Unlikely Rebels (15 page)

Francis Sheehy Skeffington, the pro-Gaelic pacifist, was also poorly received by the Clan. ‘John' gave him a list of Irish Americans to avoid, which saved him a great deal of trouble. She also gave a great welcome to Nora, daughter of James Connolly, who arrived with a letter from Countess Markievicz asking ‘John' to help. That help was readily given. Nora Connolly's mission to America was a peculiar one: her father wanted her to contact the German Ambassador to America, Count von Bernsdorff, to tell him that the British were building bogus ships in Belfast. These dummy ships were to lure the German fleet to the Kiev Canal where the British guns would strike. Von Skal, a German agent in New York, arranged a meeting for Nora Connolly with the German Ambassador in Washington, and ‘John' Gifford went with her. Von Skal's wife had been deeply impressed by what she called clever Irish intelligence because the Irish girls knew her husband would be at home on the very day they called – after a year's absence. ‘John' and Nora Connolly basked in this glory, unprepared to admit that their chance calling on that day was just the luck of the Irish.
[9]
Connolly had impressed on his daughter not to disclose to James Larkin the purpose of her visit and not to contact him until just before she was returning home. It was perhaps a justifiable precaution – the fewer people who knew the better – but it is interesting to note that ‘John' Gifford was not precluded from the secret message.

After Redmond committed his Volunteers to Britain's war effort following the outbreak of the First World War, ‘John' received a bundle of papers from Ireland which featured, among other items, news of the arrest of prominent Sinn Féiners for anti-recruiting activities. This name ‘Sinn Féiners', borrowed from Griffith's newspaper and his followers, was applied indiscriminately in Britain to all those who were to take part in the Rising and the subsequent War of Independence. In Griffith's paper, S
inn Féin
, she read a quotation from
the
Liverpool Post
of 12 September 1914:

Half a million recruits cannot be raised in this country without a derangement of industry. It is our sincere belief that if the Government of Ireland Bill received immediate signature of the King, then His Majesty could make a triumphal tour of Ireland … there would be 300,000 Irishmen of all creeds volunteer for the front in less than a week.

It was an ingenious proposition: Irishmen would face German guns so that British tradesmen would be spared. Griffith's reply was, as usual, factual. His estimate, based statistically, was that there were 7,116,000 Englishmen between the ages of twenty and forty-five. In Ireland, he judged, there were only one-tenth of that number. In Britain, the standard height for enlistment was 5 feet and 6 inches; in Ireland it was 5 feet and 3 inches. Griffith claimed the extra three inches was to exclude some English tradesmen who could thus be kept at home. He concluded his propagandist article with one of his aphorisms: ‘England expects every Irishman to do his duty.'

Delighted with her ex-editor's handling of the question, ‘
John' Gifford brought the particular issue of the newspaper to John Devoy, thinking he would be eager to publish it in support of the Clan's own anti-recruitment drive. True to form, because he would not associate with the non-militant Griffith, Devoy rejected the offer. ‘
John' brought it straight to another publisher, Patrick Ford, whose
Irish World
had up to then represented the more right-wing, conservative Irish-American readership. He printed both the
Liverpool Post
article and Griffith's rebuttal. Congratulatory letters flooded in, and the reaction was so palpable that the paper's policy changed from being pro-Redmonite to being supportive of the Irish Volunteers. If Irishmen were to fight, it was to be for their own country, not for their age-old oppressor. ‘
John' Gifford was responsible for this important change and became a frequent contributor to the ‘new look' paper, writing about Irish organisations and profiling their leaders. She had become a conduit for the Irish-Ireland ethos to the Irish in the USA.
[10]

It must be remembered also that ‘
John' was not
sent
as an agent to America. She went of her own free will. The British government, on the other hand, was determinedly sending specially trained agents to woo the various strata of American society into a military commitment against Germany. They proposed England as ‘The Mother Country of America' which, to many, it was. But an Irishman, Hugh Harkins, retaliated with a street-wide banner from his house bearing the message: ‘
Europe: Mother of America
'.
[11]
Neither mentioned the native American Indians.

Newspapers took sides. The bulletin board of one paper which later became the
New York Herald Tribune
displayed daily news favourable to the Allies. A mêlée of people
congregated at the board each day, infiltrated by British agents who spread their good news; sometimes they enforced their arguments with fisticuffs if any Irish contradicted them. Tom Tuite, an old Fenian and then secretary to Thomas Addis Emmet (Robert Emmet's grand-nephew), was badly beaten by British agents when he denounced them as warmongers at a pro-war demonstration in Madison Square. The police warned him – probably for his own good – to stay away from such demonstrations.
[12]

During ‘John' Gifford's work in Ireland as a propagandist journalist for Seán Mac Diarmada's
Irish Freedom
, Mac Diarmada had commissioned her to write a serial summary of the memoirs of the old patriot Myles Byrne, another Fenian. Thomas Addis Emmet had so enjoyed this series that he invited ‘John' to work in his New York library translating some old pamphlets and texts into modern English. Among them was the original copy of Oliver Cromwell's order to the dispossessed Irish: To hell or to Connaught.

Addis Emmet, a wheelchair invalid with enormous influence in New York's intellectual circles, loved Ireland passionately. From behind the screen in the library where she worked, ‘John' heard several requests from British agents that Addis Emmet lend his voice to their recruiting campaign. His answer was always ‘no'.

Before the 1916 Rising, ‘John' met two members of the Plunkett family in America: Mimi and her brother Joseph. Joseph Plunkett wrote to her from a New York address, asking that she meet him. She observed in her memoirs that he was not engaged to her sister Grace at the time but that he was ‘friendly' with her. However, she was obviously piqued because neither of them told her the purpose of their visit. They went to lunch in a Turkish restaurant and spent the afternoon chatting. Perhaps the fact that he told her neither that he had been in Germany nor the reason for his presence in New York may have dictated her reaction to his visit. It seems wise that he should disclose his attempt to negotiate for German arms to as few people as possible, and this visit he obviously saw in the nature of a social call on his girlfriend's sister.
[13]
Though she considered he looked well, and he himself said he was a new man since he had joined the Irish Volunteers, ‘John's' other observations are certainly not adulatory. Nellie had liked Plunkett, and she, and those who knew him well, always spoke of his pleasant laughter which often cloaked the pain of his illness. ‘John's' summing up was, however, that she had always found him ‘reserved and incapable of light conversation'. It does not match any other description of Joseph Plunkett's personality. She may have met him when he was quite ill in Ireland, and she was perhaps influenced on that afternoon in America by his diplomatic reticence. She never saw him again after that lunch.

Notes

Meanwhile, events in the Gifford family in Ireland were following their course. Claude left the legal practice shared with his father to become an officer in the British army. Ernest was pursuing his career as an electrical engineer in England. Kate returned from Germany, married a man named Walter Wilson in Wales in 1909 and settled in Dublin, involving herself in the movement. Muriel lived happily in Oakley Road, Ranelagh, with her two children, Donagh and Barbara, and her husband, Thomas, who was co-opted, in April 1916, to the military council of the Irish Volunteers. Nellie continued to run her ‘Burra' in Dawson Street, a much more ongoing and demanding activity than her 1913 role as stand-in niece to the militant trade unionist James Larkin.

Grace had been quietly working away on
The Irish Review
and falling in love with its young editor, Joseph Plunkett. Closeness fostered their affection, and so did their interest in Catholicism, as stated by Grace.
[1]
There was a tentative suggestion made in the emotional aftermath of the troubled times, as the whole period from the Rising to the ending of the Civil War was described, to publish in their entirety the love letters Joseph Plunkett wrote to Grace. Happily, better judgement prevailed. Reading such letters may leave the reader with the presumption that nothing is sacred, even the most personal expressions of human affection. Nonetheless, the only record we have of the progress of this most tragic love affair lies in the young mystic poet's letters to Grace. Enough may be quoted to reveal the measure of his love while leaving the rest in the relative privacy of the archives.
[2]

The first letter is dated 28 November 1915. The salutations, deepening in affection, are indicative of the writer's growing love for his lady, and it is significant that when Grace became ill in her declining years and when money troubles were pressing, and she negotiated the sale of some of her husband's military documentation, the love letters were never proffered.

All Plunkett's moods are there. He is passionate, prayerful, playful, tired, longing, whimsical, determined. He quotes from G. K. Chesterton and from Francis Thompson. He encloses a mystical poem he has written for Grace. Occasionally Volunteer material creeps in. His ill health is shrugged off. In that first November letter the salutation is a sober ‘Dear Grace' and is signed ‘Joseph', but it contains his ideas on mystical love and finishes, ‘All things are in some way beautiful but of all things on earth the most beautiful are the human soul and body for these are the likest God [
sic
].'
[3]

Two letters were sent on 2 December 1915. The salutations have become much warmer and the message very clear: ‘Darling Grace, you will marry me and nobody else.' The question of their marriage is pursued: ‘Dear, dear Grace, I hope to become more worthy of loving you … By the way I am actually a beggar. I have no income and am earning nothing. Moreover, there are other things desperate, practically speaking, to prevent anyone marrying me.' He is presumably referring to his ill health. But two days later he forgets such doubts and writes playfully, ‘By the way don't forget I have it [your heart] and don't go looking for it – also don't give mine away … I haven't been but at Heartquarters and Headquarters.' Six days after that he tells her, banteringly, that Seán Mac Diarmada has been speaking to him about their engagement, so he suggests it would be a good idea for her to make the usual press announcement: ‘Of course it should be done by your mother!
'
The exclamation mark is significant. Isabella did not approve of the engagement on account, it is believed, of Plunkett's health. The announcement eventually appeared on 11 February 1916.

On St Stephen's Day 1915, in a letter marked ‘midnight', Joseph had addressed Grace as ‘my darling child', though he is only a year her senior. In the same letter he called her the Arabic ‘Babbaly' and told her, ‘You have taken the harm out of all my troubles and made the whole world beautiful for me. You have made me happy – never forget that, whatever happens.'

Sometimes in this correspondence he makes appointments to see Grace at Sibley's restaurant, at a Percy French burlesque or to dine in his family home. Jocosely, on another occasion, he uses Dublin idiom: ‘Of a Friday January 7th in this year of Grace, Sweetheart … Could you drop down to Oakley tonight (or anywhere else) and let me know by this messenger. If you are not … able to bunk out, well then how about tomorrow?'

He has started to sign his letters with the symbol that reflects the name of his book of poetry which Thomas MacDonagh had edited,
The Circle and the Sword.
He addresses Grace by her two Christian names: ‘Grace Evelyn, I mean my darling dear.' There is playful flirtation. His Volunteer work is treated flippantly, cloaking its importance to him. He borrows the concluding phrase from Pepys:

I went to my sixteen-hundred sub-committees and then tea … in the DBC [Dublin Bread Company] and at eight a hellish old staff meeting (to decide the war) and congrats from Padraic Ó Riain and Shane Lester on my approaching marriage (their words) and … back here bloody awful late … and so to bed.

This letter ends with a veritable litany of endearments:

My heart's delight,
My thousand treasures,
My thousand loves,
My secret love,
My heart's music.

On 26 January 1916, Grace is again ‘Dearest Babbaly', and he translates it this time for her as ‘Gate of God'. He quotes a love poem he wrote in Algiers, disclaiming it as a poor thing in a mixture of self-mockery and playfulness: ‘That's no good I'm afraid. It was wrote [
sic
] to nobody at all (cross my heart) in Algiers.'

The following day he explains that his left arm is stiff, due to too much beer drinking. His sister Geraldine asserted that Plunkett was often in pain during this time, but this is typical of how he made fun of it.

There is great poignancy in the concluding words of another letter: ‘Nothing can ever separate us.
' The very next day, the first day of spring, he is writing to say how he misses Grace and describes how he has spent the evening ‘in fifty places and then a staff meeting and then more talk till all hours'. He was ‘not very chirpy and should not have had to go out at all' and then banteringly asks, ‘Some sleuth told me you were at the Red Bank today – is that so?'
[4]

The following day he is confined at Kimmage with a heavy cold and a snow blizzard prevents her from visiting him. Two days later, the overworked postman delivers a letter in which Plunkett expresses his longing to see her. He is ‘cultivating patience', but he details his worries about her, referring to her in the third person: ‘Perhaps she is not well and not able to come – perhaps she is tired out – perhaps something is worrying her – perhaps she is unhappy and, worse, fears that I won't write – but never any doubt that she would love to come if she could.'

St Valentine's Day 1916 produces a brief letter: ‘My darling Grace, will you come and see me?'

On 28 February his letter is headed ‘Hic et Nunc' (here and now). He calls Grace ‘Our Live Artist at the Front', a reference to her political propagandist cartoons. There are playful, repetitive expressions of love, an admission that he nearly came to blows when he was ordered to stay in bed ‘on account of the weather disagreeing with me'. Then he becomes playful: ‘Tomorrow I expect – sh! Tell it not in Rath – a leap year proposal.
[5]
Can you come early and avoid the rush?'

On her birthday, 3 March, Grace receives good wishes for the year:

… and every year thereafter and the wish of your heart and a nice husband – that's me … you know I only snatch glimpses of you and we never have time to finish a talk … I'm an enchanted prince … I will love to do everything I can to make you happy … You must know how much and little that is … but it will be the whole of me.

Even his own address he infuses with poetry: ‘At the Field of Larks near Kimmage. St Joseph his feast day, 1916' and uses, sometimes, old Gaelic endearments like ‘A Rún', ‘A chuid de'n tsaoighil' (My share of the world). He admits finding it difficult to ‘love in black and white'. Poetry is the only vehicle for his love, but ‘Poems are like love, they will not come for wishing.'

Joseph and Grace were to have been married in a double wedding ceremony, with his sister Geraldine and her fiancé Thomas Dillon, on Easter Sunday 1916. The Rising took over, however, and Joseph writes to Grace from Fitzwilliam Street on Holy Saturday 1916, when all is ready for taking over the General Post Office:

My darling sweetheart, I got your dear letter by lunch as I was going out at 9 this morning and have not had a minute to collect my thoughts since (now 2.45) … here is a little gun which should only be used to protect yourself … Here is some money for you too and all my love forever. Joe.

The gun and message were brought to Grace by Joseph's aide-de-camp, Michael Collins, and she gave this gun to Nellie, who was leaving Temple Villas on her way to her Citizen Army outpost at the Royal College of Surgeons.
[6]
The following day, which was to have been the day of their marriage, Grace received Joseph's final pre-Rising letter:

Larkfield, Easter Sunday 1916, 9 p.m.

My dearest heart, keep up your spirits and trust in Providence. Everything is bully. I have only a minute. I am going to the nursing home tonight to sleep. I am keeping well as anything but need a rest. Take care of your old cold, sweetheart. All my love for ever, darling, darling, Grace. Joe.

These were among the letters sent by Joseph Plunkett to Temple Villas during the six months leading up to the Rising on Easter Monday 1916. It is unlikely that you would find anywhere else in the world a bundle of such letters opening with a definition of mystical love and concluding with a penultimate letter accompanying a gun. But they reflect Joseph's life during these first months of 1916: a young man deeply in love and a young man determined to call England's bluff about the ever promised, never granted Home Rule for a country which her liberators declared to be a separate nation.

Notes