Evening Memories

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 41, 18 October 1923, Page 7

Evening Memories

(By William O'Brien.) :

": ;_ CHAPTER XXVll.—(Continued.)[~ v ■ If you want to know a man, quoth" the old saying, you must study him at home. In "the Impayrial," which was throughout these forlorn years my only home, there was every external evidence of an enviable popularity, and every conceivable discomfort underneath to belie appear- j ances. ■.; :'' ' '' : '-'-'~. .-.'• ' \:X' . "' ; In the street outside there was every other week the commotion attending my departure for prison or attending my return. Charles Lawlor, like another Leonidas, would muster his staff to hold the hall door against the surging barbarians, and to eject the suicidal enthusiasts who swarmed on to the frail iron balcony as to which, there came invariably at some stage of the proceedings an alarm that it was giving way. Inside, it was the incessant va-et-vient of callerspriests or village captains of distant estates to report eviction notices or cattle seizures, and seek advice; English members of Parliament, and women of a splendid courage and devotion, to be instructed whither they were to transfer their services as priceless lookerson; Mr. Shaw Lefevre to risk his Privy Councillorship in 'some obscure police scrimmage in Loughrea; W. T. Stead to invite himself to breakfast, and map out some superior plan of campaign of his own, as the somewhat exacting ambassador of the Pall Mall Gazette; American interviewers to cut off their pound of flesh in "copy"; IrishAmericans in search of autographs and mementoes, and so ad infinitum. Since my evil way with all these was to chat, as it was to speechify, with every bone in my body, and every fibre of my being in full play, the nervous tension came to be so exhausting that a flight to my top room was long" my chief luxury in life. Such became my actual terror of entering the great ifining-room, where with a deadly certainty, from this table or from that, I should be. pounced upon by a country deputation or by some fervid admirer, that one day when, having talked myself, or being talked, to death's door about the affairs of this, that, or the other scene of battle, I rose to quit the room, Michael, the sympathetic head-waiter, stopped me and, pointing to my unfinished plate of soup, whispered: "I beg your pardon, sir, but you forgot to eat your dinner." As a matter of fact, during two years, it was in my toproom under the slates, I consumed the plateful of meat and the pint of sixpenny claret, which my faithful friend Christy, the "boots," used to import from the lower regions, the while, perhaps, an outside car was at the door waiting, to convey me to a "night mail train, and I was flinging a few things wildly into my dressing-case, always towards the last minute of the last hour, and always at such haphazard, that I counted myself fortunate if there was only one articlea night shirt, a comb and brush, or a rugmissing when the journey- was over. Poor Davitt was as solitary a pelican as myself, and from his own den on the same landing would sometimes drop in to console me with maledictions on our single blessedness!- Mr. Healy' was also an ever welcome visitor even when, with eyes upraised, and some droll outburst of mock horror on his lips, he would catch me in the ignominious position of crawling under the legs of the table, or in some remote corner under "\ the bed, in search of a coin that had escaped from me in the course of a game, which had become with me a mild form of monomania. In the fever of some critical leading article, or improvisation for the morrow's speech, I would start to my legs amidst my wilderness of manuscripts and newspapers, to toss a handful of coins like a - conjurer in the air, and then penitently sink on my knees . to follow up the fallen ones as they rolled into some intri- ; cate corner, always with the repentant sinner's vow never 7 to repeat the folly, and always with the sinner's fidelity to his vow.>,The curious circumstance may be of interest: to ; some therapeutist, that if coppers would do well enough for ordinary occasions, there was a superior . degree of nervous relief in risking a silver piece,* or in extreme cases a:;; gold one, according to the importance of the problem to be thought out; anda sad reflection for human incorrigi-; . bility— folly persists to this "day- ■£,-<■ •'■'.'. ,'. _i\ g|sjd| •■■-•; '-.-, All excellent evidence it may be of. what the ; lawyers|, would call lack of sound testamentary capacity, but happily, no question of upsetting af-will:; could s have arisen, since" there was nothing to be willed except the contents of two-'

portmanteaux that had seen in© through ten years of crowded life, and whatever remnant of presentation blackthorn sticks and illuminated addresses and outworn books the hunters after prize mementoes for American Fancy Fairs had spared.

Let nobody run away with the impression that my immuring myself in my garret was for want of loving and beloved friends to tempt me into more joyous quarters. The Dublin of the day made me free of dozens of houses of refined people who never wearied of bidding me to their geneial boards. Their very names make music in my ears, as I repeople these old scenes — frequently alas! from the world of shadows: Mrs. Deane, in her town house in Great George Street, Or, better still, in far Ballaghaderin, where her window-panes shone on a winter night like a glimpse of heaven in the midst of the shivering bogs—Mrs. Deane who was, perhaps, the most capable Irishwoman of her generation, although she would have been the last to suspect it; Dr. Joe Kenny"that mad Fenian apothecary" of Dick Adams' puck-like —whose beautiful wife and superb old mansion of the Irish Parliament days, made his the most graciously hospitable house in Dublin; "Val" Dillon, whose dinner-table was the dear delight of English visitors, on their way to some scene of eviction or police violence in the country, who were never tired of saying that if the Saxon could only come to know the giant solicitor, as he sat, carving-knife in hand, to dispense the good things with a broad smile as appetising as the best of the viands, he might name his own terms for Irish Independence, and have them with a whoop; and so many others, the hereditary representatives of Irish wit and patriotismMrs.* John Martin, in whose fearless eyes and spirit one was face to face with her Spartan brother, John Mitchel in his prime— A. M. Sullivans, the T. D. Sullivans, the Healys, the Bodkins, the Coxes, the Fottrells, and so many more of the fond and simple souls who light up the memory of that sanguine, if stormtost, time. But although one may hope I will not be accused of being a man of one idea, I was undeniably a man of one idea at a time, and held immovably to the American principle "the first thing first." The terrific exigencies of the struggle that then possessed me day and night, left me no possible conception of pleasure except periods of sheer silence and oblivion, and certainly left no scruple that anybody was suffering by' my seclusion. After all this nobody will be surprised to learn that I never became a member of a and in all the forty years since my entrance into public life, was never seen in an Irish theatre through sheer terror of being recognised, and made the object of a "demonstration"whether friendly or unfriendly became an unimportant detail.

(To be continued.)

The numerous friends of Inspector W. Fouhy in Wanganui and throughout the Dominion (says the Wanganui Herald), will be delighted to learn that he has been pro moted to the rank of Superintendent. ,: ""'

Lower Hutt: Contributions to the Irish Mission

Promotion of a Popular Police Officer

to China v The Chinese Irish Missioner came to Lower Hutt on the 23rd ult. (writes an esteemed correspondent). The congregation was much impressed with Father O'Shea himself—a tall, pale, ascetic, young sagart arwv from Ireland, a model of mortification and sacrifice for the East Mission. He attracted the people very much by his eloquent and earnest appeal. The people gave as they never gave before. The contributions were, as follow':—Mr. William Redmond, £SO; Mrs. James J. Bourke, £25; Mr. James J. Bourke, £lO ;_ Children of Mary, £6; Mr. P Casey, £5 ss; Rev. Mother of Sacred Heart Convent, £5; "A Friend," £5; Mrs. Jane Redwood, £3 3s; Miss Moreen Bourke, Mr. E. P. Bunny, and Mrs. John Murphy, each £1; Mr. Ongley, Mrs. Hartigan, Nurse Werder, Mrs John Young, Mr. Mick Cleary, Mr. P. Evans, Mr. Dar Connolly Mr. Bansfield, Mr. W. Patton, Miss Costin, Mr. Le Boie, and Mr. Jermiah Sullivan, each 10s; all others contributed 5s and ■2s 6d each. Total—£l2B The Missioner was delighted with the result of his appeal. Xj * ;