for my paper. I want it now.”

  “I don’t see how we can do that,” Michael said. “We promised the reporter from the Herald, Mr. Pickens, that we’d give no interviews to anyone for twenty-four hours.”

  “Goddamn it,” snarled Meehan, “where did you see him?”

  We told him and got even worse cursing for a reply. “I suppose he paid you for it?”

  We admitted as much, and Meehan instantly ordered us to hand over the money to the Fenian treasury. O’Mahoney murmured that this was not necessary, but he accepted our cash. Colonel Roberts took from his pocket a wad of bills even larger than the one flashed by Pickens, and handed us a hundred dollars each to spend as we pleased. O’Mahoney said that, too, was unnecessary; we were agents of the Fenian government and would have all the money we needed. Colonel Roberts ignored O’Mahoney and said the money was a gift from him, to express his appreciation of our services. O’Mahoney muttered disagreeably into his beard but made no further objection.

  Meehan insisted on interviewing us for his paper. Dan and Michael stuck to our bargain with Pickens and refused to tell him a thing. I let the men do the arguing while I studied the sights of New York. We were moving into the crowded part of the city. All around us swarmed a mass of hurrying people, dressed in the wildest variety of costumes, from well-groomed gentlemen in frock coats and high hats to ragged workmen. On almost every street corner, little girls stood barefoot, crying out the hope that someone would buy some hot corn from them. Around them four or five boys waved newspapers and screeched something about the trial of “the Southern conspirators.”

  I looked worriedly at Dan and asked if the government was trying the rebel Southerners for treason. Everyone laughed. “No,” O’Mahoney said. “Just the fools who assassinated Lincoln.”

  Soon the street was perfectly jammed with carriages and wagons. Through our open window came a dreadful smell, a mixture of manure and a hundred other species of decay. The day was warm, and the heat seemed to redouble the odor. Though I had grown up on a farm and knew the smells of the barnyard intimately, I had never inhaled anything like this stench. I said as much to Colonel Roberts, who laughed and said I would get used to it. He no longer even noticed it. O’Mahoney said he would never get used to it. He’d grown up breathing Ireland’s sweet air, he said with a sad smile, and the hope of breathing it again was the chief reason he remained a revolutionary.

  After creeping along for a half hour we reached Broadway, where our progress stopped entirely. The street was packed not only with carriages and wagons but with great long omnibuses drawn on metal rails by teams of horses. Nothing moved except the pedestrians on the sidewalks. The air was full of the cracking of whips and neighs of horses and the profane shouts of drivers. Our hosts were unperturbed. They said such a pace was normal for New York at this hour, when many offices and factories quit for the day and ladies who had completed their shopping were going home.

  I was content to enjoy the view. Broadway was the one street in America I had heard about—as had almost everyone around the globe. My first impression was of a totally artificial world of bricks and mortar. There was not a tree or a blade of grass in sight. On either side, huge stone buildings confronted each other. A single person standing in front of one of these monsters would have been dwarfed, but this impression was lost in the mass of the crowd. Up and down both sides of the street they rushed, at a pace that left me bewildered.

  Mr. Roberts pointed out Alexander Stewart’s palatial department store, which we could see a block or two above us, opposite City Hall Park. It was fronted with cream-colored marble. Roberts discoursed on the tremendous display windows, the first of their kind in the world, over twelve feet long and seven feet high. He recited to us other startling facts—the store employed three hundred salesman and clerks, twice as many people as lived in our little village in Ireland. Seven million dollars changed hands within those marble walls each year.

  Eventually we began to creep along once more and finally reached our destination as dusk descended. Sweeney’s Hotel was to be our home. A huge Fenian flag flew from a staff on the roof. The lobby was crowded with cheering, smiling Irish, shouting, “God bless you! Up the Republic! Three cheers for Ireland!” Our host, Mr. Sweeney, a small, excitable man with an odd bend to his nose, led us to the elevator. It was our first experience with one of these magical contraptions, and Michael and I were suitably amazed by its silent rise to our rooms on the fourth floor. The Irish-Americans were delighted by our exclamations. Apparently we greenhorns were performing exactly as expected.

  In our suite, we found a dozen other Fenian leaders waiting, with their wives. I was both pleased and embarrassed to see these ladies, all elegantly dressed in the latest fashion. Mrs. Roberts, a large, big-bosomed woman of about forty, which I guessed to be her husband’s age as well, took charge of me. “If we’re to display this Irish beauty to her best advantage,” she said, “we can’t let her stay another moment in these peasant rags.”

  With a smile she told me that the ladies had brought along a selection of their own wardrobes, which they were determined to share with me until I was able to buy some clothes of my own. Not being sure of my size, they had even brought along a sewing machine, which they had set up in an adjoining room. With that declaration, the women swept me away with them, leaving the men to enjoy the numerous bottles of champagne that they were busy opening.

  These women were as strange and exotic to me as so many Chinese. They were elaborately dressed, with innumerable ruffles and bows on sleeves and skirts, and fingers glittering with rings. Most amazing were their huge skirts, which were stiffened with great iron hoops. These were utterly unknown in the Irish countryside. I also was puzzled by the stiff way all the ladies moved, their upper bodies rigid, like soldiers on parade. I soon discovered the rigidity was caused by corsets laced so tight the wearer was in constant danger of suffocation. On their cheeks were bright patches of rouge against a deathly white background of powder. Most remarkable to me was their hair, piled in intricate coifs and curls that stayed miraculously in place and had a bright pleasing sheen.

  They could not have been nicer to me.
In fact, their sympathy was extravagant. “Oh, my dear,” cried Mrs. Meehan, the pretty red-haired wife of the owner of the Irish-American, “how did you ever survive on that ship for weeks without a woman to talk to?”

  “I don’t know, I think I enjoyed having two dozen men all to myself,” I said.

  “Now, now,” said Mrs. Roberts, “even though we’re among friends, let us not be risqué.”

  With this remark, I caught a glimpse of the delicate line I would have to walk with Fenian women. They were utterly ignorant of the hard, rough world in which their men moved. I turned to outfitting myself. To my delight, Mrs. Meehan’s dresses fit me almost exactly. They only needed a little tucking around the waist, which we were able to do quickly, with a needle and thread. The sewing machine went unused, but they gave me a demonstration of it anyway, as one of the wonders of the age, freeing women in America from endless hours of drudgery.

  While I dressed, they plied me with artless questions about my adventures in Ireland. Was it true, they asked, that I had stabbed a British policeman to death when he was about to molest me? Was that why I’d had to flee with Dan’s help?

  They looked disappointed when I denied it and added that there were no British policemen in Ireland, they were all Irish. But wasn’t there a reign of terror raging in Ireland? That is what they heard. No woman was safe from the lust of the local landlord or his bailiff. Again, I disappointed them by knowing nothing of such things. Our landlord, Lord Gort, was in his seventies and had never shown an interest in Irish women. He spent most of his time in London. “Ireland’s chief woe,” I said, “is the landlords’ lust for money. It’s what drives so many poor to join their fellow exiles in England, America, and Australia.”

  “Exiles?” said Mrs. Roberts. “My dear, we’re not exiles. We’re Americans, as proud of that fact as any descendant of the Pilgrims. Those of us who have made their fortunes, here in America, like my husband, have no interest in returning to Ireland. We merely want to right a great wrong.”