Tipperary (23 page)

Capital punishment ceased in Ireland more than forty years ago, its abolition a by-product of the Catholic Church's opposition. Today, membership in the European Union precludes it. In English-occupied Ireland it happened everywhere, often at a whim.

Contaminated juries, perjured evidence, selected and selective witnesses—many of the trials had more rigging than a sailing ship. Justice was not so much blind as blindsided.

And the hangings caused a vicious circle. A landlord was killed. Local men were hanged in reprisal after sham trials. Another landowner got murdered—Irish roulette.

Out of the multitude of commonplace miscarriages of justice rose a rebel spirit. Fair-minded people everywhere might have murmured horror when a Protestant and his family were slaughtered or burned out of their home. But a wrongly executed Catholic raised an outcry. Every unjust trial, every hanging judge, created a new hero-martyr. The ballads and laments found a new power base.

In fact, they became a weaponry. And they helped to create the new voice of the majority. The purer literary impulses of the educated Anglo-Irish, such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and William Butler Yeats, had already been resounding. Their unique tone brought the English language to bear on the Irish imagination. Now the Catholic martyrdom in miscarriages of justice created a different Irish sound.

In the fusion of the two traditions, the cool and educated Anglo-Irish styles and the raw, often ironic, mourning ferocity of the ballad tradition, was born a new Irish voice.

My fortune has been to live through such comprehensive times. As I witnessed the great will to recover the country's land for the Irish, I also observed another and separate movement of restoration: the recovery of the native soul.

By the turn of the century, many Catholic writers and poets had begun writing about the glories of ancient Ireland. They had not previously been allowed to write, they had not been allowed to read, they could be—and were—deported for owning books. I was present to observe how the Celtic world came to the fore once again, with many passionate declamations in verse and prose, with vivid translations from the Irish language into English.

Great men were rising in all this. Some were already established in repute; some had yet to make their names but would go on to garner fame and respect. I met them, and in their company, I would recite a tale I had heard, as I believed that I should attempt to contribute. And I am pleased to say that I was often gratified by their evident acceptance of my performance—though it was always followed with a longer effort of their own, or else a lofty and steel-edged repudiation of my tale.

Some of these literary figures planted themselves in my memory, not from works they had yet written but from force of presence. One day, the sixteenth of June 1904, I was sitting in a Dublin public house after a lunch of Gorgonzola cheese with a glass of Burgundy. It was late in the afternoon and I was writing in my Journal when I caught the attention of a young man in his early twenties. He was wearing light shoes, of a kind people usually reserve for playing lawn tennis, and he wore a yachtsman's cap. With a jaunty and confident air he slouched over to me.

“What are you writing?” he asked me.

“I try to keep a Journal,” I said, “though I fail to address it every day.”

“No man's life is interesting enough for every day to be recorded,” he said. “Except mine.”

“Do you have an exceptional life?” I asked him.

“Exceptional. It gives me deep satisfaction. Today, for instance, I shall meet with a young woman who, of her own free will, shall yield up to me the mysteries of her existence.”

He told me that his name was James A. Joyce and that he came of an ancient Irish family whose ancestral lands could still be found in south Galway. When I told him my name, he pronounced with great delight that I must be one of the “royal O'Briens of Munster.”

Mr. Joyce said, “Therefore, I suppose you have a pound on you that I might borrow? By way of gratitude,” he added, “I will allow you to read me what you have been writing in your Journal.”

I said, “I cannot; I have been transcribing a legend I recently heard about a deer, but it is unfinished.”

“You are speaking to a man who believes that in Ireland the artist is the proud stag torn down by the vile hounds of the populace. And that metaphor, if metaphor it be, is certainly worth a pound.”

I gave him the requested money. Mr. Joyce waved the banknote like a small banner, promised to pay it back, and said, “This may be the unit of currency that launches a great literary career.”

“What do you intend to write?”

“I have it all planned out,” he said. “After some pithy observations of my fellow-citizens here in Dublin, I shall write a memoiristic but brilliant satire on the human soul. Then I shall write a large novel, modeled on the wanderings of Odysseus, but it will be all about a man brought low in life by a woman. Inspired, of course, by Mr. Parnell.”

To which I replied, “When you write, if you write, be sure to make it complicated. It will retain people's attention. I knew Mr. and Mrs. Parnell—they saw little that was simple in their lives.”

Mr. James Joyce rose from the bench beside me, clapped a hand to his forehead, and cried, “My God! It is I who should be paying you for that incisive advice. ‘Make it complicated.’ I shall remember it all my life”— and he departed the public house with a gracious nod to the barman and the cry “Any word on the Gold Cup?”—for it was Ascot week and all of Ireland placed wagers on the horses that were running on that great racecourse.

“It'll be tonight before we hear,” said the barman.

Mr. Joyce departed—and sprang back through the door a moment later.

“You must go and tell Mr. Yeats your story—he lives up on Rutland Square. He'd love to hear it; he welcomes all mythologies.”

That afternoon, I did as young Mr. Joyce suggested; I called, unbidden, on the renowned poet Mr. Yeats. Ofttimes I had seen him, vague and flowing, in the streets of Dublin, wearing a voluminous black cloak and a floppy bow-tie and his great scarab ring.

I was curious to meet him. People said many things—that he was arrogant; that he made poems out of works in other languages and did not acknowledge them; that he loved widely, though often with ladies who did not live in Ireland. When I came to his house, I found him on the doorstep; he was emptying tea leaves from a large brown teapot into the street drain.

I introduced myself, and Mr. Yeats asked, “Why have you come to see me?” and I told him about meeting a young man named James Joyce.

“He's so sarcastic. You can't take seriously a word that he says. He's always sending people to call on me even though he knows how busy I am; I think he does it to stop me writing. Did he try to borrow money off you? Don't give him a penny,” said Mr. Yeats. “Come in anyway.”

At first he proved short with me, but then he behaved very graciously when I told him some of the story I was writing about Finn MacCool and the deer. I said that I had heard it on my travels and he leaned forward with great attention, his spectacles winking in the afternoon sun.

Mr. Yeats then began to ask me questions about myself (he was five years younger than me), and I told him something of my life. He pronounced himself enchanted with the notion of my wandering hither and yon, healing people, and at the same time gathering stories and setting them down, and writing reports upon the world.

“Oh, your life is a kind of poem in itself,” he said in his deep, booming voice.

I was much complimented and said so.

“And you look like a poet,” he said. “A man does not have to write poetry to have a poet's soul.”

I pressed him on this point and he said, “Warmth of spirit. Love of humanity. These are poet's gifts. You have them abundantly.”

I felt my heart opening up, and in a fit of confidence I related the story of my great unrequited love. At the conclusion I said that I had written many letters and none had been answered, that I thought of this lady night and day and that my courage had now abated.

Mr. Yeats took off his spectacles, wiped them on his floppy bow-tie, replaced them, and began exhorting me.

“I remake myself many times—to ensure that I am the bravest who will deserve the fairest. Feather yourself,” he said, waving a hand at me to indicate me head to toe. “Wear bright plumage. Present a wonderful facade to her. Women enjoy a dandy.”

It had been three years, six months, one day, and twenty-two hours since I had last seen Miss Burke, on the street in Paris as she dismissed me. I have already recounted how I brokenheartedly returned to Ireland via Holland. Mother, seeing my distress, had advised me to write to Dr. a'Court Tucker's house. I wrote many letters, all civil, some apologetic, none without the utmost courtesy, but I never received a reply.

When I told this to Mr. Yeats, he said, “I like few men but I am comfortable with you. Therefore, why not seek her father? Can there be many men in London who go by the name of Terence Burke?”

I told him that I already knew the gentleman's address, and had indeed sent letters there too.

My only visit to England had thrust me into the fracas over Mr. Parnell—but when I returned to my family and narrated Mr. Yeats's advice, they supported his idea. Mother supervised all my clothing, and, days later, as I left for the train that would take me to Kingstown and the steamer to England, my father gave me a generous financial support.

“New clothes. Shiny boots. Best foot forward,” he said. “Make her father see what a fine man you are.”

Consequently, I enjoyed the good accommodation of Mr. Brown's hotel in London, and after a day of resting and walking and visiting a gentleman's outfitters, making sure that I was not prone to accusations of dishevelment, I set forth to the house of Mr. Terence Burke. It was my forty-fourth birthday, the twenty-first of June, and I hoped that this would be of good omen.

A girl with red hair and many sun-freckles opened the door at 29 Alexander Street, Westminster, and I recognized—and said so—that her accent came from Cork. She called herself Mary, and after our little conversation about the pleasantness of her native county, she went to fetch Mr. Burke; not being a trained servant, she forgot to ask my name.

Presently, the gentleman appeared, a tall, thin man, with spectacles pushed up on his forehead. I could at once see his daughter's resemblance to him; and although he seemed to have the slow movements of those who suffer chronic ill-health, he had a vigorous personality.

“Goodness,” he said, “what a gentleman I see here, mmm? Who are you, sir, and how do you do?”

He impressed me as delightful.

“Sir, I fear that I am Charles O'Brien. Himself. In the flesh, as it were.”

“Charles O'Brien?” It became plain that he did not know the name, for he said next, “And—why do you ‘fear’ that you are Charles O'Brien, mmm? Is it such a terrible thing to be Charles O'Brien?”

On some days I believe a dullness slows my intellect; on others I have a certain sharpness—which now I found.

“Oh, sir,” I said. “To fear that one is oneself is such a great terror that one needs no other fears—and so are burdens lifted.”

Mr. Burke laughed. “And a wit. Come in, Charles O'Brien.”

He led me into his inner rooms, through a most pleasant house, full of comfort and warmth. I felt some surprise; perhaps my sharp encounters with his daughter had led me to expect a colder home.

We sat and Mr. Burke offered me tea, which I declined, and a drink, which I also declined (I needed my wits about me). He settled in his chair.

“Now, Mr. Charles O'Brien, I have the pleasure of a visit from a fine man on a fine summer afternoon; what may I return to him?”

I said, “Sir, this concerns your daughter.”

He laughed. “Do you know April?”

I said, “Yes, sir. I do. I was with Mr. Wilde in Paris.”

“Ohhhhh,” he said, changing to a grave mood. “What a great loss he is to us all! April was most upset and still mourns him. Which is not usual in a young person.”

“Sir,” I blurted, “I fell in love with your daughter in Paris and I wish to press my case forward with her and with you.”