At night he could see the men talking angrily in the shadows. Crowds of fifty or a hundred would congregate beneath the trees. He let it be known through the police that he would tolerate no trouble. He would put nobody off the land in such difficult times but there were certain rules that must be obeyed. Anyone seen with a firearm would be arrested and evicted. He had Johnnyjoe Burke put bars on the windows.
The house was leaking badly; rotting with damp. Their advertisements for servants remained unanswered. They moved into the servants’ quarters at the back of the manor where the cries of the people at night could not be heard. They would see the ravaged faces peering in through the windows. The hungry faces of weeping children. His sons became terrified to leave their quarters. Laura would not leave the house without an armed bodyguard or a pistol. Merridith came to dread opening the curtains in the morning; a dozen more tents would have appeared in the night. By September the entire meadow was filled with the landless, and their colony was spreading into the distant fields.
The police came to see him and insisted the lands must be cleared. The encampment was the size of a small town by now and presented great risks both to health and security. Three thousand people were camping on the demesne, every last one of them a Liable sympathiser. He told the constables to leave and not to return. He could not put starving families on the roadside.
He wrote letters to London and insisted there must be more aid. This talk of ‘government relief works’ would have to stop. The people needed food; they were too weak to be asked to work for it. It was true that this year’s crop had not failed in its entirety; but it was far too small, too lacking in nutrients; grown from the rotten seed of last year’s blight. And many had nowhere to grow even that. Tens of thousands were being evicted.
In October the first of the tent-people died. Four the first day; nine the next. By November, eighty were dying every week. He had Burke paint over the windows of the boys’ rooms with black varnish.
They spent Christmas at the Wingfields’ Dublin townhouse. The boys had begged not to be taken back to Galway on New Year’s Eve. The Wingfields were going to Switzerland for a few months’ holiday; when they offered to take the boys, their parents agreed. Laura was also invited, but bravely declined. She would have to remain with her husband now.
On New Year’s Night they returned to Kingscourt to find a cordon of armed constables surrounding the house. An informer had told them to expect a Liable attack. Nearly two hundred tenants had died in Christmas week. The Sergeant could only allow the Merridiths entry to the manor if they agreed to station fifty troopers inside the building itself.
On the sixth of January, 1847, Merridith returned to Dublin alone. Laura was ill with suspected pneumonia and was in no condition to face the journey. She had pleaded with him not to go; the journey was dangerous. By now there was talk of landlords and their agents being attacked on the road to Dublin. But he had little choice. He had no choice at all. A document had arrived during their absence over Christmas. It was a notice of eviction from the Kingscourt Estate.
The attitude of the man from the company shocked him. He had expected to be meeting with the Chief Director, Lord Fairbrook of Perthsire, ninth Duke of Argyle. But apologies had been conveyed by the Dublin Office manager. His Lordship had been detained by a late sitting of the House. In his place he had sent Mr Williams of the Liability Collection Office: a small, bald, furiously sweating Londoner who looked as if he would kick a dog to death if it barked.
‘Have you brought what is required?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Do you have what is required to redeem your debt, sir?’
‘Not at the moment. I rather thought we might agree to a compromise. Lord Fairbrook and I have discussed the matter previously.’
Williams nodded desultorily and wrote in his ledger.
‘I thought three years would be the appropriate period,’ Merridith said.
Williams made no reply. He mopped his mouth with a handkerchief.
‘Preferably five: but I think three may show results. My plans are laid out in the document I have given you. You will find costings and so on. I assure you it is all in order. Matter of riding out the storm for a while.’
Williams nodded again without looking up from his record book. Fingered his greasy moustache as he wrote. Finally he stamped a seal on the completed page and closed the ledger so abruptly that it gave a dusty thud.
‘You have failed to repay the mortgage. The property will be sold as soon as possible. The lands still having tenants will all have to be cleared.’
‘There is absolutely no question of that, I’m afraid.’
‘It will be done, My Lord, whether you do it or no. Land with unpaying tenants produces no income. Moreover their continued squatting will keep driving down the value.’
‘Squatting?’
‘What would you call it yourself, My Lord?’
‘Some have lived on those lands for five hundred years. Since long before my family ever came to Connemara.’
‘That is not a matter of any interest to the company.’
‘I know the company very well, thank you. The Chief Director is a long-time friend of my family.’
‘Lord Fairbrook is quite aware of the situation, Lord Kingscourt. I can assure you I am acting on his direct authority. The lands will be cleared and that is an end to it.’
‘How do you expect me to clear the lands? Am I to turn starving people onto the highway?’
‘We understand there are professionals who do that kind of work.’
‘Hired thugs, do you mean? Driver-out men?’
‘Call them what you will. They enforce the law.’
‘No bailiff has ever set foot on Merridith land. Not in two hundred years of my family’s presence in Galway.’
‘It is not “Merridith land”, sir. It belongs to the company. You gave undertakings that payments would be made and they have not been made. You have failed in your obligations, sir. Utterly failed. One would have thought it might be a matter of honour for you to meet them, but obviously your word is not your bond.’
‘How bloody dare you address me in that manner, sir. I’ll take no such talk from a glorified usurer.’
‘You seem happy to take when it suits you, My Lord. You are living as a guest on a property not your own.’
‘I am a squatter too, then, am I?’
‘You have been a squatter for a very long time, sir. At least they paid something to live in the place.’
‘I shall never hand over the deeds of my land.’
‘The tides are already in our possession, I assure you. Any other documentation can be obtained by order of the courts. The company’s lawyers have the matter well in hand.’
‘Surely – some compensation for the families can be arranged.’
Williams laughed bleakly. ‘Are you making a joke, sir?’
‘I do not understand. How do you mean?’
‘It is not the company which has profited from your tenants’ labours for two hundred years. So why should the company now offer compensation?’
‘They have absolutely nothing. Surely you can see that.’
‘You can evict them and compensate them in whatever way you wish. Or we shall evict them with no compensation. The choice is your own. You have until June the first. The evictions will begin on that date. The lands will be sold as soon as possible thereafter.’
‘A brief respite is all I ask. Two years; no more.’
‘The time has elapsed. Good-day, Lord Kingscourt.’
‘One year, then. Please. You can manage a year.’
Williams pointed towards the door with his dripping pen. ‘Good-day to you, My Lord. I have other appointments. My sailing returns to London at seven tonight.’
Dusk had descended by the time he left the office. Sleet was surging noisily into the rubbish-strewn streets. A girl who looked like a housemaid was kissing a soldier in the doorway of a shop. A trio of schoolboys was
watching and laughing. He walked for a while through the crowds and the beggars, beneath the gracious colonnades of the Parliament on College Green. Down towards the river and Sackville Street next. The Liffey had a black and scabrous look. A tall ship was tied up at the south-side wharf, its three bared masts a spider web of rigging. Barrels were being unloaded by the squads of stevedores and stacked on the grey, wet flagstones.
Lightning crackled violently over the Customs House dome. He began to walk again, through the stinging blur of the hailstones. A page of a newspaper slapped against his chest. He told himself he didn’t know where he was going; but that was one thing he did know. The only thing, perhaps.
Pushing now, into the slab of wind, as he crossed the slippery bridge in a flutter of coat-tails. The stern figure of Nelson glared down from his pillar: an Easter Island idol in regimentals of granite. Traders around the pedestal were packing up their stalls. A colony of gulls flapped low and scavenged their leavings, ascending in squabbles of twos and threes. Soon he was in Faithful Place; then Little Martin’s Lane. The terraces became darker, their inhabitants shabbier. Skull-like the stare of the windowless tenements. The reek of wet coal and unlaundered clothes. A circlet of grime-faced urchins cringed around a brazier as he crept through the alleyways leading up to the Diamond; and the tolling of the Angelus from a score of chapels.
The shatter of thunder. The squeal of a skipping-chant. An old-soldierly cove was trudging the street with a placard on which had been painted REPENT; but the letters had begun to run in the rain. A chancer perched on a dirty metal keg was declaiming the miraculous properties of a potion he was selling. Two sailors hurried past under a girl’s pink parasol. The women were preparing to start work for the night.
Some sat on their windowsills, sipping cups of tea; others stood in the doorways of their small, dark houses, calling out softly to passers-by.
‘Hello, my husband.’
‘Night-night, ducks.’
‘I have what you need, love. Nice and fresh.’
He crossed Mecklenburgh Street in his leaking boots and drifted down the tiny alleyway connecting Curzon and Tyrone Streets; so narrow you could touch both walls as you walked. A vagrant was crumpled in a stinking doorway, drunkenly lilting a music-hall tune. He came to a house. Stopped. Looked up. A red light was burning in the window of an attic, like the glow before the tabernacle in a Catholic church. He took off his wedding ring and slipped it into his pocket; and he knocked on the bolt-studded panel of the door.
The hatch shot back. Deadened eyes looked out at him. The hatch shot closed and the door was opened.
The doorkeeper had on a black sacking hood, a long black coat under a thick leather pea-jacket. A cudgel was clasped in the crook of his arm, through its handle a wristlet of chain.
‘Five,’ he murmured, jerking out his gloved palm. Merridith handed over two half-crowns. The door was slammed and locked behind him.
He was led down a flight of very steep stairs; past a door behind which a piano was jangling ‘The Bucks of Oranmore’. Another door further down was slightly ajar; three cadaverous girls in corsets were sitting on troopers’ knees.
The madam was a Dubliner, well dressed and muscular, and she spoke in the antique accent of the innertown Liberties. She was smoking a Turkish cigarette in an ivory holder; on her bosom a fancy necklace of bright golden coins. The visitor was greeted with professional hospitality. Would he have a cuppa tay? A nice toddy of punch? She spoke like an innkeeper with a little time to kill.
‘You’re not a son of Dublin, sir. To judge from your nice way of speaking. Is it English, Your Honour? Commerce or pleasure? Well you’re welcome indeed and a thousand times welcome. No strangers here, sir: only friends we haven’t met. And Your Honour ’ud fancy a little sport on a cold night, I expect, sir. Banish all the cares and troubles of the day. Time enough tomorrow for sorrows, says you.’
Merridith nodded, shivering in the draught. She gave a mild chuckle, as though relishing his discomfort.
‘And why not, says you? Won’t we be a long time dead? Divil the jot of harm ever came from the gambol. We’ll rosin up your bow for you, sir: you see if we don’t.’
His hand was trembling badly as he handed over the money. The man in the mask had appeared again and was beckoning towards a corridor that Merridith hadn’t noticed. Up some stairs, along a shabby landing. He entered the dark room and quickly undressed. He realised he was crying as he lay on the filthy mattress; but he dried his eyes. He did not want to cry. The air stank of sweat and putrefaction and cats, but drenched in a fug of sickly-sweet perfume. From outside in the street he could hear strident laughter, the fatigued tread of cart-horses plodding the cobbles.
A long time seemed to pass before the black door opened. The girl entered quietly, as though she was tired. She had a candle in one hand, a ragged towel in the other. Her chemise had been loosened to reveal her breasts. Her hollowed, deathly face was a grotesquerie of rouge.
‘Good-night, sir,’ she said. And then nothing was said.
The candle flame flickered.
It was Mary Duane.
No words can describe this peculiar appearance of the famished children. Never have I seen such bright, blue, clear eyes looking so steadfastly at nothing. I could almost fancy that the angels of God had been sent to unseal the vision of these little patient, perishing creatures, to the beatitudes of another world.
Elihu Burritt A Journal of a Visit of Three Days to Skibbereen London,1847
1 Hansard, vol. 234, col. 21 (1846).
CHAPTER XXVI
THE SHIPPING REPORTS
THE NINETEENTH DAY OF THE VOYAGE: IN WHICH THE CAPTAIN RECEIVES A MOST WORRYING ITEM OF INFORMATION.
Friday, 26 November, 1847
Seven days remaining at sea
LONG: 48°07.31′W. LAT: 47°04.02′N. ACTUAL GREENWICH STANDARD TIME: 02.31 a.m. (27 November): ADJUSTED SHIP TIME: 11.19 p.m. (26 November). WIND DIR. & SPEED: E. (92°). Force 6. SEAS: mountainous. HEADING: W. (267°). PRECIPITATION & REMARKS: Peak wind gust of 51 knots recorded. Tore mizzen-sail loose. Churning over easterly Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
The crippled person is lodged in the lock-up. He has slept for almost all of the past thirty-six hours. Surgeon Mangan has cleaned the wounds of his face, small lacerations and swellings. No broken bones. It seems that his name is indeed ‘Mulvey’ as was said; the error of calling him Swales being my own. (From the name on his bible, but he had received it from a friend.) Leeson is of the view that he is most extremely untrustworthy; but there never was a man so entirely bad that life had boiled all the goodness out of him.
Last night seven of the steerage passengers died and their mortal remains were committed to the deep. Their names were John Barrett, George Fougarty, Grace Mullins, Denis Hanrahan, Alice Clohessie, James Buckiner and Patrick Joseph Connors. God have mercy on them.
Just after dawn we made sighting of the brigantine Morning Dew out of New Orleans for Sligo and accordingly signalled to belay. Signal being received was returned.
We dropped anchor at 47°01.10′W, 47°54.21′N and prepared a boarding party. I went across in the launch with the Mail Agent Wellesley and some of the men (also some of the stronger passengers, and a boy) to load and receive several bags of mail. Also to put on to her Eliza Healy, seven yrs, a child whose mother and father have died on board and who has no relative to care for her in America.
I took coffee and a little brandywine for my chest with Captain Antoine Pontalba of Shreveport in his quarters. He had most worrying information to divulge.
He first enquired if we were bound for Quebec, and when I said no, he remarked that this was a mighty good thing. We discussed the horrible events which occurred there this past summer,1 which were yet the talk of his ship; but I was most extremely alarmed when he said that the catastrophe has not yet run its appalling course but is still claiming hundreds of souls every week. I had thought the dreadful crisis ended but alas it is not. Indeed some say much worse
may yet come.
Master Pontalba confided that his First Mate had met a man at New Orleans who had come down recently from Quebec, the latter asserting that a large section of the St Lawrence River, which course forms the main channel in to Canada, is entirely frozen over, also an enormous area on the banks, comprising many score of miles all around. This man, a Russian merchant of furs, had many stories of the sufferings now being endured by the unfortunate people in that place. Reportedly he could not speak English very well but the gist of what he said was frightful.
Forty or more ships are reported to be waiting to go in to Canada, lined several miles down the river, with upwards of fifteen thousand emigrants on board, almost all from Ireland; many of these with cholera and typhus and entirely without means to be treated or even quarantined. It is accounted that on some vessels not a single man, woman or child is without affliction, neither passengers nor crew. On two vessels, it is said, all have died: every last human soul on board. Nothing less than an undiminished calamity may be expected now, with enormous loss of life.
To add to this heavy news, there had been rumours that the authorities at New York and Boston might turn back all ships deriving from Ireland, those ports being now choked with many vessels unable to go in to Canada, and the authorities at New York greatly fearful of epidemics.
I begged him not to let any of my passengers know of it but I fear it was perhaps too late, for returning in the launch I observed that several of them looked most frightened and chapfallen. I made the bosun lift the oars for a moment and said to all that we had a solemn duty not to spread alarm among our fellows, that the traveller’s best friend is a cool mind. Everyone agreed to keep his counsel, even the boy, who was very afraid. But as soon as we returned to the Star and unfurled, I noticed that many of them were congregating on the foredeck and appearing most extremely distressed. Presently they commenced to pray aloud, in that fervently incantatory manner they have, the many strange names they give unto the Mother of Jesus.