Death on the Holy Mountain (11 page)

‘Anyway,’ Uncle Peter went on, fuelling his cynicism with another large gulp of Cockburn’s finest Old Tawny, ‘your man Yeats, so a professor from Trinity told me once
– don’t ask me his name, that’s gone too for the present – he told me Yeats thought he and his friends could create an alternative version of the Irish past to fill the
political vacuum left by the death of Parnell and the squabbling of his associates. Horse manure!’ He paused for just one more mouthful. ‘Horse manure and gobshite! How many people from
Carrick-on-Shannon or Ballywalter know where the bloody Abbey Theatre Yeats founded actually is? How many people have bought tickets for the performances? How many Catholic farmers and shopkeepers
and solicitors are ever going to buy a book of poetry, any damned poetry, let alone stuff with titles like “The Song of the Wandering Aengus” or “The Valley of the Black
Pig” or “The Host of the Air”, for God’s sake? And how many Christian Brothers are going to teach poetry written by a Protestant from Sligo, if they teach poetry at all?

‘Damn. I’m lost now. Where was I?’

‘Parnell’s just off the boat, Uncle Peter,’ said Johnny, ‘and it was still raining. This was Ireland, after all.’

Uncle Peter looked as if he was going to continue his diatribe, but he went back to his book.

‘“The body was carried quickly ashore and placed on the waiting train. There was a short delay while the mail was unloaded from the
Ireland
. Charles Stewart Parnell began his
last journey into Ireland’s capital on track laid in 1834 by the Dublin and Kingston Railway Company, at the time the first commuter line in the world. At seven thirty on Sunday morning it
reached Westland Row station. As the coffin, six feet four inches long, was finally removed from the large deal case which had protected it on its rough journey across the sea, the crowd surged
forward and hacked the case to pieces, breaking the wood up into fragments to be treasured as relics, as if they had come from a dead saint. A soaking escort of nearly a thousand members of the
Gaelic Athletic Association, a nationalist body devoted to Irish games, widely believed to be infiltrated by Fenians or members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, more devoted to insurrection
than to ball games, formed an honour guard round the bier as it was laid on its hearse. They were all dressed in green and carrying hurling sticks tied with black crepe and green ribbon. Here was a
blatant warning to any anti-Parnellites who might have thought of trying to disrupt the proceedings. Violence would be met with violence.”’

Johnny Fitzgerald had been holding his hand up and waving it for a minute or so. ‘Those bits of the deal case enclosing the coffin, Uncle Peter,’ he said, ‘I know something
that might be useful for this section of your book when you next revise it. You could buy bits of them, the relics I mean, in many of the Dublin pubs that evening when the funeral was over. They
were changing hands in some places for a pound or more. Mind you, one of the publicans told me afterwards that there was enough wood on sale that night to cover fifty coffins. Maybe they increased
and multiplied, like those loaves and fishes on the mountain.’

‘Thank you, Johnny,’ said Uncle Peter. ‘I am seriously thinking of banning all interruptions in the manner of a French teacher of mine who punished any disturbances when he was
giving dictation with a severe thrashing.’ Uncle Peter took advantage of the diversion to open another bottle. ‘Anybody else wish to interrupt? Young James, have you further comments on
the personalities involved you would like to impart to us? Powerscourt, you have been commendably quiet so far?’

All three shook their heads.

Uncle Peter’s appearance was rather wild now, wisps of hair falling down on to his lined forehead. He looked, Powerscourt thought, like an aged prophet come out of the wilderness with his
book to lead his people on a last crusade, or a man who had spent too long in solitary confinement. A large drop of port had fallen on to his green dressing gown. At any moment, Powerscourt felt, a
dragon’s mouth might dart forth and gulp it down. Uncle Peter’s drinking continued regularly, like the beat of a metronome. From outside the dining room came faint noises of doors being
bolted and creaky sash windows closed. The household was going to bed.

‘“Parnell’s last journey across the city resembled a secular version of the Stations of the Cross, the stops at the great memorials to Ireland’s past replacing the final
stages of Christ’s journey. The procession moved slowly away from Westland Row station, outriders on either side, the honour guard of the hurling stick youths surrounding the coffin, crowds
marching six abreast behind them, the pavements packed with mourners, women kneeling down and crossing themselves as it passed by. Down College Street they went, stopping at the Old Parliament
building on College Green. Here, until its abolition in 1800, an Irish Parliament had sat, composed entirely of Protestant members and looking after entirely Protestant interests, able to pass
limited amounts of legislation. Parnell’s great grandfather had been a prominent member of this Assembly. Now the cortège rested for a minute to honour the great grandson who had
nearly secured the return of an Irish Parliament to Dublin, one that would have been dominated by Catholics. Nobody in an Irish crowd would have failed to see the symbolic significance of this
moment. At the rear one of the thirty-three bands on duty that day began playing the Dead March from
Saul
. The procession continued through the rain, crossing the river Liffey and advancing
along the northern quays to St Michan’s Church, one of the oldest in the city. As the coffin entered the church one of the officiating clergy said at the porch, ‘I am the Resurrection
and the Life, he that believeth in me shall not perish but have everlasting life.’ As the coffin went through the church it passed under the archway of the organ which, according to legend,
Handel himself had played at the first performance of the
Messiah
. Down in the crypt of St Michan’s, some special atmospheric properties, unique to the church, had kept a number of
corpses in a state of remarkable preservation, the wooden caskets cracked open to reveal skin and strands of hair. There is even a figure, deep from Ireland’s past, known as The Crusader. Up
above, as the prayers for the dead were intoned, Parnell’s own body was beginning its long rot towards eternity. For most of the congregation this was the first, and probably the last,
Protestant funeral service they would ever attend.

‘“Elsewhere in the city groups of mourners began forming up for the final procession. Societies and clubs assembled on St Stephen’s Green at twelve, members of Dublin and
provincial Corporations gathered in Grafton Street. The Parnell Leadership Committee, the small remnant of his Parliamentary supporters, met in the National Club. Fresh mourners were still pouring
into the city on special trains from all over Ireland, the carriages filled with people wearing the black armband with a ribbon of green.”’

‘Still here, are ye?’ Uncle Peter asked, pausing to pour another glass. ‘Not dropping off yet?’

No, no, his little audience assured him, they were all fine.

‘“The most dramatic farewell of all the farewells that day came in the City Hall, the municipal headquarters of Dublin Catholicism where Daniel O’Connell himself had been Mayor
back in the 1840s. Parnell’s coffin was placed on a catafalque on the marble floor of the great circular chamber, ringed with statues of dead heroes from Ireland’s past. He lay in front
of a statue of O’Connell himself. There were railings round the body, guarded by members of the Dublin Fire Brigade with their polished helmets to allow the mourners to pass round it to pay
their last respects. Some thirty thousand were believed to have done so. All around were flags from that earlier Protestant Parliament which had been brought up from Parnell’s family estate
at Avondale in County Wicklow. Behind O’Connell’s statue was a huge Celtic cross of flowers, six feet high, of arum and eucharis lilies, white chrysanthemums and ferns. It came from
Parnell’s Parliamentary colleagues. The building was draped with black all the way up to the dome and a great white banner ran across the room bearing what was meant to be Parnell’s
last message to his country, ‘Give my love to my colleagues and the Irish people.’ There were other wreaths, of course, from Limerick, from Navan, from Waterford, from Arklow, from
Tralee, from Kilkenny, from Donegal, but none more poignant than the simple three of lilies and roses, from the children of Mrs O’Shea, now Mrs Parnell, which said, ‘To my dear
mother’s husband, from Nora,’ ‘From little Clare,’ and ‘From little Katie.’ Few in the City Hall that sad Sunday would have known it, little Clare and little
Katie themselves did not know it at the time, but it was Parnell who was their father. Other inscriptions spoke of murder and martyrdom in Erin’s cause. Parnell, a man who spent more time in
his lifetime cultivating the Roman Catholic hierarchy than he had his own Protestant bishops, was being turned into a human sacrifice in the sacred cause of Irish freedom. The torch of heroic
martyrdom had passed in apostolic succession from Wolfe Tone to Daniel O’Connell and from O’Connell to Charles Stewart Parnell. Who would be next?”’

‘That’s good,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, ‘that’s very good, Uncle Peter.’

‘Do you like it now?’ Uncle Peter replied, gazing at them like a very old owl over the tops of his battered spectacles, as eager and hungry for praise as authors usually are.

‘Oh yes,’ Powerscourt said, ‘it’s very good indeed.’

‘“Now came the last journey,”’ Uncle Peter went on, ‘“the last apocalyptic journey to the graveside. As the procession moved out from the sombre gloom of the
City Hall the weather changed and sunshine arrived to bless Parnell’s last moments on the streets of Dublin. The young men of the Gaelic Athletic Association formed up in their honour guard
around the hearse once more, many of them now holding their hurling sticks like rifles on a drill parade. Behind them came the City Marshal on horseback and in full uniform. Behind the Marshal,
Parnell’s horse, riderless, saddled, with the boots in place in reverse position, tribute and symbol to the dead leader since the days of Genghis Khan. Then the carriages, over a hundred of
them, with the Mayor and the members of the Corporation and Parnell’s family. There was one carriage, observed but not apprehended by the plain clothes men from Dublin Castle who mingled with
the crowds that day, believed to be carrying three veteran Fenians, with whom Parnell had enjoyed ambiguous relationships throughout his life. They, along with the members of the Corporation, had
organized the funeral. Behind them a vast procession, most of them wearing black armbands with a green ribbon, said to be two hundred thousand strong.

‘“The great cortège left the City Hall and moved slowly through Christ Church Place into Thomas Street. Here were two more symbolic stops, the first at the house of Robert
Emmett, another martyred Protestant rebel who had launched a pathetic postscript to the ’98 Rising in 1803 and been executed for his pains. Emmett’s true claim for inclusion in the
pantheon of Irish saints and heroes was his speech from the dock at the close of his trial where he declared that no man should write his epitaph until Ireland was free. Emmett’s
epitaph,”’ Uncle Peter looked up at them sternly at this point, ‘“remains unwritten to this day. A little further up the same street came the last stop, the last of
Parnell’s Stations of the Cross, at the house where another Protestant rebel, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, was betrayed and fatally wounded at the end of the 1798 rising. Lord Edward had been born
into the bluest of blue-blooded Irish families. His father was the Duke of Leinster and he was a child of the vast wealth and splendour of Carton House in County Kildare. Even after he was betrayed
for his role with the United Irishmen, his relatives were arranging with the authorities for blind eyes to be turned at selected ports while Lord Edward fled the country. He died in prison several
days after the shooting.

‘“It was now taking an hour and three-quarters for the procession to pass a given point. The bands were playing with muffled drums, many of them now working their way through
Chopin’s Funeral March. From Thomas Street they took the body of the man they had called The Chief or The Uncrowned King of Ireland in a great loop around the city, showing Parnell Dublin as
if he were a living visitor, east into James Street, across the river at King’s Bridge, back along the northern side of the Liffey, running brown and dirty after the rains, over the river
once more at Essex Bridge, down Parliament Street, close to the City Hall where they had started, back into College Green for a last look at the old Parliament building, north up Westmoreland
Street and over the river again, past O’Connell’s statue at the bottom of Sackville Street and along Cavendish Row to the last resting place at Glasnevin Cemetery.”’

The last bottle of port was open now. Young James was looking tired. Johnny Fitzgerald had a slight smile on his face as if some other memories of the day had come back to him. Uncle
Peter’s voice was slowing now, on the last lap of his marathon read.

‘“It was evening by the time the hearse finally stopped at the gates. A group of pallbearers, some of them Parnell’s colleagues in the Parliamentary party, carried his coffin
to the grave. Mrs Parnell’s wreath was first into the ground, ‘My true love, my darling, my husband,’ followed by many more. The rest of the funeral service was read by a Reverend
Fry from Manchester and the Reverend Vincent, the Chaplain of the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin. Parnell’s last resting place was not far from O’Connell, the two ready to lead Ireland once
more when the dead shall rise from their graves at the last day. The crowd, after a last look at the grave, peeled off to make their way back to their pubs or their tenements or their homes,
‘their homesteads’ as Parnell had called the peasant cabins at the time of the Land War in the early 1880s. Maud Gonne,”’ Uncle Peter stared balefully at Young James at this
point, daring him to speak, ‘“told her friend Yeats later that evening that a shooting star had appeared in the sky during the actual burial itself. Both she and the poet were greatly
impressed, discussing the astral significance for some hours. Another poet, Katherine Tynan, also a friend of Yeats, began a poem about the apparition.