Читать книгу An Irish Crazy-Quilt - Arthur M. Forrester - Страница 11

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DURING the height of the land agitation in Ireland, some of the most exciting debates in the House of Commons, and some of the most vehement articles in the National press, had reference to the action of the post-office authorities in opening letters addressed to gentlemen (and, for that matter, to ladies, too) whom the sagacious police intellect “reasonably suspected” of connection with the obnoxious league. This peculiarly English method of circumventing the plans of a constitutional association by a resort to an unconstitutional and illegal act was popularly known as “Grahamizing,” from the fact that it had first been introduced by Postmaster-General Graham to discover what designs certain refugees in London entertained against the Emperor of the French, Napoleon III. Inquisitive Graham had to resign his office, and the government which sanctioned his conduct was also kicked out by the indignant English electors, who are the soul of honor in all questions that do not relate to Ireland. But, despite the fate of Graham, subsequent cabinets did not hesitate to adopt his invention when they had reason to believe that anything calculated to interfere with the status quo was afoot amongst the terrible Irish. Sir William Harcourt, English Home Secretary in 1882, especially distinguished himself by his reckless indulgence in this espionage of the letter-box. His post-office pilferings at last involved him in an avalanche of correspondence that nearly swamped the staff employed in letter steaming.

The sapient Home Secretary had taken it into his bucolic brain that Ireland and Great Britain were undergoing one of those periodical visitations of secret conspiracy which enliven the monotony of existence in those superlatively happy and contented realms. From the amount of his postal communications, and from the brilliant reports of a gifted county inspector, Sir William strongly suspected that one Ryan, a Tipperary farmer, was engaged in less commendable pursuits than turnip-sowing or cabbage-planting. Still, there was no positive proof that Ryan’s whole soul was not centred in his Early Yorks and Mangolds. So resort was had to the Grahamizing process.

For some time Ryan suspected nothing, until his correspondence began to get muddled,—his tailor’s bill coming in an envelope addressed in the spidery calligraphy of his beloved Mary, a scented billet-doux from that devoted one arriving in a formidable-looking official revenue envelope which should have contained an income-tax schedule, a subpœna to appear as a witness in a law-suit at Clonmel reaching him in an envelope with the New York post-mark, and a half a dozen other envelopes being found to contain nothing at all.

Then Ryan smelt a multitude of rats, and he determined to cry quits with the disturbers of his gum and sealing-wax. He adopted the name of Murphy for the purposes of correspondence, and he arranged that the intelligent sub-inspector should know that he was going to receive letters in that euphonious cognomen.

Now, Murphys were as plentiful round there as counts in a state indictment or nominations at a Democratic convention. You couldn’t throw a stone in the location without knocking the eye out of a Murphy. You couldn’t flourish a kippeen there without peeling the skin off a Murphy. If you heard any one appealing to the masses, collectively or individually, to tread on the tail of his coat, you might depend it was a champion Murphy. The tallest man in the parish was a Murphy, the shortest was a Murphy; the stout man who took a square rood of corduroy for a waistcoat was a Murphy, and the mite who could have built a dress suit for himself out of a gooseberry skin was a Murphy. When a good harvest smiled on that part of the country people said the Murphys were thriving, and when small-pox decimated the population it was spoken of as a blight among the Murphys.

So, when the order came down from the Castle that all letters directed to Murphy should be stopped and forwarded to headquarters for perusal, it might naturally be expected that, even under ordinary circumstances, the local postmasters would have decent packages to return to Dublin.

But Ryan didn’t mean to be niggardly in his donations to the central bureau of the postal pimpdom. He took the clan Murphy into his confidence, and every Murphy in that parish wrote to every other Murphy in every other parish, and those Murphys wrote to other Murphys, and the fiery cross went round among the Murphys generally, and the fiat went forth that every Murphy worthy the name of Murphy should write as many letters to the particular Murphy the postmen were after as they could put pen to. It didn’t matter what they were about,—the crops, the weather, the price of provisions,—anything, in fact, or nothing at all. The language was of minor importance,—Irish, however, preferred,—and the Murphy who paid his postage would be considered a traitor to the cause.

Nobly did the Murphys sustain their reputation.

The first day of the interception of the Murphy’s letters, three bags full were deposited in the Under Secretary’s office for perusal.

The morning after sixteen sacks were piled in the room.

The third morning that room was filled up, and they stuffed Mr. Burke’s private sanctum with spare bags.

The fourth morning they occupied a couple of bedrooms.

The fifth morning half a dozen flunkeys were arranging bales of Murphy letters on the stairs.

Then there was a lull in the Castle, for that day was Sunday.

But it was a deceptive lull, because it enabled every right-thinking Murphy to let himself loose, and on Monday three van loads of letters for Mr. Murphy were sent out to the viceregal lodge.

Day after day the stream flowed regularly for about a week, when the grand climax came. It was St. Valentine’s morning, and, in addition to the orthodox correspondence, every man, woman, and child who loved or hated, adored or despised a Murphy, contributed his or her quota to the general chaos.

The post-office authorities had to invoke the aid of the Army Service Corps, and from 8 A.M. till midnight the quays and Phœnix Park were blocked with a caravan of conveyances bearing boxes and chests and tubs and barrels and sacks and hampers of notes and letters and illustrated protestations of affection or highly-colored expressions of contempt for Murphy from every quarter of the inhabitable globe.

Then the bewildered denizens of the Castle had to telegraph to the War Office for permission to take the magazine and the Ordnance Survey quarters, and the Pigeonhouse Fort and a barracks or two, to store the intercepted epistles in.

Forster wouldn’t undertake to go through the work,—the order to overhaul Murphy’s letters had come from Harcourt, and Harcourt would have to do it himself. Well, Harcourt went across, but when he saw the task that had accumulated for him, he threatened to resign unless he was relieved.

Finally, the admiralty ordered the channel fleet to convey the Murphy correspondence out to the middle of the Atlantic, where it was committed to the treacherous waves.

To this day, letters addressed to Mr. Murphy are occasionally picked up a thousand leagues from land, on the stormy ocean, and whenever Sir William Vernon Harcourt reads of such a discovery he disappears for a week, and paragraphs appear in the papers that he is laid up with the gout.