The Making of Mollie

by Anna Carey

  Sunday

  This letter is getting longer and longer, but I must tell you about the meeting yesterday. First of all, it was surprisingly easy to get away because Mother suddenly decided that I looked ‘peaky’ and needed some fresh air. I almost pointed out that the reason I looked peaky (I’m not sure I did, anyway – I think I looked pale and interesting) was because I’d been stuck indoors for most of the last few days, but I didn’t want to antagonise her in case she changed her mind. Anyway, I asked if I could go for a walk in the park with Nora and she said I could.

  ‘Maybe you can take Julia too,’ she added.

  My heart sank.

  ‘Oh Mother, please don’t make us,’ I said. ‘She’ll just keep telling me I need to join that sodality in school and that I don’t concentrate enough on my prayers at Mass.’

  From the expression on Mother’s face I wondered, not for the first time, whether she wanted me to take Julia out for a walk so that Mother herself didn’t have to put up with her going on about how the rest of us weren’t praying enough (when really we all say lots of prayers every single day. Even Harry says his prayers every night, not that it seems to do him much good). She took a deep breath.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Phyllis was talking about going for a walk in the park too. Maybe you can go with her.’

  ‘Thanks, Mother,’ I said, and ran out before she could change her mind. I wanted to tell Nora straight away. I do wish we could have a telephone. Imagine if I could just ring up and talk to Nora whenever I wanted. I suppose I could send her a telegram, but even if I could afford it (and I can’t), her house is on the way to the post office so it would defeat the purpose to walk past it in order to send her a message. Grace says her family have a telephone at home but I don’t believe her.

  For once, Phyllis and Kathleen didn’t mind me and Nora tagging along, if only because they still felt guilty about the fact that we had had to sit in a hall the other week while they were enjoying the meeting.

  ‘Phyll told me I had your ticket,’ said Kathleen. ‘Sorry about that. I must say I was impressed you wanted to come at all.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ I said, and tried very hard to stop myself staring at her new hat, which had what looked like an enormous cotton cabbage leaf and a felt carrot attached to the band. I obviously wasn’t trying hard enough because Kathleen said, ‘Do you like my new hat? It’s a commemoration of the time we were attacked by those dreadful Ancient Order chaps.’

  ‘It’s very impressive,’ I said, and for once I wasn’t lying. I mean, it’s not every day you see a girl with a felt carrot on her hat. That said, Nora and I did make sure we kept a bit of a distance between us when we got off the tram at the park, especially when small boys started shouting things like, ‘Miss, you’ve left your dinner on your head!’

  ‘Ignore them, Kathleen,’ said Phyllis. ‘They’re just jealous.’ Which was a blatant lie, but Kathleen didn’t seem to mind. I suppose she’s used to people saying rude things about her hats. It actually makes me admire her for continuing to wear them in the face of ridicule. I’d have probably started wearing ordinary hats by now.

  It was a very hot afternoon and by the time we reached the park I was utterly parched. Phyllis and Kathleen had promised to take us for tea and buns afterwards ‘to reward you for being so stoical about missing the Antient meeting’ but the tearooms seemed a very long way away as we made our way to the place where the ladies would be speaking. When we were almost at the spot, we saw a couple of policemen.

  ‘Maybe they think there’s going to be more stone throwing,’ said Nora.

  ‘Well it wouldn’t do much good throwing stones here,’ said Kathleen. ‘There aren’t any windows to smash in this part of the park.’

  We had almost reached the lorry from which the women would be making their speeches. A very large crowd had gathered, some of whom looked a bit rowdy. Two more policemen stood nearby, observing the scene. We could see Mr. Sheehy-Skeffington and some of the I.W.F.L. ladies looking slightly uncomfortable at the front of the crowd. Phyllis turned to me and Nora.

  ‘I think you girls should stand back,’ she said. ‘This might get a bit … raucous. I have a horrible feeling the Hibernians are here.’

  ‘We’re not afraid of that,’ said Nora indignantly.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid of having to explain to my mother – and Mrs. Cantwell – why the pair of you are covered in cabbage leaves or worse, bruises,’ said Phyllis. ‘So go on.’

  And she looked so stern that we did what she said, though we grumbled as we moved towards the back of the crowd. The ground was a little higher there so we had a decent view down towards the lorry. We did get a few odd looks from the men.

  ‘Here to see the fun, girls?’ said one man with a very red face. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll protect you if they start throwing any more of those stones.’

  But we didn’t have to answer him because there was a sort of commotion at the front of the crowd.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked Nora. This was one of those times when her being taller than me made a difference.

  ‘They’re after Mr. Sheehy-Skeffington,’ she said. ‘I think Phyllis was right, it is those Ancient Order people.’

  Most of the crowd were quiet and well behaved, but quite a few people at the front were shouting now, and it seemed like Mr. Sheehy-Skeffington was their target.

  ‘Cut his whiskers off,’ shouted one lout. ‘He’s no man!’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said. I felt very sorry for Mr. Sheehy-Skeffington. The crowd were rude fools. Imagine telling someone he wasn’t a man just because he supported women’s rights!

  ‘Put some breeches on him!’ shouted another man in the crowd.

  ‘No!’ bellowed another. ‘We should take off his breeches and give him a skirt!’

  There was more jostling and pushing at the front of the crowd. The men around us started to move forward to try and see what was happening. One of them looked at us.

  ‘You kiddies should get out of here,’ he said. But we ignored him.

  ‘Where are those policemen?’ I said to Nora. ‘They were here a few minutes ago.’

  Nora looked back. ‘They’re over there,’ she said. ‘But they’re not doing anything.’

  Nora and I made our way further up the slope where we could both get a better view of the terrible scene. It looked like the rowdy troublemakers were trying to stop the ladies getting to the lorry, and Mr. Sheehy-Skeffington and the ladies were trying to push them back, with little success. Finally, Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington made her way through and mounted the make-shift stage. She looked scornfully at the crowd.

  ‘What kind of law have we,’ she cried, ‘that allows women to be mobbed while the police are looking on?’

  This seemed to strike some sort of chord with the policemen, as well it might. A few minutes later, four of them, three constables and an inspector, were at the front of the crowd, pushing back the louts who had been attacking the suffragettes.

  ‘Be quiet, boys,’ said the Inspector.

  But the rowdies just laughed and made rude remarks. They stopped pushing and shoving, though. For a while, at least.

  That was when the orange sellers arrived. There are always fruit sellers in the park at the weekends, but these ones had discovered a new way of selling their wares.

  ‘Suffra-gate oranges!’ cried one woman. ‘Two suffra-gate oranges a penny!’

  ‘They’re not saying the right word,’ said Nora. ‘People might get confused.’

  So we went over to one of the orange sellers.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Nora, ‘but you’re calling the name wrong.’

  The orange-selling woman stared at us.

  ‘What in the name of goodness is it then?’ she asked.

  ‘Suffragette,’ I said. ‘Can we have two oranges, please?’

  I handed over a penny. The woman gave us the oranges, and we thanked her and went back to our vantage point. We hadn’t even reached it when she started c
alling out, ‘Two more suffra-gate oranges a penny!’

  ‘Well!’ I said. ‘She’s not even trying. And we bought oranges and everything.’

  They were nice fresh oranges, though. We started to peel them as Mrs. Cousins, another of the window smashers, got up on the lorry and started addressing the crowd. She read a long statement about how women had a definite right to the vote, but the goons at the front kept shouting.

  ‘Go home and mind the baby!’ shouted a man standing near us. Some people – or rather men – laughed and cheered, but quite a lot of others told him to shush. Nora and I glared at him (and you know how good Nora is at glaring), but he just laughed at us.

  ‘This is no place for little girls like you,’ he said, but we ignored him. We have become very good at ignoring rude and ignorant men.

  Then Mrs. Cousins introduced Mrs. Palmer, who got up on the lorry. The rowdies jeered even louder and some even booed when they realised this was another one of the women that had been arrested on Thursday.

  ‘Have you any bricks with you?’ shouted one ‘wit’.

  ‘No, I used them all up,’ cried Mrs. Palmer, and the crowd laughed again, though it was a different sort of laughter this time. They were laughing with Mrs. Palmer, not at her.

  Mrs. Palmer went on to tell us that we were fortunate enough to be addressed by two criminals that day – herself and Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington. Some men in front of us started talking very loudly then so we couldn’t hear exactly what she said next, but we heard the words Mountjoy Jail. Which is where the brave window-smashers will doubtless soon be languishing.

  ‘The proper place to have you for life!’ shouted another man at the front of the crowd, and some of his pals cheered, but Mrs. Palmer was undaunted by their rudeness. It was inspiring, but it was also horrible. She had been so brave, and these awful men were just laughing at her and spoiling the meeting for all the well-behaved people who wanted to listen. Luckily, most of the crowd wanted to listen, and she ignored the louts and kept talking, all about why they had broken the windows (‘to assert our rights to vote and to bring our claims prominently under the notice of Government’) and how she believes that the Irish people will not want Home Rule if it excludes women.

  This just made the rowdies at the front laugh even more. Their laughter made me feel a bit sick. I had thought what we did on Thursday was very brave, but I realised those awful men would just laugh at us for doing it if they knew.

  ‘You won’t get a vote for smashing glass!’ shouted one man.

  It was very discouraging. At least, I would have thought so, but Mrs. Palmer didn’t seem to be bothered by their rudeness. She just introduced Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington, who climbed back on the lorry.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she cried. ‘And police notetakers,’ she added, glancing at the policemen that were still standing near the front. The whole crowd laughed, even some of the rowdies.

  ‘Well,’ Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington went on, ‘as far as quantity goes, this is the biggest meeting we’ve ever held in the park.’

  The rowdies booed and some people cheered. In fact, from now on you can just take it for granted that this happened almost every time the women spoke.

  ‘You all know the way we did it,’ said Mrs. S.-S. (I can’t keep writing out her name, it’s just too long). ‘And now people want to know why we did it.’

  ‘Why did you do it in the dark hours of the morning?’ shouted one man.

  ‘Yeah,’ yelled another. ‘You should have been out in broad daylight.’

  ‘I don’t consider half past five on a June morning dark,’ said Mrs. S.-S.

  ‘You thought there’d be no policemen about,’ yelled another man.

  ‘This is a very serious matter,’ said Mrs. S.-S., trying to ignore them. ‘Before this day week, a good many of the women who are here now will be in prison.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ shouted the rowdies.

  I hated every one of them.

  Mrs. S.-S. told them that if she didn’t believe that militancy was the only way to change things ‘when all constitutional means have failed’, she wouldn’t have bothered. But, as she pointed out, ‘Home Rule – which will be granted one of these days – was the result of militancy. If my father hadn’t gone to jail in his time for the cause of Home Rule, I might not be imbued with a militant spirit. I’m very glad it is hereditary in the female line as well as the male. And I’m ready to go jail for my cause – namely, Parliamentary votes for women.’

  Nora and I cheered and clapped as loudly as we could, though our cheers were almost drowned out by the Ancient Order of Hibernians and their chums, yelling things like, ‘All right then, twelve months hard labour’ and ‘Go home and mind the baby!’

  Mrs. S.-S. went on to talk about Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet and other Irish heroes, and said ‘I wonder do the Irish Party realise that if they had the women of Ireland with them, they could make a very good thing of Home Rule. But if they don’t have the women of Ireland with them, the Home Rule bill might go through, but it will be a terrible fiasco.’

  After that, the rowdies started booing so loudly we couldn’t hear anything Mrs. S.-S. was saying for a while.

  But after a while it subsided long enough for us to hear her say, ‘A cause that can produce women who are ready to face imprisonment for the sake of their rights is not likely to die. You must remember that militants do not hurt people. Window-breaking is a historic method of protest against the Government. And we did not break shop windows; we only broke the Government windows.’ She was trying to explain that they made sure to act at a time when there were no clerks inside who might be injured when an absolutely extraordinary noise was heard coming from the front of the crowd, drowning out all of her words. It was a sort of squeaking instrument, playing a very unpleasant tune.

  ‘What on earth is that?’ said Nora.

  It was difficult to make it out, even from the raised ground. We jumped up and down until finally a man took pity on us and said, ‘It’s a melodeon.’

  I don’t know whether melodeons always sound like that but this one was hideous. And it went on for ages and ages. We were wondering if the women would have to give up the meeting altogether because no one could hear a word Mrs. S.-S. was saying, but eventually the melodeon-player gave up and she was able to continue her speech. She talked about how Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister, was coming to Dublin soon and how the suffragettes were determined to let him know that they thought.

  ‘He wouldn’t dare address a meeting of the Irish people at the Phoenix Park!’ she cried. Then she talked about how soon she would be going to jail, ‘a place where I won’t be able to tell if the sky is blue or grey’, but that the cause of the suffragettes ‘will prosper as a result of our militancy!’

  Some people laughed, but quite a few cheered too. Then there were questions from the crowd. Some of the questions were actually quite polite. One man asked whether it wasn’t irresponsible to smash things, and Mrs. S.-S. pointed out that if the law held women to be the same as lunatics, it wasn’t surprising if they adopted irresponsible methods. And, she said, more and more women were joining the fight.

  ‘A few years ago we had only three hundred suffragettes in Dublin,’ she cried. ‘And now we have a thousand!’

  And she sounded so brave and optimistic that even if I hadn’t already been devoted to the cause, I really do think it would have won me over. Quite a lot of the men clapped. And then some more started asking questions (most of which we couldn’t hear because we were too far back), and the ladies answered them, and that was the end of the meeting.

  We made our way through the crowd to Phyllis and Kathleen, who were part of a number of women sort of guarding the speakers as they made their way towards the park gates, with the policemen taking the lead. Phyllis spotted us as we approached.

  ‘Go and wait for us in the tearooms,’ she cried. I suppose she was afraid we might be caught up in more roughness – which looked likely as some of the rowdies jostled a
round them. She kept going towards the gates and I was wondering whether we should join them anyway – surely the men would be less likely to attack the speakers if there were young girls there too – when a familiar voice said, ‘I thought that was you. Were you there for the speeches?’

  I turned around and there was Frank. He was even taller than I remembered him being. His fair hair was, as usual, falling over one eye and he looked as though he’d been running around (which it turned out he had).

  ‘Haven’t I met you before?’ he said to Nora. He held out his hand. ‘I’m Frank Nugent, Harry’s friend. You’re Nora, aren’t you?’

  ‘How do you do?’ said Nora, very politely – for her.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said. I felt quite flustered, especially as this was the first time Frank and Nora had met since she discovered I had told him about our suffrage activities.

  ‘I was playing football on the playing fields,’ said Frank. ‘I came over to listen to the speeches on my way out. I must say, the suffragettes were fine, weren’t they?’

  ‘What we could hear of them,’ said Nora.

  ‘It wasn’t the most receptive crowd,’ said Frank dryly. He looked over at the men that were still jeering the suffragettes and their guards. Then he took a deep breath and shouted, ‘Votes for women!’

  Some of the men looked over him and made rude gestures.

  ‘Charming,’ he said. ‘Are you going home now?’

  ‘We’re going to the tearooms,’ I said. ‘We’re meeting my sister there.’ I pointed towards the crowd escorting the speakers. ‘She’s over there.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Frank. ‘May I walk you there?’

  ‘You should come in and have tea with us,’ said Nora, extremely boldly.

  Frank himself looked a bit taken aback, though not in a bad way.

  ‘I wish I could,’ he said, ‘but I told my parents I’d be home at the usual post-footer time. Another day, perhaps?’