The Star of the Sea (67 page)

The above events all happened. They belong to fact.

As for the rest – the details, the emphases, certain devices of narration and structure, whole events which may never have occurred, or may have happened quite differently to how they are described – those belong to the imagination. For that no apology whatsoever is offered, though some will insist that one is needed.

Perhaps they are correct, by their own lights anyway. To take the events of reality and meld them into something else is a task not to be undertaken coldly or carelessly. On the question of whether such an endeavour is worthwhile or even moral, readers may wish to pronounce for themselves. Such questions must hover over any account of the past: whether the story may be understood without asking who is telling it; to which intended audience and to what precise end.

As for David Merridith’s murderer, his answer is this: on the wall of his study hangs the image of a monster which he cut from a newspaper seventy-five years ago, when he was young enough to believe that ends justify means. Love and freedom are such hideous
words. So many cruelties have been done in their names. He was a very weak man; and a rational man: a combination capable of realising the unspeakable. He believed he could not live without what he desired, and what he desired was owned by another. When he wept in the night, that was what he wept for. And still he weeps now, though for different reasons. As to whether he would have desired beyond that terrible limit had the prize been free, he does not know. He called this deformity ‘love’ but part of it was hatred; another part was vanity and yet another fear: the same reasons why men have always done murder. His life was unimaginable without possessing the prize. Some call that patriotism; others call it love. But murder is murder no matter the translation.

He is an old man now with very little left to him. People are kind when they see him in the street. They know he once wrote something, but they do not know what. There was a time long ago when he garnered citations for his work, when he met with Presidents and eminent men. But the times did not last; and he was glad when they ended. He visits the tomb of his wife every morning. In the evenings he sits in his window and writes; and the portrait of a killer glares down from his wall. Sometimes it reminds him of Pius Mulvey; sometimes of Thomas David Merridith; but mostly of other untouchables he has known who lived to great ages and died in their beds.

Many on the
Star
had their secrets: their shames. Few have kept them hidden for quite so long.

The stare of the murderer intimates many things, but one thing mainly, which he sometimes forgets. That every image committed to paper contains the ghost of the author who fashioned it. Outside the frame, beyond the border, is often the space where the subject is standing. A shifting and elusive presence, certainly, but a palpable one for its camouflages. He is there, the killer, in the pictures he paints. But they also contain the untold histories, as every man who ever hated contained the blood of his innumerable fathers. Every woman. Every man.

All the way back to Cain.

G. Grantley Dixon.

New York City.

Easter Saturday, 1916.

¹
It was Mr Newby and not the author who composed the arresting ‘standfirst’ texts which introduced the chapters of the original volume, with their hair-raising references to ‘SHOCKING DETAILS’, ‘WICKED DEEDS’, ‘HIDDEN SECRETS’ and so on. Having vexed the author utterly at the time of publication, they now seem rather innocent (though of course they are not). They are left unaltered here as a fond memorial to a friend who could sometimes be a little unscrupulous. – GGD

²
He dropped the final ‘e’ from his surname early in his political career, arguing that ‘it made me appear too English.’ See Meadows, J.
Fifteen Rounds for Justice: The Story of My Life
(New York, 1892). – GGD

BACKGROUND: Mary Daly,
The Famine in Ireland
(Dublin Historical Association, 1986); R.F. Foster,
Modern Ireland 1600–1972
(Allen Lane, 1988); Joan Johnson,
James and Mary Ellis: Background and Quaker Famine Relief in Letterfrack
(Religious Society of Friends in Ireland, 2000); Helen Litton,
The Irish Famine: An Illustrated History
(Wolfhound, 1994); Kerby A. Miller,
Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America
(Oxford U.P., 1985); Cormac Ó Gráda,
The Great Irish Famine
(Macmillan, 1989); Tim Robinson
Connemara: Map and Gazetteer
(Folding Landscapes, Roundstone, 1990); William V. Shannon,
The American Irish
(Univ. of Massachusetts, 1963); Kathleen Villiers-Tuthill,
History of Clifden 1810–1860
and
Patient Endurance: The Great Famine in Connemara
(Connemara Girl Publications, 1997). Larger bibliographies are available in the above works and at the website of the University of Wales,
www.swan.ac.uk/history
. Other websites featuring primary source texts and illustrations include
www.ucg.ie/depts/history/famine0.html
and
www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine
.

EYE-WITNESS ACCOUNTS OF THE FAMINE: William Bennett,
Six Weeks in Ireland
(Gilpin, London, 1847)
¹
;
Distress in Ireland: Narrative of William Edward Forster’s Visit
(Friends’ Historical Library, Morehampton Road, Dublin 4);
The Irish Journals of Elizabeth Smith 1840–1850
(Oxford U.P., 1980); Alexander Somerville,
Letters From Ireland During the Famine of 1847
(Irish Academic Press, 1994, K.D.M. Snell ed.); Asenath Nicholson,
Lights and Shades of Ireland
(1850)
²
.

SHIPBOARD EXPERIENCES: Details of individual voyages, some with passenger manifests, are at
www.theshipslist.com
. Many emigrant ballads are at ‘Irish Folksongs’,
www.acronet.net/~robokopp/irish
Thomas Gallagher’s
Paddy’s Lament: Ireland 1846–1847
(Harvest, 1982) quotes the unmediated recollections of numerous emigrants, many from the collection at the Folklore Department, Univ. College Dublin. Further material is held at the Irish National Archives, Bishop Street, Dublin 8 (
www.nationalarchives.ie
).
Voyage
from Dublin to Quebec
by James Wilson is at ‘Immigrants to Canada’, http://list.uwaterloo.ca/~marj/. Robert Whyte’s
Journey of an Irish Coffin Ship, 1847
is at fortunecity.com/littleitaly/amalfi. A work of which questions have been asked as to provenance is Gerald Keegan’s
Famine Diary
(or
Summer of Sorrow 1847)
, first published in 1895.

ILLUSTRATIONS: L. Perry Curtis’s
Apes and Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature
(1971) is a pioneering work on the subject, though some of its assumptions are questioned at
www.people.virginia.edu/~dnp5c/Victorian/index.html
, where a gallery of ‘simian’ Irish images is available. Steve Taylor’s website ‘Views of the Famine’ at
www.vassar.edu/~sttaylor
also features a collection of visual materials. I thank him for providing copies of certain illustrations and granting permission for their use. Artists, dates and original publications are listed if known.
(HW: Harper’s Weekly. J: Judy
magazine.
ILN: Illustrated London News;
JM is the
News
’s resident Irish artist, James Mahony.
PT: Pictorial Times. PU: Punch
magazine; JT is
Punch’s
principal cartoonist, John Tenniel.)

Title Page:
‘Scientific Racism’,
HW
. From
www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/unit
.
Prologue:
‘Emigrants Boarding a Ship at Waterloo Dock, Liverpool’,
ILN
, 6 Jul 1850, signed ‘Smyth S.’
Chapter I:
‘Poor House from Galway’,
HW
; by W.A. Rogers. From
www.people.virginia.edu/~eas5e/Irish/Famine
.
II:
‘The Pig and the Peer’,
PU
, 7 Aug 1880; JT.
III:
‘Meal-Cart Under Military Escort’,
PT
, 30 Oct 1847.
IV:
‘The Fenian Guy Fawkes’,
PU
, 28 Dec 1867; JT.
V:
‘Below Decks — Feeding Time’. From http://vassun.vassar.edu/~sttaylor/famine.
VI:
‘The Scalp of Brian Connor, near Kilrush Union House’,
ILN
, 22 Dec 1849; JM.
VII:
‘Keillines, near General Thompson’s Property’,
ILN
, Jan 1850; JM.
X:
‘Searching for Potatoes in a Stubble Field’,
ILN
, 22 Dec 1849; JM.
XI:
‘A Scalp at Caeuermore’,
ILN
, 29 Dec 1849; JM.
XIII:
‘The Village of Tullig’,
ILN
, 22 Dec 1849; JM.
XIV:
‘Bridget O’Donnel and Children’,
ILN
, 22 Dec 1849; JM.
XV:
‘Boy and Girl at Cahera’,
ILN
, 20 Feb 1847; JM.
XVI:
‘Funeral at Skibbereen’,
ILN
, 30 Jan 1847; ‘From a sketch by Mr H. Smith, Cork’; [the signature is ‘Smyth’].
XVII:
‘Cottage Interior’,
PT
, 7 Feb 1846.
XVIII:
Detail from ‘Three Irish Affections: Force, Folly and Fraud’,
J
, 8 Dec 1880.
XIX:
‘Pentonville Yard’, from
The Criminal Prisons of London and Scenes of London Prison Life
by Henry Mayhew and John Binny, London, 1862.
XXII:
‘A Farming Family Defending Their Home’,
PT
, 2 Jan 1847; and ‘The Ejectment’,
ILN
, 16 Dec 1848, signed ‘Landells’.
XXIII:
Cover of
Harriet Staunton; or married and starved for money
. Artist and date unknown.
XXVI:
‘Miss Kennedy Distributing Clothes at Kilrush’,
ILN
, 22 Dec 1849; JM.
XXVII:
‘Begging at Clonakilty’,
ILN
, 13 Feb 1847; JM.
XXVIII:
‘Irish Armed Peasants Waiting for the Arrival of a Meal-Cart’,
PT
, 30 Oct 1847.
XXIX:
‘The Day After the Ejectment’,
ILN
, 16 Dec 1848.
XXX:
‘The British Lion and the Irish Monkey’,
P
, 8 April 1848.
XXXI:
Detail from ‘Two Forces’,
PU
, 29 Oct 1881; JT.
XXXII:
Detail from
PU
anthology, Vol. LXXXII, 1882; JT.
XXXIII:
Detail from ‘Anything for Peace and Quiet’,
J
, 13 Apr 1881.
XXXV:
‘The Kind of Assisted Emigrant We Cannot Afford to Admit’ by F. Graetz, date unknown; possibly from
HW
.
XXXVI:
‘The Bogus American’, J, 15 Jan 1868.
XXXVII:
‘The Irish Frankenstein’,
PU
, 20 May 1882; JT, after similar work by J. Kenny Meadows in
PU
, 3 Mar 1843.
Page 371:
‘Herd Boy of the Purple Mountain’,
ILN
, 1849.
XXXVIII:
Detail from ‘The Irish-American Skunk’,
J
, 3 Aug 1881.
XXXIX:
‘Idiot and Mother’,
ILN
, 12 Aug 1846.
Epilogue:
‘The Village of Moveen’,
ILN
, December 1849; JM.

QUOTATIONS: Many of Mulvey’s words for stealing are quoted in Robert Hughes’s
The Fatal Shore
(Collins Harvill, 1987). The remarks of London traders (pp. 178 and 227) were recorded by Henry Mayhew in his
London Labour and the London Poor
(1861) and quoted in Donald Thomas’s
The Victorian Underworld
(John Murray, 1988). That compelling work also describes the ‘solitary’ system in British prisons of the era and the 1836 escape of a Newgate prisoner who climbed over the cheval-de-frise; I borrowed the latter detail for the flight of Mulvey, so again I acknowledge Donald Thomas. The real-life letters extracted throughout the novel are quoted in Kerby Miller’s
Emigrants and Exiles
and
Out of Ireland: The Story of Irish Emigration to America
(Aurum, 1994, with Paul Wagner). I thank Professor Miller for his kind assistance in identifying the owners of some of the documents, and I thank the institutions and individuals below for granting permissions.
Chapter II:
From Patrick Dunny, 1856; Collection of Arnold Schrier, Emeritus Prof. of History, Univ. of Cincinnati.
IV:
From Mary Brown; Schrier Collection.
V, VI
and
VIII:
From Mrs Nolan (first name unknown); by permission of the Deputy Keeper of Records at the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) T2054.
XI
and
XIII:
From James Richey; quoted from Miller; ownership of original document unknown. Possibly at PRONI T/2035/2345/2671 or D3561 (Richey Family Papers).
XVII:
From Daniel Guiney; Irish Nat. Archives (Famine Letters from the Quit Rent Office, Kingwilliamstown Estate).
XXXIII:
From Maurice Woulfe (or Wolfe), circa 1870; microfilm copy in Nat. Library of Ireland (mf p.3887); current ownership of original document unknown.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I thank my wife, Anne-Marie Casey, for so many kindnesses that I could not catalogue them without writing another book. For her patience, wisdom and endless charm, I am more grateful than the dedication of this novel could begin to convey. To Geoff Mulligan, my editor
at Secker, I once again express my thanks for his insight and skill. To my literary agent, Carole Blake, I add my gratitude; as I do to Conrad Williams, my screenwriting agent, also at Blake Friedmann Literary Agency in London. I thank Caroline Michel, my publisher at Vintage, Hans Juergen Balmes at Fischer Verlag, Germany, Lolies van Grunsven at Nijgh and Ditmar, Holland, Jean Pierre Sicre at Editions Phebus, France, Luigi Brioschi at Guanda, Italy, and Drenka Willen, my publisher at Harcourt Books, New York. Special thanks are due to my father, Seán, whose jaunts with me into Connemara three decades ago were the joy of my childhood. Advice on certain Irish translations was given by Dr Angela Bourke, Dr Diarmuid Breathnach, Peadar Lamb and Niall Mac Fhionnlaoich. I offer each of them the sincere
maith agat
of an almost monolingual whose own garblings will be identifiable to careful speakers of Irish. The book was designed with great skill by Peter Ward.

I also thank the following: John and Monica Casey; Denise Clack; Dr John de Courcy Ireland; Philomena Connolly at the Irish National Archives; Ciara Considine; Dr Mike Cronin of De Montfort Univ.; Joe and Jillian Cunningham; Isobel Dixon; Adrienne Fleming and Anthony Glavin; Seamus Hosey; Beth Humphries; Professor Declan Kiberd; Grainne Killeen; Noel Kissane (Keeper of Manuscripts at the Nat. Library of Ireland) and his colleague Justin Furlong; Michael McLoughlin; Ann McVeigh at PRONI; Kim Miley; Eimear O’Connor; Viola O’Connor; Faith O’Grady; Jonathan Owens (Oxford Univ. Press, New York) and Shelagh Phillips (OUP, London); Prof. Robert Patten at Rice Univ. Houston; Deirdre Shanahan; Stuart Williams at Secker, and Barbara Walker. Kay McEvilly of Cashel House Hotel, Connemara, discussed local surnames with me, and I thank the McEvilly family for their hospitality over a number of years. I thank the Arts Council of Ireland for awarding me the Macaulay Fellowship in 1995, which allowed me to do initial research for this novel in New York. I thank Dr Philip Smyly of the National Maritime Museum at Dun Laoghaire, who gave me access to the museum’s extensive collection despite the building being closed for renovation. Landlubber’s mistakes, and all other ones, are my own.