John O'Donovan

“ John O’Donovan.
Dublin, March 29, 1860.
My dear Friend—I return you the letters of Donal Oge and Edward O’Sullivan (Edward, the Cork butter merchant, now dead—1898) , and thank you most heartily for the read of them. Donald Oge (Dan McCartie, now in New York—1898) , seems very clever, but the other seems wild. Your cousin, Finghin Ceannmor and my nephew-in-law in New [370] York may be of mutual advantage to each other, as they seem bent on business and industry. I fear your political friends are too sublime in their notions to herd with either of them. ”

“ Louis; Edmond was slain in Africa; and William died here in New York a [376] dozen years ago; I saw him buried in Calvary Cemetery. The three were actively connected with the Fenian movement in Ireland. I don’t know I may blame myself for having anything to do with that connection.
The father, John O’Donovan, died in the year 1862, at the age of fifty-three, and his co-laborer in Celtic literature, Eugene Curry, died a few months after. God be merciful to them, and to all the souls we are bound to pray for! ”

“ And how can I help thinking of the wreck and ruin that come upon the Irish race in the foreign land! One in a hundred may live and prosper, and stand to be looked at as a living monument of the prosperity, [155] but ninety-nine in a hundred are lost, never to be heard of. The six O’Donovan brothers that I saw sail out from the Cove of Cork—the sons of Patrick O’Donovan-Rossa and Mary O’Sullivan-Buadhaig—came to be known as men in the First Ward of New York a few years after—Den, Dan, Jerrie, John, Conn and Florrie Donovan ”

“ Sometimes the Revision Courts gave us the opportunity of teaching a little Irish history. In South Wales most of our people hail from Munster. In one of the Courts there was the case of Owen O'Donovan being objected to, on the ground that he had left the qualifying property, and that Eugene O'Donovan was now the occupier. I explained to the Barrister that in the South of Ireland the names of Owen and Eugene were often applied to the same man, Eugene being the Latinized form of Owen. ”

“ In 1866 he began his journalistic career by occasionally contributing to the ‘Irish Times’ and other Dublin papers. Between that date and 1870 he made several journeys to France and America, and in the latter country he continued his medical studies, attending for some time the courses at the Bellevue Hospital Medical College at New York. When the Franco-German war broke out in 1870, O'Donovan's adventurous temper led him to enter the French army, joining the Légion Etrangère after Sedan. ”

“ CHAPTER VI. THE IRISH REVOLUTIONARY BROTHERHOOD—ESCAPE OF JAMES STEPHENS—PROJECTED RAID ON CHESTER CASTLE—CORYDON THE INFORMER.
The trials in 1859, following the arrests in connection with the Phœnix movement, with which the name of Jeremiah O'Donovan (called also "Rossa," after his native place) was identified, were the first public manifestations of what developed into the great organisation known in America as the Fenian Brotherhood, and, on this side of the Atlantic as the I.R.B., or Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood. ”

“ O'Donovan especially petted him and cherished him, and lavished on him the affection which she had been so ready to give the son Heaven had never granted her. As she and her husband grew older, and as this adopted member of their family began to seem more "like other people," read books, studied farming and trucking seriously, and recovered something of his shattered memory for every-day events, he was trusted with more and more of the farming and the business. ”

“ The sheriff advised him to be a man, and told him to turn to God,—who, if he repented, would in no wise cast him out. “Act,” said he, “as O'Donovan did, whom you yourself prosecuted and placed in the very cell in which you now stand.”
“Connor O'Donovan!” he exclaimed, “he might well bear to die; he was innocent; it was I that burned Bodagh Buie's haggard; he had neither act nor part in it no more than the child unborn. I swore away his life out of revinge to his father an' jealousy of himself about Una O'Brien. ”

“ Of course, Mr. O'Donovan, you are acting in good faith; but you have no more legal right nor the power to arrest a man in Samoa, than you have to arrest one in Manchuria or Patagonia. Of course, old Johns (the British Consul) doesn't know this, or [pg 208] he would not have made such a fool of himself by endorsing a warrant from an irresponsible judge of a New Zealand court. But as I told you, I shall aid you in every possible way."
O'Donovan was no fool. He knew that all that Otway had said was absolutely correct, but he braced himself up.
"I daresay what you say may be right, Mr. Supercargo. ”

“ O'Donovan did very well with the bottles for a minute or two, and afterwards with the leg of a chair; but they were too many for him, and when the table was upset and the lamps put out there was a fairly lively five minutes round the wreck of the dinner-table and of the empty dish that had once contained a sucking-pig à l'Irlandaise. The Moslem [339] Circassians, full to repletion with the flesh of the accursed creature, fought under a disadvantage; and when O'Donovan's servants rushed in and took their master's part, the issue was no longer in doubt. ”

“ Instead of issuing the projected supplemental catalogue of "Memories Wanted," O'Donovan by this time saw his way to buying them up on spec. He was not satisfied with his commission. He had learnt by experience the kinds that went best, such as exam. answers, but he resolved to have all sorts and be remembered as the Whiteley of Memory. Thus the Clearing House very soon developed into a storehouse. O'Donovan's advertisement ran thus:—
WANTED! ”

“ Connor O'Donovan was a happy representation of all that is noble and pious in the Irish character, without one tinge of the crimes which darken or discolor it. But the heart that is full of generosity and fortitude, is generally most susceptible of the kinder and more amiable affections. The noble boy, who could hear the sentence of death without the commotion of a nerve, was forced to weep on the neck of an old and faithful follower who loved him, when he remembered that, after that melancholy visit, he should see his familiar face no more. ”

“ I am sure it would offend him to hear that Donell-na-g Croicean, who died in 1584, was unquestionably a bastard—Teige, his father, was never married. Donell-na-g Croicean “kept” Eileen ni Laoghaire—Ellen O’Leary, but afterward married her. Domhnall, their son, married Juana, daughter of Sir Owen McCarthy.
Daniel, their first son, is the ancestor of General O’Donovan, of Bawnlahan, who died in 1829. Teige, their second son, is the ancestor of Morgan, now O’Donovan. Donogh, the fourth son is the ancestor of James of Cooldurragha. ”

“ It appears, from the depositions in Trinity College, Dublin, that the said Daniel O’Donovan and Teige-a-Duna McCarthy hanged the said Dorothy Ford at Castle Donovan, to deprive her and her family of debts lawfully due unto them.
You and I escape this last curse, but we reel under that pronounced by the Holy Columb (if indeed, its rage is not spent) . God’s curse extends to the fifth generation, but I believe man’s goes further. ”

“ Then, when I went up to Newcastle-on-Tyne, a man called on me who told me he recollected seeing me at his father’s house, in Dunmanway, when he was a child. He was a grandson of old Jerrie Donovan, of Nedineh, whom I met in my early days—Jer-a-Bhaaid, who belonged to the family of my grandmother, Mauria ’n Bhaaid. This New Castle Irishman was half a Tipperary man. His mother, before she married his father, Tim O’Donovan Baaid, was a Miss Doheny, the niece of Father Doheny, of Tipperary, who was a parish priest in Dunmanway. ”

“ Life is sweet, especially to a young man of my years.”
“But if we should fail,” observed the jailer, “I trust you will act the part of a man.”
“I hope, at all events, that I will act the part of a Christian,” returned O'Donovan. “I certainly would rather live; but I'm not afeard of death, and if it comes, I trust I will meet it humbly but firmly.”
“I believe,” said the sheriff, “you need entertain little apprehension of death ”

“ In the year 1841, the family of my father’s brother Cornelius, sold out their land and their house, and went to America. In that house the priests used to have their dinner on “Conference” days in Ross. My uncle had recently died. His widow was Margaret, the daughter of Daniel O’Donoghue, who belonged to a family of O’Donoghues whom England had plundered. She had four daughters and two sons: Mary, Ellen, Julia, Margaret, Denis and Daniel. They settled first in Philadelphia. All the girls are dead ”

“ O’Donovan, and possibly McNeice, will be left out in the cold if Babberly is right. The matter is rather a tangled one. With Babberly is Lady Moyne, working at her ingenious policy of dragging a red herring across the path along which democracy goes towards socialism. On the other hand there is McNeice with fiery intelligence, and O’Donovan, a coldly consistent rebel against English rule in any shape and form. They have their little paper with money enough [Pg 97] behind it, with people like Crossan circulating it for them. It is quite possible that they may count for something. ”

“ New York.
Dear O’Donovan Rossa—It is forty years since I left Dunmanway, and did not bring with me much news about our family relations.
When I was a boy, our friends would come to town on market-day, and have their talk in the Irish language. It was a pleasure to hear them in their own soft tongue—the women with the long cloak and the hood thrown gracefully back. The times and the people all gone now, and none to take their place!
My mother’s name was Nora Donovan. She had one sister and three brothers. All came to the United States. One uncle lives. ”

“ The horse-dealer was too well versed in human nature to press for a confidence, which he foresaw would be, at last, willingly extended to him; he therefore walked along at Mark's side, without uttering a word, and seeming to be absorbed in his own deep musings. His calculation was a correct one. They had not gone many paces forward, when young O'Donoghue unburthened his whole heart to him—told him, with all the eloquent energy of a wounded spirit, of the insult he had received in his own home, before his younger brother's face. ”

“ However in Ireland man proposes and the priest disposes.
At a meeting of the Conservative electors in Cork, Mr. Standford read a telegram announcing the return of The O'Donoghue in Tralee, which was received with hisses. He said the reason I had stood there was a requisition, signed by Sir Henry Donovan, in the presence of nine grand jurors of the County of Kerry, calling on me to do so. Sir Henry Donovan had since turned over to The O'Donoghue from the man he had forced into the field. Now that would teach them not to be fooled by Liberal promises. ”

“ O'Donovan died he mourned her with sorrow so sincere that her bereaved old husband felt him to be the one link which still bound him to life, and seven years later, when old Timothy himself passed away in the arms of his faithful servitor, it was found that he had left the farm and house to the wanderer who, twelve years before, haggard and nameless, had stumbled desperately up his garden path.
The new farmer was not long to lead a solitary life. ”

“ O'Donnell laughed. "No business at all, friend Brown—no business at all. I happen to be a lover of the Stars and Stripes; consequently, no friend of Captain Farquharson's political intrigues here. Do you understand?"
"More or less. It's the Stars and Stripes for me too, every time!"
"You are a likely-looking man. Since you have left Farquharson I'll offer you place with me. You will find it active, full of excitement, and with pay not small."
"Thank you, Mr. Irishman, but I don't intend to work any more for strangers. It's like buying a pig in a sack. ”

“ However, when he arrives at Sir John Hotham's, he finds no one but his son, Sir John being very ill----"
"Ah, by----! here's a pretty affair!" cried O'Donnell. "Very ill Sir John is not. He has got the gout in one foot and both hands, and is as cross as the yards of a ship; but his son takes all upon himself, and a base business he makes of it. What more? what more?"
"Why, the son causes this noble gentleman to be arrested immediately for a spy, tears his pass to pieces, will not let him see the governor, and threatens to shoot him to-morrow morning." ”

“ The drowning hand grasps not the straw with more avidity than does the harassed and wearied mind, agitated by doubts, and worn out with conjectures, seize upon some one apparent solution to a difficulty that has long oppressed it, and, for the very moment, convert every passing circumstance into an argument for its truthfulness. The O'Donoghue now saw, or believed he saw, why Mark would never accompany the others in their visits to the “Lodge”—nor be present when any of the Travers family came to the castle ”

“ Long ago, O’Donohue was lord of all these mountains and lakes, and of as much land as the best race-horse in the country couldn’t run around in a day—from Glenflesk to Castle Island. He was very fond of stag hunting on the mountains, and used to have the O’Sullivans of Twomeys, the McCarthy Mores, and all the great men of the country hunting with him. ”

“ If a real crisis, what will be its consequences to us? I shall offer a few observations on these two points. If there be one thing, in connection with the cause of Ireland, I more cordially detest than any other, it is what scribblers or spouters call “a Crisis.” It has been the chronic bane of Ireland—a more fatal bane than famine or any other the enemy have had, to perpetuate their rule. A bane—a scourge—a disease—a devil’s scourge it has been to us. Its best known formula has resolved itself into this: “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity.” ”