CHAPTER XIII—THE SUBJECT OF REPORTS.

The lecture society—“Early Architecture”—The professional consultation—Its result—“Un verre d’eau”—Its story—Lyrics as an auxiliary to the lecture—The lecture in print—A well-earned commendation—The preservation of ancient ruins—The best preservative—“Stone walls do not a prison make”—The Parnell Commission—A remarkable visitor—A false prophet—Sir Charles Russell—A humble suggestion—The bashful young man—Somewhat changed—“Ireland a Nation”—Some kindly hints—The “Invincibles” in court—The strange advertisement—How it was answered—Earl Spencer as a patron—“No kindly act was ever done in vain!”

A REPORTER is now and again compelled to exercise other powers than those which are generally supposed to be at the command of the writer of shorthand and the paragraphist. I knew a very clever youth who in a crisis showed of what he was capable. There was, in the town where we lived, a society of very learned men and equally learned women. Once a fortnight a paper was read, usually on some point of surpassing dulness—this was in the good old days, when lectures were solemn and theatres merry. Just at present, I need scarcely say, the position of the two is reversed: the theatres are solemn (the managers, becoming pessimistic by reason of their losses, endeavour to impress their philosophy upon the public), but the lecture-room rings with laughter as some savant treats of the “Loves of Coleoptera” with limelight illustrations, or “The Infant Bacillus.” The society which I have mentioned had engaged as lecturer for a certain evening a local architect, who had largely augmented his professional standing by a reputation for conviviality; and the subject with which he was to deal was “Early Architecture.” A brother professional man, whose sympathies were said to extend in many directions, had promised to take the chair upon this occasion. It so happened, however, that, owing to his pressing but unspecified engagements, the lecturer found himself, on the day for which the lecture was announced, still in doubt as to the sequence that his views should assume when committed to paper. About noon on this day he strolled into the office of the gentleman who was advertised to take the chair in the evening, and explained that he should like to discuss with him the various aspects of the question of Early Architecture, so that his mind might be at ease on appearing before the audience.

They accordingly went down the street, and made an earnest inspection of the interior of a cave-dwelling in the neighbourhood—it was styled “The Cool Grot,” and tradition was respected by the presence therein of shell-fish, oat-cake, and other elementary foods, with various samples of alcohol in a rudimentary form. In this place the brother architects discussed the subject of Early Architecture until, as a reporter would say, “a late hour.” The result was not such as would have a tendency to cause an unprejudiced person to accept without some reserve the theory that on a purely æsthetic question, a just conclusion can most readily be arrived at by a friendly discussion amid congenial surroundings.

A small and very solemn audience had assembled some twenty minutes or so before the lecturer and chairman put in an appearance, and then no time was lost in commencing the business of the meeting. The one architect was moved to the chair, and seconded, and he solemnly took it. Having explained that he occupied his position with the most pleasurable feelings, he poured himself out a glass of water with a most unreasonable amount of steadiness, and laid the carafe exactly on the spot—he was most scrupulous on this point—it had previously occupied. He drank a mouthful of the water, and then looked into the tumbler with the shrewd eye of the naturalist searching for infusoria. Then he laughed, and told a story that amused himself greatly about a friend of his who had attended a temperance lecture, and declared that it would have been a great success if the lecturer had not automatically attempted to blow the froth off the glass of water with which he refreshed himself. Then he sat down and fell asleep, before the lecturer had been awakened by the secretary to the committee, and had opened his notes upon the desk. For about ten minutes the lecturer made himself quite as unintelligible as the most erudite of the audience could have desired; but then he suddenly lapsed into intelligibility—he had reached that section of his subject which necessitated the recitation of a poem said to be in a Scotch dialect, every stanza of which terminated with the words, “A man’s a man for a’ that!” He then bowed, and, recovering himself by a grasp of the desk, which he shook as though it were the hand of an old schoolfellow whom he had not met for years, he retired with an almost supernatural erectness to his chair.

In a moment the chairman was on his feet—the sudden silence had awakened him. In a few well-chosen phrases he thanked the audience for the very hearty manner in which they had drunk his health. He then told them a humorous story of his boyhood, and concluded by a reference to one “Mr. Vice,” whom he trusted frequently to see at the other end of the table, preparatory to going beneath it. He hoped there was no objection to his stating that he was a jolly good fellow. No absolute objection being made, he ventured on the statement—in the key of B flat; the lecturer joined in most heartily, and the solemn audience went to their homes, followed by the apologies of the secretary to the committee.

The chairman and the lecturer were then shaken up by the old man who came to turn out the lights. He turned them out as well.

Now, the reporter who had been “marked” for that lecture found that he had some much more important business to attend to. He did not reach the newspaper office until late, and then he seated himself, and thoughtfully wrote out the remarks which nine out of every ten chairmen would have made, attributing them to the gentleman who presided at the lecture; and then gave a general summary of the lecture on “Early Architecture” which ninety-nine out of every hundred working architects would deliver if called on. He concluded by stating that the usual vote of thanks was conveyed to the lecturer, and suitably acknowledged by him, and that the audience was “large, representative, and enthusiastic.”

The secretary called upon the proprietor of the paper the next day, and expressed his high appreciation of the tact and judgment of the reporter; and the proprietor, who was more accustomed to hear comments on the display of very different attainments on the part of his staff, actually wrote a letter of commendation to the reporter, which I think was well earned.

The most remarkable point in connection with this occurrence was the implicit belief placed in the statements of the newspaper, not only by the public—for the public will believe anything—but also by the architect-lecturer and the architect-chairman. The professional standing of the former was certainly increased by the transaction, and till the day of his death he was accustomed to allude to his lecture on “Early Architecture.” The secretary to the committee, for his own credit’s sake, said nothing about the fiasco, and the solemn members of the audience were so accustomed to listen to incomprehensible lectures in the same room that they began to think that the performance at which they had “assisted” was only another of the usual type, so they also held their peace on the matter.

Having introduced this society, I cannot refrain from telling the story of another transaction in which it was concerned. The ramifications of the society extended in many directions, and a more useful organisation could scarcely be imagined. It was like an elephant’s trunk, which can uproot a tree—if the elephant is in a good humour—but which does not disdain to pick up a pin—like the boy who afterwards became Lord Mayor of London. The society did not shrink from discussing the question “Is a Monarchy or a Republic the right form of Government?” on the same night that it dealt with a new stopper for soda-water bottles. The Carboniferous Future of England was treated of upon the same evening as the Immortality of the Soul; perhaps there is a closer connection than at first meets the eye between the two subjects. It took ancient buildings under its protection, as well as the most recently fabricated pre-historic axe-head; and it was the discharge of its functions in regard to ancient buildings that caused the committee to pass a resolution one day, calling on their secretary to communicate with the owner of a neighbouring property, in the midst of which a really fine ruin of an ancient castle, with many interesting associations, was situated, begging him to order a wall to be built around the ruins, so as to prevent them from continuing to be the resort of cows with a fine taste in archaeology, when the summer days were warm and they wanted their backs scratched.

The property was in Ireland, consequently the landlord lived in England, and had never so much as seen the ruins. It was news to him that anything of interest was to be found on his Irish estates; but as his son was contemplating the possibility of entering Parliament as the representative of an Irish borough, he at once crossed the Channel, had an interview with the society’s secretary, and, with the president, visited the old castle, and was delighted with it. He sent for his bailiff, and told him that he wanted a wall four feet high to be built round the field in the centre of which the ruins lay—he even went so far as to “peg out,” so to speak, the course that he wished the wall to take.

The Irish bailiff stared at his master, but expressed the delight it would give him to carry out his wishes.

The owner crossed to England, promising to return in three months to see how the work had been done.

He kept his word. He returned in three months, and found, sure enough, that an excellent wall had been built on the exact lines he had laid down, but every stone of the ruins of the ancient castle had disappeared.

The bailiff stood by with a beaming face as he explained how the ruins had gone.

He had caused the wall to be built out of the stones of the ancient castle, to save expense.

If reporters were only afforded a little leisure, any one of them who has lived in a large town could compile an interesting volume of his experiences. I have often regretted that I could never master the art of shorthand. I worked at it for months when a boy, and made sufficient progress to be able to write it pretty fairly; but writing is not everything. The capacity for transcribing one’s notes is something to be taken into account; and it was at this point that I broke down, and was forced to become a novelist—a sort of novelist. The first time that I went up country in Africa, my stock of paper being limited, I carried only two pocket-books, and economised my space by taking my notes in shorthand. I had no occasion to refer to these notes until I was writing my novel “Daireen,” and then I found myself face to face with a hundred pages of hieroglyphs which were utterly unintelligible to me. In despair I brought them to a reporter, and he read them off for me much more rapidly than he or anyone else could read my ordinary handwriting to-day. In fact, he read just a little too fast,—I was forced to beg him to stop. There are some occurrences of which one takes a note in shorthand in one’s youth in a strange country, but which one does not wish particularly to offer to the perusal of strangers years afterwards.

But although I could never be a reporter, I now and again availed myself of a reporter’s privileges, when I wished to be present at a trial that promised some interesting features to a student of good and evil. It seemed to me that the Parnell Commission was an epitome of the world’s history from the earliest date. No writer has yet done justice to that extraordinary incident. I have asked some reporters, who were present day after day, if they intended writing a real history of the Commission; not the foolish political history of the thing, but the story of all that was laid bare to their eyes hour after hour,—the passions of patriotism, of power, of hate, of revenge; the devotion to duty, the dogged heroism, the religious fervour; every day brought to light such examples of these varied attributes of the Irish nature as the world had never previously known.

The reporters said they had no time to devote to such thankless work; and, besides, every one was sick of the Commission.

Often as I went into the court and faced the scene, it never lost its glamour for me. Every day I seemed to be wandering through a world of romance. I could not sleep at night, so deeply impressed was I with the way certain witnesses returned the scrutiny of Sir Charles Russell; with the way Mr. Parnell hypnotised others; with the stories of the awful struggle of which Ireland was the centre.

Going out of the courts one evening, I came upon an old man standing with his hat off and with one arm uplifted in an attitude of denunciation that was tragic beyond description. He was a handsome old man, very tall, but slightly stooped, and he clearly occupied a good position in the world.

We were alone just outside the courts. I pretended that I had suddenly missed something. I stood thrusting my hands into my pockets and feeling between the buttons of my coat, for I meant to watch him. At last I pulled out my cigarette-case and strolled on.

“You were in that court?” the old man said, in a tone that assured me I had not underestimated his social position.

He did not wait for me to reply.

“You saw that man sitting with his cold impassive face while the tears were on the cheeks of every one else? Listen to me, sir! I called upon the Most High to strike him down—to strike him down—and my prayer was heard. I saw him lying, disgraced, deserted, dead, before my eyes; and so I shall see him before a year has passed. ‘Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.’”

Again he raised his arm in the direction of the court, and when I saw the light in his eyes I knew that I was looking at a prophet.

Suddenly he seemed to recover himself. He put on his hat and turned round upon me with something like angry surprise. I raised my hat. He did the same. He went in one direction and I went in the opposite.

He was a false prophet. Mr. Parnell was not dead within the year. In fact, he was not dead until two years and two months had passed. In accordance with the thoughtful provisions of the Mosaic code, that old gentleman deserved to be stoned for prophesying falsely. But his manner would almost have deceived a reporter.

Having introduced the subject of the Parnell Commission, I may perhaps be permitted to express the hope that Sir Charles Russell will one day find sufficient leisure to give us a few chapters of his early history. I happen to know something of it. I am fully acquainted with the nature of some of its incidents, which certainly would be found by the public to possess many interesting and romantic elements; though, unlike the romantic episodes in the career of most persons, those associated with the early life of Sir Charles Russell reflect only credit upon himself. Every one should know by this time that the question of what is Patriotism and what is not is altogether dependent upon the nature of the Government of the country. In order to prolong its own existence for six months, a Ministry will take pains to alter the definition of the word Patriotism, and to prosecute every one who does not accept the new definition. Forty years ago the political lexicon was being daily revised. I need say no more on this point; only, if Sir Charles Russell means to give us some of the earlier chapters of his life he should lose no time in setting about the task. A Lord Chief Justice of England cannot reasonably be expected to deal with any romantic episodes in his own career, however important may be the part which he feels himself called on now and again to take in the delimitation of the romantic elements (of a different type) in the careers of others of Her Majesty’s subjects.

It may surprise some of those persons who have been unfortunate enough to find themselves witnesses for the prosecution in cases where Sir Charles Russell has appeared for the defence, to learn that in his young days he was exceedingly shy. He has lost a good deal of his early diffidence, or, at any rate, he manages to prevent its betraying itself in such a way as might tend to embarrass a hostile witness. As a rule, the witnesses do not find that bashfulness is the most prominent characteristic of his cross-examination. But I learned from an early associate of Sir Charles’s, that when his name appeared on the list to propose or to respond to a toast at one of the dinners of a patriotic society of which my informant as well as Sir Charles was a member, he would spend the day nervously walking about the streets, and apparently quite unable to collect his thoughts. Upon one occasion the proud duty devolved upon him of responding to the toast, “Ireland a Nation!” Late in the afternoon my informant, who at that time was a small shopkeeper—he is nothing very considerable to-day—found him in a condition of disorderly perturbation, and declaring that he had no single idea of what he should say, and he felt certain that unless he got the help of the man who afterwards became my informant he must inevitably break down.

“I laughed at him,” said the gentleman who had the courage to tell the story which I have the courage to repeat, “and did my best to give him confidence. ‘Sure any fool could respond to “Ireland a Nation!”’ said I; ‘and you’ll do it as well as any other.’ But even this didn’t give him courage,” continued my informant, “and I had to sit down and give him the chief points to touch on in his speech. He wrung my hand, and in the evening he made a fine speech, sir. Man, but it was a pity that there weren’t more of the party sober enough to appreciate it!”

I tell this tale as it was told to me, by a respectable tradesman whose integrity has never been questioned.

It occurred to me that that quality in which, according to his interesting reminiscence of forty years ago, his friend Russell was deficient, is not one that could with any likelihood of success be attributed to the narrator.

If any student of good and evil—the two fruits, alas! grow upon the same tree—would wish for a more startling example of the effect of a strong emotion upon certain temperaments than was afforded the people present in the Dublin Police Court on the day that Carey left the dock and the men he was about to betray to the gallows, that student would indeed be exacting.

I had been told by a constabulary officer what was coming, so that, unlike most persons in the court, I was not too startled to be able to observe every detail of the scene. Carey was talking to a brother ruffian named Brady quite unconcernedly, and Brady was actually smiling, when an officer of constabulary raised his finger and the informer stepped out of the dock, and two policemen in plain clothes moved to his side. Carey glanced back at his doomed accomplices, and muttered some words to Brady. I did not quite catch them, but I thought the words were, “It’s half an hour ahead of you that I am, Joe.”

Brady simply looked at his betrayer, whom it seems he had been anxious to betray. There was absolutely no expression upon his face. Some of the others of the same murderous gang seemed equally unaffected. One of them turned and spat on the floor. But upon the faces of at least two of the men there was a look of malignity that transformed them into fiends. It was the look that accompanies the stab of the assassin. Another of them gave a laugh, and said something to the man nearest to him; but the laugh was not responded to.

The youngest of the gang stared at one of the windows of the court-house in a way that showed me he had not been able to grasp the meaning of Carey’s removal from the dock.

In half-an-hour every expression worn by the faces of the men had changed. They all had a look that might almost have been regarded as jocular. There can be no doubt that when a man realises that he has been sentenced to death, his first feeling is one of relief. His suspense is over—so much is certain. He feels that—and that only—for an hour or so. I could see no change on the faces of these poor wretches whom the Mephistophelian fun of Fate had induced to call themselves Invincible, in order that no devilish element might be wanting in the tragedy of the Phoenix Park.

I do not suppose that many persons are acquainted with the secret history of the detection of the “Invincibles.” I think I am right in stating that it has never yet been made public. I am not at liberty to mention the source whence I derived my knowledge of some of the circumstances that led to the arrest of Carey, but there is no doubt in my mind as to the accuracy of my “information received” on this matter.

It may, perhaps, be remembered that, some months after the date of the murders, a strange advertisement appeared in almost every newspaper in Great Britain. It stated that if the man who had told another, on the afternoon of May 6th, 1882, that he had once enjoyed a day’s skating on the pond at the Viceregal Lodge, would communicate with the Chief of the Detective Department at Dublin Castle, he would be thanked. Now beyond the fact that May 6th was the date of the murders, and that they had taken place in the Phoenix Park, there was nothing in this advertisement to suggest that it had any bearing upon the shocking incident; still there was a general feeling that it had a very intimate connection with the efforts that the police were making to unravel the mystery of the outrage; and this impression was well founded.

I learned that the strangely-worded advertisement had been inserted in the newspapers at the instigation of a constabulary officer, who had, in many disguises, been endeavouring to find some clue to the assassins in Dublin. One evening he slouched into a public-house bespattered as a bricklayer, and took a seat in a box, facing a pint of stout. He had been in public-house after public-house every Saturday night for several weeks without obtaining the slightest suggestion as to the identity of the murderers, and he was becoming discouraged; but on this particular evening he had his reward, for he overheard a man in the next box telling some others, who were drinking with him, that Lord Spencer was not such a bad sort of man as might be supposed from the mere fact of his being Lord-Lieutenant. He (the narrator) had been told by a man in the Phoenix Park on the very evening of the murders that he (the man) had not been ashamed to cheer Lord Spencer on his arrival at Dublin that day, for when he had last been in Dublin he had allowed him to skate upon the pond in the Viceregal grounds.

The officer dared not stir from his place: he knew that if he were at all suspected of being a detective, his life would not be worth five minutes’ purchase. He could only hope to catch a glimpse of some of the party when they were leaving the place. He failed to do so, for some cause—I cannot remember what it was—nor could the barmaid give any satisfactory reply to his cautiously casual enquiries as to the names of any of the men who had occupied the box.

It was then that the advertisement was inserted in the various newspapers; and, after the lapse of some weeks, a man presented himself to the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department, saying that he believed the advertisement referred to him. The man seemed a respectable artisan, and his story was that one day during the last winter that Earl Spencer had been in Ireland, he (the man) had left his work in order to have a few hours’ skating on the ponds attached to the Zoological Gardens in the Phoenix Park, but on arriving at the ponds he found that the ice had been broken. “I was just going away,” the man said, “when a gentleman with a long beard spoke to me, and enquired if I had had a good skate. I told him that I was greatly disappointed, as the ice had all been broken, and I would lose my day’s pay. He took a card out of his pocket, and wrote something on it,” continued the man, “and then handed it to me, saying, ‘Give that to the porter at the Viceregal Lodge, and you’ll have the best day’s skating you have had in all your life.’ He said what was true: I handed in the card and told the porter that a tall gentleman with a beard had given it to me. ‘That was His Excellency himself,’ said the porter, as he brought me down to the pond, where, sure enough, I had such a day’s skating as I’ve never had before or since.”

“And you were in the Phoenix Park on the evening of the murders?” said the Chief of the Department.

“I must have been there within half-an-hour of the time they were committed,” replied the man. “But I know nothing of them.”

“I’m convinced of it,” said the officer. “But I should like to hear if you met any one you knew in the Park as you were coming away.”

“I only met one man whose name I knew,” said the other, “and that was a builder that I have done some jobs for: James Carey is his name.”

This was precisely the one bit of evidence that was required for the committal of Carey.

An hour afterwards he offered to turn Queen’s Evidence.