XIV
On Wednesday my mother and sisters came in to Dublin. Agna went up to Dublin Castle to try to see my father. She made a number of attempts to see him, received all sorts of advice, was sent chasing from pillar to post; and finally was told that no visitors would be allowed. The only news she was able to get was from a nurse who told her that Papa was very weak from loss of blood; and that he was not improving.
After that all the news we had of my father was through the newspapers. They told us that he was steadily growing weaker and that his recovery was doubtful. Then we had heard of the murder of Sheehy Skeffington. Agna had met Mrs. Skeffington when she was at Dublin Castle, and had been told the awful news of Skeffington's death. It was a dreadful shock. We had known and admired Sheehy Skeffington, and he had been a great friend of Papa's.
Then day by day the news of executions nearly drove us out of our minds. We heard of the executions of Tom Clarke, and of Padraic Pearse, and of Thomas MacDonagh. Every time we heard the newsboys call out, "Two more executions," or "One more execution" we dreaded to look in the paper for fear we might read my father's name. And yet we must buy the papers.
Every day we heard of further arrests. Every day we saw men being marched off between rows of soldiers. And Mamma had had the added fear of my being arrested given to her. Some one had come to the house and told her that the police were searching for me. I felt that it was not so but could not convince Mamma. At times the awful terror that we were all going to be taken from her took possession of her, and she could not be comforted. We had found out that Rory was imprisoned in Richmond Barracks. Mamma feared and dreaded that he might be shot because of his relationship to his father.
"Willie Pearse was executed because he was Padraic Pearse's brother," she would say when we remonstrated with her. "He was not a leader; he was only a soldier. Rory was a soldier too. How can I be sure that he won't be shot?"
On Sunday afternoon we found a note in the letter box addressed to Mrs. Connolly. Mamma opened it and read: "If Mrs. Connolly will call at Dublin Castle Hospital on Monday or Tuesday after eleven o'clock she can see her husband." Mamma was in terror that Papa's time had come. Every one had been telling her that the fact of Papa's being wounded was a good thing for him; that as long as he was wounded he would not be executed; and that by the time he was well public feeling would have grown so strong the authorities would hesitate to shoot him. "They'll never execute a wounded man" was the cry.
I quieted Mamma's terror somewhat by pointing out that the note said Monday or Tuesday, so the day of his execution could not be either of those days. Still she was in an agony of impatience for Monday morning.
"I'll have to tell him that Rory is in Richmond Barracks," she said.
She had just said this when a knock came to the door. When we opened it Rory and a chum of his stepped inside of the door. They were filthy dirty and their eyes were red rimmed. Sleep clogged their eyes and made speech difficult to them.
"Rory," cried my mother. "And Eamonn—where were you?"
"We were both in Richmond Barracks," said Rory. "We're hungry," he added.
While we got them something to eat they had a wash and came to the table more like themselves.
"We haven't had a real sleep since Easter," said Rory as an excuse for his prodigious yawns.
"Couldn't you sleep in Richmond Barracks?" asked my sister Moira.
"Sleep," he cried. "The room we were in had marked on the door "Accommodation for eleven men" and they put eighty-three of us into it. There was hardly room to stand. We couldn't sit down, we couldn't lie down, we couldn't wash, we couldn't do anything there," he broke off.
We asked him if he knew many of the men in the room with him.
"Yes," he said. "Tom Clarke was in the room with me, and Sean MacDermott, and Major MacBride. But they were removed later."
"How did they come to let you out?"
"O, they were releasing all boys under sixteen."
"Did they ask you anything about your father?" asked Mamma.
"O," said Rory, "I didn't give them my right name. I'm down as Robert Carney, of Bangor, Co. Down."
On Monday morning Mamma went to see my father. Before she went I said, "If you get the chance tell him that we are safe."
"O, I'd be afraid to mention your name," she said.
"Well," I said. "Tell him that Gwendolyn Violet has turned out to be a great walker; that she walked to Dublin. That will satisfy him and quiet his mind."
Gwendolyn Violet was a name bestowed on me by my father when once I had tried to ride my high-horse. And he often used it when he did not desire to refer to me by name.
Before Mamma was allowed to see Papa she was subjected to a most rigorous search. She was also required to give her word that she would not tell him of anything that had gone on outside since the rebellion. Also to promise that she would not bring in anything for him to take his life with. My youngest sister, who was not quite eight years old, and whom Mamma had brought with her was also searched. Mamma came home in a more contented frame of mind. She was sure that he would be spared to her for some time.
On Tuesday I went with Mamma to see my father. There were soldiers on guard at the top of the stairs and in the small alcove leading to Papa's room. They were fully armed and as they stood guard they had their bayonets fixed. All that armed force for a wounded man who could not raise his shoulders from the bed!
In Papa's room there was an officer of the R.A.M.C. all the time with him. Papa had been wounded in the leg, both bones had been fractured. When I saw him his wounded leg was resting in a cage. He was very weak and pale and his voice was very low. I asked him was he suffering much pain.
"No," he said. "But I have been courtmartialed to-day. They propped me up in bed. The strain was very great."
I was very much depressed. I had been thinking that there would be no attempt to shoot him till he was well. But then—I knew, that if they courtmartialed him while he was unable to sit up in his bed, they would not hesitate to shoot while he was wounded. I asked him how he got wounded.
"It was while I had gone out to place some men at a certain point. On my way back I was shot above the ankle by a sniper. Both bones in my leg are shattered. I was too far away from the men whom I had just placed to see me, and I was too far from the Post Office to be seen. So I had to crawl back till I was seen. The loss of blood was great. They couldn't get it staunched."
He was very cheerful as he lay in his bed making plans for our future. I know now that he knew what his fate was to be. But he never gave us word or sign that his sentence had been pronounced an hour before we were admitted to him. He gave my mother a message to Sheehy Skeffington asking him to get some of his (Papa's) songs published and to give the proceeds to my mother. It nearly broke my mother's heart to think that she could not tell him that his good friend and comrade had already been murdered by the British. I tried to tell him some things. I told him that the papers had it that Captain Mellowes was still out with his men in the Galway hills. I told him that Laurence Ginnell was fighting for the men in the House of Commons.
"Good man, Larry," he said. "He can always be depended upon."
He was very proud of his men.
"It was a good, clean fight," he said. "The cause cannot die now. The fight will put an end to recruiting. Irishmen now realize the absurdity of fighting for the freedom of another country while their own is still enslaved."
He praised the brave women and girls who had helped in the fight.
"No one can ever say enough to honor or praise them," he said. I mentioned the number of young boys who had been in the fight.
"Rory, you know, was only released on Sunday last along with the other boys of sixteen or under."
"So Rory was in prison," said my father. "How long?"
"Eight days," I answered.
"He fought for his country, and has been imprisoned for his country, and he's not sixteen. He has had a great start in life. Hasn't he, Nora?" he said.
"Tell me," he said. "What happened when you arrived in the North?"
"The men were all dispersed and could not be brought together again," I answered. "When I saw that there would be no fighting there, I tried to come back here. I came by road," I added.
"Did you walk the whole way?" he asked.
"Only from Dundalk," I said. "And when I arrived the fighting was over. I had no chance—I did nothing."
"Nothing," said my father as he reached up his arms and drew me down to his breast. "I think my little woman did as much as any of us."
"There was one young boy, Lillie," he said, turning to my mother, "who was carrying the top of my stretcher when we were leaving the burning Post Office. The street was being swept continually with bullets from machine guns. This young lad was at the head of the stretcher, and if a bullet came near me, he would move his body in such a way that he might receive the bullet instead of me. He was so young looking, although big, that I asked him his age. 'I'm just fourteen, sir,' he answered."
EAMONN CEANNT
My father's eyes lit up as he was telling the story and at the end he said, "We cannot fail now. Those young lads will never forget."
When next I saw my father it was on Thursday, May 11, at midnight. A motor ambulance came to the door. The officer who accompanied it said my father was very weak and wished to see his wife and eldest daughter. Mamma believed this story because she had seen my father on Wednesday and he was in great pain and very weak then. He told her also that he never slept without receiving morphine. Nevertheless she was a trifle apprehensive for she asked the officer to tell her if they were going to shoot my father. The officer said he could tell her nothing.
It seemed to take hours to get to the Castle. We went through the dark, deserted, burning streets encountering only the sentries. We could hardly restrain ourselves while the sentries were questioning the driver. The minutes seemed hours. At last, we arrived at the Castle and were taken to Papa's room. As we went up the stairs we were surprised to see that about a dozen soldiers were encamped on the small landing outside his room. They had their mattresses and their full equipment with them. Six soldiers were asleep, six more on guard at the top of the stair with rifles and fixed bayonets. And in the alcove leading to the room were three more also with fixed bayonets. There was an officer on guard in the room.
When we entered the room Papa had his head turned to the door watching for our coming. When he saw Mamma he said:
"Well, Lillie, I suppose you know what this means?"
"O James! It's not that—it's not that?" my mother wailed.
"Yes, Lillie," he said. "I fell asleep for the first time to-night and they wakened me at eleven and told me that I was to die at dawn."
My mother broke down, laid her head on his bed and sobbed heartbreakingly.
My father patted her head and said, "Don't cry, Lillie, you'll unman me."
"But your beautiful life, James," my mother sobbed. "Your beautiful life."
"Well, Lillie," he said. "Hasn't it been a full life, and isn't this a good end?" My mother still wept.
I was crying too. He turned to me at the other side of the bed and said:
"Don't cry, Nora, there is nothing to cry about."
I said, "I won't cry." He patted my hand and said, "That's my brave girl." He then whispered to me, "Put your hand here," making a movement under the clothes. I put my hand where he indicated. "Put it under the clothes," he said. I did so and he slipped something stiff into my hand.
"Smuggle that out," he said. "It is my last statement."
Mother was sitting at the other side of the bed holding Papa's hand, her face growing grayer and older every minute.
"Remember, Lillie," said my father. "I want you and the girls to go to America. It will be the best place for the girls to get on. Leave the boy at home in Ireland. He was a little brick and I am proud of him."
My mother could only nod her head. Papa tried to cheer her up by telling her about a man who came to the Post Office, during the revolution, to buy a penny stamp; and how indignant he was when he was told he could not get one. "Don't know what Dublin is coming to when you can't buy a stamp at the Post Office," he said.
Papa then turned to me and said, "I heard that poor Skeffington was killed." I said, "Yes." And then I told him that all his staff, that all the best men in Ireland were gone. He was silent for a while, then said, "I am glad I am going with them." I think he thought he was the first to be executed. I told him that the papers that day had said, that it was promised in the House of Commons that there would be no more shootings. "England's promises," was all he said to that.
The officer then told us that we had only five minutes more. My mother was nearly overcome; we had to give her water. Papa tried to clasp her in his arms but he could only lift his head and shoulders from the bed. The officer said, "Time is up." Papa turned to say "Good-by" to me. I could not speak. "Go to mother," he said.
I tried to bring her away. I could not move her. She stood as if turned to stone. A nurse came forward and helped her away. I ran back and kissed my father again. "Nora, I'm proud of you," said my father. I kissed him again, then the door was shut and we saw him no more.
We were brought back to the house. Mother
went to the window, pulled back the curtain, and stood watching for the dawn, moaning all the while. I thought her heart would break and that she would die too.
When dawn was past and we knew that my father was dead, I opened the stiff piece of paper he had given me, and read to my mother, my brother and sisters the Last Statement of my father.
This is what I read:
To the Field General Court Martial, held at Dublin Castle, on May 9, 1916.
The evidence mainly went to establish the fact that the accused, James Connolly, was in command at the General Post Office, and was also the Commandant-General of the Dublin Division. Two of the witnesses, however, strove to bring in alleged instances of wantonly risking the lives of prisoners. The Court held that these charges were irrelevant and could not be placed against the prisoner.
I do not wish to make any defense except against charges of wanton cruelty to prisoners. These trifling allegations, that have been made, if they record facts that really happened, deal only with the almost unavoidable incidents of a hurried uprising against long established authority, and nowhere show evidence of set purpose to wantonly injure unarmed persons.
We went out to break the connection between this country and the British Empire, and to establish an Irish Republic. We believed that the call we then issued to the people of Ireland, was a nobler call, in a holier cause, than any call issued to them during this war, having any connection with the war. We succeeded in proving that Irishmen are ready to die endeavoring to win for Ireland those national rights, which the British Government has been asking them to die to win for Belgium. As long as that remains the case the cause of Irish Freedom is safe.
Believing that the British Government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland, the presence, in any one generation of Irishmen, of even a respectable minority, ready to die to affirm that truth, makes that government forever a usurpation and a crime against human progress.
I personally thank God that I have lived to see the day when thousands of Irishmen and boys, and hundreds of Irish women and girls were ready to affirm that truth, and to attest it with their lives if need be.
(Signed) JAMES CONNOLLY, Commandant-General,
Dublin Division, Army of the Irish Republic.