Hyacinth. George A. Birmingham
for funds orbi et urbi. The world—in this case North America—was to be visited, exhorted, and, it was hoped, taxed by some of his most eloquent lieutenants. Even Canada, with its leaven of Orangemen, was to be honoured with the speeches of an orator of second-rate powers. The city—Dublin, of course—was the chosen scene of the leader’s personal exertions. Since his revolt against John O’Neill, O’Rourke had been a little shy of Dublin audiences, but the pressing nature of the present crisis almost forced him to pay his court to the capital. He found some comfort in the recollection that during the five years that had elapsed since O’Neill’s death he had missed no public opportunity of shedding tears beside his tomb. He remembered, too, that he had put his name down for a large subscription towards the erection of a statue to the dead leader, a work of art which the existing generation seemed unlikely to have the pleasure of seeing.
Thus it happened that on the very day of the publication of Miss Goold’s scheme Mr. O’Rourke announced his intention of addressing an appeal for funds to a public meeting in the Rotunda. Miss Goold was disconcerted and irritated. She was well aware that Mr. O’Rourke’s appeal would give the respectable Nationalists an excellent excuse for ignoring hers, and unfortunately the respectable people are just the ones who have most money. She was confident that she could rely on the extreme section of the Nationalists, and on that element in the city population which loves and makes a row, but she could not count on the moneyed classes. They were, so far as their words went, very enthusiastic for the Boer cause; but when it came to writing cheques, it was likely that the counter-attractions of the Parliamentary fund would prove too strong.
Since it seemed that Mr. O’Rourke would certainly spoil her collection, the obvious thing to do was to try to spoil his. If he afforded people an excuse for not paying the travelling expenses of her volunteers to Lorenzo Marques, she would, if possible, suggest a way of escape from paying for his men’s journeys to London. After all, no one really wanted to subscribe to either fund, and it might be supposed that the public would very gladly keep their purses shut altogether.
For an Irishman it is quite possible to be genuinely enthusiastic and at the same time able to see the humorous side of his own enthusiasm. This is a reason why an Irishman is never a bore unless, to gain his private ends, he wants to be. Even an Irish advocate of total abstinence, or an Irish antivaccinationist, if such a thing exists, is not a bore, because he will always trot out his conscientious objections with a half-humorous, half-deprecating smile. This same capacity for avoiding the slavery of serious fanaticism enables an Irishman to cease quite joyfully from the pursuit of his own particular fad in order to corner an obnoxious opponent. Thus Augusta Goold and her friends were genuinely desirous of striking a blow at England, and really believed that their volunteers might do it; but this did not prevent them from finding infinite relish in the prospect of watching Mr. O’Rourke squirming on the horns of a dilemma. They took counsel together, and the result of their deliberations was peculiar. They proposed to invite Mr. O’Rourke to join his appeal to theirs, to pool the money which came in, and to divide it evenly between the volunteers and the members of Parliament. It was Tim Halloran who hit upon the brilliant idea. Augusta Goold chuckled over it as she grasped its consequences. Mr. O’Rourke, Tim argued, would be unwilling to accept the proposal because he wanted all the money he could get, more than was at all likely to be collected. He would be equally unwilling to reject it, because he could then be represented as indifferent to the heroic struggle of the Boers. In the existing state of Irish and American opinion a suspicion of such indifference would be quite sufficient to wreck his chances of getting any money at all.
Of course, the obvious way of making such a proposal would have been by letter to Mr. O’Rourke. Afterwards the correspondence—he must make a reply of some sort—could be sent to the press, and sufficient publicity would be given to the matter. This was what Tim Halloran wanted to do, but such a course did not commend itself to Augusta Goold. It lacked dramatic possibilities, and there was always the chance that the leading papers might refuse to take any notice of the matter, or relegate the letters to a back page and small print. Besides, a mere newspaper controversy would not make a strong appeal to the section of the Dublin populace on whose support she chiefly relied. A much more attractive plan suggested itself. Augusta Goold, with a few friends to act as aides-de-camp, would present herself to Mr. O’Rourke at his Rotunda meeting, and put the proposal to him then and there in the presence of the audience.
In the meantime the few days before the meeting were occupied in scattering suggestive seed over the hoardings and blank walls of the city. One morning people were startled by the sight of an immense placard which asked in violent red letters, ‘What is Ireland going to do?’ Public opinion was divided about the ultimate purpose of the poster. The majority expected the announcement of a new play or novel; a few held that a pill or a cocoa would be recommended. Next morning the question became more explicit, and the hypothesis of the play and the pill were excluded. ‘What,’ the new poster ran, ‘is Ireland going to do for the Boers?’ The public were not intensely anxious to find an answer to the conundrum thrust thus forcibly on their attention, but they became curious to know who the advertisers were who hungered for the information. Men blessed by Providence with sagacious-looking faces made the most of their opportunity, and informed their friends that the thing was a new dodge of O’Rourke’s to get money. Their reputation suffered when the next placard appeared. The advertisers had apparently changed their minds, for what they now wanted to know was, ‘What are the Irish M.P.‘s going to do for the Boers?’ Clearly Mr. O’Rourke could have nothing to gain by insisting on an answer to such a question. The public were puzzled but pleased. The bill-stickers of the city foresaw the possibility of realizing a competence, for the next morning the satisfied inquirers published the result of their investigations. ‘The Em Pees ‘(it was thus that they now referred to the honourable members of Parliament) ‘are supporting the infamies of England.’ It was at this point that the eye of a Castle official was caught by one of the placards as he made his way to the Kildare Street Club for luncheon. He discussed the matter with a colleague, and it occurred to them that since they were paid for governing Ireland, they ought to give the public some value for their money, and seize the opportunity of doing something. They sent a series of telegrams to Mr. Chesney’s London house, which were forwarded by his private secretary to the Riviera. The replies which followed kept the Castle officials in a state of pleasurable excitement until quite late in the evening. At about eight o’clock large numbers of Metropolitan police sallied out of their barracks and tore down the last batch of placards. Next morning fresh ones were posted up, each of which bore the single word, ‘Why?’ The bill-stickers were highly pleased, and many of them were arrested for drunkenness. Mr. O’Rourke was much less pleased, for he began to guess what the answer was likely to be, and how it would affect his chances of securing a satisfactory collection. The officials were perplexed. They suspected the ‘Why?’ of containing within its three letters some hideous sedition, but it was not possible to deal vigorously with what might, after all, be only the cunning novelty of some advertising manufacturer. More telegrams harried Mr. Chesney, but before any definite course of action had been decided on the morning of the Rotunda meeting arrived, and with it an answer to the multifarious ‘Whys’: Because O’Rourke wants all the money to spend in the London restaurants.’ There was a great deal of laughter, and many people, quite uninterested in politics, determined to go to the meeting in hopes of more amusement.
When Mr. O’Rourke took the chair the hall was crowded to its utmost capacity. Under ordinary circumstances this would have augured well for the success of his appeal, for it showed that the public were at all events not apathetic. On this particular occasion, however, Mr. O’Rourke would have been better pleased with a smaller audience. The placards had shown him that something unpleasant was likely to occur, though they afforded no hint of the form which the unpleasantness would take. When he rose to his feet he was greeted with the usual volley of cheers, and although some rude remarks about the Boers were made in the corners of the hall, they did not amount to anything like an organized attempt at interruption. He began his speech cautiously, feeling the pulse of his audience, and plying them with the well-worn platitudes of the Nationalist platform. When these evoked the usual enthusiasm he waxed bolder, and shot out some almost original epigrams directed against the Government, working up to a really new gibe about officials who sat like spiders spinning murderous webs in Dublin Castle. The audience were