The Rebels of Ireland (117 page)

“And where will they find them?”

The earl smiled.

“When you think about it, they are saying the same thing now that their ancestors have been saying ever since they first encountered Ireland in the days of the Plantagenets, hundreds of years ago. The Tudors and Stuarts with their plantations were trying to do the same thing. Since the yeoman farmer is the backbone of England—and he is, Stephen—it is only natural that the English should suppose that the yeoman is all that is needed here. And such farmers do exist in Ireland, of course, many of Irish descent. We have them in Wexford. But they won't want to buy land in Clare, and nor will any rich farmers from England. So my belief is that as land in Clare becomes available, it will mostly be bought up by the richer local men. And the question is, should we buy any of it ourselves?”

Stephen had looked hard, talked to Charles O'Connell, and Mr. Knox, and many other local men. After three weeks, he had prepared a report. His conclusions were partly financial and partly political. But at the end of the day, he was sure what he would say: “The Mountwalsh estate and family have built up such a good reputation in Wexford that it would be wiser to reinforce that than risk dissipating it in Clare.” Whether this was what the earl wanted to hear or not, he did not know.

He had been ready to leave when he had received a message from the earl, asking him to meet him in Offaly at the estate of a friend where he was staying, near Birr.

The great estate of Parsonstown, the home of the earls of Rosse, was rather what he had expected it would be, a noble place with a fine-looking castle. There was a considerable company there, and he was soon able to have some words with Lord Mountwalsh, who was eager to know his conclusions. He gave him the report but told him at once that he had advised against the investment in Clare.

“I was hoping you would,” William said with a smile “I felt I must look at the thing properly, though. I'll read the report carefully, you may be sure.”

Their host genially invited him to join the company at dinner, but as he was very tired, he begged to be excused—only to be told that if such was the case, he must spend the following day with them and dine tomorrow evening, before he returned to Dublin.

And he felt much refreshed after breakfast when their host announced to the company:

“For all those who wish, it's time to visit the telescope.”

If aristocrats are tempted to be amateurs, this could not be said of the Parsons family. Each generation seemed to produce at least one serious expert in their field. The difference was that they could afford to finance their own research. In the case of their host, the results had been quite awesome.

The great telescope at the seat of the Earls of Rosse was a monster. Sitting majestically in its housing, like a huge cannon pointing at the sky, it weighed four tons. Technically a Newtonian reflector, its polished mirror dish, in which the light of the most distant heavens could be gathered, was six feet across, making it the largest telescope in the world. “They call it,” William whispered to him, “the Leviathan.”

“The dish is metal—speculum. We actually ground it here on the estate. But in particular, I want to draw your attention to the wrought ironwork on the telescope casing, because it was all done by Mary.”

“You realise,” William murmured with a smile, “that he means his wife.”

“His wife did the ironwork?”

“Yes. She's an accomplished blacksmith. She made the gates to the estate as well.”

It gave Stephen an interesting new light upon the aristocracy.

“We've only had this big one up and running for a few years,” their host continued, “but it has proved its worth. My contention
was always that many of the stars we see are not single entities at all, but clusters of stars themselves, of possibly vast extent.” He drew out a paper. “Look at this. It is a meticulous ink drawing of a star that is in fact a nebula. This is what our big dish revealed. You can see, there are hundreds of stars there, and they are arranged in a huge spiral.” He passed the paper round.

As Stephen gazed at it with Mountwalsh, he felt a strange sense of wonder and excitement, and William spoke for him, too, when he cried:

“By God, we know nothing of the universe. Nothing! This is truly wonderful.”

As they all returned, William Mountwalsh pointed out various other members of the party to him. His own brother was there, with a university colleague; there was a local scholar landowner, a fashionable painter. “And that,” William indicated a strong-faced, balding man who walked with a purposeful step, “is the great Professor William Rowan Hamilton, of Dublin. Have you ever heard of quaternions?”

“I have not.”

“Well, nor had I. But he's the man who has discovered the formula for them, which to mathematicians is a matter of great significance. They say he's almost the equal of Newton. And he's an Irishman born.” He smiled. “What a strange mixture Ireland is, Stephen. On the one hand, we have the tragedy and shame of the Famine, and in other ways, we lead the world.”

“I wish,” Stephen sighed, “that I'd more of an education.”

“You've done well,” the earl said, “but I know what you mean.” And then he muttered something, which sounded like: “Have a son.”

Perhaps he should have thought of it, but Stephen was quite unprepared, as they reached the house again, to find himself face-to-face with Caroline Doyle, or Caroline Barry, as he must call her now. She had just arrived with her husband, who was in another part of the house.

She greeted him pleasantly, and they talked, quite easily, for several minutes.

“And the extraordinary thing was,” he told them, “I felt nothing.”

It was a week later and he was sitting in their parlour with the two Tidys. Maureen was sitting quietly in a corner. There were very few people with whom Stephen felt he could discuss personal matters, but for some reason, with the Tidy family, he felt secure enough to do so. As for the fact that Maureen was in the room, he didn't suppose it mattered.

“My feelings for her had been tender before, after all; and when she chose another, I suppose I must confess that, after the pain, I may have felt some anger.” He smiled. “That was foolish of me. Un-pardonable, perhaps. But I think I did.”

The meeting with Caroline had really been very agreeable. Before him he had seen a pleasant woman, a little fuller in the figure than before, happy with her husband, the mother of a child. She had been entirely easy in his presence, and the fact that she no longer had any interest in him as a man had probably prevented his experiencing any renewal of his former desire. They had parted the following day as friends. “It is agreeable,” he remarked, “that love can turn into friendship.”

Mrs. Tidy regarded him with a mild expression. She was a small, neat woman with yellow hair that grew naturally into small curls.

“There is something even better, Stephen,” she said. “That is when friendship turns into love.”

“Ah, yes,” said Stephen. “I'm sure that must be so.”

“You are not very knowledgeable in the ways of the heart,” said Mrs. Tidy kindly.

“Am I not?”

“No.”

It was just before he left that Tidy took him to one side.

“I have a favour to ask,” he said. Naturally, Stephen was only too anxious to do anything he could. “It concerns Maureen Madden,” the Quaker explained. “When you rescued her, she was entirely alone in the world. And yet she has relations—a brother and two sisters—but where they are now, and whether they are even alive, she does not know. I wonder if you would talk to her, and then make enquiries, to see if anything could be discovered?”

“Certainly,” said Stephen. And he agreed to return to interview her the following day.

The year that followed was not easy for the Tidy family. As one of those involved in the provision of relief, Samuel Tidy travelled twice down to Cork and across to Limerick. Each time, he came back more depressed than before. Part of the trouble was the new scourge that arrived on the island in November.

The arrival of cholera was not a surprise. The disease had been pandemic across much of Europe for some time; it was almost inevitable that it would reach Ireland, too, and when it did, it found its way easily into the drains and water supplies of the ports and the market towns where huge numbers of weakened people were seeking shelter. It raged across the country for more than six terrible months, adding to the causes of mortality already so well entrenched.

“We now have a quarter of a million more workhouse places than we had before,” Tidy remarked to his wife in the spring. At present, one inmate in eighty dies every week. That is two and a half thousand souls, or a hundred and twenty-five thousand a year. And that's just within the workhouses. In parts of Clare, I've been told, people are dying at four times that rate.”

“Is it the workhouses themselves that are hastening the spread of the disease?” asked his wife.

“Possibly. But many of the people who enter the workhouses are dying already. One can hardly even blame the workhouse guardians.
The system is completely bankrupt, and the government still refuses to give them funds.”

One small concession had come in February. The government had sent an extra £50,000 in relief. In England, it had caused a scandal. The
Times
of London had thundered that this extravagant gesture had “almost broken the back of British benevolence.”

“I met a poor law official,” he told her soon afterwards, “who intends to resign. He showed me the letter he's written. He says that he refuses any longer to be an agent of extermination.”

But the worst moment for them both was when, one day, they found Maureen sitting in the kitchen. Upon the table was an English newspaper she had purchased that afternoon. On the page that was open, there was a cartoon. It showed a potato, large, blackened and rotting. But the potato also had a caricature Irishman's face, which appeared to be corrupt and suffused with greed. In its putrid roots, the potato held a bag of gold. And under this picture, was the single word ROTTEN.

Maureen had burst into tears.

Conditions on the eastern half of the island were far better than in the prostrated west. Indeed, there were signs of a slow recovery. But the stream of wretched folk still came daily into the capital. And Tidy could see no end to it.

Meanwhile, there was the frustrating business of Stephen.

It did not prove easy to find any information. Stephen went to considerable trouble, but the displacement of people was so large that the chances of tracking a person down, especially a woman, were not good. He had started with Maureen's elder sister, who'd left for England. Since the start of Queen Victoria's reign in 1837, records had been kept of English births, marriages, and deaths. He had employed a clerk to search these. It did not appear that Maureen's sister had featured. She might have died somewhere unrecorded, of
course. More likely she was living, unmarried, somewhere in England. He tried advertisements in the more obvious cities: London, Liverpool, Manchester. So far there had been no response. As for her brother, if William and his uncle had disembarked safely in America, they might be easier to find. But with the distances involved, that might take some time. Nuala, also, had vanished without trace. So many nameless people had succumbed already during the Famine that she could easily have died and left no trace. Enquiries in Wexford and Dublin elicited no response. But he kept trying.