The Rebels of Ireland by Edward Rutherfurd
The centre of attention was O’Toole.
Fortunatus had not encountered Art O’Toole before. The man was quite young, still in his early thirties. A fair, rangy fellow, eyes like pools of blue water, a long, thin face with a wide mouth and high, protruding cheekbones: in Walsh’s imagination, he took shape as a fair-haired violin. During much of the year, he lived with his family up in the Wicklow Mountains, but in the summer and early autumn he would take to the roads, as the poet bards of Ireland had done since ancient times, and be welcomed with respect wherever he went. Usually, in modest farms and hamlets, he would perform his art for the native Irish, who could only provide him with food and shelter for the night—and he surely only did what he did for the love of the thing. Sometimes at such ceili gatherings, he would sing, tapping his foot to the rhythm while a fiddler or two accompanied him. Or often he would tell stories from the old Irish folk tales. But best of all, if he was in the mood, accompanying himself on a small harp he carried with him, he would quietly sing verses of his own composition.
There were a number of poets of this kind on the island. The greatest of them was Turlough Carolan, a poet musician who had been blind from his birth. “Blind as mighty Homer,” Sheridan had once described him to Fortunatus, “and with the most phenomenal memory I have ever encountered. As for his verses, as one who is familiar with all the classical Greeks, I should rank some of them with Pindar himself.” Carolan lived in the region and had been to Quilca several times. O’Toole was his junior by twenty years, but in the opinion of many, might one day be his equal.
During the meal, the poet talked sparingly, reserving himself for his performance afterwards; but when he did speak, it was in a pleasant, easy manner, and it was clear to Fortunatus that, as well as an encyclopaedic knowledge of Irish poetry, he was well acquainted with classical literature and even some recent English authors. He drank a little aqua vitae. “I offer you wine, Art,” Sheridan said, “but I know you prefer usquebaugh.”
“I do,” confessed the poet, “for I find that if I drink wine, my brain becomes clouded, whereas the water of life has little effect upon me, except somewhat to sharpen the faculties.”
“That,” Sheridan responded happily, “is exactly what claret does for me.”
O’Toole spoke to Swift with a marked respect, and to Walsh in a courteous manner, saying that he had heard much good of his brother Terence. He also spoke a few words to young Garret, who only replied in monosyllables, and Walsh supposed that the young man might be shy. But at one point, he did address the poet directly.
“What part of Wicklow do you come from?” he asked.
“From up in the hills. On the road to Glendalough. Rathconan is the name of the place.”
“Would you know the Brennans there?”
A faint cloud seemed to pass across O’Toole’s face.
“There is a family of that name there.” He looked at Garret carefully. “Have you a connection with Rathconan?”
Garret stared at him.
“You could say so.”
“Ah.” O’Toole nodded thoughtfully. “The green eyes. That would explain it.” But he made no further comment.
When the meal was done, he moved to a chair apart and took up his harp.
“First,” he announced, “some music.”
First he played a short jig, then a soft old Irish tune, so that Fortunatus assumed this was a prelude to an Irish tale. But then, to his surprise, O’Toole suddenly began to play a lively Italian piece which, to his even greater astonishment, he recognised as an adaptation of a violin concerto by Vivaldi. Seeing his amazement, Swift leant over to him.
“I have heard blind Carolan make an Italian composition of his own in just the same style,” he whispered. “Your Irish musicians could be the equal of any in Europe.”
Having proved a point, O’Toole skilfully returned to some Irish airs, and after three or four of these, he paused, while Sheridan brought him some usquebaugh. By this time, the women from the kitchen had also come back into the room, together with the boy from the stable and the men from the farm, so the whole household was present. “Now,” the poet said quietly, “a tale or two.” And sometimes singing, sometimes reciting, he wove the magical tales of old Ireland, of Cuchulainn, and Finn Mac Cumhaill, of ancient kings, and saints, and mysterious happenings. Most of the time he spoke in Irish, but once or twice in English, and always with the greatest ease. Apart from the occasional sip of his drink, he did not pause for over an hour.
“You will be celebrated, Art, long after we are forgotten,” said Sheridan warmly when he paused at last. For several minutes, the company drank quietly, the conversation little more than a murmur. Then O’Toole ran his fingers lightly over his harp again. “A composition,” he announced, “of my own. I call it, ‘The River Boyne.’”
For if the Irish Catholic cause had been utterly lost at the Battle of the Boyne, it had certainly not been forgotten. How could it be, when Protestant landlords occupied all the stolen Catholic land, and the law added insult to injury every day of a Catholic’s life? Small wonder, then, that the poets sang haunting, mournful songs to the Ireland that was lost, conjured visions of Ireland restored to its ancient glory, and dreamed dreams of the day when that should be. Above all, however, it was the sadness, the tender yearning for the Jacobite cause, that the harpers like Carolan expressed. And it was just such a lovely lament—for the bloodshed by the magical River Boyne, for the loss of Limerick, and the Wild Geese long since fled—that Art O’Toole sang now.
And it touched them all, Irish and English alike. Fortunatus looked around him and saw the serving women with tears in their eyes; Swift, silent but clearly moved; Sheridan, eyes half closed, half smiling, like an angel; even Tidy seemed thoughtful, aware, perhaps, of the beauty of the music. But it was Garret Smith’s face that Walsh’s eyes rested upon.
The transformation was remarkable. Gone was the self-absorbed, sulky look that he had mostly worn before. His face had relaxed; he was gazing at the poet with shining eyes, his mouth half open, rapt.
Whatever the young man’s faults, thought Fortunatus, young Garret had genius: there was no question. He really belongs at Trinity, he thought, and Terence and I could send him there if only he weren’t a Catholic. But as a Catholic he can’t go, nor enter the learned professions for which nature so obviously intended him. Instead, he must be a frustrated and discontented grocer’s apprentice. He shook his head at the terrible waste of it all. He thought of the conversation he’d had with the worthy priest and wondered what Garret’s feelings might be for the servant girl, illiterate no doubt, that he’d been busy seducing. At this very moment, very possibly, the poor girl was being taken back to her family up in the Wicklow Mountains. To the very place, it now turned out, where O’Toole himself lived. What strange coincidences. Was there some hidden meaning here? What did it all mean?
Nobody rose early the next day. In the middle of the morning, Fortunatus came down to find Garret sitting on a bench outside, reading Macbeth, and eating an oatcake. Sheridan and Swift were talking quietly down by the water.
At noon, O’Toole appeared, took a little light refreshment, and said that he must be on his way as he had ten miles to walk to the village where he was next expected. Sheridan and he had a brief talk together at which, Fortunatus had no doubt, a guinea or two had been bestowed. Then all the party said their farewells and gave the thanks that the poet rightly took as his due. Garret murmured something to him in Irish, which Walsh did not catch, and the poet answered with a calm nod. Then, with a long, loping stride, he was gone.
They were not to dine until late in the afternoon. Sheridan and Swift clearly wished to continue their conversation alone, so when Garret had finished his reading, Walsh took him off for a short walk. He tried to draw the young man out about his reactions to O’Toole the night before. Garret said little, but it seemed to Fortunatus that there was a suppressed excitement in his manner, as though he had made some secret discovery or ma
It was later, during the meal, when Fortunatus brought up the other matter that had been on his mind.
“I need your advice,” he told Swift and Sheridan.
“And why is that?” his host asked amiably.
“To avoid eviction,” Walsh replied with a laugh. And he told them about the visit from his cousin Barbara Doyle, and her fury over Mr. Wood’s copper coins. “I haven’t the least idea,” he confessed, “how to satisfy her.”
“From all accounts,” remarked Sheridan, “there will be protests in the Dublin Parliament from every side.”
“Which the government in England will ignore,” said Swift bluntly. “For I have it upon excellent authority that they mean to do nothing at all.”
“Yet surely,” said Fortunatus, “after the scandal of the South Sea Bubble, the London men will know that their reputation is at a low ebb. You’d think they’d be anxious to avoid any financial transaction that looks improper.”
The great crash, three years ago, of the entire London financial market, in a staggering series of overblown expectations and bogus stock offerings, had left the reputation of the City of London and the British government in tatters. Walsh could only be glad that his own savings, and those of most of his friends, had been safely in Ireland. There was hardly a town in England where someone hadn’t been ruined.
“You underestimate the arrogance of the English,” Dean Swift replied grimly. “The government believes that the complaints from Ireland are due to political faction. They suppose that those who raise objections do so only because they are friends of members of the opposition party in the English Parliament.”
“That is absurd.”
“The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it.”
“I wish, Dean,” said Fortunatus fervently, “that you would use your satiric pen in this cause. Even an anonymous pamphlet would be a far more powerful weapon than any poor speech I could make.” The Dean’s satires in the past had been published anonymously— though no one ever doubted who’d written them.
The Dean and Sheridan glanced at each other. Swift seemed to hesitate.
“Were I to consider such a thing,” he said guardedly, “it could only be after the Dublin Parliament has debated the issue and had a response from London. For me to write, even anonymously, must be a last resort. As Dean of Saint Patrick’s, I may speak out on a moral question, but not a political one.”
Fortunatus nodded.
“If it should come to that, however,” he smiled, “you must let me tell my cousin Margaret it was only thanks to my prompting that you did so. If I can take the credit, I may keep a roof over my head.”
“Very well. As you wish,” Swift answered. “Yet the truth is, Fortunatus, that I not only share your view about this business; my indignation surpasses your own.” He frowned, before continuing with some heat: “For this man to flood Ireland with his debased coinage, I find the most insupportable villainy and insolence. Then, when we complain, Wood and his hirelings represent it as disloyalty. It is infamous. Yet it is believed. And the reason for it,” he continued angrily, “I must acknowledge as an Englishman, is that while the English have a contempt for most nations, they reserve an especial contempt for Ireland.”
Walsh was quite taken aback at the sudden anger of this outburst from the taciturn Dean, but Sheridan smiled affectionately.
“There, Jonathan, you are a wise and circumspect fellow, yet your passion for truth and justice will suddenly come out and make you quite as reckless as I am.”
“Ireland’s wool trade is ruined,” Swift went on, “she is vilely treated at every turn, and it is done with impunity. Let me say, Walsh, what I think the Dublin Parliament should do. It should forbid English goods to enter Ireland. Perhaps then the English Parliament, and these operators like Wood, might learn to mend their ways.”
“That is strong medicine,” Fortunatus said.
“A necessary cure for a national reproach. But even this would be just a little bleeding, Walsh, a temporary cure. For the underlying cause is this. Ireland will be mistreated so long as its Parliament is subservient to that of London. We elect men as our representatives, yet their decisions are set at naught. London has not the moral or constitutional right to legislate for Ireland.”
“A radical doctrine.”
“Hardly so. It has been said in the Dublin Parliament for more than twenty years.” Indeed, leading Irish politicians of the previous generation like Molyneux had advanced just such a case. But Walsh was still surprised to hear it coming from the Dean of Saint Patrick’s. “Let me make clear,” Swift said emphatically, “it is my opinion that all government without the consent of the governed is the very essence of slavery.”
And it was now that young Garret Smith suddenly burst into the conversation.
The truth was that, for some time now, the other men had forgotten him. He had been sitting on Swift’s right but had not said a word, and while he was talking to Walsh and Sheridan, the Dean had had his back to him.
“Welcome,” he cried quite loudly, “to the Jacobite cause.”
The Dean turned sharply. Fortunatus stared at him. The young man’s face was flushed. He wasn’t drunk, but he’d evidently been drinking quietly by himself all through the meal. His eyes were shining. Was there genuine excitement, bitter irony, or outright mockery in his tone? It was impossible to say. But whatever it was, there was more of it to come.
“The Catholics of Ireland will bless you.” He laughed a little wildly.
And Fortunatus felt the blood drain from his face.
The boy didn’t understand what he had said. That was evident. But it was too late now. Dean Swift was turning upon him, and his face was black with fury.
“I am not, Sir, a Jacobite,” he thundered.
For, strangely, it was not the suggestion of Catholic sympathies that was so damaging to the Protestant Dean of Saint Patrick’s: it was calling him a Jacobite.
How could Garret understand? In the complex world of English politics, a man like Swift had to be careful. Though his sympathies had originally been with the Whigs, who had supported the new Protestant settlement after throwing out Catholic King James, Swift as a literary man had found friends and patrons who belonged to the Tory party. So in the minds of the Whigs, who were in power now, Swift was in the Tory camp. And since some of those Tories had formerly been supporters of King James, there was always the suspicion that any Tory might secretly desire the return of the hated Stuart royal house. Any Tory whom they desired to destroy, therefore, they’d try to expose as a Jacobite—a traitor to King George and the Protestant order. Guilt by association.
Hadn’t the Jacobite cause died when the Stuart Pretender had so utterly failed to make any headway back in 1715? You couldn’t be sure. King George and his family were hardly popular. In the cockpit of Westminster and the great country houses where rich English lords wove their political webs, intrigue was always in the air. Every man had enemies, even the faraway Dean of Saint Patrick’s, and there had been whispers from them that Swift was a Jacobite.
Did it matter? Oh, indeed it did. You could complain about Wood’s copper coins, you could argue that Ireland should be ruled from Dublin, you could even mock the government in a satire, and probably get away with it because, in the political world, that was considered fair game. But if they could prove you a Jacobite, that was treasonable, and they could bring you down like a pack of hounds upon a fox. It didn’t take much, either. A careless word in print, a sermon that could be misinterpreted, even an unwise choice of text, and your position in the church or university, your chances of preferment, the very bread upon your table, could be gone. These niceties were well understood by Walsh and Sheridan, but obviously not by young Garret. Under no circumstances could Swift allow himself to be labelled as a Jacobite.
“But you are!” cried Garret Smith cheerfully. “And i
Swift glowered at him, then turned a furious look upon Walsh, as though to say, “You brought him here.”
The trouble was, thought Fortunatus, that the boy was actually right. When Swift spoke of the governed, Walsh knew very well that he meant the members of the Protestant Church of Ireland. Swift entirely believed in the need for the Ascendancy, and for the exclusion of Catholics and Dissenters alike. But the man’s innate passion for justice was leading him farther than he himself realised. That’s it, thought Fortunatus: he’s a good man, at war with himself, who doesn’t entirely know it. Perhaps that was the wellspring of his strange satire, of his love for stern classical order and Irish exuberance all together.
“You are impertinent, young man, you are ignorant, and you are wrong,” Swift shouted in a rage. “The Jacobites are traitors, and as for the Catholic religion, Sir, I must tell you very plainly that I abominate it. I abominate it utterly.” And he rose from the table and strode from the room.
“Damn,” said Sheridan. “Damn.” He sighed. “You’d better take your kinsman away, Fortunatus, first thing in the morning.”
It was a clear, crisp morning as they rode away from Quilca, but Walsh’s mood was hardly cheerful. Sheridan had spoken to him briefly before he left.
“I’m truly sorry that your stay is cut short, Fortunatus, but I can’t have Swift annoyed,” he had said. “Your young kinsman has genius, undoubtedly, but I fear he has much to learn.” What upset Walsh, however, was the thought that because of this, he might not be asked to Quilca again.