Chapter XXVI (2)

‘I send you dear Louie Simeon’s letter to show how they all
value the likeness of the father of that house and home. It is
a sacred blessing which has attended my photography. It gives a
pleasure to millions and a deeper happiness to very many....
While the spirit is in me I must praise those I love.’

The coffee crop had failed in Ceylon several years and the money difficulties became very serious for the Camerons. Photography might have paid better if the photographer had been less lavish in her gifts and ways. She was a true artist in her attitude towards money.

She, the most recklessly generous of women, was able to write:

‘I myself have never felt humiliated at the idea of receiving
charities, for I always feel about friendship and love that
what it is good to give it is also good to take.’

‘I do not mean to let you ruin yourself by giving the
photographs away,’ Mrs. Tennyson wrote: ‘I cannot pretend
to say that I do not prize a kindness done to mine, more
than if it were done to myself, still I feel bound to point
with a solemn finger to those stalwart boys of yours, saying
“Remember.” I see that I shall have to set up a shop for the
sale of photographs myself all for your benefit.’

To these remonstrances the photographer would answer: ‘I have always tried to get my husband to share my feelings—so long as illness and death are mercifully spared us. _Death_ is as to deeper wounds—only a grain.’ Julia Cameron was not a woman of to-day. She seemed to belong to some heroic past. She has told me how as a girl she and her sister, the dearest of them all, used to wander forth and kneel to pray on the country-roadsides.

Once when her eldest son went through a painful operation, which lasted some time, she had held his hand in hers through it all, and he said he could not have endured it if she had not been present. ‘As to my bearing it,’ she said simply, ‘what is there one cannot bear if one can give one grain of helpful support to any sufferer?’

* * * * *

Of a friend in great trouble she writes:

‘I am not sure that time with him will soften the calamity. God
grant it may, but with some

“Time but the impression stronger makes,
As streams their channels deeper wear.”

In the case of my absence from my boys, the more it is
prolonged, the more the wound seems to widen.’

It was during her husband’s absence that she wrote:

‘I found when I was with you the tears were too near my eyes
to venture to read out aloud Charles’s letters. I am in very
truth very unhappy. I assume vivacity of manner for my own sake
as well as for others, but the only real vivacity now at this
moment in me, is one to conjure up every form of peril and my
heart is more busy when sleeping than when waking. When waking
I fag myself to the uttermost by any manner of occupation
hoping thus to keep the wheels of time working till I hear
again.’

VII.

The legends are endless of Mrs. Cameron’s doings at Freshwater, and to this day the older villagers tell of them—of the window she built and equipped in the room destined for Sir Henry Taylor. It was an east room; she thought it looked dark in the afternoon and she determined that a western window should be there when her guest arrived next day. The village carpenter and his assistant builder sawed and worked late into the night, in the early morning the glazier was summoned; when the passengers arrived from the three o’clock boat the window was there, the western light was pouring in into the spare room through the panes, and Mrs. Cameron’s faithful maid was putting the last stitches to the muslin blind. Another inspiration of hers was a lawn, also spread in a single night, for Mr. Cameron to stroll along when he went for his morning walk next day.

She used to bring wayfarers of every sort in from the roads outside. We still may recognise some of the models living at Freshwater—the beautiful parlourmaid, King Arthur who in robes and armoured dignity appears so often in her camera, and who still meets travellers from the little steamer that runs from Lymington to Yarmouth Pier. Indeed wayfarers of every sort were made welcome by her. After my father’s death she welcomed us to her cottage, where fires of hospitality and sympathy were lighted and endless kindness and helping affection surrounded us from her and from Farringford through that cold and icy winter. When spring had passed and when at last summer was over, we gratefully returned to the sheltering bay where such good friends were to be found.

The Camerons’ departure for Ceylon in 1875 will long be remembered—the farewells, the piles of luggage. Mrs. Cameron grave and valiant, with a thousand cares and preoccupations. Mr. Cameron with long white locks falling over his shoulders and dark eyes gleaming through spectacles, holding his carved, ivory cane in his hand and looking quietly at the preparations. There were animals—a cow I have been told among them, bales and boxes without number, their faithful maid Ellen and their son Hardinge, that spirited prop and adviser, ordering and arranging everything. He travelled with them, for he was on his way back to his post in the Civil Service at Colombo. Many of us came down to Southampton to see them off in the vast ship manned by Lascars, crowded with passengers and heaving from confusion into order.

I can still see Mr. Cameron in his travelling dress looking quietly up and down the quay at the piles of luggage, at the assembled friends; he held a beautiful pink rose which Mrs. Tennyson had given him when he stopped at Farringford to take leave of her. A member of Mr. Cameron’s family whom I had never seen before, for he had lived in India, had come from London with his wife and was standing taking leave with the rest of us. He was strangely like Mr. Cameron, with white hair and bright fixed eyes; and even then, starting though they were for the great venture, Mrs. Cameron came forward and said to me that I must go back to town with her step-son and he would look after me.... I remember presently finding myself sitting in the railway carriage sadly flying home, away from the good friends of many a year, and vaguely wondering at the likeness of Mr. Cameron sitting on the opposite seat. Then at Waterloo, after putting me into a hansom, even the likeness departed and I never saw either of the two again.

VIII.

It is pleasant to read of the happy progress of the travellers.

_From Julia Margaret Cameron to Alfred and Emily Tennyson._

1875.

‘... I now continue my letter in revived spirits, having left
the month of partings behind, and having entered to-day the
month of meetings. I think Ewen will send forth my Benjamin
to greet me. My Har, endowed with double my prudence, has
hitherto prevented me from telegraphing to tell my boys that
we had actually started. I resisted at Freshwater. Resisted
at Southampton. Hardinge prevented me at Gibraltar, prevented
me at Malta. He says Aden is the best spot, for we can then
announce we have got over the Red Sea.

‘I need not say how often and often I am with you both in
thought. I need not tell you that amidst all this bustling
world of 380 people, my husband sits in majesty like a being
from another sphere, his white hair shining like the foam of
the sea and his white hands holding on each side his golden
chain.’

(_They travel on to Malta._)

‘A real gem of the ocean; everything glittered like a fairy
world, the sapphire sea, the pearl-white houses, the emerald
and ruby boats, the shining steps, 132 in number, from the
Quai to the town, all was delicious. As Har observed, I was
the most childlike and exuberant of the party—only one thing
disappointed me, that I did not telegraph to my Ceylon boys. We
visited the Cathedral of St. John. How delicious the silence
was after the life on board! What a holy joy to kneel down in
that solemn silent temple and feel oneself alone with one’s
God!’

Her sympathy for the ship’s captain must not be omitted:

‘We have daily prayers and the Sunday evening service is
specially imposing, with the dark ocean around, “The lamps
filled with everlasting oil” above and the ship lamps hanging
on the deck and the one voice, like St. John in the Wilderness,
crying to everyone to repent.’

She raises subscriptions for a harmonium on board as a token of gratitude to the captain—‘one in a thousand.’

Mr. Cameron would not land at Malta; it had painful memories for him, he had been there as a child with his beautiful mother, Lady Margaret, and his father who was Governor of the Island. ‘Our voyage is fabulously beautiful,’ she says, and she dwells on the pleasure it gives them to make it easier for an invalid on board by bestowing their most comfortable chair upon the suffering lady.

As they glide through the Suez Canal Mrs. Cameron writes:

‘It is an honour to the French nation that in the face of all
assertions of impossibility from men of all countries, Lesseps
persevered and achieved this mighty enterprise. Whilst I write
we pass a pier and at the end of it is a whole flock of camels,
with camel drivers waiting to see if any one cares to cross the
Desert; no one does care, so we glide on.

‘The only time I crossed, my Har was a baby in my arms whom I
never for one instant put down. We crossed through a beautiful
starlight night. I have never forgotten the rising of the
morning star nor the utter silence, one seemed to lose the idea
of time and to feel in a land that could have had no beginning
and still less could have no end.’

As she finishes her letter the young moon is hanging over the vessel.

‘O what good it does to one’s soul to go forth. How it heals
all the little frets and insect stings of life, to feel the
pulse of the large world and to count all men as one’s brethren
and to merge one’s individual self in the thoughts of the
mighty whole!’

Here is another letter written a year later to Mrs. Tennyson:

Easter, 1876.

‘MY OWN BELOVED AND SWEETEST FRIEND,—This day’s post brought
me your letter, so strong in love, so feeble in calligraphy,
in the wielding of that pen which is meant to say so much but
which now trembles in the hand which used never to tire. Its
very trembling is expressive of all that you have it in your
heart to say. How glad I am that your sons, that Alfred’s sons,
should be what they are! How truly does an answer seem to be
given in them to your life of holy prayer! I do so devoutly
wish that you could spend next winter here, the air is so
uplifting and so life-giving. I think my illness on arrival
was the result of all that I suffered mentally and bodily, the
hurry of that decision, the worry of all minutiæ, the anguish
of some partings, the solemnity of all, the yielding to my
husband’s absorbing desire, and the yearning need to live with
my absent children, all this is satisfied and beyond all this,
beyond the inward content, there is certainly a strength given
by the aspect of nature in this Island.’

After describing Ceylon and its beauties, the mother returns to the theme she loves best of all, that of her son Hardinge, who had just paid her a visit.

‘He wore for my sake his very brightest looks and you know
there is no cheer like his. His spirits dance with intellectual
freshness and buoyancy, all his talk is mirth and wide
pleasantry and his voice is full of song.

‘He has to travel in districts, sleeping in the open and my
imagination represents the invasion of beasts and reptiles. He
walks through long grass where I fear snakes for his beloved
feet. He says alligators on the river-side are the only beasts
he sees, alligators ten or twelve feet long.’ (_Here many pages
follow partly concerning Ceylon and the people who then lived
there, partly concerning Freshwater and its politics._)—‘And
how is your dear Alfred, dearest of all and greatest ever in
your heart beyond all; above all, I hope not bothered about
anything.’ ‘Worries, for him, are as if these vast sublime
mountains, instead of standing steady as they do, rearing their
eternal heads to the sky, were to be swayed by the perishable
chances of the little coffee estates at their feet.

‘What is time in the eyes of Him to whom a thousand years are
but as yesterday and who pities us when we vex our immortal
souls with fears of more or less gold, and good crops, one year
or another?

‘Think of us in a little hut with only mud walls, four thousand
four hundred feet above the level of the sea.’

It was in her youngest son’s bungalow on the Glencairn estate that Mrs. Cameron died, early in 1879, only a short time after her second return to Ceylon. She had been warned not to return, but she longed to be near ‘her boys.’ The illness only lasted ten days. When she lay dying, her bed faced the wide-open window; it was a glorious evening and some big stars were shining. She looked out and just said ‘_Beautiful_’ and died, her last word, a fitting end to her reverent soul on earth. Her body was taken in a low open cart, drawn by two great white bullocks, and all covered with white cloth, over two ridges of mountains, and buried in the little churchyard at the bottom of the valley, between Galle and Colombo, where Hardinge was living. After this Hardinge took his father and his mother’s maid, the faithful Ellen Ottingnon, ‘old E,’ to live with him there. It was in May of the following year that Mr. Cameron died, and he too was carried over the mountains and buried in the same churchyard.

‘I can’t describe to you the beauty of that valley entered by
a narrow pass,’ writes Mrs. Bowden Smith who sent this record.
‘High mountains surround it and the rolling green grass lands
and a great river runs all along it. The little church stands
on a knoll not far above the river, which flows into a lower
river, also a dream of beauty. They could not have found a more
beautiful resting-place.’

Lady Tennyson survived her friend seventeen years:

‘Such wert thou, half a Saint and half a Queen,
Close in thy poet’s mighty soul enshrined,
Lady of Farringford,’

wrote Edith Sichel at the time.

And some one who loved her, speaking lately, said to me:

‘Though her vocation was to be a poet’s wife she reminded me of
a holy Abbess of old, and there was something almost cloistral
about her.’

She had a gift we all felt, of harmonising and quieting by her _presence_ alone; often too tired to say much, she could contribute the right word to the talk for which Farringford was always notable. I have a special memory of once dining with the Tennysons in the company of George Eliot and Lord Acton, but it was Mrs. Tennyson’s gentle voice which seemed to take the lead.

Tennyson had said: ‘I felt the peace of God come into my life at the altar before which I married her.’ And after more than forty years of marriage he dedicated his last book to her.

‘I thought to myself I would offer this work to you,
This, and my love together,
To you that are seventy-seven,
With a faith as clear as the height of the June-blue heaven
And a fancy as summer-new
As the green of the bracken amid the gloom of the heather.’

The following paper left by Lady Tennyson concerning her husband might seem almost too intimate to quote here, if it did not give so truly the atmosphere at Farringford that one does not venture to omit it.

‘... He felt intensely the sin and all the evils of the world
and all its mystery, and still kept an unshaken faith in the
God of perfect love, perfect wisdom and infinite power, with
that confident assurance of man’s immortality which pointed
to a hereafter where all would be reconciled. “Be ye perfect
as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” In the _life_ of
Christ he found his Christianity; undisturbed by the jarring
of sects and creeds. Politics were to him patriotism, and
passionately did he feel for all that concerned the welfare of
the Empire. Party, as far as his own personal opinion went,
was unintelligible. That all should work conscientiously and
harmoniously for the common good, each with such differing
powers as God has given to each, recognising the value of the
difference, this was his highest idea of Empire. He honoured
all honest work.’

FOOTNOTES

[1] He did most of his work for the Colonial Office from his sick bed, and few Secretaries of State have done more important work than he.

[2] Tennyson would say, ‘some of those stupid critics say that King Arthur is meant for Prince Albert. I never thought of him.’

_DUBLIN DAYS: THE RISING._

LETTERS FROM MRS. HAMILTON NORWAY.

_April 25, Tuesday._—On Saturday we were going to tea with friends at Bray when just as we were starting H. (my husband) got an ‘official’ from the Castle, so I went alone and he went to the Castle. News had come that a boat had been taken off the Kerry coast, landing ammunition, and a very important arrest had been made. Easter Sunday passed off in absolute calm, and yesterday (Easter Monday) morning H. said he had a lot of letters to write and he would go and write them at his Club, almost next door to the Sackville Street General Post Office. He found he wanted to answer some letters that were in his desk at the G.P.O. so he walked over to his room and was just sitting down when his ’phone went, an urgent message to go at once to the Castle.

He had only just arrived there and was in consultation with Sir M. N. when suddenly a volley of shots rang out at the Castle Gate, and it was found armed bodies of men were in possession of the City Hall and other houses that commanded the other gates to the Castle, and anyone attempting to leave the Castle was shot. All the officials in the Castle were prisoners.

When N. (my son) came in about 12.30 I said we would walk down to the Club and meet H. The streets were quiet and deserted till we crossed O’Connell Bridge, when N. remarked there was a dense crowd round Nelson’s Pillar, but we supposed it was a bank-holiday crowd waiting for trams. We were close to the General Post Office, when two or three shots were fired, followed by a volley, and the crowd began rushing down towards the bridge, the people calling out ‘Go back, go back, the Sinn Feiners are firing.’ N. said ‘You’d better go back, mother; there’s going to be a row; I’ll go on to the Club and find Dad.’ So I turned and fled with the crowd and got back safely to the hotel.

About 1.30 N. returned, having failed to find H., and we had an anxious lunch. During lunch a telephone message came through saying H. was at the Castle but could not leave.

At 3 P.M. N. told me all was quiet in Sackville Street and begged me to go out and see the G.P.O.

I quaked rather, but we set off and reached Sackville Street safely.

Over the fine building of the G.P.O. floated a great green flag with ‘Irish Republic’ on it. Every window on the ground floor was smashed and barricaded with furniture, and a big placard announced ‘The Headquarters of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic.’ At every window were two men with rifles, and on the roof the parapet was lined with men. H.’s room appeared not to have been touched and there were no men at his windows.

We stood opposite and were gazing when suddenly two shots were fired, and, seeing there was likely to be an ugly rush, I fled again.

At 11.30 P.M. H. walked in, to my immense relief. The troops had arrived, 2000 of them from the Curragh, at about 5 P.M., and had promptly stormed the City Hall, which commanded the main gate of the Castle, and had taken it after fierce fighting.

_Tuesday._—This morning we hear the military are pouring into the city.

All our valuables were stored in H.’s safe and cupboards when we gave up our house, and all our dear F.’s books, sword, and all his possessions, which we value more than anything else in the world; we would not trust them with the stored furniture.

Yesterday afternoon the mob broke all the windows in various streets, and looted all the shops. The streets were strewn with clothes, boots, furniture, tram cushions, and everything you can imagine.

While I am writing now there is incessant firing in St. Stephen’s Green, and we fear there may be street fighting in this street.

_Tuesday Evening._—H. and N. have just come in, having seen Dr. (now Major) W., Surgeon to the Forces in Ireland. He told them that so far we had had about 500 casualties, two-thirds of them being civilians shot in the streets.

The first thing Dr. W. heard of the outbreak was a ’phone message telling him to go at once to the Shelbourne, as a man had been shot. He supposed it was a case of suicide, so jumped into his car and went off, fortunately in mufti. In Nassau Street his car was stopped and he was ordered by rebels to get out; he attempted to argue, and was told if he did not obey instantly he would be shot. Had he been in uniform he would have been shot at sight; as a civilian doctor they allowed him to go, and he took his bag and ran. He found three men shot in the Shelbourne, and a boy was shot as he reached the door.

After we got into bed a ’phone came that H. was to go at once to the Viceregal Lodge in the Phœnix Park, so he dressed and tried every way to get a motor; but of course no motor would go out. After some delay he got the Field Ambulance of the Fire Brigade, at Dr. W.’s suggestion, but when it came the men told H. they had been carrying wounded all day, and that they had been constantly stopped by pickets, and the car searched, and if they went, and the car was stopped and found to contain H., they would undoubtedly all be shot. So H. considered it too risky and it had to be abandoned, and eventually his Excellency gave his instructions over the ’phone, first in French, but that particular ’phone did not speak French! So eventually he took the risk of the ’phone being tapped and gave them in English.

While we were dressing a terrific bombardment with field guns began, the first we had heard, and gave me cold shivers. It went on for a quarter of an hour—awful! big guns and machine guns—and then ceased, but we hear they were bombarding Liberty Hall, the headquarters of Larkin and the strikers two years ago. The guns were on H.M.S. _Hecla_, that came up the river and smashed it from within about fifty yards. It made one feel quite sick.

H. has just been summoned to the Castle, and there is no knowing when he will be back. All who go out carry their lives in their hands.

N. did a fine thing yesterday. After the Green had been raked by our machine guns’ fire, he strolled up, in his casual way, to see the result. In front of one of the side gates in the railings, which are seven feet high and spiked three ways, he saw a small group of men peering into the Green; he went to see what they were looking at. The rebels had barricaded the gate, which opened inwards, by putting one of the heavy garden seats against it upside down and on the top of it another right side up, and lying full length on the seat, face downwards, was a man, a civilian, with all his lower jaw blown away, and bleeding profusely! N. immediately climbed the railings and dropped down on the Sinn Fein side, and found that the man was still alive; he then turned and fairly cursed the men who were looking on, and asked if there was not one man enough to come over the railings and help him. Whereupon three men climbed over and together they lifted down the seat with the poor creature on it, and dragged away the other seat, when they were able to open the gate, and they brought out the seat and the man on it, and carried him to the nearest hospital, where he died in about five minutes.

N.’s theory is that he was probably one of the civilians taken prisoner by the Sinn Fein the previous day, and was trying to escape from the awful machine-gun fire when he was shot down and fell back on to the seat. It was a terrible case.

_Friday_, 10 A.M.—N. is of course safer attached to the Red Cross than roaming the streets making rescues on his own, and if he was killed one should at least hear of it; but the risks are many and great, as in street fighting the ambulances are constantly under fire.

Among other things they enter houses where there are known to be wounded Sinn Feiners, and bring them out and take them to the hospitals.

This N. was doing yesterday. One of the most awful things in this terrible time is that there must be scores of dead and dying Sinn Feiners, many of them mere lads, that no one can get at in the houses, where they will remain till after the rebellion; and in some cases the houses take fire and they are burnt. However, whatever is possible is being done.

All the afternoon an awful battle raged in the neighbourhood of the river and quays, and the din of the great guns and machine guns was tremendous. We now have 30,000 troops and plenty of artillery and machine guns, so the result cannot be uncertain, though there is desperate work to be done before the end is in sight.

I cannot give you any idea of what it was like when I went to bed; I sent for Mrs. B., the manager’s wife, and together we watched it from my window.

It was the most awe-inspiring sight I have ever seen. It seemed as if the whole city was on fire, the glow extending right across the heavens and the red glare hundreds of feet high, while above the roar of the fires the whole air seemed vibrating with the noise of the great guns and machine guns. It was an inferno! We remained spellbound.

Yesterday Lord S. had a narrow escape from a sniper who has been worrying this street for two days and could not be located. He was picking off soldiers during the fighting in Grafton Street, but later turned his attention to the cross streets between this and Grafton Street and there as nearly as possible got Lord S., who was coming back to us from the Castle.

The military thought the man was on _our_ roof, which made us all whistle with indignation—the mere idea of the wretch being on our hotel; but a thorough search proved he was not here, though he evidently had access to some roof.

Yesterday afternoon, when the firing in Grafton Street was over, the mob appeared and looted the shops, clearing the great provision shops and others.

From the windows we watched the proceedings, and I never saw anything so brazen! The mob were chiefly women and children, with a sprinkling of men; they swarmed in and out of the side door, bearing huge consignments of bananas, the great bunches on the stalk, to which the children attached a cord and ran away dragging it along; other boys had big orange boxes, which they filled with tinned and bottled fruits. Women with their skirts held up received showers of apples and oranges and all kinds of fruit which were thrown from the upper windows by their pals; and ankle deep on the ground was all the pink and white and silver paper and paper shavings used for packing choice fruits. It was an amazing sight! And nothing daunted these people. Higher up, at another shop, we were told a woman was hanging out of a window dropping down loot to a friend, when she was shot through the head by a sniper, probably _our_ man. The body dropped into the street and the mob cleared. In a few minutes a cart appeared and gathered up the body, and instantly all the mob swarmed back to continue the joyful proceedings!

H. and Lord S. were sitting at the window for a few minutes yesterday when the fruit shop was being looted and saw one of the funniest sights they had ever seen. A very fat, very blowsy old woman emerged from the side street and staggered on to the pavement, laden with far more loot than she could carry; in her arms she had an orange box full of fruit, and under her shawl she had a great bundle tied up, which kept slipping down; having reached the pavement, she put her box down and sat on it! And from her bundle rolled forth many tins of fruit; these she surveyed ruefully, calling on the Almighty and all the Saints to help her! From these she solemnly made her selection, which she bound up in her bundle and hoisted, with many groans and lamentations, on her back and made off with, casting back many longing looks at the pile of things left on the pavement, which were speedily disposed of by small boys!

Humour and tragedy are so intermixed in this catastrophe! A very delicate elderly lady who is staying here said to me this morning, in answer to my inquiry as to how she had slept:

‘I could not sleep at all; when the guns ceased the _awful silence_ made me so nervous!’

I know exactly what she meant; when the roar of the guns ceases you can _feel_ the silence.

_5 p.m._—Colonel C. has just come in, having been in the thick of it for 48 hours. He tells us the Post Office has been set on fire by the Sinn Feiners who have left it. If this is true, and it probably is, I fear we have lost all our valuable possessions, including my diamond pendant which was in my jewel-case in H.’s safe.

To-day, about lunch-time, a horrid machine gun gave voice very near us, also the sniper reappeared on the roofs and this afternoon was opposite my bedroom window, judging from the sound. A man might be for weeks on the roofs of these houses among the chimney-stacks and never be found as long as he had access to some house for food. When we were working in my room this afternoon he fired some shots which could not have been more than twenty yards away.

I was almost forgetting to tell you how splendidly one of H.’s men behaved when the G.P.O. was taken. When the rebels took possession they demanded the keys from the man who had them in charge. He quietly handed over the keys, having first abstracted the keys of H.’s room! Imagine such self-possession at such a terrible moment.

_6.30 p.m._—A party of soldiers and a young officer have just arrived to search the roof for the sniper. They say he is on the roof of the annexe, which is connected with the main building by covered-in bridges. They are now on the roof and shots are being fired, so I expect they have spotted him.

When N. was out last night another ambulance had a bad experience. They had fetched three wounded Sinn Feiners out of a house and were taking them to hospital, when they came under heavy fire; the driver was killed, so the man beside him took the wheel and was promptly wounded in both legs; the car then ran away and wrecked itself on a lamp-post. Another ambulance had to run the gauntlet and go to the rescue! On the whole, as far as possible the rebels have respected the Red Cross, but not the white flag.

Guinness’s brewery have made three splendid armoured cars by putting great long boilers, six feet in diameter, on to their great motor lorries. Holes are bored down the sides to let in air, and they are painted grey; the driver sits inside too; they each carry twenty-two men or a ton of food in absolute security. N. saw them at the Castle being packed with men; nineteen got in, packed like herrings, and three remained outside; up came the sergeant.

‘Now then, gentlemen, move up, move up; the car held twenty-two yesterday, it must hold twenty-two to-day,’ and in the unfortunate three were stuffed. It must have been suffocating, but they were taken to their positions in absolute safety!

_29th, Saturday, 4 p.m._—Sir M. N. has just rung up to say the rebels have surrendered unconditionally. We have no details, and the firing continues in various parts of the town; but if the leaders have surrendered it can only be a question of a few hours before peace is restored and we can go forth and look on the wreck and desolation of this great city. So ends, we hope, this appalling chapter in the history of Ireland, days of horror and slaughter comparable only to the Indian Mutiny.

_April 30, Sunday, 10 a.m._—This morning we hear the reports of the burning of the whole of Sackville Street were exaggerated. The Imperial Hotel, Clery’s great shop, and one or two others were burnt, but the street as a whole escaped, and the Accountant’s Office and the Sackville Street Club were not touched.

Here I must tell you how absolutely heroic the telephone girls have been at the Exchange. It is in a building a considerable distance from the G.P.O., and the Sinn Feiners have made great efforts to capture it. The girls have been surrounded by firing; shots have several times come into the switch-room, where the men took down the boards from the back of the switch-boards and arranged them as shelters over the girls’ heads to protect them from bullets and broken glass. Eight snipers have been shot on buildings commanding the Exchange, and one of the guard was killed yesterday, and these girls have never failed. They have been on duty since yesterday, sleeping when possible in a cellar, and with indifferent food, and have cheerfully and devotedly stuck to their post, doing the work of forty. Only those on duty at the outbreak of the rebellion could remain, those in their homes could never get back, so with the few men who take the night duty these girls have kept the whole service going; all telegrams have had to be sent by ‘’phone,’ and they have simply saved the situation. It has been magnificent!

The shooting is by no means over, as many of the Sinn Fein strongholds refuse to surrender. Jacob’s biscuit factory is very strongly held, and when the rebels were called on to surrender they refused unless they were allowed to march out carrying their arms!

It is said that when Jacob was told that the military might have to blow up the factory he replied:

‘They may blow it to blazes for all I care; I shall never make another biscuit in Ireland.’

I don’t know if this is true, but it very well may be, for he has been one of the model employers in Dublin. He almost gave up the factory at the time of the Larkin strike, and only continued it for the sake of his people, and so it will be with the few great industries in the city. Dublin is ruined!

Yesterday I made a joyful discovery. When we came back from Italy in March, H. brought back from the office my large despatch-case, in which I keep all F.’s letters. I did not remember what else was in it, so I investigated and found my necklace with jewelled cross and the pink topaz set—both of these, being in large cases, would not go into the jewel-case,—also the large old paste buckle, so I am not absolutely destitute of jewelry. But, best of all, there were the three little handkerchiefs F. sent me from Armentières with my initial worked on them; for these I was grieving more than for anything, and when I found them the relief was so great I sat with them in my hand and cried!

This week has been a wonderful week for N. Never before has a boy of just seventeen had such an experience. Yesterday morning he was at the Automobile Club filling cans of petrol from casks for the Red Cross ambulances; he came in to lunch reeking of petrol! In the afternoon he went round with the Lord Mayor in an ambulance collecting food for forty starving refugees from the burnt-out district, housed in the Mansion House, and after tea went out for wounded and brought in an old man of seventy-eight shot through the body. He was quite cheery over it and asked N. if he thought he would recover. ‘Good Lord! Yes; why not?’ said N., and bucked the old man up!

There is intermittent firing in all directions. I doubt if it will quite cease for some days, as their strongholds will not surrender.

_May 1, 11 a.m._—I had no time to continue this yesterday, but during the afternoon three of the rebel strongholds surrendered, Jacob’s, Boland’s, and the College of Surgeons on St. Stephen’s Green. From this last building 160 men surrendered and were marched down Grafton Street. It is said that among them was Countess Marcovitz, dressed in a man’s uniform; it is also said that the military made her take down the green Republican flag flying over the building herself and replace it by a white one. When she surrendered she took off her bandolier and kissed it and her revolver before handing them to the officer. She has been one of the most dangerous of the leaders. People who saw them marched down Grafton Street said they held themselves erect, and looked absolutely defiant!

Yesterday H. revisited the Telephone Exchange and a point was cleared up that had mystified everyone; and that is why, when the rebels on Easter Monday took every building of importance and every strategic position, did they overlook the Telephone Exchange? Had they taken it we should have been absolutely powerless, unable to send messages or telegrams for troops. The Exchange is situated in Crown Alley, off Dame Street, and the Superintendent told H. an extraordinary story. It seems when they had taken the G.P.O. they marched a detachment to take the Exchange, when just as they were turning into Crown Alley an old woman rushed towards them with arms held up calling out ‘Go back, go back; the place is crammed with military.’ And, supposing it to be in the hands of our troops, they turned back! This was at noon; at 5 P.M. our troops arrived and took it over.

This saved the whole situation! Whether the woman was on our side, or if she thought she had seen soldiers, will never be known....

I have just returned from walking round the G.P.O. and Sackville Street with H. and some of the officials. It passes all my powers of description; only one word describes it: ‘desolation.’ If you look at pictures of Ypres or Louvain after the bombardment, it will give you some idea of the scene.

We looked up through the windows of the G.P.O. and saw the safe that was in H.’s room still in the wall, and the door does not appear to have been opened or the safe touched; but the whole place has been such an inferno, one would think that door must have been red-hot. Among all the débris the fire was still smouldering, and we could not penetrate inside. Do you realise that out of all H.’s library he does not possess a single book, except one volume of his Dante, and I not even a silver teaspoon!

Everything belonging to F. has gone; as he gave his life in the war, so an act of war has robbed us of everything belonging to him, our most precious possession!

_May 2, 10 a.m._—Last evening I walked all round the ruined district. The streets were thronged with people, and threading their way among the crowd were all sorts of vehicles—carts carrying the bodies of dead horses, that had been shot the first day and lain in the streets ever since; Fire Brigade ambulances followed by Irish cars bringing priests and driven by Fire Brigade men. The motors with Red Cross emblems, carrying white-jacketed doctors, would dart along, followed by a trail of Red Cross nurses on bicycles, in their print dresses and white overalls, their white cap ends floating behind them, all speeding on their errand of mercy to the stricken city.

From time to time we came across on the unwashed pavement the large dark stain telling its own grim story, and in some places the blood had flowed along the pavement for some yards and down into the gutters; but enough of horrors. We came sadly back, and on the steps we met Mr. O’B. returning from a similar walk. He could hardly speak of it, and said he stood in Sackville Street and cried, and many other men did the same.

Out of all the novel experiences of the last eight days, two things struck me very forcibly. The first is that under circumstances that might well have tried the nerves of the strongest, there has been no trace of fear or panic among the people in the hotel, either among the guests or staff. Anxiety for absent friends of whom no tidings could be heard, though living only in the next square, one both felt and heard, but of fear for their own personal safety I have seen not one trace, and the noise of battle after the first two days seemed to produce nothing but boredom. The other fact is a total absence of thankfulness at our own escape.

It may come, I don’t know; others may feel it, I don’t. I don’t pretend to understand it, but so it is. Life as it has been lived for the last two years in the midst of death seems to have blunted one’s desire for it, and completely changed one’s feelings towards the Hereafter.

_AN AMERICAN AMBULANCE IN THE VERDUN ATTACK._

BY FRANK HOYT GAILOR

‘Our artillery and automobiles have saved Verdun,’ French officers and soldiers were continually telling me. And as I look back on two months of ambulance-driving in the attack, it seems to me that automobiles played a larger part than even the famous ‘seventy-fives,’ for without motor transport there would have been no ammunition and no food. One shell, accurately placed, will put a railway communication out of the running, but automobiles must be picked off one by one as they come within range.

The picture of the attack that will stay with me always is that of the Grande Route north from Bar-le-Duc, covered with the snow and ice of the last days of February. The road was always filled with two columns of trucks, one going north and the other coming south. The trucks, loaded with troops, shells, and bread, rolled and bobbled back and forth with the graceless, uncertain strength of baby elephants. It was almost impossible to steer them on the icy roads. Many of them fell by the wayside, overturned, burned up, or were left apparently unnoticed in the ceaseless tide of traffic that never seemed to hurry or to stop.

All night and all day it continued. Soon the roads began to wear out. Trucks brought stones from the ruins of the Battle of the Marne and sprinkled them in the ruts and holes; soldiers, dodging in and out of the moving cars, broke and packed the stones or sprinkled sand on the ice-covered hillsides. But the traffic was never stopped for any of these things. The continuous supply had its effect on the demand. There were more troops than were needed for the trenches, so they camped along the road or in the fields. Lines of _camions_ ran off the road and unloaded the reserve of bread; the same thing was done with the meat, which kept well enough in the snow; and the shells, which a simple _camouflage_ of white tarpaulins effectually hid from the enemy airmen.

At night, on the main road, I have watched for hours the dimmed lights of the _camions_, winding away north and south like the coils of some giant and luminous snake which never stopped and never ended. It was impressive evidence of a great organisation that depended and was founded on the initiative of its members. Behind each light was a unit, the driver, whose momentary negligence might throw the whole line into confusion. Yet there were no fixed rules to save him from using his brain quickly and surely as each crisis presented itself. He must be continually awake to avoid any one of a thousand possible mischances. The holes and ice on the road, his skidding car, the cars passing in the same and opposite directions, the cars in front and behind, the cars broken down on the sides of the road—all these and many other things he had to consider before using brake or throttle in making his way along. Often snow and sleet storms were added to make driving more difficult. Objects six feet away were completely invisible, and it was only by watching the trees along the side of the road that one could attempt to steer.

I was connected with the _Service des Autos_ as a driver in Section No. 2 of the Field Service of the American Ambulance of Neuilly. We had the usual French section of twenty ambulances and one staff car, but, unlike the other sections, we had only one man to a car. There were two officers, one the Chief of Section, Walter Lovell, a graduate of Harvard University and formerly a member of the Boston Stock Exchange; and George Roder, Mechanical Officer, in charge of the supply of parts and the repair of cars. Before the war, he was a promising bacteriologist in the Rockefeller Institute. Our section was one of five which compose the field service of the American Ambulance, and are located at various points along the front from Dunkirk to the Vosges. The general direction of the Field Service is in the hands of A. Piatt Andrew, formerly professor at Harvard and Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury. He has organised the system by which volunteers and funds are obtained in America, and is the responsible link between the work of the service and the will of the French authorities.

In each of the five sections there are twenty drivers, all Americans and volunteers. Most of them are college men who have come over from the United States to ‘do their bit’ for France and see the war at the same time. Certainly our section was gathered from the four corners of the ‘States.’ One, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, had worked for two years on the Panama Canal as an engineer; another, an Alaskan, had brought 200 dogs over for the French Government, to be used for transportation in the Vosges; a third was a well-known American novelist who had left his home at Florence to be a chauffeur for France. There were also two architects, a New York undertaker, several soi-disant students, and a man who owned a Mexican ranch that was not sufficiently flourishing to keep him at home.

The term of service required by the French authorities is now six months, though, of course, some of the men have been in the section since the Battle of the Marne. We all got five sous a day and rations as privates in the French army, which was represented in our midst by a lieutenant, a _maréchal de logis_, a mechanic, and a cook.

On February 22 our French lieutenant gave us our ‘order to move,’ but all he could tell us about our destination was that we were going north. We started from Bar-le-Duc about noon, and it took us six hours to make forty miles through roads covered with snow, swarming with troops, and all but blocked by convoys of food carts and sections of trucks. Of course, we knew that there was an attack in the neighbourhood of Verdun, but we did not know who was making it or how it was going. Then about four o’clock in the short winter twilight we passed two or three regiments of French colonial troops on the march with all their field equipment. I knew who and what they were by the curious Eastern smell that I had always before associated with camels and circuses. They were lined up on each side of the road around their soup kitchens, which were smoking busily, and I had a good look at them as we drove along.

It was the first time I had seen an African army in the field, and though they had had a long march they were cheerful and in high spirits at the prospect of battle. They were all young, active men, and of all colours and complexions, from blue-eyed blonds to shiny blacks. They all wore khaki and brown shrapnel casques bearing the trumpet insignia of the French sharpshooter. We were greeted with laughter and chaff, for the most part, in an unknown chatter, but now and again some one would say, ‘Hee, hee, Ambulance Americaine,’ or ‘Yes, Ingliish, Good-bye.’

I was fortunate enough to pick up one of their non-commissioned officers with a bad foot who was going our way. He was born in Africa, which accounted for his serving in the colonials, though his mother was American and his father French. From him I learned that the Germans were attacking at Verdun, and that, to everyone’s surprise, they were trying to drive the point of the salient south instead of cutting it off from east to west. As we were passing along, one of his men shouted something to him about riding in an ambulance, and I remarked that they all seemed in a very good humour. ‘Oh yes,’ he answered; ‘we’re glad to be on the move, as we’ve been _en repos_ since autumn in a small quiet place south of Paris.’ ‘But it means trouble,’ he added proudly, ‘their sending us up, for we are never used except in attacks, and were being saved for the summer. Six hundred have been killed in my company since the beginning, so I have seen something of this war. Now my regiment is mixed up with two others, and altogether we make about 4000 men.’

As we talked, I realised that his was a different philosophy from that of the ordinary _poilu_ that I had been carrying. Certainly he loved France and was at war for her; but soldiering was his business and fighting was his life. Nothing else counted. He had long since given up any thought of coming out alive, so the ordinary limitations of life and death did not affect him. He wanted to fight and last as long as possible to leave a famous name in his regiment, and to add as many _citations_ as possible to the three medals he had already gained. He was the only man I ever met who was really eager to get back to the trenches, and he said to me with a smile when I stopped to let him off, ‘Thanks for the lift, my old, but I hope you don’t have to carry me back.’