Evening Memories

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 9, 1 March 1923, Page 7

Evening Memories

(By William O'Brien.) CHAPTER IX—(Continued.) Before daybreak one winter morning, I woke to find a man crawling by the side of my bed in the dark. It was the Protestant turnkey specially set over me, who had silently unlocked the door of the cell, and creeping on his hands and knees had got possession of my clothes, and substituted a blue hospital suit before my cry could reach him as he stole away. Tike Hohenlinden ''it was a famous victory," and Captain Fctherstonehaugh, who arrived at daybreak with his burglar turnkey, with the order that 1 must get up and dress, was piteously astonished to find that there was anything left of the battle except the shouting. I declined to leave the bed until my clothing was restored to me, and the Governor departed with a groan to communicate with Dublin Castle for further orders. Again, day followed day, the prisoner nailed to his bed, Dr. Moorhead and redoubled swarms of Cork magistrates flocking to his bedside, the pressmen raising to a fever height the public excitement as to the upshot of the uneven struggle, and the author and ministers of the blood-and-iron programme of the Clouds conversation, standing in a condition of miserable uncertainty, neither boldly taking action nor honestly abandoning it.*

* During the endless weeks while the duel within the prison Avails Mas proceeding, popular anxiety as to the result reached a pitch of positive agony which perhaps can best be understood from the versos published in United Ireland at the time from the pen of Miss Charlotte G. O'Brien, the golden-hearted daughter of William Smith O'Brien, who was the most luckless of insurrectionary leaders and the most chivalrous type of Irish gentleman* of his time, and perhaps of all times:WHAT THE PEOPLE SAY. Ah, poor Willie! ah, poor fellow! as ye sit within your cell, Do you hear the people praying, them you loved so true and well? Do you hear the talk they're talking as they meet upon the road ?

Their minds were made up for them in an unexpected manner. Harrington despatched an old Fenian friend of us both in Tralee, John Kelly, to arrange for the smuggling of a new suit of civilian clothes into the prison, and, if it should be necessary, for my escape. Kelly, one of the most insinuating of diplomatists, succeeded in enlisting the cooperation of two prison officials—Mr. Gcoghegan, the Clerk at the Gate, and a young warder named Fordo. The plan was that Forde should be enabled to penetrate to my room in the hospital buildings during the hours from the evening locking up to the final round of visits at nine o’clock, the staff being dismissed from duty during these hours, and the keys collected in the Clerk’s office at the front gate. The plan went within an ace of a disastrous defeat. While Warder Forde, with the bunch of keys in his possession, was delivering his contraband parcel to me, a knock came at the front gate. Looking out through the judas-hole for inspecting callers, the Clerk was horrified to see a local Orange Visiting Justice named T who was in the habit of calling up in the evenings for a gossip and a glass of grog with the Governor. There was no key with which to open the gate ! Geoghegan’s presence of mind saved us from an immediate discovery of the plot and a certain sentence of penal servitude for himself and Warder Forde. He reported to the Governor, snug at his own fireside: “Mr. T is outside, sir, and wants to see you. But he’s very drunk” (a condition, fortunately, habitual enough

Ah, poor Willie! ah, poor fellow! but he’s in the hands of God!”

“God be with him!” so they’re saying, “for he felt our cruel wrong,

Felt for every pain we're feeling, struck for us —and he was strong.

Not that he was rich, poor fellow! — only rich in truth and love,

Strong in justice, rich in faith, and great in trusting God above

"If ye suffer in the prison—did not Jesus suffer, too! If ye die, sure He that loved you died for love of us and you. Ye may dieand so can we —and so our fathers died before. Bat the great God has ye safely, if ye live or die, asthore!" Ah, poor Willis, ah, poor fellow! ye must bear a bitter lot! Though the tjrants took you from us, never fear that ye're forgot. No, we're talking, always talking, as we meet on every road — Ah, poor Willie! ah, poor fellow! sure he's in the hands of God.'' —Charlotte Grace O'Brien. Nov. 19, 1887. One other sample of how the Irish Nation can feel in such emergencies may be forgiven. It was one of thousands of letters J received after my release, and came from one of the most eminent ecclesiastics' in the South : Youghal, Jan. 22, 'BB. My dear Mr. O'Brien. I could not approach you before now. 1 was occupied watching the surge of universal sentiment. Delivered and deliverer, all hail! Welcome back from your life in the catacombs —but how long shall you be permitted to breathe the air of liberty? Balfour and you cannot co-exist in Ireland —that much is pretty clear. They will kill you if they can with any show of formality. O'Brien is wanted to live. Don't let them kill you. I confess I at one time had given up all hope of ever seeing you again in this world. The good Cod has saved you, and the prayers of the innocent little children. Four thousand Hail Marys a day were offered by my dear little ones of our convent school. "Mother, you did not ask us to-day whether we said the Hail Marys for Mr. O'Brien," said they to the nun. "No, my children, for I knew you said them," was the reply. The clouds are growing darker and thicker—it is the last desperate effort of Ireland's secular foes. Live if you can that you may see the victory. Au rcvoir at Mallow. Of course yon are not to reply. Yours ever devoted, D. Keller, P.P. W. O'Brien, Esq, M.P.

with Mr. T— — to comm the ready belief of the Governor). Life or death hung upon the answer. The good luck was ours. “Oh! for God’s sake tell him I’m out,” cried the Governor in alarm. Mr. T — toddled away, and there was no longer any need for the missing key.

While this little tragi-comedy was enacting at the front gate, Warder Forde, armed with his bunch of keys, was unlocking my room, and to my amaze (for I had been kept entirely uninformed of the design), groping his way to my bedside in the dark with the bundle of clothing which was to decide the fortunes of Mr. Balfour's famous prison policy. The parcel contained an outfit complete from head to foot, a suit of Blarney tweed, with shirt, collar, handkerchief, boots and soft hat, even to a green silk necktie, to which no doubt some tender feminine hand had attached a scrap of paper bearing the one word, "Courage!"* The operation, which Mr. T 's alcoholic reputation alone saved from a catastrophic ending, was completed without interruption. When at unlocking hour the next morning the turnkey, who had had his own moment of humble victory as a clothes-snatcher, beheld his prisoner sitting on the bed, clad in mysterious habiliments to him as unaccountable as a suit of supernatural armor, he literally took to his heels, without a word, as though he had seen an apparition, leaving the door wide open. He returned a few minutes afterwards in the wake of ill-starred Captain Fetherstonehaugh, whose bedraggled condition would have irresistibly forced a smile, only that the pathos of the unhappy man's situation was more moving still. He raised his eyes in a desperate effort to get these two organs to concentrate their united energies in an attempt to make sure that they were not playing some diabolical trick on him, shook his head several times with the air of one for whom misfortune had done its last turn, and without uttering a word quitted the room, the turnkey having this time recovered sufficient presence of mind to shoot the lock behind him. The next day the country to its remotest recesses was ringing with the news from Tullamore. The depth of the emotion, unimaginable now, was not altogether without its justification, for it was felt, in England as well as in Ireland, that the prison policy, on which" Mr. Balfour had built his hopes, had received a blow from which it never could recover. * It was one of the curiosities of those extraordinary times that the Blarney tweed (although a dismally inartistic specimen of the products of the famous Blarney factory, being of a thick material, cut up into ugly squares, and of a color that might be anything from drab to purple) for years set the glass of fashion for young Nationalists, and created a demand which it required the increase of the factory staff by several hundreds to .supply. (To be continued.)