Tipperary: A Novel of Ireland

  In mid-1909, Joseph Harney and I set out on a journey. We had five destinations, all determined by me, and in different parts of the country. Sometimes, a cure will kick back upon a healer and his patient, with sad and regrettable outcome. More than once, I had been reproached by family members in a place I had previously visited, because my attempts to heal had not met with success. Hostility had been expressed, and I had thought it best to remove the irritant—namely, myself.

  Based upon this experience, I deduced that it would not be good to leave such a hostile connection unappeased. Searching my memory, I found five occasions where the most bitter feelings might be harbored. Without telling my parents, I decided that I must confront each of those families where I knew resided the deepest animosity to me. I invited Joseph to accompany me.

  When we began to travel, he gave himself a job to do—he was the one who planned the stages of the journey, where we would stay, how many miles a day we would cover, and, most important of all, our mode of transport: we rode bicycles. Harney taught me to cycle (he insisted that I call him “Harney”—said it made me sound like a gentleman with a manservant), and I mastered it immediately; he was an excellent teacher, and off we went.

  After two days, we reached our first place of inquiry. The MacDonaghs lived in south Offaly, in a stone house with a slate roof; they had a small farm, and the father of the family had been a quarry worker. Dust from the stones he quarried had caused him sharp respiratory problems, and I had visited him upon a request from his brother, whom I had treated successfully for a chronically uncertain stomach (sweet warm milk, with honey, every night before retiring).

  For the poor respiration I had prescribed balsam; but where I had shown him how to inhale the treatment in warm water, he went further; he drank it, and became so distressed at the taste and the gastric burning that he suffered a heart attack and died. As I had remained in the district, attending to others, I went to the funeral and was urgently accosted by his sons. I defended myself, but as I departed, the elder said to me that he would seek me out and kill me—“if it took ten years.” As the sinister Bruree horseman seemed to resemble this family, I had wondered whether a kinsman of some sort had been employed.

  Harney and I decided to approach this house at eventide; he told me that he had a plan—and that it necessitated him entering the house first. He did, and I waited outside with the bicycles. A dog came and wagged its tail; I must admit that I felt apprehensive.

  A long time passed. Harney came out, pulling the door closed behind him.

  “We'll travel on,” he said.

  But I said to this boy of twenty-one, “No. I must see them.”

  He looked alarmed. “Don't do that. I didn't get a good result.”

  I started to walk to the house.

  “Come with me,” I said. “We can't have this.”

  I knocked at the door, opened it, and stood there.

  The family sat at their evening meal—the widow MacDonagh and her two sons and a daughter; the house had a dismal air, and seemed poorer than before. As I walked in, the elder son rose.

  “Do you know what's coming to you?” he shouted.

  “Please allow me to speak.”

  He would have none of it; he took a sickle from a hook on the wall and came toward me, swinging the implement.

  Harney stepped in front of me and held out his arms like a supplicant.

  “Here! Listen!” He got their attention, though they glared the coals of Hell at me. “Two things. First of all—do you think this man killed your father deliberately? If you do, you're all eejits. Second thing. If he's harmed—ever, by anyone, anywhere—I'll harm you.” Enraged, he pointed to the son with the sickle. “And you won't know when it'll be. It might be next year—or when you're sixty. But I'll do it—myself. Now sit down and offer us a cup of tea like decent people. What kind of hospitality is this? We came a long way to see you.”

  This threw the family into confusion. Mrs. MacDonagh, in her black, rose to the occasion and turned to the dresser for two cups and saucers (the family was drinking from mugs); her daughter moved to make room at the table; Harney fetched a chair for me. We sat down, in total silence.

  I waited to see whether someone should speak. Soon, oppressed by this, I cleared my throat—and received a warning glance from Harney; I subsided. The silence continued—then Mrs. MacDonagh spoke.

  “Big auction here next week.”

  Harney, quick as light, asked, “Oh? Whose is it?”

  The younger son answered. “A Gallagher man. His wife died; he's going to America.”

  Harney looked at the older son, who still had a seething air.

  “You should buy that place.”

  Mr. MacDonagh said nothing—but I saw his eyes flicker.

  “Does your land adjoin it?” asked Harney.

  “Our bottom field hits their big meadow,” said the younger.

  “That's the thing to do then,” said Harney.

  The older son spoke, quick and sullen. “You need money to go to an auction.”

  “There's banks,” said Harney encouragingly.

  Mrs. MacDonagh listened to all of this, and I saw that she had a yearning to her—she wanted her sons to prosper.

  “We know no banks,” said Mr. MacDonagh again.

  “We do,” said Harney. “Isn't that right, Charles?”

  I did know banks in Tipperary, and in Limerick; my mother's family had strong banking connections. But I knew no banks in Offaly, and I said so.

  “But you can introduce this man, can't you?”

  That night, I marveled again at Harney and his skills. At twenty-one, I was awkward and uncertain; he seemed capable of any situation. The MacDonaghs responded to him; by letter we performed introductions to the National and Royal banks. Some months later, we heard that they had bought another farm, not the one at auction—there had not been the time; but they had taken the next step in their lives.

  “Always try to turn something bad into something good,” said Harney.

  He established of a certainty that no MacDonagh had ever pursued me, they attained a kind of forgiveness of me, and on we rode, on our bicycles, with our side-panniers and front baskets, through driving rain and in lovely sunlight. In each of the other four households where we visited, we found progressively less hostility; indeed, we found warmth and welcoming attitudes. Much of this may be attributed to Harney's friendliness, his refusal to let rancor float upon the air. When I look back upon it now, it feels like a journey of true progress.

  I believe that we are witnessing, in the pages of his account of his own life, a man in the throes of changing. Charles O'Brien, remember, began his “History” by wishing to change. He wanted with all his heart to make himself irresistibly appealing to the young woman by whom he had been smitten. From this point in his text, it soon becomes plain that he was beginning to undergo a maturing process.

  For years he had ridden around the country like an innocent abroad. In comparison with the works of other observers, including those of more formal historians, his general observations of his society were accurate and valuable. Where he seemed out of true came in his judgment of his own life, on which he seemed to have a poor hold.

  He adored his father, yet we learn from his mother that his father reciprocated that love less than fully. Charles saw himself as upstanding and dashing, yet he had to be told to wear clean shirts. He blundered onto the stage of Anglo-Irish politics with the unfortunate incident of Parnell, where he was used like a simpleton by the British press hostile to Parnell. And he chose for the love of his life a woman who rejected him completely.

  In the love affair, though, something may have been right. If someone as sharp as Harney thought that April Burke would have been ideal for Charles, then he can be assumed to have had some accuracy in his view of himself—even if he wasn't totally aware of it.

  We also know that he found out one major fact about himself. He could be at home, feel at one with the world, in T
ipperary Castle. Yet that raised the stakes for his life and his good management of it, because he was, as yet, no more than a bystander in that drama (although he did make a significant contribution, to which we'll come in a moment).

  His reaction to misfortune—of which he tells us little—is fascinating. Suddenly, instead of languishing, he does something more than brave. Without giving the full details, he sets out to find the people who might have shot him. No fear does he express that this time they might finish the job. Instead, he finds them all, faces them, and sits down with them.

  Unfortunately, Joe Harney is not on record regarding that extraordinary journey he took with Charles O'Brien in the summer of 1909. His view of it would have been compelling—especially given what a different picture we get of Charles through Harney.

  Charles was as selective as any historian. Whatever his protestations of the integrity essential to the record he was keeping, he tells us only what he wants to tell us. He glosses over his injuries, and the subsequent illnesses and fevers. And he paints April in a kindly light no matter how cynically she used him. But Harney fills in Charles's outline.

  And, fortunately, Harney was in court for Charles's evidence in the Tipperary Castle hearings. Charles himself never reveals that he was even there.

  Yes, I got dragged into that case. Well, the use of the word “dragged” is excessive; I went along willingly, because my great friend Charles O'Brien was giving evidence. It was May, I remember, not long after Easter; the year was 1910, I'm fairly certain of that. I was over at the O'Briens' house on the Sunday. Charles was never any good at asking any favors for himself—it was his mother who said, “Did you hear that Charles is called as a witness in the case?” She didn't even need to specify—it was known as “the case.” So that if you said, “Any news of the case?” everyone knew what you were talking about.

  I knew what Mrs. O'Brien was hinting at, so I said, “I'll go with you. When is it?” And Charles of course demurred.

  “Tuesday,” said his mother, and she told me afterward that she was delighted that I'd go.

  He was called the minute the court sat on the Tuesday morning. Which was unusual in those cases—mostly they began with legal arguments over knotty points that came up the previous day.

  We spent the night before in a hotel near the courts, and Charles and I sat up until very late, discussing not so much what he would say as how he would say it. He was fifty that summer, but he was the youngest and least confident fifty-year-old—man or woman—that I ever knew.

  I remember saying to him, “You have a wonderful gaze. It's very truthful. And it'll stand you in good stead, because you're supposed to speak your evidence to the judge. So just look at him and he'll believe you.”

  Then we worked out something that could have got us into trouble! I was to sit in the public gallery, and if Charles saw me putting my hand to my forehead, he was to slow down. When he got agitated, he always said too much and spoke too quickly—through nerves, I expect. And I wanted to be able to send him a reassuring sign that would help him to slow down.

  It worked perfectly, and everything went very well. For a start, he dressed elegantly; he had a dark suit of clothes, and he wore a blue striped shirt with a white cutaway collar and a black-and-white-checked tie with a little diamond stickpin. And he had a sober waistcoat. He looked magnificent—the hair was still powerful, he had a look of Beethoven to him.

  But he needed something to help him—because the way he was treated in court would have rattled any man. First of all, he was examined and then cross-examined, as happens with most witnesses, unless they're experts who don't need to be challenged. Now, in all such cases, the person who does the examination is the lawyer who's supposed to be on your side, then comes the cross-examination, from the opposition, and that's supposed to be hostile.

  In this case you'd wonder which was the more hostile, because, of course, the first part of the questioning, the supposedly benign part, was done by Stephen Somerville, April's husband, with his black beard cut like a spade. He was so hostile to Charles that the judge intervened, and I thought he was going to ask him, “Whose side are you on?” He was rough! I can remember his first question—more of a remark, really.

  “Mr. O'Brien,” said he, “it is not customary for men to wear jewelry in court.”

  He was referring to the tiepin; he said it with a smile, but you could feel the barb. Everybody looked up, Charles looked over at me, I put the palm of my hand to my forehead—and Charles turned to the judge.

  “My Lord,” he said, and he had this great, polished Tipperary accent and, of course, perfect courtesy—he got it from both parents—“My Lord, I was not aware. And I'm wearing cuff links. Do they count as jewelry?”

  Of course he knew that the judge and all the other lawyers were wearing cuff links—everybody did in those days. The judge laughed—and he was a bit of a sour old bugger in his way—but he laughed.

  “Mr. O'Brien,” said he, “you have drawn the most appropriate form of attention to the ridiculousness of your barrister's remark.”

  You see, the judge did a number of things there: He relaxed the witness. He pointed up Stephen Somerville's nonsense. And he reminded Somerville whose side he was supposed to represent. By the way, Miss Burke herself wasn't in the court that day—which surprised me.

  Charles acquitted himself very well. After a while I was able to stop passing my hand across my forehead and sit back and enjoy the spectacle. Charles was dignified. He was thoughtful. They couldn't rattle him. When my old friend Dermot Noonan got up, he did his best. He was fighting to get the land into official hands so that people could buy it. I was taken aback by his attitude. He was antagonistic. And he was, I have to say, nasty.

  He tried to dig into the relationship between Charles and April, but Charles didn't get caught. He just answered the questions as though he were a gentleman—which is exactly how he came across, and exactly what he was. Dermot's a tough man—but he couldn't shake Charles.

  I've always believed that Charles won that case for April Burke, which, given the circumstances of the time, was very ironic. Like all great cases, it happened in one exchange—and we knew that it had happened. It came late in the second day, when Dermot was really stuck into Charles.

  Dermot said to him, “You know this property—these lands, this house—better than anyone in Ireland, is that not so?”

  Charles said, “Perhaps. I have certainly spent more continuous time there than anyone I know.”

  You see, Charles's answers were so reasonable and well mannered that you couldn't figure out whether he was answering for his own side or the other's.

  “So what is your opinion of the place? I mean,” said Dermot, “you're a well-traveled man, you hobnob with the aristocracy.”

  “I believe it very beautiful,” said Charles.

  “Is it the most beautiful you've ever seen?”

  Charles turned to the judge. “My Lord, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it would be invidious to make an unfavorable comparison with other houses, in so many of which I have received great hospitality.”

  The judge himself owned a fine place in Wicklow, a house and estate of which he was known to be proud, and he nodded in grave agreement. And then came the winning point.

  Dermot Noonan said to Charles, “Whom do you believe should own this house and land?”

  Said Charles, “The party who will most preserve its beauty and usefulness for this country.”

  Said Dermot, “Why is that necessary?”

  Charles took his time in answering; he turned to the judge and said, “My Lord, I believe that in the years to come, no matter what way the history of this country bends, Tipperary Castle and the gardens—they're a matter of world beauty.”

  Now, this unsteadied Dermot, and he was then jostled by the judge, who told him he must ask questions to elicit facts, not opinions.

  So the next question was “And why do you think Mrs. Somerville”— he laid emphas
is on the “Mrs.,” to unsettle Charles, I suppose, to needle him—“why do you think she's the one who could do that?”

  Charles had his answer ready. “Well,” said he, “up to now all the local people have ever tried to do is damage the property. They try to break into the building. Or they steal grazing, they turn their animals in there unlawfully. The first act of Mrs. Somerville's was to appoint someone whom she knew would take close care of the place. I believe that if she owns it, she will turn it into a national treasure.”

  There was something very convincing in the way he said it. No drama, no great legal clinching point—just a steady conviction. His evidence came across as, well, irrefutable.

  The final paragraphs of Mr. Prunty's note on the Tipperary Castle case assemble everything neatly.

  “Months of delay and counterclaim had already stretched into years, and in 1911, the case was decided before Sir Michael King-Hamilton. The learned judge gave three lengthy disquisitions, one toward each side of the argument. First he dismissed the Crown's right to disperse the house and lands by sale. The learned judge said that he understood the great national interest in the case, given the recent direction that Irish lands had been taking ‘back into native hands.’ And in any case, the Crown had never taken any rights over this—still private—estate.

  “Then he dismissed the claim by Mr. Dermot Noonan, a self-proclaimed member of Sinn Fein, who, via the provisions of the Wyndham Act, sought the property's ‘rightful return to the people of Tipperary from whom it had been taken by Plantation in the year 1587.’

  “In his dismissal, the learned judge made comment upon Mr. Noonan's ‘meticulous and even scholarly Research, going back hundreds of years—some of which, it has to be said, eventually came to rest in that land where no proof may be adduced, the Land of Myth.’