The Life Story of an Old Rebel Part 1

The Life Story of an Old Rebel.

by John Denvir.

CHAPTER I.

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS--"COMING OVER" FROM IRELAND.

I owe both the t.i.tle 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 G.o.d-father, and my Aunt Kitty had to come all the way from "our own place" in the County Down to be my G.o.d-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 const.i.tutional 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, circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sengers 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 20,000 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 Ma.s.s 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 Ma.s.s was never said in it during my time.

Lancas.h.i.+re 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 Lancas.h.i.+re. During the time I was at Lydiate there came a Holiday of Obligation, when I heard Ma.s.s 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, Ma.s.s 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 Lancas.h.i.+re, 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 Ma.s.s in Rimmer's, and now a.s.sisting at the solemn High Ma.s.s at the opening of the Church of our Lady, not far from the old chapel of St. Catherine.

At the time I went to Ma.s.s 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 n.o.ble-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 s.h.i.+p'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 n.o.ble 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 wors.h.i.+pped, of a bright-eyed Irish girl beloved in the golden days of youth. These and a host of other a.s.sociations 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 circ.u.mstances 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 "Sat.u.r.day 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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sistance, from all intoxicating liquors, he laid great emphasis on the word "liquors," p.r.o.nouncing 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 G.o.d 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, pa.s.sed 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 n.o.ble 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 p.r.o.nunciation 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 G.o.d, 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.