The views from the windows are magnificent. To the east is the sea, with Howth and Ireland’s Eye, and on the other side of the house are the mountains with Three Rocks and the Hellfire Club. I would like to know more about the Hellfire Club but nobody will talk about it. It must be very wicked.
Ned’s letters expressed a deep and growing happiness. The Saint Enda’s philosophy made learning a privilege rather than an obligation, and cherished the boyhood in students while developing the manhood. Every fortnight a céili was held after the last class of the day. These were a combination of informal concert and dancing exhibition, giving the students a chance to demonstrate their skills. Debates, which usually took place around the stove in the refectory, were also a much-enjoyed feature.
Ned’s special delight was in playing parts in school theatricals. Under Willie Pearse’s direction, mythic figures from the Irish past such as Cuchulain and Fionn MacCumhaill were brought to life. The performances were fund-raisers for the school, which was always in need of additional finance. But there was more to be gained from the dramas.
“We are made to feel,” Ned wrote Kathleen, “that the achievements of noble heroes are not beyond our own abilities, but are an inherent part of our heritage. As I stood on that stage, Caitlín, I felt as if I was one of the Fíanna. I was not acting; I was living.”
Closing her eyes for a moment, Kathleen saw Ned in the costume of another time, a young warrior with his sword and his spear and a bright light shining on him. He stood alone on a stage above a sea of people, and there was something extraordinarily proud and joyous in his face.
“Mr. Pearse says we are to concentrate on becoming good men rather than learned men,” Ned’s letter continued. “But he also means us to be truly educated rather than merely qualified to pass examinations. That is a very important distinction, which I am beginning to appreciate. I ask a lot of questions, but he never seems to mind; he encourages them. The headmaster is slow to chastise but quick to praise and treats us all with respect and dignity.”
Kathleen put down the letter and gazed thoughtfully into space. Respect. Dignity. Was that not what she—and so many others—had hoped to find in America? Even for the daughter of a strong farmer, respect from the British ruling class was in short supply in Ireland. Only the Anglo-Irish were accorded any measure of dignity, though she suspected that was begrudged. She recalled her father relating a comment Lord Inchiquin had once made to him: “In Ireland I am resented as English, while in England I am looked down upon as Irish.”
In refusing to employ an Irish servant, Kathleen instinctively was rejecting the centuries-old assault on Irish dignity. She would have liked to explain this to Alexander, but he had no interest in philosophical conversations. He had married her for her beauty. She was to be an ornament to his life and his house; for intellectual companionship he looked elsewhere.
From the earliest days of their marriage he had absented himself two nights a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, returning very late and reeking of cigar smoke. When she inquired where he went he simply replied, “Out, my dear. I have business.”
At first Kathleen accepted this with no further question. Business was, after all, part of that male world from which women were excluded in order to protect them from the harsher realities of life. Then a casual comment revealed certain “meetings” that Alexander attended; meetings of a society to which he belonged. An all-male society, of course. And so secret he did not even tell her its name.
In Ireland such meetings could have only one purpose—political.
The Halloran home had been apolitical, carefully occupying neutral ground between Lord Inchiquin’s anglicized views and those of the simmering rebel element in Clare. The 1903 Land Act, which had allowed Patrick Halloran and others like him to buy their holdings from the landlords by a system of annuities, had not overcome the ancient bitterness that festered in the county and was exacerbated by undying memories of the Famine.
While the Hallorans had not converted to Protestantism, they had otherwise done whatever they could to guarantee a future for themselves, just as Lord Inchiquin’s family had once secured its own future by espousing the English cause against the Gaelic Irish. In a poor country, such accommodations were a matter of survival.
But there were many in Clare who would never be able to accept that their land was a vassal state governed by a foreign power. The demand for Home Rule continued to grow. Its advocates insisted the Irish should be allowed to govern themselves in their own country. Moderates would be willing to settle for having an autonomous Irish parliament functioning as a respected partner in the British Empire. Nationalists argued that Ireland herself must belong to the Irish, must be free and independent as she had not been since the twelfth century.
There were a lot of nationalists in Clare.
Kathleen’s father had never attended the meetings held in back rooms and barns where such matters were discussed. If he was aware of them he never mentioned them at home. Yet somehow his family had known. Everyone in Clare knew.
The longing for freedom was like fine pollen blown on the wind. Though unremarked, it pervaded the atmosphere of the county. Secret societies flourished. Names like the Fenians were mentioned in a whisper.
Now Kathleen had learned that her own husband belonged to a secret society in America. It must be dangerous, she reasoned, else why would it be secret? She began to imagine her husband being brought home to her injured—or worse. Such things had happened in Ireland.
But when she tried to talk to Alexander he brushed her aside.
“You’ve no need to concern yourself, Kate, with matters you could not possibly understand. I assure you I am perfectly safe; this is not your barbarous Ireland. Forget your foolish imaginings. Soon, I trust, you will have a family to keep you occupied and can devote yourself to those things which are appropriate for women.”
He smiled at her but she did not smile back. She was annoyed for two reasons. In Ireland women deferred to their husbands in public, but within the walls of the home the real power lay with them. She would not have Alexander dismiss her so casually. And she resented the fact that, in spite of her protests, he continued to call her by a nickname she disliked. Yet he insisted that his full Christian name be used even in their most intimate moments.
She raised the issue of his meetings again and was denied again. Her frustration grew. The couple began bickering, at first playfully, then with increasing rancor. Alexander was determined not to lose control of his wife, and annoyed that she was more inclined to spend her passion on domestic arguments than in bed.
Kathleen began to feel the need of more than a confidante in Ireland. She required an ally closer to hand.
Chapter Ten
“I don’t want to make my husband angry, but I am worried about him,” Kathleen admitted to the priest from Saint Xavier’s, the Roman Catholic church four blocks from their house. Before their wedding Alexander had agreed that any children would be raised in the Catholic faith. Yet she was increasingly aware of his silent disapproval of her religion. Going to Mass had become almost an act of defiance. Fortunately, she liked Saint Xavier’s; it was very much a neighborhood church in a neighborhood that had few Catholics.
It made her think of home.
“Have you learned the name of this secret society he belongs to?” Father Paul asked as she sat with him in the parlor of the presbytery. He thought the church dark and rather gloomy at the best of times, so he encouraged parishioners to speak of their problems in the more relaxed atmosphere of the priests’ residence.
At that moment the housekeeper appeared carrying a tray with hot coffee and tiny cakes arranged on a lace doily. Kathleen took a cup of coffee and a cherry cake, then waited until the woman left the room. “Freemasons.”
The priest inhaled sharply.
Father Paul was a lean, well-proportioned man in his thirties. In dramatic contrast to his fair hair he had dark, swooping eyebrows like ravens’ wings. A second-generation I
rish-American, he was the sort of man of whom women said, “What a pity he’s a priest!” But if celibacy weighed heavily upon him he gave no indication.
“Are you certain your husband’s a Freemason, Kathleen?”
“I am, though he didn’t tell me.”
“Then how did you find out?”
“From my next-door neighbor, Alderman Claffey’s wife. She thought I already knew. She said I should be glad Alexander is a Freemason because they support one another politically; that’s how her husband became an alderman. She gave the impression that it was almost like joining a church. I believe there are Freemasons in Ireland, though I know nothing about them.”
Father Paul’s blue eyes darkened as if someone had turned off a light behind them. “In spite of its arcane philosophy and symbolism, Freemasonry is not a religious institution. Most Masons are strongly Protestant, however. I must tell you, the church does not approve of Freemasonry. Pope Clement banned the society in the eighteenth century for being anti-papist, but it has continued to flourish.”
“Is it dangerous? To my husband, I mean?”
“Not dangerous in the physical sense. Is that what you were worried about?”
She nodded.
“Then I can put your mind at ease on that score.” When Father Paul smiled, the ravens’ wing eyebrows lifted and his eyes sparkled. Kathleen found herself smiling back at him, a smile so radiant the priest caught his breath.
Leaning forward, he put his hand over hers. It was intended merely as a solicitous gesture, but a vein suddenly began throbbing above his temple.
Kathleen could not help noticing.
Like every good Irish girl of her time, she had come to her marriage bed a virgin. Alexander had done nothing to awaken her. Her husband was vigorous but single-minded. When in the throes of passion he seemed barely aware of her except as a stimulus and receptacle. Afterward, he acted almost embarrassed, turning away and falling asleep without speaking. Always with his back to her.
In the intense gaze of Father Paul she read hints of a far different nature, tightly held in check but simmering beneath the surface.
When she left Saint Xavier’s she walked for a long time before returning to the brownstone. Only two years before she had thought herself the luckiest girl alive. A devoted fiancé, a new home in America, prosperity and a bright future; how wonderful those things had seemed from the outside.
Now she was inside, and nothing was as it had appeared. And Alexander was talking about a family. Was she ready for babies, ready to lose herself in the nursery and the endless rounds of pram pushing and talking with other young mothers about colic and teething?
In Ireland she would have accepted such a life as inevitable. But there was something different in the air in America, a sense of possibilities even for a woman.
Her heels pounding against the pavement, Kathleen scolded herself for being ungrateful. She had so much by comparison to women her age back home in Ireland. Why was it not enough? If she voiced her reservations about motherhood to her priest, what would he say?
Why did Father Paul’s touch disturb her so?
In her next letter to her brother at Saint Enda’s, Kathleen sought to reveal nothing of her personal feelings. Ned occupied a world that seemed far distant now, receding into mist and memory.
She wrote:
My dear brother, I hope everything is well at home. Frank is a hopeless correspondent, and Norah is far too busy to put pen to paper, though I write her regularly. I rely on you to keep in touch with them and let me know if there is anything they or the girls need. Times are always hard in Ireland, I know.
Oh, Ned, I do wish you were here, and I’m not just being selfish. Under the circumstances you had no chance to appreciate America on your first visit, but this is the best possible place for young people. Anyone who wants to can find work, I am told. There is so much to do, concerts and museums and various other entertainments available every day of the week. It’s a far cry from home and a Saturday night seisún in someone’s parlor with local boys playing tin whistles and a fiddle.
You say you are developing a fondness for theater. If you were in New York now I could take you to see Laurette Taylor in a play called Peg O’ My Heart, which has received glowing reviews in the papers. Or we could go to the Astor Theater. An eight-reel motion picture called Quo Vadis is showing there to capacity crowds. Just imagine! I would love to see it, but of course a lady cannot go without an escort, and Alexander is not interested in such fads.
When he read Kathleen’s letter Ned thought it sounded a bit too wistful, as if she was trying hard to convince herself how wonderful everything was.
July 15, 1913
IRISH HOME RULE BILL AGAIN DEFEATED IN
HOUSE OF LORDS, 302–64.
Chapter Eleven
IN his narrow dormitory bed at Saint Enda’s, Ned dreamed of the Titanic—not as he had last seen her, broken and dying, but as she had first appeared to him, a sovereign of the seas, dynamic and complete, offering everything a human might require.
She had seemed invulnerable then.
As he ran down the hurling field with the camán in his hands and his teammates in their white jerseys and knickers shouting encouragement, he would have a sudden, flashing memory of the deck games aboard the Titanic. Passengers laughing and carefree in their sporting togs.
The dark sea waiting.
ONCE he got over his initial shyness Ned had no difficulty making friends at Saint Enda’s. He did not talk much about himself for fear of uncovering memories he could not bear to face. But he listened to others with a flattering intensity of interest that soon made him popular with students and staff alike. Even the headmaster’s busy mother found time to reminisce with him.
Margaret Brady Pearse did not see her elder son as an authority figure. To her he was still the little boy who shyly brought her flowers every May Day. “Pat was such a grave, sweet child,” she told Ned.1 “But he had a hot temper, too; he would not be laughed at or tolerate bullying. From the beginning Willie idolized him and wanted to do everything his older brother did. They’re still devoted to each other, you know. Pat would kill for Willie and Willie feels the same about him.
“When Pat was old enough we sent him to the Christian Brothers’ school because it was the best education we could get for him. The brothers had a reputation for preparing students for the Intermediate examination no matter what it took. Everyone knew they could be brutal to boys, though, and I worried for Pat. But one of his teachers, Brother Maunsell, was a native Irish speaker from County Kerry,2 and once Pat started studying Irish he was happy enough. He always loved the hero tales.”
“So did I!” exclaimed Ned. “When I was haying in the fields I used to pretend I was Cuchulain attacking Maeve’s warriors with the scythe.”
Mrs. Pearse said, “My boys never worked in the fields; they are city boys, born and bred. Their late father—he was an Englishman, you know—was a fine sculptor. The churches ’round the city competed for his stonework. He provided well for us, though since his death we have put all our money into Pat’s school. Yet I suppose the Irish love for the land is in the blood.”
“Were your people farmers?”
She shook her head. “Not at all. Both my parents were Dublin born. My grandfather farmed, but he had to move to the city during the Famine. His sons drove hackney cabs here, and his daughters went into service. When I married James Pearse—he was a widower, and a good catch—I was living in a tenement near the North Strand. Now we’re surrounded by fields and woods, and Pat even keeps a tiny cottage in Connemara to be closer to what he calls ‘the real Ireland.’”
Ned laughed at the irony. “And to think, I came up to the city to get away from the real Ireland!”
IN the classroom Ned devoured knowledge as if making up for lost time. Sometimes he crept from his bed after the other boys in his dormitory were asleep and, with a paraffin lamp in his hand, made his way to the inner hall to sit hunched over his
books until dawn streaked the eastern sky.
With amazement he read of the wealth of natural resources Ireland had once possessed, the lure that had brought the looters.
All gone now. Taken away, with only the potato as recompense.
At one time the Irish had been forbidden by English law to educate their children, to own a horse worth more than five pounds, to play the Irish pipes, to wear the color green…the list went on and on. Most of the oppressive statutes were no longer enforced, but the shamed submission they had engendered remained.
Ned’s initial surprise at Ireland’s former prosperity became a sense of outrage over her humiliation. He studied more, worked harder, strove to understand what had happened to this land, this people.
NED’S scholastic progress was duly reported to Robert Beauchamp. “The boy appears to have a good mind,” the solicitor grudgingly admitted in a letter to Lord Inchiquin. “He may make something of himself some day—within certain limitations, of course.”
In fine weather lessons were taught in the open air after the custom of the Socratic school.3 The teachers assembled the boys around them on the grassy lawn and stood to lecture, or sat among their pupils for more informal discussion. At first Ned was homesick for the rolling fields of Clare, the Atlantic wind as reliable as a shoulder to lean upon, the wide high sky. He hated being shut up in the classroom, and was thankful that Padraic Pearse gave his young charges all he could of sun, wind, freedom.
That was a word often spoken at Saint Enda’s. Saoirse. Freedom.
The Hermitage was both school and family home. The Pearses were close-knit and loving, with pet names for one another. Family and friends referred to Pádraic simply as “Pat.” But Mrs. Pearse called Willie “Little Man,” and her elder daughter, Margaret, was nicknamed “Wow-wow.”
1916 Page 8