Of Irish Blood (32 page)

Irish history again. I know Maud and Constance are, well, fanciful, but for this hardheaded American Yankee to be seeking signs and omens … Maybe some combination of Yeats’s Golden Dawn, Maud’s ornate Catholicism shot through with Celtic mythology, and St. Bridget’s parish novenas will get a higher power to work for Ireland. I hope.

“You believe in Norse gods, too,” I say to Maud.

“What does it matter if we call these messengers archangels or emanations or Krishna or the great god Lugh?” Maud says. “The spirit is moving through the Irish people, and it will not be denied.”

Constance, who has been very quiet during all this, now says, “In the material world we’ll need money to buy the rifles.”

“The Daughters of Erin are making flags to sell,” Maud says.

“Maybe they can bake cakes, too,” I say. I mean, come on. They sound like the Altar and Rosary Society at St. Bridget’s planning the spring fundraiser.

“Good idea,” Molly says. Even she doesn’t see the absurdity.

The third woman has been very quiet.

“What about you, Mary?” I say. “Do you think it’s a good idea? After all, you’re like me—one of ‘the people’ that this crew wants to liberate.”

She looks at Molly but doesn’t reply.

“Shouldn’t even a maid be able to speak her mind?” I say.

All the women and Father Kevin laugh.

“Oh, my dear, Mary is Mary Spring Rice,” Molly says. “Lord Monteagle’s daughter.”

“Is your family descended from one of the Gaelic chieftains?” I ask.

“Not really,” Mary says. “The queen gave my grandfather the title for service to the state.”

“Aren’t you related to the O’Briens and the de Vere de Veres?” Maud asks Mary, who nods.

De Vere de Vere? I think Maud’s having me on, but no; she goes on about Aubrey de Vere de Vere, a well-known poet—though not to me.

“He’s converted to Rome, hasn’t he?” Maud asks.

Again Mary nods.

“Soon all the best people will be in the Church, Father Kevin,” Maud says.

The best people?

The women chat away about who is married to whom, and I move closer to Father Kevin and ask in a soft voice, “Aren’t there any regular Catholic women in this group?”

But Maud hears me. “All the Sheehy sisters are born Catholics,” she says.

“Their father, David Sheehy, and I studied together right here in this very college as seminarians,” Father Kevin says. “He went home for a visit, fell in love with Bessie McCoy. They eloped. Now they have six grown children.”

“Good for them,” I say, and then realize how that sounds.

“Oh, sorry Father Kevin. I didn’t mean that. And, of course, you are doing great work for Ireland, and he’s probably a clerk in a bank or…”

“Not at all, Nora. David joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood, worked with the Land League, was jailed by the British and then elected to Parliament, served twenty years as part of the Irish Party at Westminster. And has a son a priest! I’ve met his daughters, lovely women—all four made good matches,” Father Kevin says.

“To husbands who are for the Cause too,” Maud adds.

I feel like I’m back in Bridgeport as Maud asks Mary Spring Rice if the O’Brien Kathleen Sheehy married is one of her O’Brien connections, and they go off tracing relations.

“That reminds me,” Mary says, “my cousin Conor’s willing to help us sail the
Asgard
from Germany.”

And I wonder is the Irish Revolution only a web of sisters and sisters-in-law and cousins and school friends? But then, I think, isn’t the Democratic Party in Chicago a similar kind of conspiracy of families and friends? In fact, having a lot of relations is almost a requirement for running for office. Who else would get out and knock on doors for you? Where else could you find an inner circle of people you could trust?

“Plenty of Catholic women in Inghinidhe na hÉireann, the Daughters of Erin, and the Cumann na mBan’s simply overrun with them,” Constance says.

“The what?”

Hard to join a movement when you can’t pronounce the names of half the organizations. Oh, why didn’t I listen to Granny Honora and hold on to some of the Irish she and Mam and Aunt Máire spoke so easily? I used to get the occasional word, but after a while, even that floated away.

Maud translates for me. “The women’s auxiliary of the Irish Volunteers. Kathleen Kelly called them together in a great meeting in Wynn’s Hotel.”

“They’re raising funds, too, making flags to sell,” Constance says.

And baking cookies, I suppose.

“But the money must be smuggled out of Ireland and then converted into dollars,” Constance says.

“German agents demand payment in American currency,” Father Kevin says.

“That’s where you come in, Nora,” Maud says. “We need someone with a dollar bank account.”

“Like me?” I ask.

“Like you,” Constance says. “Think of it, Nora, women and men marching together. Rifles on their shoulders.”

“I’m not wearing a uniform,” I say. “Not unless Coco Chanel designs it.”

They laugh.

“So am I an Ingh, whatever, Daughter of Erin now?”

“As you’ve always been,” Maud says.

13

FEBRUARY 1914

And then nothing. Here I am ready to march into battle, defy old General Henry Wilson and the whole British army, and my comrades disappear. Molly Childers, Mademoiselle Barton, and Mary Spring Rice have gone to the Barton estate in Burgundy. Constance Markievicz is in Ireland. Maud was to go with the countess but bronchitis delayed her. Not in the greatest health is Maud. Still she manages to get over to Ireland in time to prepare for the massive demonstration. British trade unionists will come to Dublin to join the Irish strikers.

“When they all march up Sackville Street, the employers will give in. Negotiate with the unions,” Father Kevin says to me. Only the two of us in that cold parlor. He’s not looking well, coughing away. Never talks about his age but Father Kevin’s well into his seventies, I know, and has a weak chest.

“I’m worried about you, Father,” I say.

“Nothing a hot whiskey won’t cure,” he says as he pours boiling water and a good shot of whiskey into a cup, squeezes a lemon into the mixture, adds sugar and cloves.

“Medicinal,” he says, and smiles. “You’ll join me?”

“I will.”

He makes a second drink.

As I take that first warm sip of the mixture he brews for me, I think, Why am I sitting in the Irish College instead of setting out on some mission for the Cause? Am I going to be like those fellows who arrive in Chicago full of stories about defying the Sassenach in Ireland but never give any proof of what they themselves actually did? “Another man who gave his life for Ireland and lived to tell the tale,” my uncle Patrick would say. I even wonder about Maud and Constance’s efforts. What real difference does serving soup to the strikers make?

I say as much to Father Kevin but he assures me the battle for Ireland is being fought in the streets of Dublin right now. Father Kevin explains that Dublin tramcar drivers work as much as seventeen hours a day for buttons.

“Can’t support their families. Shocking, the poverty in Dublin,” he says. “More babies die at birth than in any other European city. And the wee ones who do live are malnourished and…”

“Wait,” I say. “These are the kids taking Irish dancing lessons from Maud? How does that help?” I say.

“Ah now, Nora, take that derision out of your voice. A child who learns to hold up his head and move his feet to a
bodhrán
drum is more likely to stand up against oppression.”

And the workers had found the courage to strike. He tells me about the leaders, James Connolly and Big Jim Larkin. Both men born to poor Irish Catholic families—Larkin in Liverpool, Connolly in Edinburgh. Hardscrabble lives. Worked as laborers. Very Chicago-sounding both of them. Not big house patriots. These fellows were union organizers who I could imagine talking to railroad workers in Bridgeport.

“Driving the Protestant owners crazy I suppose,” I say.

But Father Kevin shakes his head.

“Sad to say, it’s one of our own leading the bosses against the workers. The owner of the tram system is a good Catholic called William Martin Murphy, a Belvedere boy, educated by the Jesuits but rich now and terrified he’ll lose his money. He locked out his workers and got other employers to do the same. Convinced them it was the only way to stop the Bolsheviks from taking over Dublin and putting Larkin and Connolly over them all.”

“James Connolly,” I say. “He’s the countess’s friend.” I tell Father Kevin about her uniform and laugh. The outfit seemed to me an affectation, like Romaine Brooks wearing a man’s suit.

Father Kevin reprimands me.

“Don’t be mocking the Irish Citizen Army, Nora,” he says. “It’s no joke. At the end of August the police charged a meeting of strikers and killed two of them. Then a crowd of strikebreakers hired by Murphy murdered a woman named Alice Brady who was carrying food to her family. Imagine the hate that drives a man to murder a woman,” he says.

Not hard to imagine. Hadn’t Tim McShane been ready to strangle me? For what? For standing up to him.

“So now, the Irish Citizen Army acts as bodyguards for the strikers,” Father Kevin says. “A defensive force, really like the Irish Volunteers.”

Tens of thousands joined the Irish Volunteers to counter the 250,000 Ulster Volunteers and defend implementation of the Home Rule Bill, he tells me.

I get excited.

“That ugly fellow Wilson talked about them, the Ulster Volunteers. Hard to believe that the Protestants would fight against a lawful order of the British government while the Catholics are ready to fight for it!” I say.

I mean this stuff is confusing.

“Strange isn’t it?” he says. “Officers from Ulster in the British army are threatening to mutiny rather than enforce Home Rule. We’ve learned that the Ulster Volunteers have raised almost a million pounds and are negotiating with a German arms dealer to buy guns.”

“German? Do the British know?”

“They’re turning a blind eye. All right for Ulster men to arm themselves but the government won’t tolerate nationalists getting weapons. Which is why we need you, Nora. It’s time to act.”

Oops. Here it is. My orders. And suddenly I’m very nervous.

“Listen, Father Kevin. I don’t think I’m ready to carry a gun for Ireland,” I say.

“Oh, we wouldn’t expect that, Nora.”

He leans toward me, lowers his voice.

“As I told you the Germans want payment in dollars. We’re asking you to lodge the funds the Daughters of Erin collect in Ireland into your account. The British watch Maud’s bank account and monitor anyone they think is sympathetic. They’d even question any large sums paid into the college’s account. But you can hold the money then get a dollar draft from your bank. Say you’re sending money home.”

“Not very believable for me to deposit loads of money of any kind in my account,” I say. “I just manage to cover my expenses.”

“But what if you have a run of generous clients—women grateful to you for showing them Paris and able to pay you well?”

“Is this a prediction?” I say.

“A certainty,” he says.

But a whole month goes by. Maud’s still in Dublin. The strike’s over. The employers won. The British workers never came to support the Dublin strikers. The Irishmen had to crawl back. Could only get jobs if they promised not to join a union. Father Kevin tells me Maud wrote to him saying John Quinn had sent money for the strikers’ families and she’s distributing it so families can redeem their possessions from pawnshops.

“The gombeen man does well from tragedy,” Father Kevin says. “Very sad.”

I’m spending time in the Louvre copying any likely gown and learning about painters, though no more visits to Gertrude Stein. Still smarting from her servant crack.

Then at Mass Father Kevin tells me I’ll meet my clients at Madame Simone’s that next day.

FEBRUARY 18, 1914

Molly Childers, Mademoiselle Barton, and an older woman called Alice Stopford Green wait for me in front of Madame Simone’s studio. Mary Spring Rice is back in Ireland, Molly tells me.

I help Molly Childers struggle up the steps. Her fists are tight around the railings. I guide her from the back while Mademoiselle Barton helps from the front. A brave woman, Molly Childers.

I look for something to say to ease our slow way up the stairs.

“Did you know Madame Geoffrin lived in this building and held her famous salon here?” I ask, acting as if I knew all about the woman who’d hosted famous figures from the French Enlightenment though I’d never heard of her or it until Madame Simone instructed me on the history of the building. No place in Paris without some kind of tale.

But Mademoiselle Barton really does know all about Madame Geoffrin. “I believe my great-grandfather ‘Irish’ Tom Barton came to her Wednesday dinners whenever he was in Paris. He saw Madame de Pompadour here once. Though he was better acquainted with Louis XV’s younger mistress, Marie-Louise O’Murphy, whose father was an Irish soldier.”

“Oh,” I say. My God—she’s talking about people who lived over a hundred and fifty years ago as if they were neighbors. These families have long memories!

Molly finally reaches the top landing.

“I wouldn’t fancy being a royal mistress or a royal anything,” she says. “We Americans were right to put all that nonsense behind us. Weren’t we, Nora?”

“We were,” I say, thinking of all those French aristocrats climbing the steps to the guillotine.

There’s revolutions and then there’s revolutions. Though for all I know English agents followed Martha Washington. I think of the fellow who was trailing after Constance Markievicz, Maud’s story of minders, and General Wilson’s threats. I’m a bit worried that these women, known to be sympathetic to the Cause, will attract attention from the British government. Surely if they smuggle money out of Ireland the government will notice.

But Father Kevin says that the British know these women are the kind who buy new clothes in Paris.

“And you’re simply their guide. Besides, we have a contact at Dublin Castle,” he said. “You’re not suspected by British Intelligence. Wilson was only blustering at you.”