Henri Le Caron
By permission of Mr. William Heinemann
How came the Major by his adopted name, and was it really meant to portend anything? It was humorously said at the time that the spy had taken his pseudonym from the French form of the name of that mythical boatman of classic memory who was wont for a few halfpence to ferry the souls of the damned across the river Styx, Charon, to wit. Le Caron is, however, a common enough French name, and the Major had lived some years in France previously to migrating to the United States, in which country Thomas Beach first became Henri Le Caron. Born at Colchester, Essex, in 1841, Beach belonged to a type of family which was clearly of old-fashioned puritanical stock, and the point is important enough in view of his later claim to have acted the rôle of traitor purely on the ground of moral principle. In his autobiography he tells how from his earliest days he had been brought up to cherish the Bible and to loathe all forms and quantities of alcoholic liquor. His home life was altogether not a very bright one and dull domestic repression soon began to exert its own particular reaction on a character which was already bursting with the spirit of adventure and derring-do. He records it that the routine of his existence grew too monotonous for the larger soul within him, and how he ran away from home and a Quaker's shop at least three times before his sixteenth year, breaking his apprentice bonds and travelling far and wide, yet managing, at whatever town he made a halt, to earn what he calls a respectable living. Like most characters of his obviously crude and untutored kind, in whom the spirit of romance is a considerable, if a somewhat jumbled, equation, there was not a little of the megalomaniac in the boy, and even in those early days his soul thirsted after the big things of life. In young Beach, too, there was a bit of artistry of sorts, and just as it was a chief ambition of Spy Schulmeister to dance like a marquis of the old regime, and a foible of Spy Stieber to accumulate pectoral decorations testifying to his honour, so also the youthful Le Caron discovered a precocious passion for hymns and the music of the church organ. At Colchester he became a leading and decorous choir lad, and according to himself it was his love for psalmody rather than any regard for his puritanical parents which invariably brought about his return, prodigal-wise, to the paternal roof. One is obliged in that spirit of fairness which gives the devil all that is due to him, to insist on what are otherwise prosaic enough details, and all the more so because, to the man's admirers, his piety provides an argument for the rôle he afterwards adopted in life.
Having spent some years in Paris, where he worked as an agent for that now-extinct old worthy, John Arthur, earning a living which enabled him to present a highly respectable figure, he clearly felt a call, he tells us, to join the North in 1861, when the kindling American Civil War made the States a kind of promised land for all sorts of adventurous spirits, most of whom, it may be supposed, were still feeling the influences of the comparatively fresh Napoleonic legend. Taking out a passport in the name of Henri Le Caron, young Beach shipped on the Great Eastern, then about to take her maiden trip across the Atlantic, and landed duly in New York, where the military authorities enlisted him as a private in the Pennsylvania Reserves. Le Caron—he was never after 1861 known by the name of Beach—passes over his military career with unexpected haste in his autobiography, it must be said. He was present, he tells, at important engagements during the course of the war, first as an infantry soldier, subsequently as a cavalryman, receiving promotion and being especially detailed for scouting operations. In 1864 he was gazetted second lieutenant and by 1865 had attained the rank of regimental adjutant with the title of Major—a rank which became, it may be said in passing, at the close of the war, so common throughout the States, that humorists were wont to tell how in 1866 it was impossible to throw a brick in any given direction where men happened to assemble without hitting an officer of that standing.
Le Caron, it is interesting to note, records his act of religious faith in the following words:—"We are impelled by some unknown force to carry out, not of our own volition or possible design, the work of this life, indicated by a combination of circumstances to which unconsciously we adapt ourselves." This, it may be remembered, was the religion of the late Prince Bismarck, and it must be allowed that it is a highly convenient and elastic hypothesis of life. It goes far to explain how he came to be associated with Fenianism. Le Caron declares, however, that he was far from having gone in search of the Fenians; on the contrary, he insists, the Fenians came in search of Le Caron. The Major disappoints us rather badly, nevertheless, by failing to show how it was that the Irish in America, even in those days a powerful community, should have sought out the psalmodical soldier who abhorred alcohol in all its forms and possible quantities, and why he, a Briton, of all men, should have been singled out to put life into the Irish-American movement for the emancipation of the Sister Isle. At the head of that movement in 1865 was James Stephens, who directed the organisation both in Ireland and America, while his agents on American soil included some of the shrewdest Irishmen of that age and, indeed, some of the most prosperous. Le Caron explains briefly how he first entered the movement as a spy. A fellow-officer had informed him quite casually that the main object of the Irish-American agitation of that date was the invasion of Canada. This startling bit of news proved more than sufficient to call out the fires of the old puritanical moralist dormant in the Major, who proceeds to inform us in the language of tragic passion which one applies to a tailor who has omitted a minor detail, that he "felt quite indignant at learning what was being done against the interests of my native country." Accordingly, and in order to unload his chest of the perilous secret, he addressed a letter to his father, a local tradesman, at Colchester, informing the sire that an attack was contemplated on the Dominion by a group of bold bad Irishmen. Evidently there was in the Beach tribe a congenital incapacity for holding a secret, for no sooner had the old man read his son's letter than, "startled and dismayed at the tidings it conveyed, he, true Briton that he was," made over the letter to the then sitting member for Colchester, a Mr Rebow. It was this gentleman who was instrumental in procuring Le Caron his salaried commission to act in America as a spy for the British police authorities.
In 1867, Major Le Caron, freed from military service, was looking around him for the means of maintaining his family, and in the course of a visit to England, was instructed by the British Government to ally himself with the Fenian organisation in America, "in order," as he frankly admits, "to play the rôle of spy in the rebel ranks." His adventurous nature welcomed the work as congenial, he says, while his British instincts made him a willing worker from a sense of right. Accordingly, on his return to America, he offered his services as a military man to General O'Neill, who was to lead the anti-British forces in the event of another uprising. On his cordial acceptance by O'Neill, as well as initiation, on his solemn oath, into the Fenian Brotherhood under that soldier's sponsorship, Le Caron returned to his Western home and lost no time "in commencing to lead my double life," as he puts it. At Lockport, Illinois, he set about the organisation of a Fenian "circle" in which he took the position officially known by the title of "center," or commander, a post which entitled him to receive all official reports and communications issued by O'Neill. These reports were duly transmitted to London by the Major and one pauses here to reflect that in this supplementary office Le Caron might not inappropriately have borne the subsidiary title of "scenter." The soul of the Major was clearly one of no ordinary beauty and versatility, for in order to supplement his gains as a secret-service agent, he accepted about this time a comfortable post as hospital steward in a vast gaol in Illinois. Here, he naïvely admits, he felt at home, because, as he writes, "in such a vast assembly of criminals, there were many whose characters and careers formed subjects for very interesting study to me. I was fortunate in being connected with the prison at a time when some more than usually clever and facile scoundrels were temporarily resident there." O'Neill was, however, on the look-out for energetic agents, and Le Caron was not suffered to remain long in the comparatively inactive life of an Illinois gaol. In response to a telegram from headquarters, he proceeded hurriedly—and apparently without giving due notice to his employers—to New York, where he was engaged as "major and military organiser of the Irish Republican Army," at a salary equivalent to £650 a year, a rare exchange for the few pounds he was being paid weekly as a prison official in Illinois. With his commission he received instructions to proceed on an organising tour, in the course of which, the Major learned, to his deep disgust, that he was expected to address public meetings as a sworn advocate of the Irish cause. He knew nothing whatever about Irish politics and was well aware that ignorance of Irish aspirations meant, in the opinion of most Irishmen, wholesale indifference, which was hardly worse than active hostility itself. Once, indeed, he found himself in a tight fix which called for all the undoubted nerve the spy possessed. The occasion was a Convention of the Fenian Brotherhood at Williamsburg. The Major tells the story in the course of his autobiography in the following words:—
"The evening came and with it our trip to Williamsburg. On arrival there in the company of O'Neill and some brother officers, I found several thousands of persons assembled. We were greeted with the greatest enthusiasm and given the seats of honour to the right and left of the chairman. My position was a very unhappy one. I was in a state of excessive excitement, for I feared greatly what was coming. Seated as I was next to O'Neill, I could hear him tell the chairman on whom to call and how to describe the speakers; and as each pause took place between the speeches, I hung with nervous dread on O'Neill's words, fearing my name would be next. The meeting proceeded apace, some four or five of my companions had already spoken and I was beginning to think that after all the evil was postponed and that for this night at least I was safe. Not so, however. All but O'Neill and myself had spoken when to my painful surprise I heard the General call upon the chairman to announce Major Le Caron. The moment was fraught with danger; my pulses throbbed with a maddening sensation; my heart seemed to stop its beating; my brain was on fire and failure stared me in the face. With an almost superhuman effort, I collected myself, and as the chairman announced me as Major M'Caron, tickled by the error into which he had fallen and the vast cheat I was playing on the whole of them, I rose equal to the occasion, to be received with the most enthusiastic of plaudits.
"The hour was very late and I took advantage of the circumstance. Proud and happy as I was at being with them that evening, and taking part in such a magnificent demonstration, they could not, I said, expect me to detain them long at so advanced an hour. All had been said upon the subject nearest and dearest to their hearts. (Applause.) If what I had experienced that night was indicative of the spirit of patriotism of the Irish in America (tremendous cheering), then indeed there could be no fears for the result. (Renewed plaudits.) And now I would sit down. They were all impatiently waiting, I knew, to hear the stirring words of the gallant hero of Ridgeway, General O'Neill (thunders of applause), and I would, in conclusion, simply beg of them as lovers of liberty and motherland (excited cheering) to place at the disposal of the General the cash necessary to carry out the great work on which he was engaged. This work, I was confident, would result in the success of our holy cause and the liberation of dear old Ireland from the thraldom of the tyrant's rule which had blighted and ruined her for seven hundred years. These last words worked my hearers up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, and amidst their excited shouts and cheers I resumed my seat, with the comforting reflection that if it took so little as this to arouse the Irish people, I could play my rôle with little difficulty."
Fenian Conventions came and passed; the organisation had grown to extraordinary proportions, as is shown by the fact that in 1868, when the Brotherhood made a demonstration at Philadelphia, not fewer than 6000 armed and uniformed Fenian soldiers paraded the city, with General O'Neill at their head and Le Caron among the staff. In the course of his work in the Eastern States, the Major had already distributed, he tells, 15,000 stands of arms and 3,000,000 rounds of ammunition for the prospective raid which promised shortly to be undertaken, on the prime condition, however, that the funds should be forthcoming to finance the adventure. In the spring of 1870 it was decided to make the projected move upon Canada, O'Neill declaring with a Kelt's enthusiasm that "no power on earth could stop it." Le Caron, who was, of course, already in active touch with the Ottawa authorities, met the British agents at Buffalo, giving them full particulars and details as to the Raid which was about to take place. On their departure to make complete preparations for all eventualities, O'Neill arrived at Buffalo, whence, and accompanied by Le Caron, he left for the Front. "O'Neill," writes the Major, "was full of enthusiasm and firmly believed that the Canadians would be taken entirely by surprise, while I myself was laughing at his coming discomfiture." Arrived at the frontier, O'Neill, who expected to find at least 1000 Fenians under arms—the nucleus of an army which was to attract another 500,000 Irishmen from all parts of America—discovered to his dismay that only 250 men had assembled; this number was swelled by the arrival of 250 more on the morrow, when the General, fearful of the effects of hesitation and delay, ordered his force to cross the border from Vermont into Canadian territory. The simple Irishman addressed his troops in early-Bonapartian fashion as follows:— "Soldiers! This is the advance guard of the Irish-American army for the liberation of Ireland from the yoke of the oppressor. For your own country's sake you enter that of the enemy. The eyes of your countrymen are upon you. Forward—March!"