Tipperary (38 page)

From
The Nationalist & Tipperary Advertiser
(published in Clonmel every week since 1890), in its edition of 28 March 1908:

“On Wednesday evening, Charles O’Brien, of Ardobreen, Golden, was found lying on the roadside near the old entrance to Tipperary Castle. He had been shot twice, and neighbors reported having heard gunfire some hours earlier, but attributed it to fowlers, known to frequent the area. As this newspaper goes to press, no reports have come to hand regarding the gentleman's condition.”

SUNDAY, THE 19TH OF APRIL 1908.

What is to become of us? Three days after Bernard and I avoided telling Charles of Miss Burke's marriage, Charles was shot. We know not why. We know not by whom. He was struck in the leg and the neck by heavy bullets.

We have been putting together the pieces of the incident. Charles was seen by neighbors as he rode down from the castle to the main road at past four o'clock. It had been raining heavily. The same neighbors saw two men riding by and then heard gunshots. Then Charles was pitched from his new horse, Maudie, who died under him. She was killed when the bullet passed through Charles's leg and into her heart.

At five o'clock and again at six, I had been asking myself why Charles had not come home. Had he decided to sleep in the castle tonight, as he sometimes did? At some minutes before seven o'clock, we heard a commotion in the yard. Our neighbor Mattie Hogan came to the door. I answered the knock and I saw that Mattie looked stricken. On his cart behind him I saw Charles's boots sticking out.

With Mattie came a man who introduced himself as “Harney.” He had heard the gunfire and kept on his own journey. By some mysterious instinct, he chose to return, though he did not need to (he had been going home). Harney (as, he said, everyone calls him), found Charles. And, seeing the neck wound, he lifted Charles's head to keep the wound closed. This probably saved Charles's life. Another passer-by then roused Mattie Hogan, who has the nearest house to the castle gate.

We set out in the long car for Tipperary and dispatched Mattie for Dr. Moran. Harney rode with us and kept up Charles's head. Charles still bled.

When we reached the hospital we found that the wounds were not in themselves mortal. His damage rose from the fact that he had lain there for some hours in a cold, wet ditch. Today he continues to lie ill in the Tipperary Hospital. We do not know whether he can live. Bernard says the gun must have been a Mauser. And, he believes, Mausers usually kill. Charles was fortunate, so Bernard says.

“Fortunate?” I am distracted. Fortunate to be shot? Fortunate to lie in repeating fevers? He has not lost his leg, as we feared he might. The neck wound may take his life. It grows septic constantly. Everybody has tried to help. I have sent a man to bring Mr. Egan to the hospital.

On some days Charles is lucid, on some not. He tries to recall what occurred. He saw two horsemen, he says. And he had seen one before, on the road to Bruree some years back. The men rode by him. No challenge was issued. Then, when they were behind him, he heard the gunshots. He says that he heard them before he felt the bullets. At first his leg, then his neck “stung.” And he heard hooves galloping but recalls no more than that.

I have been sitting with him night and day. Bernard has made me come home tonight. Perhaps if I write it down, it will take away my anxiety. We thought that Euclid would die when he heard. He is less able to sleep than usual, and now he grows very weak. Harney has promised to ride here every day and tell me of Charles. It seems that Harney is remarkable. I do not know who he is. Bernard says he comes from Urlingford, in Kilkenny. He is twenty years old, mature, and unusual. I believe that he saved Charles's life. He believes so too, and as a consequence has become devoted to Charles.

What has come into our lives? What malign force has placed itself in our midst? I do not wish to hang blame around any person's neck—and I shall not do it. Tonight, I am exhausted, and full of tears that I have not yet shed for my two sons who have never grown up.

Tipperary Castle's long, officially secured closure told everyone that the estate had become a major inheritance issue. The grief-stricken Terence Hector Burke had not left a last will and testament before his wife vanished. If people had any knowledge—no matter how vague—of a son and heir somewhere, the property would be frozen by the government. Anybody laying claim to the estate would have to offer proof of family lineage, and thereby hope to establish title.

Over the decades, various claims came in, from chancers and hopefuls. Some claimed distant kinship, or said they had “verbal contracts,” or showed forged wills. All had to be investigated, and the issue of title to the place became delayed and delayed. Many of these documents became matters of public record, because increasingly it began to look as though the estate would inevitably pass into public ownership. For this reason, government law officers had to take an interest.

As a result, the affairs of Tipperary Castle built up into a famously large official dossier. The legal files, still available to be seen, would stand more than six feet high if piled up together. They contain a few surprises—and one chilling shock. It comes in correspondence between the Royal Irish Constabulary and a Dublin firm of lawyers who at one time represented the British government's interests.

The letters reveal that the trio who assaulted Charles O’Brien in Limerick in December 1900 had meant to kill him. A “contract,” as it would be called today, had been put out on him, and by people who meant what they said. Astute, wealthy, prominent, and capable, they had hired others to do their killing, as the rich usually do. Charles had no knowledge of it, would never have guessed it, and therefore remained unprotected.

4

M
y name is Michael Nugent. No, this is not a new voice in this tale—I'm the author of the “commentaries” on the writings of Charles O'Brien, and I've chosen this moment to reveal myself. I'm the one who discovered all the letters and newspaper reports, met Mr. Prunty in Limerick, received his permission to search his files—and found Amelia O'Brien's journal.

In fact, I'm the person who also bought the oak chest, cleaned it, opened it up, and in time donated it and its contents to the county library. I had long known of its existence; it had a kind of small mythology attached to it, among the people who had known of it.

It was presumed to be hiding somewhere in our county. In the end I found it by chance. And somehow, in one of those odd things that life delivers from time to time, I'd always known that I would find it, since the day I was alerted to look out for it.

I can't claim that I at first felt unusually arrested in any way by the contents. When I began to read the “History,” I certainly found it interesting. As it went on, I felt it compelling for what it was. This, I thought, is a good self-portrait of a somewhat untypical nineteenth-century Irishman who had a decent sensibility and, when he was being objective, a clear eye.

Also, I knew the locality, and I recognized the names of the places; it all had a familiar ring. And I wondered whether it would make a diverting lecture for the Clonmel History Group. Or maybe I could turn it into a paper for the annual publication of the Tipperary Historical Society.

And it chimed with my interests. For most of my adult life, I taught (and with some passion) history and English literature to boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen. So, in the interests (I thought) of spontaneity, and for my own amusement, I began writing commentaries on Charles O'Brien, and his life and times, before I finished reading the entire text.

Then, as I read, I found myself being drawn in further and further— and for reasons that I could not quite explain. I stopped writing simple glosses on Mr. O'Brien's narration and began to step closer to him—all without quite understanding why.

Before long, I began to recognize that I was being completely taken over. When I came to the shooting incident I raced ahead to the end— because I now knew that I had some connection to this story. The attempted murder of Charles O'Brien was part of my childhood, a story that my mother told me as a secret, never to be divulged to my father (I will come to that presently).

My “unmasking” of myself at this moment comes about because from here onward my involvement becomes too dominant to permit anonymity. It can't be otherwise. I know how the story ends, and its ramifications spread far wider and go much deeper than the “History.”

In a way that has shocked me beyond measure I am involved with the lives of Charles O'Brien, the O'Brien family, and April Burke. As a result, almost everything in my life has been altered, including the way I now have to perceive myself. It has been nothing less than a profound shock.

When I realized this, I had some difficulties in deciding how to manage the material. At the outset, while writing the commentaries, I had been expecting to do no more than merely follow the document's chronology—filling in the background, illuminating the historical details, that sort of thing.

But once I had begun to uncover the background to the story, I couldn't be content with that anymore. This “event” in my life—which is what it had become—had changed its character. I went back and read what I had written and I saw it in a different light. Dry, dispassionate comment would no longer be adequate, because now this was my story too.

Therefore, everything that I, Michael Nugent, write from now on comes with the hindsight of having read Charles O'Brien's entire document. And—such an important “and”—from the moment I introduce myself here, everything has been written
after
completing my own verifications and inquiries.

I decided after much thought to resort to what I know best—I began to behave as a teacher. “Master the subject,” I told myself. “Lay it out in a clear and benign way. Make it easy to survey. And to assess.”

To accomplish this, I decided that I would begin by fleshing out Charles's life. In a sense, he drove me to it, by saying, “Be careful about me.” As I began to delve and find relevant material, it became essential to apply it to his text, as a kind of extra commentary, a corroboration of what I had been feeling and observing.

By the way, there is nothing in Charles O'Brien's “History” that gave me any clue to the eventual full story and my place in it. So—how much of my response was instinct? I can't tell. But I do know that once I decided to widen my inquiries, I hoped—with an earnest, arresting hope— that I would end up in possession of a text capable of teaching me something extraordinarily valuable.

And I did. What's that old saying—“Be careful what you wish for?” It's fair to say—and I'm smiling with pleasure and irony as I say it—that nothing I have ever read has changed me so profoundly, or mattered to me as much, as Charles O'Brien's “History.”

Delightfully, that is what I, as a teacher, always sought to do: to improve, to elevate, to matter. I
loved
teaching. Not only have I always considered it a noble profession, but my heart used to pound with excitement on Monday mornings as I walked to the school.

How could it be otherwise? I taught Shakespeare, for heaven's sake! And the poets of the world. I taught the campaigns of Napoleon, the unification of Italy, the American Revolutionary War, the fall of the Roman Empire—I taught the great events of the universe and the great literary art of Man.

That was a privileged life. How many people gain the permission to earn a living by striding through great works and universal events and pointing out their wonders?

Now—though perhaps not on a cosmic scale—I was going to do it for myself, and I became so delighted at this prospect that I began to feel selfish. But I laughed it off. What could be selfish about it? Nothing! I live alone, I would trouble nobody, and I wanted something to fill my days.

Not for a moment did I suspect that this would become the most astonishing and rewarding thing that had ever happened to me. It brought shock, of course, and anger, and some deep sadness wafted in. But at the end of it, nothing would ever look—or be—the same.

When I decided to examine this entire matter as deeply as I could, I began by walking some ground—the woods in Dundrum, where the Treece eviction took place. I got my hands on old land maps, found a fence post, saw the ferns and the red bracken that also grew there in 1869, when young Charles O'Brien had sat in the pony-trap with his father.

It gave me a glorious feeling; I thought that I had stepped back in time. And I felt that an adventure had come into my life, that I could reach out and touch the past. I could almost see those “hundred or more, white-faced and grave” people who came to witness. How I wished I had tossed a shovel in the car so that I could excavate the ground where I reckoned the cottage had stood.

Next, I set out on my first documentary searches. I knew very little about “research”—indeed, I had always been slightly in awe of the word. In my own career, I merely visited the official Department of Education texts, extracted information and beauty from them, and passed it down to my students. But now I was obliged to do what the big boys did, the major academics. I didn't yet know where to begin.

One day, not long after the visit to the woods, I went to Dublin to lunch with a friend. She took me to the National Library. I had never been in the building before; it's one of the better relics of empire. People at small tables with green-shaded lamps pored over big, leather-bound objects. These turned out to be volumes of newspapers.

Library reading facilities were much less formal in those days—no passes required, or people vouching for one's character. We approached the desk, and my friend—who is a librarian—asked for
The Limerick Reporter & Tipperary Vindicator
for 1864 on my behalf.

Naturally, I knew what I was looking for—I had recently read Charles's version, after all—and I soon found it: the report on the case of leprosy. A girl by name of Mary Hurly had caught the disease from washing a sailor's clothes. Charles O'Brien had called it up as his first memory. He reported it accurately—he had the crucial bit, the date in his young boyhood, right. And the spelling of her name, which more commonly has an “e”: “Hurley.”

When I was teaching history, I tried to make it come to life. I liked to make it vivid for my classes; I liked to think that all history began as oral history—we could talk before we could write.

Now, in front of my eyes, I had an objective proof of a subjective event. Charles reported the oral version as told to him by his mother's housekeepers, and here, in the newspapers—journalism being the first draft of history—was the written account. (Which also raised an interesting question: Which informed which?)

Let me pause at this moment of revealing myself and clarify the sequence of events. Charles O'Brien met April Burke in November 1900; he was forty, she was eighteen. Four years later, after many failed letters, he traveled to London, met her father, told him of Tipperary Castle, and went with him to his boyhood home, the Brook House, in Somerset. The following morning he saw the lady who lived there board a carriage for Bristol, on an appointment—in all probability—to see her lawyers. That was in June.

In October 1904, Miss Burke came to visit the O'Briens, to see Tipperary Castle, and to hire lawyers—and the previous month a firm in Bristol put in a claim upon the estate. The case never got very far in the courts.

Next, in late October 1905, the newspapers reported the opening of the Tipperary Castle title hearings in the Irish High Court; and in March 1906, Terence Burke, April's father, died.

Six months later, she announced that, as her father's inheritor, she had now taken over the lawsuit. She was granted a caretaking order by the court, she asked Charles to accept the task, he agreed, and the keys arrived in September 1907.

In March 1908, April married Stephen Somerville; Charles's parents knew of it within days—Charles never tells how he heard of it. The poet William Butler Yeats came to visit the castle, remembered Charles, and was obviously puzzled at Charles's hopes of marrying April. Charles observed that when he stated his hopes of marrying Miss Burke, Yeats gave him a “long, penetrating stare.” Yeats must have heard of April's marriage: he relished gossip, and he had just been in Limerick, where every Protestant knew of the marriage.