The following is the first part of chapter 1, from 'My Life in Two Hemisphere's written by Charles Gavan Duffy. The chapter has been broken down into 4 sections or pages. Names mentioned in each section are linked to on that page. Mr. Duffy speaks of his schooling, the attitudes of Presbyterian children to Catholic children and vice versa, friendships with those who were not Catholic, Orange parades, books which were available to read at the time and much more. Part 1 deals with his introduction, the Sacrament of Confirmation and schooling. Part 2 with books, friends & Orangemen, John Sloan. Part 3 with Politics, Charles Hamilton Teeling, Dublin & Lord Mulgrave. Notes written at a later stage, relating to people or places mentioned in the chapter itself. Names mentioned include: Patrick Gavan, Captain John Dawson, Philip Hughes, Neil Quin, Revd. John Bleckly, Mat Trumble, Henry McManus, Terence Bellew McManus, John Sloan, Dacre Hamilton, Father Bogue, Father Tierney, Rev. John Caulfield, John Duffy, Charles Hamilton Teeling, Thomas O'Hagan,, Jimmy Sherry

Early Life in Monaghan

Charles Gavan Duffy

Sacrament of Confirmation - Schooling - Books - Friends & Orangemen - John Sloan - Politics - Charles Hamilton Teeling - Dublin - Lord Mulgrave in Monaghan

I am shy of pedigrees. When I was a boy, however, there were half a dozen of my relations among the Catholic priests of the diocese of Clogher, and I listened with complacency to their talk of the M'Mahons, chiefs of Oriel, and the M'Kennas, chiefs of Truagh, as our near kinsmen, and I was delighted to be told that under George III. when the existence of a priest was at last grudgingly recognised, provided he could find two freeholders willing to be sureties for his good behaviour, such sureties for a dozen priests of Clogher were furnished by the Duffys of Monaghan, who held land in their native Oriel, under the imperfect tenure permitted by law. These were facts which in after life I submitted to the test of critical scrutiny, and found to be authentic.

I was born in the town of Monaghan on Good Friday, 1816. My father, John Duffy, was a shopkeeper, who by industry and integrity had accumulated considerable property in houses and townparks, and had purchased a share in a bleach-green at Keady, the art of transforming the grey web into one of dazzling whiteness being then, as it still is, one of the standard industries of the country. The Ulster Catholics had been reduced by law to abject penury, but at the beginning of the nineteenth century they were here and there slowly lifting their heads. Even while the penury was sorest old social distinctions were cherished, and my father, as a descendant of "the old stock," was one of the few leaders of the people in his district. Among the family papers bequeathed to me was a resolution of the Catholics of Monaghan, thanking him for having acted as their faithful treasurer for sixteen years, an authentic testimonial which I prefer to a glittering and shadowy pedigree furnished by Ulster King at Arms.

My maternal grandfather, Patrick Gavan, was notable in his day as a Catholic who had succeeded in emerging from the obscure and trampled multitude. He held on lease a large tract of land which had once belonged to his clan, and was in fact a gentleman farmer. He was known among his neighbours as "the King of Aughabog," and I remember when a child pestering my mother to show me any crown or sceptre he had bequeathed to his posterity; but to my despair there were no regalia forthcoming. A tradition, however, has descended to us which keeps him and his dame fresh in our memory. When the Union was proposed it was sweetened by a promise of Catholic Emancipation from a united Parliament, which the Irish Parliament had peremptorily refused; and Paddy Gavan, like the Catholic Primate of the day, thought the compromise ought to be accepted, and got a petition in its favour signed by many of his neighbours. But our grandmother Judith flew into a rage at the proposal to give up Ireland for a bribe, and flung the petition into the fire. The flame she kindled that day has illuminated her memory for more than three generations among a numerous progeny who are proud to bear her name. Judith, I regret to say, derived her name, according to the genealogists, and perhaps her robust will, from a Puritan soldier; her mother being daughter and heiress of Captain John Dawson, of Dartry, who gave her in marriage to a native gentleman, one of the MacMahons of Oriel, father of our Judith.

When my father died I was only ten years of age, and the youngest of six children. As one of my elder brothers was in the office of Philip Hughes, an enterprising merchant in. Newry, who was our kinsman; a second in the office of another Newry merchant (the father of Sir Patrick Jennings, who has risen to distinction in New South Wales in recent time); and a third pursuing his studies as a medical student in Scotland, the management of the family interests fell wholly on my mother. If sleepless assiduity in the interest of her children could secure success she would have succeeded; but to regulate complicated accounts and take up the thread of incomplete projects, was a task for which she had no experience or training, and I was not of an age to be of any assistance to her. It looks like a dream of another life, that distant time when, seeing her exhausted with labour, I have induced her to hear me read a story to divert her jaded mind, "The Children of the Abbey," perhaps, or "The Scottish Chiefs" for though the modern novel was born with Waverley it had not yet penetrated into provincial Ireland, and there was no national novel or romance of which I had ever heard.

The earliest political incident I can recall was hearing my father read the letters of Wellington and Peel, when they refused to serve with George Canning because he was friendly to Catholic Emancipation. I was barely nine years of age, but the oppressed learn their wrongs early, and I already knew dimly and vaguely that Catholic Emancipation incant the deliverance of our race from the subjection to Orange ascendancy in which we habitually lived.

 

Sacrament of Confirmation

At what time does a boy discover that he has in his bosom a monitor who punishes him when he misbehaves, and comforts him if he suffers unjustly? The Sacrament of Confirmation is administered to Catholic children at an early age, generally before they enter on their teens, and I received it in the ordinary course. The bishop and a senior priest sat on the altar steps, and questioned each boy in turn on the principles of Christian doctrine. When I had gone through the examination the bishop asked the assistant priest, "Do you think we may pass this lad?" The priest thought perhaps they might, and I retired deeply humiliated. The ceremony was followed by a distribution of prizes supposed to be granted in the order of merit. The schoolmistress of the chapel school who had prepared the boys for the sacrament arranged the prize list, and to my consternation I heard the first prize assigned to Charles Duffy, who in fact, had barely escaped rejection. For many a day afterwards I was disturbed and unhappy with the sense of being an impostor who had received a distinction in the face of the whole congregation which he did not deserve. I have never since doubted that conscience is a tribunal before which the boy is as peremptorily summoned as the man.

An ardent youngster must have some outlet for his sympathies, and before patriotism awoke I was passionately religious. I can recall a time when I was despatched to bed at nightfall and took a coarse board with me to kneel upon under the blanket lest my prayers should be too luxurious; and for years after I read controversial books with avidity, and was ready on the shortest notice to defend the most abstruse mysteries of religion. But the first passion was superseded after a time by one which has lasted all my life - the determination to love, and, if possible, serve Ireland.

 

Schooling

Some account of my early schools will help the reader to understand the social condition of Ulster at that time. The Ulster Catholics had been deprived by the Puritan Parliament in Dublin of their lands, their churches, and their schools at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and they were long forbidden by statute to obtain education at home or abroad, or to possess property in land. At the time I speak of their schools were still very often what were then known as "poor schools." The schoolroom was commonly a barn or a garret, the furniture rude and scanty, the walls and windows bare, and some of the pupils probably shoeless and unwashed. But these establishments were regarded as evidence of remarkable progress by those who remembered the "hedge schools" of a previous generation, which had not even the shelter of a roof. My first schoolmaster was a one-handed man, named Neil Quin, who had probably become a teacher because this deficiency unfitted him for any other employment. He performed duties which were merely manual with marvellous dexterity - mending a pen, for example, as speedily and skilfully as a man with two hands. A long loop of twine passed through two holes in a table held the quill, flat, and was kept fast by his foot in the other end of the loop, while he trimmed it with his right hand, which happily remained. Of the elements of education Mr. Quin did not teach us much, I fear, but he told us stories, generally little apologues or homilies, intended to impart a homely moral. His rudimentary science was taught with a scanty equipment of instruments, but he contrived to make it impressive. One day he let his hat fall from his head to the floor, and exclaimed, "Now, boys, which of you will tell me why that hat fell down to the ground instead of failing up to the ceiling?"

My escape from this primitive institution was one of the most fortunate incidents of my life. My eldest sister, a girl of vigorous will, met me one day coming home from school in the midst of a clamorous swarm of urchins, some of them bare-footed and ragged, and all riotous and undisciplined, and she interposed with a vigour worthy of our grandmother Judith. She peremptorily declared that I should never return to that society. But where was I to go? There was not a Catholic school in the county a whit better. There was, however, a classical academy in the town taught by a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend John Bleckley, where the boarders were sons of the small gentry and professional men of two or three neighbouring counties, and the day boys sons of the principal townspeople. There were about fifty pupils, all Protestants or Presbyterians, a Catholic boy never having been seen within the walls. It needed a considerable stock of moral courage to contemplate sending me to such an, establishment, where I might be ill-received, or, if not ill-received, where I might be taught to despise the boys of my own race and creed whom I had quitted.

The consent of my guardian, a parish priest( Rev. James Duffy, P.P., of Muckno, Castleblayney, afterwards canon of his diocese, Clogher.) living a dozen miles away, had to be obtained, and he had liberality and good sense enough to approve of the project. Mr. Bleckley received me graciously, but during the first day one of the boys told me (what I soon learned had been muttered among many others) that it was unpardonable presumption for a Papist to come among them. But the bigotry of boys is mostly inherited from their elders, and has little root. This lad, Mat Trumble, son of a lieutenant in the British Army, but also grandson of a chaplain of the Volunteers, afterwards a notable United Irishman soon became my close friend. He was a youth of good intellect, resolute will, and considerable reading, and with such aid I did not do badly in the strange society on which I had intruded. During the first year a boys' parliament, a boys' regiment, and a boys' newspaper were established, which I did something to initiate, and my connection with them was vehemently resisted in the name of Protestant ascendancy. But after a fierce debate the majority voted my emancipation, three years before the legislators of larger growth at St. Stephen's made a similar concession to my seniors. I used to boast that I was the first Catholic emancipated in Ireland, but though tolerated I was never allowed altogether to forget that I belonged to the race who were beaten at the Boyne. A cynical lad, who afterwards became a noted local preacher, sometimes occupied the recreation hour with marvellous stories of Popish atrocities designed for my edification.

One of them is worth quoting as an illustration of the cruel and wicked inventions by which the rancour of race hatred was promoted:
A farmer's son - so the story ran - went to confession, and as his offences were serious the priest made a tally with chalk on the sleeve of his coat, that the penance might be proportionate to the sins. "I was too intimate with a neighbour's daughter, your Reverence." "Very bad," says the priest, making a stroke on his arm with the chalk. "There was a baby, your Reverence, and, to keep it dark, I made her throw it in the river." "Oh, you unfortunate miscreant," cried the priest, making two long strokes on his arm; "I'm afraid you'll never see purgatory. Anything else?" "Yes, your Reverence, God forgive me, there's something worse. The girl took to fretting; I was afraid she'd tell her people, and I shoved her into a bog-hole." " Away with you," cried the priest, starting to his feet in a rage. "I can't absolve a double murderer who has hid his crime from punishment." "But, your Reverence, - wait a minute, I forgot to tell you she was a black Prisbiteran." "Pooh ! pooh!" says the priest, brushing the score off his arm, "why did you make me dirty my coat?" ('Black' as used here does not refer to the colour of the girl's skin)

Mat Trumble, who was present, remarked that if the story was true, and doubtless it wasn't, the priest might have found a precedent in Anglo-Irish history, when the violation of a married woman, with which two Norman soldiers were charged in a court of Pale ended in a judgment that no offence was proved, as the victim was a mere Irishwoman!

Mr. Bleckley was a careful and assiduous teacher, much devoted to his school, and for five years I profited by his instructions. We parted under circumstances which, as I have never since doubted, justified me in quitting him abruptly. One morning before the arrival of the head-master I had a contest with one of the boys about something I have altogether forgotten. He complained to an usher, but, as the ushers were not permitted to punish the boys, this one promised to report me for misconduct. On the arrival of the master he did so, and Mr. Bleckley, who was perhaps disturbed by some personal trouble, immediately laid hold of me, stretched me over a desk, according to his practice, and administered a sharp discipline with a leather strap. When he had finished he faced me and demanded, "Now, sir, what have you got to say for yourself ?" Though the result proved a great inconvenience to me I can never regret what happened as a test of character. "Say," I roared, "I say it is too late to ask for my defence after I have been punished; and that I will never suffer you to lay hands on me again." I seized my cap and vanished out of the school. Mr. Bleckley reported the facts to my mother, not ungenerously, I think, but I could not be induced to submit again to his authority. With the assistance of a student preparing for Maynooth, and in concert with my constant chum Mat Trumble, I read at home, to replace, as far as I could, the direction of a competent teacher.

The Presbyterian planters from whom my schoolfellows were descended preserved to an amazing degree the characteristics of their Scottish ancestors. They were thrifty, industrious, and parsimonious, and sometimes spoke a language worthy of Dumfriesshire. Their familiar sayings were of the same origin. "Keep the halter shank in your ain hand," was a Pawkie warning against rash confidence; or, "Don't let the want come at the web's end," an exhortation to fore-sight. The name employed to designate a courtesan was "an idle girl," a phrase which implies a population devoted to labour and duty. The few books which circulated among them were steeped in the bitterness of hereditary feuds. I remember being horror-struck by a copy of "Fox's Book of Martyrs," with illustrations fit to poison the spirit of a community for a century. Men reared for the liberal professions might in time outlive these prejudices, but with the poor and ignorant time only deepens them. But the nationalities sometimes mingled marvellously. I can recall more than one descendant of Puritan settlers smitten with sympathy for the Celtic tongue and Celtic traditions, and on the other hand O'Neills and MacMahons speaking a dialect that might pass muster in Midlothian, and practising economies which would charm Sir Andrew Wylie.

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