John Denvir - The Life Story of an Old Rebel

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THE LIFE STORY OF AN OLD REBEL

BY JOHN DENVIR

AUTHOR OF "THE IRISH IN BRITAIN" "THE BRANDONS" ETC.

DUBLIN SEALY, BRYERS & WALKER 86 MIDDLE ABBEY STREET 1910

[Illustration: John Denvir]

CONTENTS.

CHAP.

I.--Early Recollections--"Coming Over" from Ireland

II.--Distinguished Irishmen--"The Nation" News-paper--"The Hibernians"

III.--Ireland Revisited

IV.--O'Connell in Liverpool--Terence Bellew MacManus and the Repeal
Hall--The Great Irish Famine

V.--The "No-Popery" Mania--The Tenant League--The Curragh Camp

VI.--The Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood--Escape of James
Stephens--Projected Raid on Chester Castle--Corydon the Informer

VII.--The Rising of 1867--Arrest and Rescue of Kelly and Deasy--The
Manchester Martyrdom

VIII.--A Digression--T.D. Sullivan--A National Anthem--The Emerald
Minstrels--"The Spirit of the Nation"

IX.--A Fenian Conference at Paris--The Revolvers for the Manchester
Rescue--Michael Davitt sent to Penal Servitude

X.--Rescue of the Military Fenians

XI.--The Home Rule Movement

XII.--The Franco-Prussian War--An Irish Ambulance Corps--The French
Foreign Legion

XIII.--The Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain

XIV.--Biggar and Parnell--The "United Irishman"--The O'Connell Centenary

XV.--Home Rule in Local Elections--Parnell succeeds Butt as President
of the Irish Organisation in Great Britain

XVI.--Michael Davitt's Return from Penal Servitude--Parnell and the
"Advanced" Organisation

XVII.--Blockade Running--Attempted Suppression of "United
Ireland"--William O'Brien and his Staff in Jail--How Pat Egan kept the
flag flying

XVIII.--Patrick Egan

XIX.--General Election of 1885--Parnell a Candidate for Exchange
Division--Retires in favour of O'Shea--T.P. O'Connor elected for
Scotland Division of Liverpool

XX.--Gladstone's "Flowing Tide"

XXI.--The "Times" Forgeries Commission

XXII.--Disruption of the Irish Party--Home Rule carried in the
Commons--Unity of Parliamentary Party Restored--Mr. John Redmond becomes
Leader

XXIII.--The Gaelic Revival--Thomas Davis--Charles Gavan
Duffy--Anglo-Irish Literature--The Irish Drama, Dramatists, and Actors

XXIV.--"How is Old Ireland and how does She Stand?"

~THE LIFE STORY OF AN OLD REBEL~

* * * * *

CHAPTER I.

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS--"COMING OVER" FROM IRELAND.

I owe both the title of this book and the existence of the book itself
to the suggestion of friends. I suppose a man of 76 may be called "old,"
although I have by no means given up the idea that I can still be of use
to my country.

And a Rebel? Yes! Anything of the nature of injustice or oppression has
always stirred me to resentment, and--is it to be wondered at?--most of
all when the victims of that injustice and oppression have been my own
people. And why not? If there were no rebels against wrong-doing,
wrong-doing would prosper. To an Irishman, who is a fighter by
temperament, and a fighter by choice against those in high places, life
is sure to provide plenty of excitement; and that, no doubt, is why my
friends have thought my recollections worth printing. The curious thing
is that my share in the struggle for Irish self-government has been
almost entirely what I might call outpost work, for I have lived all my
life in England.

Indeed, it seemed but a stroke of good luck that I was born in Ireland
at all. My father (John, son of James Denvir, of Ballywalter, Lecale)
came to England in the early part of the last century, and settled in
Liverpool, where my eldest brother was born. It was during a brief
period, when our family returned to Ireland, that I and a younger
brother were born there. My father was engaged for about three years as
clerk of the works for the erection of a castle for Sir Francis
Macnaghten, near Bushmills, County Antrim. This must be one of the least
Catholic parts of Ireland, for there was no resident priest, and I had
to be taken a long distance to be christened. There was a decent
Catholic workman at the castle, James MacGowan, who was my god-father,
and my Aunt Kitty had to come all the way from "our own place" in the
County Down to be my god-mother.

Brought to England, my earliest remembrances are of Liverpool, which has
a more compact and politically important Irish population than any other
town in Great Britain.

Anyone who has mixed much among our fellow-countrymen in England,
Scotland and Wales knows that, generally, the children and grandchildren
of Irish-born parents consider themselves just as much Irish as those
born on "the old sod" itself. No part of our race has shown more
determination and enthusiasm in the cause of Irish nationality. As a
rule the Irish of Great Britain have been well organised, and, during
the last sixty years and more, have been brought into constant contact
with a host of distinguished Irishmen--including the leaders of the
constitutional political organisations--from Daniel O'Connell to John
Redmond.

I have taken an active part in the various Irish movements of my time,
and it so happens that, while I know so little personally of Ireland
itself, there are few, if any, living Irishmen who have had such
experience, from actual personal contact with them, as I have had of our
people in every part of Great Britain. As will be seen, too, in the
course of these recollections, circumstances have brought me into
intimate connection with most of the Irish political leaders.

My father came to England in one of the sloops in which our people used
to "come over" in the old days. They sometimes took a week in crossing.
The steamers which superseded them, though an immense improvement as
regards speed, had often less accommodation for the deck passengers than
for the cattle they brought over.

Most of the Irish immigration to Liverpool came through the Clarence
Dock, where the steamers used to land our people from all parts. Since
the Railway Company diverted a good deal of the Irish traffic through
the Holyhead route, there are not so many of these steamers coming to
Liverpool as formerly.

The first object that used to meet the eyes of those who had just "come
over," as they looked across the Clarence Dock wall, was an effigy of
St. Patrick, with a shamrock in his hand, as if welcoming them from "the
old sod." This was placed high upon the wall of a public house kept by
a retired Irish pugilist, Jack Langan. In the thirties and forties of
the last century, up to 1846, when he died, leaving over L20,000 to his
children, Langan's house was a very popular resort of Irishmen, more
particularly as, besides being a decent, warm-hearted, open-handed man,
he was a strong supporter of creed and country.

I am old enough to remember hearing Mass in what was an interesting
relic in Liverpool of the Penal days. This was the old building known to
our people as "Lumber Street Chapel." Of course, the present Protestant
Church of St. Nicholas (known as "the old church") is a Catholic
foundation. Lumber Street chapel was not, however, the first of our
places of worship built during the Penal days, for the Jesuits had a
small chapel not far off, erected early in the eighteenth century, but
destroyed by a No-Popery mob in 1746. St. Mary's, Lumber Street, too,
was originally a Jesuit mission, but, in 1783, it was handed over to the
Benedictines, who have had charge of it ever since. Father John Price,
S.J., built a chapel in Sir Thomas's Buildings in 1788. I can recollect
this building since my earliest days, but Mass was never said in it
during my time.

Lancashire is the only part of England where there are any great number
of the native population who have always kept the faith. I once spent a
few weeks in one of these Catholic districts. My employer had an
alteration to make in the house of a gentleman at Lydiate, near
Ormskirk. I used to come home to Liverpool for the Sundays, but for the
rest of the week I had lodgings in the house of a Catholic family at
Lydiate.

There was an old ruin, which they called Lydiate Abbey, but I found it
was the chapel of St. Catherine, erected in the fifteenth century. The
priest of the mission had charge of the chapel which, though unroofed,
was the most perfect ecclesiastical ruin in Catholic hands in South
Lancashire. During the time I was at Lydiate there came a Holiday of
Obligation, when I heard Mass in the house of a Catholic farmer named
Rimmer. This was a fine old half-timbered building of Elizabethan days,
and here, all through the Penal times, Mass had been kept up, a priest
to say it being always in hiding somewhere in the district.

The priest in charge of Lydiate at the time I was there told me he was
collecting for a regular church or chapel, and hoped soon to make a
commencement of the building. Some years later he was able to do so. Our
church choir at Copperas Hill, Liverpool, was then considered one of the
best in the diocese. The choirmaster and organist, John Richardson, was
a distinguished composer of Catholic church music, and held in such high
esteem that, for any important celebration, he could always secure the
services of the chief members of the musical profession in and about
Liverpool. In this way, on one occasion Miss Santley came to help us.
She was accompanied by her brother, then a boy, who has since risen to
the highest position in the musical world--the eminent baritone, Sir
Charles Santley.

St. Nicholas' was, as it is yet, the pro-Cathedral of the diocese, and
whenever a new church had to be opened, or there was any important
ceremonial anywhere in Lancashire, our choir was generally invited. In
this way I was delighted to go to the opening of the new church at
Lydiate, so that I was taking part in the third stage of the Catholic
history of the diocese--having said a prayer in the old ruin, and
attended Mass in Rimmer's, and now assisting at the solemn High Mass at
the opening of the Church of our Lady, not far from the old chapel of
St. Catherine.

At the time I went to Mass in Lumber Street Chapel, Liverpool, which is
nearly 70 years since, there were but four other _chapels_, as they were
generally called then, in the town--Copperas Hill (St. Nicholas'), Seel
Street (St. Peter's), St. Anthony's and St. Patrick's. It must have been
a custom acquired in the Penal days to call the older Catholic places of
worship rather after the names of the streets in which they were
situated than of the saint to whom they were dedicated. During the
Famine years the bishops and clergy must have found it extremely
difficult to provide for the tremendous influx of our people. I have
seen them crowded out into the chapel yards and into the open streets;
satisfied if they could get even a glimpse of the inside of the sacred
building through an open window. I see by the Catholic Directory there
are at the time I now write thirty-nine churches and chapels in
Liverpool. The schools have increased in a like proportion.

The progress in numbers, wealth and influence of the Irish people may
be pretty well marked by the gradual increase in the number of churches
and schools, which have been built for the most part by the Irish and
their descendants. All honour to the noble-hearted, hard-handed toilers
who have contributed to such work, and greater glory still to the humble
men who, after a hard week's work in a ship's hold at the docks, or
perhaps in the "jigger loft" of a warehouse eight stories high, turn
out every Sunday morning to act as "collectors," and go in pairs from
door to door, one with the book and the other with the bag in hand, to
raise the means of erecting the noble churches and schools that
everywhere meet our view in Liverpool to-day.

With regard to the social position our people occupy in Liverpool, there
have been many Irishmen who have come well to the front in the race of
life, some of whom have occupied the foremost positions in connection
with the public life of the town. On the other hand; a large number of
our fellow-countrymen in Liverpool are by no means in that enviable
condition. Many of them have set out from Ireland, intending to go to
America, but, their little means failing them, have been obliged to
remain in Liverpool. Here they considered themselves fortunate if they
met someone from the same part of the country as themselves to give them
a helping hand, for it is a fine trait in the Irish character--and
"over here in England" the trait has not been lost--that, however poor,
they are always ready to befriend what seems to them a still poorer
neighbour. Those who have lived here some time are glad to see someone
from their "own place," and, amid the squalor of an English city, the
imaginative Celt--as he listens to the gossip about the changes, the
marriages, and the deaths that have taken place since he left "home
"--for a brief moment lives once more upon "the old sod," and sees
visions of the little cabin by the wood side where dwelt those he loved,
of the mountain chapel where he worshipped, of a bright-eyed Irish girl
beloved in the golden days of youth. These and a host of other
associations of the past come floating back upon his memory, as he hears
the tidings brought by Terence, or Michael, or Maurya, who has just
"come over." It often so happens that, from the very goodness of the
Irish heart, the newcomers are frequently drawn into the same miserable
mode of life as the friends who have come to England before them may
have fallen into.

Irish intellect and Irish courage have in thousands of cases brought our
people to their proper place in the social scale, but it is only too
often the case that adverse circumstances compel the great bulk of them
to have recourse to the hardest, the most precarious, and the worst paid
employments to be found in the British labour market.

In the large towns, in the poorer streets in which our people live, a
stranger would be struck by the swarms of children, and of an evening,
at the number of grown-up people sitting on the doorsteps of their
wretched habitations. John Barry once told me that a friend of his
asked one of these how they could live in such places? "Because," was
the reply, "we live so much _out_ of them." The answer showed, at any
rate, that their lot was borne cheerfully.

Nevertheless, there are Irishmen too--men who know how to keep what they
have earned--who, by degrees, get into the higher circles of the
commercial world, so that I have seen among the merchant princes "on
'Change" in Liverpool men who, themselves, or whose fathers before them,
commenced life in the humblest avocations.

Liverpool has, on the whole, been a "stony-hearted stepmother" to its
Irish colony, which largely built its granite sea-walls, and for many
years humbly did the laborious work on which the huge commerce of the
port rested. But, perhaps, in years to come Liverpool will realise the
value of the wealth of human brains and human hearts which it held for
so long unregarded or despised in its midst.

CHAPTER II.

DISTINGUISHED IRISHMEN--"THE NATION" NEWSPAPER--"THE HIBERNIANS."

I have met, as I have said elsewhere, most of the Irish political
leaders of my time in Liverpool, but I will always remember with what
pleasure I listened to a distinguished Irishman of another type, Samuel
Lover, when he was travelling with an entertainment consisting of
sketches from his own works and selections from his songs. Few men were
more versatile than Lover, for he was a painter, musician, composer,
novelist, poet, and dramatist. When I saw him in one of the public halls
he sang his own songs, told his own stories, and was his own
accompanist.

His was one of a series of performances, very popular in Liverpool for
many years, called the "Saturday Evening Concerts." He was a little man,
with what might be called something of a "Frenchified" style about him,
but having with it all a bright eye and thoroughly Irish face which,
with all his bodily movements, displayed great animation. I can readily
believe his biographers, who say he excelled in all the arts he
cultivated, for his was a most charming entertainment.

Lover undoubtedly had patriotism of a kind, and some of his songs show
it. It certainly was not up to the mark of the "Young Irelanders," one
of whom attacked him on one occasion, when he made the clever retort
that "the fount from which _he_ drew his patriotism was a more genuine
source than a fount of Irish type"--alluding to the plentiful use of the
Gaelic characters in "The Spirit of the Nation," the world-famed
collection of songs by the Young Ireland contributors to the "Nation"
newspaper. There are passages in Lover's novel of "Rory O'More" and his
"He Would be a Gentleman" that show he was a sincere lover of his
country. I agree in the main with what the "Nation" said of him in
1843--"Though he often fell into ludicrous exaggerations and burlesques
in describing Irish life, there is a good national spirit running
through the majority of his works, for which he has not received due
credit."

One of his stories, "Rory O'More," achieved universal popularity also as
a play, a song and an air. In it there is a passage which, when I first
read it, I looked upon as an exaggeration, and as somewhat reflecting
upon the dignity of a great national movement like that of the United
Irishmen. Lover brings his hero, Rory, into somewhat questionable
surroundings in a Munster town--intended for Cork or some other
seaport--to meet a French emissary. One would think that a struggle for
the freedom of Ireland should be carried on amongst the most lofty
surroundings. But I found in after life that the incidents described by
Lover were not so exaggerated as might be supposed, for, as "necessity
has no law," during a later revolutionary struggle we had often to meet
in strange and unromantic places, as I shall describe later, for most
important projects.

Lover's wit was spontaneous, and bubbled over in his ordinary
conversation with friends. An English lady friend, deeply interested in
Ireland, once said to him--"I believe I was intended for an Irishwoman."
Lover gallantly replied--"Cross over to Ireland and they will swear you
were intended for an Irishman."

A famous Irishman, whom I saw in Liverpool when I was a boy, was the
Apostle of Temperance, Father Mathew.

At this time he visited many centres of Irishmen in Great Britain, and
administered the pledge of total abstinence from intoxicating drink to
many thousands of his fellow-countrymen. In London alone over 70,000
took the pledge. As in Ireland, this brought about a great social
revolution. The temperance movement certainly helped O'Connell's Repeal
agitation, which was in its full flood about this time.

My remembrance of Father Mathew was that of a man of portly figure,
rather under than above the middle height, with a handsome, pleasant
face. He had a fine powerful voice, which could be heard at the furthest
extremity of his gatherings, which often numbered several thousands. As
he gave out the words of the pledge to abstain, with the Divine
assistance, from all intoxicating liquors, he laid great emphasis on the
word "liquors," pronouncing the last syllable of the word with almost
exaggerated distinctness. After this he would go round the ring of those
kneeling to take the pledge, and put round the neck of each the ribbon
with the medal attached.

I ought to remember his visit to Liverpool, for I took the pledge from
him three times during his stay in the town.

My mother took the whole family, and, wherever he was--at St. Patrick's,
or in a great field on one side of Crown Street, or at St.
Anthony's--there she was with her family. She was a woman with the
strong Irish faith in the supernatural, and in the power of God and His
Church, that can "move mountains." A younger brother of mine had a
running in his foot which the doctors could not cure. She determined to
take Bernard to Father Mathew and get him to lay his hands on her boy.

At St. Patrick's, with her children kneeling around her, she asked the
good Father to touch her son. He, no doubt thinking it would be
presumptuous on his part to claim any supernatural gift, passed on
without complying with her request. Father Mathew's next gathering was
in the Crown Street fields. I was a boy of about nine years, attending
Copperas Hill schools. Mr. Connolly, who was in charge, was a very good
master, but there was nothing very Irish in his teaching. Some idea of
this may be formed when I mention that--though there were not a dozen
boys in the school who were not Irish or of Irish extraction--the first
map of Ireland I ever saw was on the back of one of O'Connell's Repeal
cards.

It was not until the Christian Brothers came, a few years afterwards,
that this was changed. I shall always be grateful to that noble body of
men, not only for the religious but for the national training they gave.
We had Brothers Thornton and Swan--the latter since the Superior of the
Order in Ireland.

Under them we not only had a good map of Ireland, but they taught us, in
our geography lessons, the correct Irish pronunciation of the names of
places, such as (spelling phonetically) "Carrawn Thooal," "Croogh
Phaudhrig," and similar words.

But our old master, Mr. Connolly, was a good man too, according to his
lights. Hearing of Father Mathew's visit, he asked how many of the boys
would go to Crown Street to "take the pledge"--their parents being
willing? Out of some 250 boys there were about a dozen who did not hold
up their hands.

It is unnecessary for me to say that my mother was there again with her
afflicted boy and the rest of her children, and again she pleaded in
vain. She was a courageous woman, with great force of character--and a
_third_ time she went to Father Mathew's gathering. This was in St.
Anthony's chapel yard, and amongst the thousands there to hear him and
to take the pledge she awaited her turn. Again she besought him to touch
her boy's foot. He knew her again, and, deeply moved by her importunity
and great faith he, at length, to her great joy, put his hand on my
brother's foot and gave him his blessing. My mother's faith in the
power of God, through His minister, was rewarded, for the foot was
healed.

I had an aunt--my mother's sister--married to a good patriotic Irishman,
Hugh, or, as he was more generally called, Hughey, Roney, who kept a
public house in Crosbie Street. The street is now gone, but it stood on
part of what is now the goods station of the London & North Western
Railway. Nearly all in Crosbie Street were from the West of Ireland,
and, amongst them, there was scarcely anything but Irish spoken. I have
often thought since of the splendid opportunity let slip by O'Connell
and the Repealers in neglecting to revive, as they could so easily have
then done, so strong a factor in nationality as the native tongue of our
people. My Aunt Nancy could speak the Northern Irish fluently, and, in
the course of her business, acquired the Connaught Irish and accent.

After a time Hughey Roney retired, and the house was carried on by his
daughter and her husband, John McArdle, a good, decent patriotic
Irishman, much respected by his Connaught neighbours, though he was from
the "Black North." It used to be a great treat to hear John McArdle, on
a Sunday night, reading the "Nation," which then cost sixpence, and was,
therefore, not so easily accessible, to an admiring audience, of whom I
was sometimes one, and his son, John Francis McArdle, another. This
younger McArdle, originally intended for the Church, became in after
life a brilliant journalist, and was for a time on the staff of the
"Nation," the teaching of which he had so early imbibed. The elder
McArdle was a big, imposing looking man, with a voice to match, who gave
the speeches of O'Connell and the other orators of Conciliation Hall
with such effect that the applause was always given exactly in the right
places, and with as much heartiness as if greeting the original
speakers.

After Father Mathew's visit, their trade fell away to such an extent
that John McArdle, determined to hold his ground--while still keeping
the public house open, though the business was all but gone--broke
another door into the street, and made his parlour into a grocery and
provision store. This enterprise on his part was only necessary for a
short time, as the abnormal enthusiasm in the cause of temperance which,
for the time being, had swept all before it, had subsided to such an
extent that McArdle, after a time, turned the room to its original
purpose, and was able to resume his readings from the "Nation" to
admiring audiences, as heretofore.

Yet, though so many fell away from their temporary exaltation, there
were still large numbers who remained firm, and the lasting good from
Father Mathew's work was undeniable.

So popular was John McArdle's house, that it was used as one of the
lodges of the Ancient Order of Hibernians--then very strong in
Liverpool, and stout champions of country and creed. In regard to this
organisation, I find in the "Irish World" of New York a high tribute
paid to them by the Very Rev. Thomas J. Shahan, of the Catholic
University of America. In his paper on "Hibernianism" he said there was
a tradition in the Ancient Order that they first started in Ireland in
the Penal days as a bodyguard to their poor parish priest when he said
Mass in the open air. Anyone who has spent most of his life in England,
as I have done, can well understand that this is not simply an effort of
this good priest's imagination, for, over and over again I have seen the
Hibernians among the first to come forward in defence of their priests
and churches when these were threatened. In the course of his paper Dr.
Shahan quoted a letter from the Brethren in Ireland, Scotland and
England to the Brethren in New York. It sent instructions and authority
to the few brothers in New York to establish branches of their Society
in America.

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