Tipperary (3 page)

Mr. O'Brien makes a slight error when he says that the Treeces had been rewarded “for helping Oliver Cromwell on his fiery rampage through Ireland in the 1650's.” So they had, but the reward consisted of being granted a bigger acreage in Tipperary than the estate they already farmed in the poorer county of Clare, some sixty miles to the west.

Originally the Treece family had come over from Yorkshire. They formed part of the Munster Plantation in the late 1500s, which sought to replace the native Irish in the country's southernmost province with loyal English subjects. Many went back to England and Scotland when the tides of history began to drown them.

But others of those colonists stayed on. They were called “planters,” because they had been planted in the land from which the native Irish had been uprooted. Now they rode the waves of change, and having caused much of the past's turbulence, they had to survive in the ever more violent future.

Of the nameless tenant's house torn down in that eviction, not the slightest vestige remains, not even a mark on the ground. Its location—or, rather, the outlined locus of a tenancy—can still be traced on nineteenth-century land maps. An old fence post still stands that might have marked the tenant boundary, but the ground has long been pasture, probably since the day George Treece leveled the place.

The woods, though, have survived, and increased. After the 1921 treaty between Ireland and England, the new Irish Forestry Commission took over that terrain northeast of the town of Tipperary, close to the village of Dundrum. It maintained the fine growths planted by English governors, and even though some modern house building has encroached on the roads up from the sawmill, the countryside still offers a deep sense of peace. And there are still tall ferns and bracken at the edge of the trees.

As for the people who, in Charles O'Brien's words, “lived in the cottages, all gaunt with the same undernourishment”—they must have traveled some distance that day. Many no doubt came from the village of Dundrum, where the Treeces were particularly hated. It also seems likely that some walked out from the town of Tipperary itself—word of a threatened eviction spread like wildfire in those days.

The fact that they brought no weapons suggests that (a) they had heard in advance that a militia would attend; typically, such evictions could be accompanied by stone throwing and, in larger or more desperate cases, riots. Or, and equally possible, (b) they were generally too disempowered and hungry to offer any significant resistance.

Charles O'Brien's choice to begin his manuscript with such an incident begins to explain why he called his document a “History.” He prefers not to call it an “autobiography” or “memoir” because he sought to perceive the dramatic personal events of his own life in tandem with the political upheavals of the era.

As already stated, I have recounted that eviction scene because it has recurrently haunted me; also, because I found it emblematic of the political and social agitations in the Ireland into which I was born. Now I add another reason. The Treece eviction, with its compelling elements of passion, violence, and land, has come to form the opening chapter in what amounts to a History of My Own Life—a task that I undertook for a most specific and personal purpose, which I will here explain.

In the year 1900, when I was forty, I had not yet married (to my mother's oft-stated concern). Then I met an exceptional person. As you shall soon know the whole tale, let me abridge it here by saying that I found myself hurled into a passion deeper than any of which I had read or ever imagined; it was Abélard to Héloïse, Dante for Beatrice, Arthur and Guinevere at Camelot. It elevated my spirit and yet pitched me into an awful confusion, one in which I lost direction for a time long enough to make me think I might never recover it. My wooing began in passion, was defined by violence, and ended up circumscribed by land; and all these elements molded my soul as surely and as fiercely as George Treece and his whip shaped the life of that unfortunate little family.

Of the passion, I shall write more and at greater length—indeed it is, in the main part, the purpose of this History. As to the violence, with the irony that has run through my life as a vein runs down my arm, it began days after I had met this marvelous young woman who, without her knowledge, became the core of my life. I recall reflecting that it was as though the great new beauty in my heart required balancing by the force of the world.

The first attack came after I had spent an afternoon in the city of Limerick, seeking the help of a dear friend. She had listened carefully to my lyrical descriptions of my new love, and then counseled me wisely on how to win the girl. I had left her house and was walking along a street when I saw two men, one fat, one thin, and a shabby woman lounging by a shop entrance. They did not catch my eye in any significant way; they were disheveled and, I thought, of a low type.

Of a sudden, after I had passed them, I received a blow on the side of my head. Never before, not as a child or a boy, had I felt as much as a mild cuff on the ear or any personal assault—and now physical violence arrived with ferocity. A stinging noise sang like a bee in my brain—and more blows landed. Pain seared my mouth as a back tooth was knocked loose; a boot on the shins made me shout with pain. For reasons that I did not yet understand, I thought of Saul on the road to Damascus. My shin received a severe gash, a hobnailed boot struck my hip. More blows on the side of the head followed, more kicks on the shins and hips; I was bewildered and close to tears; I would have wept, I think, had it not become so urgent to fight back.

I began to defend myself—and straightaway hurt my knuckles when my fist struck the fat man of the attackers, not on his face but on a bone of his shoulder, because I aimed the punch incompetently.

“Get him on the ground,” the woman shouted. “On the ground!”

Next, both men clambered upon me and their accomplice, with her thin pointy nose, ran forward and began to hit my face and head with her little fists. This annoyed me beyond measure, especially as I, a gentleman, could not fight against a woman.

I began to spin around in a circle, very swiftly, to avoid the harridan's slaps and to dislodge the two villains who were swinging upon me. The fat one fell off quickly and squealed in pain like an infant, and that improved my morale. Although the other person clung tighter, I soon dislodged him too, and I must have shrugged them both off with some force because they lay on the ground in a moaning disorder. The woman came rushing at me, waving her mean and dirty little hands, shouting, “Now look at you! You're after doing them damage!”

This seemed illogical (even for Ireland), so I said, “But, madam, they attacked me.”

“You're a scut, that's what you are—you're a rank scut.”

Then, as a gentleman opened his door to clear this commotion from the front of his house, the small woman ran away. The two men, moaning and groaning, rose from the mud of the street and took themselves off too. I retrieved my hat, which showed no damage, bowed slightly to the inquisitive house-owner, who went back indoors, and continued on my way.

Who were they? I do not know. At first I assumed that footpads, robbers, had come upon me—but they had made no attempt to take money or valuables (and I was wearing an excellent watch). Next I presumed mistaken identity—that some family or neighborhood fracas had spilt over into the wider streets of the city, and I had somehow been mistaken for a member of the dispute. My questions progressed; perhaps somebody had hired them to attack me, because the assailants and their female companion did not have the appearance of people whom I—a gentleman, and of good family—knew or would have sought for company? But who might have hired them? I believed myself generally popular— even though I admit one or two antagonisms in life, as any man may acquire; but I had no gambling creditors, jealous husbands, or the usual such adversaries.

Now came what I think of as my Damascene moment! To be assailed physically is to be reduced temporarily to a form of helplessness not unlike childhood. I felt unprotected and in danger. At the same time, here was I endeavoring to win the heart—and the life's companionship—of an unusual and important young woman whom I had recently met, and yet I felt as weak as water. My next thought was: If a pair of ruffians may so dislodge my general resolve, what right can I have in my romantic ambitions? “Faint heart never won fair lady”; truly, “only the brave deserve the fair.”

Generally, in those days, I ambled through the world; I was a reasonable and wandering fellow, I went about my vocation trying to heal the sick, and I took little thought beyond the morrow. But now! In a blaze of mental and emotional power, I resolved to become the master and commander of my life. Under a streetlamp, I stood and regained my composure, and felt the vow forming in my heart—the vow to alter myself and become remarkable.

My method became the material that you now see here:
My Life as a History of Which I Am Author.
I did not set out to be vainglorious. It is rather that I hoped by setting my events and remembrances down on paper, I might come to understand, as a first step, how to make myself outstanding. Writing the History of my life would, I believed, help me come to terms with my fortunes, and lead me through the rapids of this new and dominating passion to which I must fit myself.

As I reflected, a mist lifted and a calm floated down upon me. I thought: If I can make myself into a good man, a fine man, then it follows as the night the day that I shall be loved as I wish to be, by the person whose love I seek. (My father said many times, “Give her up, she's a losing bet.” I could not.)

But how would I sustain the effort? I have a fear of boredom and therefore, in this charting of my life, I soon knew that I must write about matters other than myself. To avoid impatience with the little details of my own days, I would need a device. Happily, I had one at hand.

I could see from the politics of Ireland that I stood on the lid of a boiling pot—all politics stem from anger at something or other. And since my own life had now been set ablaze with unfulfilled passion, the fever in my country, it seemed, echoed the fever in my heart. In short, I would write a History of my country in my lifetime and it would also be a History of my life.

How different it could be, I thought. I have had the good fortune to see Ireland at first hand, often in most intimate circumstances, because I commenced my adult life as a Traveling Healer. Up and down Ireland I visited the ailing in their homes. Castle or cottage, I cured them—or tried to. With drinks and poultices made from the herbs of the countryside, plucked from the hedgerows and sometimes mixed with secret mineral powders, I was often able to make people better in their health; I brought about recovery. As a consequence they loved me, they welcomed me back into their houses, they celebrated me—and they gave me their confidences.

Next I acquired another means of intimate access to my country's people. Although I am neither trained historian nor scholar, I have always gathered people's tales and I have always enjoyed meeting figures of interest and significance. Thus, while healing the sick, I also worked as a Traveling Correspondent. I was retained permanently by no one periodical; rather, I gathered impressions—of peoples, places, occurrences—and put them together and submitted them.

Many of my accounts and essays appeared in distinguished journals and newspapers, notably the
Vindicator,
and I was much fulfilled by that. Consequently, I was granted access to anybody whom I chose to meet; I am still astonished by the zeal with which people want to see their names in printed pages. Thus my twin professions of healer and scribe opened many doors. I felt confident that the narrations I derived from such a life would stand one day as a modest achievement, a small personal History of Ireland during my lifetime—a life of love and pain and loss and trouble and delight and knowledge.

A portrait in oils of the woman with whom Charles O'Brien fell in love hangs in Trinity College, Dublin. It was painted by Sir William Orpen, a distinguished Anglo-Irish artist of the Edwardians. Orpen saw a very beautiful thirty-year-old woman of determined character. Her heavy and shiny fair hair has been cut to neck length. Orpen painted her mouth in a straight line, and her brown eyes looked directly at him.