The Easter Rising 1916 - Molly's Diary (Hands-on History) Page 3

  Sometimes Jack and I sneak into the Coliseum, with three thousand velveteen seats and plush walls inside. The safety curtain is enormous! We have seen some gymnastics. There was a man from Barnum and Bailey Circus and when he saw Jack walk on his hands, he gave him his card. I think Jack secretly dreams of running away to the circus. He could probably teach them a thing or two when it comes to climbing. He’s shown me some of his climbing tricks, like distributing your weight between your hands and toes and he’s a much more patient teacher than Miss Nugent!

  There is also Lemon’s sweet shop. I absolutely love their pineapple rock and butterscotch even if it sticks to my teeth. Jack’s favourites are bull’s eyes and bonbons. Another wonderful place is Lawrence’s Toy Shop and Photographic Emporium up near Cathedral Place that has everything from tricycle horses to beautiful China dolls. Beside them is Tyler’s Boots and also Cables shoe shop. In fact, there are loads of shoe shops around here – Saxone, Trueform Boots, Mansfield’s – which is quite surprising because I often see children without any shoes. My mother says they are poor people with no money. Not even to buy food. She says Dublin is the poorest city in Europe with the biggest slums. That is not so nice a thing to be best in.

  Jack and I have often peeked through the skylight of the Hamman Turkish Bath in Upper Sackville Street. The visitors look most peculiar wrapped in their towels, lying on deck chairs and sweating like pigs. Then they jump in a freezing cold plunge pool! But they get to drink from a soda fountain. One of the maids there told us it has EIGHT different kinds of cooling drinks. Imagine that!

  I will have to stop writing soon as we are off to Howth Head to collect sphagnum moss for the war effort, with only a quick bite to eat before. We are to catch a tram.

  You have to be very careful not to get run over by all the trams going up and down Sackville Street. Nelson’s Pillar is also the centre of a spider’s web leading out to all parts of the city. Because many people can’t read, the trams have signs – a red triangle for Terenure, a brown diamond for Rialto and Glasnevin, a brown oval for Inchicore and Westland Row and a shamrock if you are going all the way to Dalkey. I like the green crescent on the side of the one for Sandymount, like a smiling mouth. The hoarse Dublin United Tramways Company timekeeper bawls out the names of trams as the single and double-deckers swerve down the line. “Rathmines! Terenure! Rialto!”

  We will catch the one with the green beard symbol to Dollymount then walk to Sutton Railway station for the Hill of Howth tramway. I’d better wear my galoshes. It will be very boggy on Howth Head as it has been raining cats and dogs for the last twelve days!

  4.30 p.m. Saturday April 22nd – back home after a busy trip!

  We spent a lively time in the Bog of Frogs on Howth Head collecting bog moss for the war effort. Mother says we have to help the unfortunates caught up in the war. I am proud to be the youngest girl in the whole country trained in First Aid. They even gave me a certificate, though Mother said my bandages were a bit of a mess! But I try to practise on my dolls and teddies when I can.

  It is through the training that I know women can be doctors. We are taught by my mother’s old friend Dr Ella Webb, whose father is the Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and Dr Kathleen Lynn of the Irish Citizen Army (the boss-haters that Jack magicked out of my ear!).

  Among us today was Miss Huxley who runs the Volunteer Aid Detachment hospital in Mountjoy Square with the Trinity College graduates – or the ‘Very Adorable Darlings’ as they are known! They look after the wounded men who come to Dublin from the front.

  My mother says Miss Huxley is trying to improve nursing and make it more scientific in Ireland. Jack says her uncle was a famous scientist who insists we are all descended from the apes. Not Mr Darwin with the big beard but another one with an even bigger beard who they called Darwin’s Bulldog. Jack says she wants to turn us all into monkeys who are our cousins. But I don’t think this can be right. Except in his case. At least it explains his climbing skills!

  As the tram rattled through North Dublin, Mother confided in Miss Huxley about Jack as I pretended to concentrate on looking out the window.

  “He is sharp as anything,” said Mother, “but he gets all his letters jumbled and cannot read well.”

  Miss Huxley, who is kind and sweet, said she had heard of such “word blindness”. Some doctors thought it was to do with the eyes and the brain not connecting properly and she promised to look into it. It has nothing to do with intelligence in her experience. I dearly hope she can help Jack because he flies into such rages when he cannot understand.

  They also had a conversation about wound-cleaning. Miss Huxley told Mother that, if stuck, sugar and honey could be good for treating wounds. I found this very curious and interesting.

  We had a competition to see who could collect the most moss and Jack and I collected twenty mail sacks! But at one stage he snuck off. I followed him for a little way but I was worried about falling into a bog. I am not as surefooted as Jack. I thought I saw him conceal something in one of the sacks. I will have to investigate.

  Let me tell you about bog moss because I find that very interesting. Not like what Miss Nugent teaches me!

  With so many poor men being injured in the war, the army needs a great quantity of bandages and there is not enough cotton. So they are using bog moss, also called sphagnum moss, instead. Its leaf and stalk quickly absorb up to twenty-five times their own weight in liquid. That would be a lot of blood!

  We have spent many a cold afternoon in the Dublin Mountains collecting bog moss, I can tell you! My mother prepares as much as she can before we drop it over to Merrion Square Supply Depot. First we pick through it to remove grass and twigs and small insects, then we sew it into muslin bags – two ounces of moss into each bag which Mother insists must be precisely ten inches by fourteen or half that again at five by seven inches. At the laboratory at Merrion Street, the bags are passed through a solution. Jack pretends it is a secret potion but one of the laboratory workers there told me it is made from mixing mercury and chloride. In small doses it is an antiseptic but otherwise it is a powerful poison. The lab worker also told me they have sent over half a million bags of dressings to help poor soldiers in Flanders or even Gallipoli in Turkey. Imagine, a stalk of bog moss collected by me might save someone’s life! One of these could be Nancy’s husband or son. I have now all those bags to prepare. Groan! The moss is moist and green and gold now but when dry it becomes crisp and springy and the colour of hay. We dry it in the basement of the GPO because there are many hot pipes there. At first my father was reluctant in case we dropped mud on his shiny new instruments. But my mother talked him around.

  As we were coming back up Sackville Street, who should pull my pigtail but Anto Maguire on his bike, delivering groceries for Findlater’s. Mother and Jack got all tied up in dropping off the bags of moss at the GPO and left me talking to Anto.

  “Gi’s a kiss,” he winked. “Tá tú mahogany gas pipe, O’Donnell Abú!” Anto pretends to speak Irish but I know it is pure gibberish.

  I stuck my tongue out at him. “Even your own mother calls you ‘a good-for-nuthin’ lazy article’!”

  “You wait ’til we fight for Ireland’s freedom,” he insisted. “Me an’ Jack will be runnin’ the Republic.”

  “And, pray, what will you be – Minister for Groceries?”

  “I’ve even written a poem about our leaders an’ all,” Anto said, sticking his chest out like a crowing cock.

  “Pádraig Pearse is not so fierce

  And has a squinty eye,

  But he has a dream for Ireland free,

  And is prepared to die!”

  “Why then, you can be Ireland’s national bard,” I said, laughing so hard I nearly fell over. “Good luck rhyming ‘Countess Markievicz’.”

  “That’s easy,” he said, all puffed up. “‘With the Fianna she flits.’”

  “Why, even Mr Yeats couldn’t better that,” I mocked. “What about: ‘Countess Markievicz and he
r Fianna nitwits’?”

  “You’ll see,” he said, trying to sound all mysterious.

  “You’ll see even further if I tell on the Countess’s noble Fianna Boy Scouts gambling on the roof at the back of our house!”

  “There’s no way you’d rat on Jack.” He shoved a note in my pocket and, before I could box his ears, he disappeared.

  I pulled out the note and had a look at it. This is what it said: “Two tins of peaches, a pound of sugar, five rashers of bacon . . .” Our future national bard has given me a Findlater’s grocer’s list! How very funny, I don’t think! I crumpled it up and shoved it back in my pocket.

  But now I am so excited because I am going in my new birthday clothes to Bewley’s Oriental Café in Westmoreland Street for high tea!

  I am so happy to have something swanky to wear, for my one-piece velveteen frock is so patched it cannot be said to be the original garment at all.

  I am now wearing the height of fashion from Roberts’ in Grafton Street. A cream coat teamed with a mushroom-shaped hat and pink ribbon, a pleated brown kilt (which Mother says won’t show the dirt) and a lovely cream Viyella blouse. Best of all, I got a new dress for Easter of snow-white cambric lace with a tiered skirt and a V-shape detail in the front panel.

  I also got some new “unmentionables” – some camiknickers and drawers that go down to the knee. I do so hate these garments. My mother bought herself a liberty bodice, which is a one-piece. She says I am lucky, that when she was a girl her grandmother made her wear her old whalebone corsets and it was like being locked in a suit of armour.

  We will walk across the Liffey, to the café in Westmoreland Street. We pass by Clerys Department Store where you can buy EVERYTHING: silk hats, baby carriages, woven rugs all the way from Arabia. We pass by the DBC and Reis’s Wireless Repair shop on the corner of Abbey Street but that is closed because of the war. My favourite shop is further down on Eden Quay on the banks of the Liffey: in Hopkins and Hopkins, beautiful ticking watches and chronometers keep the time for the whole of Dublin. On the opposite side of Sackville Street, at the corner with Bachelors Walk is Kelly’s Fishing Tackle and Gunpowder shop. I always get the shivers passing by for fear someone will light a match! No doubt bought from Mr Tom Clarke. I bet he puts dynamite in them!

  & & &

  7 p.m. Saturday 22nd April.

  My bedroom.

  Well, I was so excited to have my first proper cup of tea that I nearly scalded my mouth and had to splutter into my handkerchief. Normally I am only allowed milk as my mother thinks tea is too stimulating for children’s stomachs. So I am not used to being a fine lady taking high tea. The Bewleys are Quaker friends of hers so she would have been vexed to see my bad manners. Luckily she was too busy, waving to friends all the time.

  Many people wished me Happy Birthday including Skeffy, a friend of my mother’s, who is quite eccentric in his tweed knickerbockers. He hates war but loves quarrels, including disagreeing with his wife Hannah Sheehy whose name he took (and won’t give back, ha, ha!). My mother told me that she supports the Fenians who want a republic and he wants Home Rule peacefully. He causes a sensation wherever he goes. Some bad people beat him, which must be very hard for a peace-loving man – even if he could start an argument in an empty room, as Nancy says.

  “The bould Molly!” When he embraced me, his badge ‘Votes for Women’ caught my face.

  He gave me a big bear hug and a penny whistle which is a hard-striped candy that you can actually blow. He had probably bought it for his own boy who is seven. But that’s Skeffy – would give you the shirt off his back, as Nancy says.

  He set to whispering with my father and mother. I pretended to suck on my penny whistle while listening for any interesting news for my diary.

  “A friend at the paper told me Eoin MacNeill will cancel any Irish Volunteer marching tomorrow with adverts in the Sunday Independent,” he said.

  “Does Professor MacNeill actually know what’s going on?” my mother asked. “I know he’s Chief of Staff of the Irish Volunteers, but he’s always struck me as being out of touch.”

  “You have a point.” Skeffy frowned. “Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army and some of the Irish Volunteers have become very close recently. And you never know what the old Fenians might be stirring up in the background.”

  I thought of Jack’s old teddy bear and it made me smile to myself.

  But, oh dear, it’s all confusing again, as if someone had pulled up Jack’s counterpane and mixed all the soldiers up!

  “I hope there will be no trouble,” said my mother.

  “What about the Fianna Boy Scouts?” I asked, forgetting I wasn’t supposed to be earwigging.

  “Countess Markievicz is their leader, but she of course is very pally with James Connolly of the Irish Citizen Army,” said Skeffy.

  “Some members of the government think there is a lot of playacting involved but others are beginning to share your suspicions,” said my father in a low voice. “Pearse is always going on about being a martyr to the cause and it’s making the English nervous – they already think Liberty Hall is a hotbed of revolution.”

  “There are too many people willing to die for Ireland,” said Skeffy. “Why can’t more people just live for it?”

  “The government won’t act until they actually break the law,” my father said.

  “It’s well your family are all out of it,” said Skeffy. “I wish Hannah wasn’t tied up in it.”

  “The extremists who want to take up arms are only a small group,” said my father. “I’d be surprised if they’re still at liberty next week.”

  “But there are many gifted people among them,” sighed my Mother. “Pearse the patriot, Connolly who has fought so much for Dublin’s poor, the glamorous Countess – all those flowers of Ireland in love with the idea of dying a glorious death for Irish freedom. It is sad.”

  “I agree with the idea of a united Ireland,” Skeffy said, “but I hate violence of any kind. Wars and armies are organized murder and lead to chaos.”

  “I dislike politics,” my father said emphatically. “We should embrace progress in the twentieth century. Modern communications will bring us closer together.”

  “If Danny has his way, we’ll be off to America on the next boat to live under Mr Edison’s light-bulb!” joked my mother.

  They all laughed but I got a bit worried. For my family isn’t all out of it. That is, of course, Jack’s secret!

  9 p.m. Saturday 22nd April.

  My bedroom.

  Someone gave my mother free tickets to see Yeats’s play ‘Cathleen ni Houlihan’ at the Abbey Theatre next Tuesday. It’s about Ireland as an old woman or something. I have to confess it sounds a bit yawny. Mr Yeats is a poet who believes in ghosts and my Mother says is a terrible snob though probably a genius. He has a Ouija board and has séances with the dead, Nancy says. (Probably summoning his audience.) I would prefer to go and see the Gilbert and Sullivan musical in the Gaiety. Their panto last Christmas was wonderful! Addy, Mother’s friend, knows one of the Gaiety Girls, Louisa Nolan. She sang like an angel!

  When I was getting changed for bed, as I pulled out my tea-stained handkerchief, Anto’s crumpled grocery list came tumbling out with it and I saw there was more writing on the other side.

  It read: “Dir Bootyfool Muly, wil u b my sweethart? I may soon go into battle for thee, your secrit admiyerur, AM”

  So much for being my secret admirer! Signing it with his initials! His spelling is even worse than Jack’s. I would rather become a nun in Eccles Street Convent than marry him.

  But what is that battle he talks about? Skeffy said all the marching will be cancelled. Anto must be behind the times as usual!

  11 p.m. Saturday 22nd of April – still my birthday!

  My bedroom.

  I am writing with the moonlight coming in through my curtains because I am eavesdropping on Jack up on the back roof above, smoking and playing cards with his friends. I have opened the window a c
rack to listen to them. One cheeky beggar is whistling an Irish air and I hear Jack hiss.

  “Would you keep it down, Martin! If Father catches me I’ll be packed off to Belfast and miss all the action.”

  Parp! Parp!

  I don’t believe it. The sound of a bugle!

  “Matthew Connolly! You madman!” Jack is laughing so much he can barely speak.

  They are being shocking unruly. I know Matthew Connolly from First Aid training. He is fifteen, a year older than Jack and rather good-looking. His even better-looking brother Seán, the actor, is going to be in that dreary play we’re seeing on Tuesday. But they aren’t related to James Connolly who is the boss of the Irish Citizen Army.

  “I hope I get the chance to sound the fall-in tomorrow,” says Matthew. “If we’re joining ranks with the Volunteers it might go to one of their boyos.”

  “Janey Mac, are you sure it’s not all off?” says Anto’s little reedy voice. “I can’t keep up with all the changes.”

  I can hear from the catch in his words that he’s smoking as well.

  “The brother, Seán, says Pearse and Connolly are determined about getting the boys out. No matter what MacNeill puts in the papers,” says Matthew.

  What a lot of intrigue about a march! Anto was just being dramatic in his note when he boasted about a battle.

  “My da says he’s going to take the air out of my bicycle tires so I can’t leave,” says Martin.