A first contribution on joining the Writing.ie community.
Gloves were not required, but I was cautioned, as always, about keeping my pens in my bag, and to take utmost care with my 6B pencil. Thirty years as a visitor beneath the giant warm cream dome, requesting numbered manila boxes and reading by the colonial brass lamps. The procedure was the same. Only the photo ID had evolved. Or at least that was the only outward appearance of change.
The box arrived. Personal possessions of The O’Rahilly, found on his desk at the time of his untimely death. Mortally wounded on Sackville Lane, dying, sheltering, in a doorway, writing last words to his wife Nancy; after leading a charge up Moore Street at Easter 1916. I paused, offering quite unconsciously, a moment of silence, a remembrance of the man, his charge, the note, his death.
There were few items inside, most others I imagine would have been claimed by grieving relatives and friends. The box was preserving a moment, one still familiar in memory older than mine. The almost-emptiness betrayed a life that was full.
A slight whiff of damp, and another pause. And there in that mundane disguise of artefacts that lived through the struggle for freedom, a single sheet of ledger paper with a letter typed up on it. The characters struck deep, the faint trace of red at the top fringe of each letter revealed the bicolour ink of an ancient Underwood typewriter ribbon, an office typewriter, the ripped contours of every character spelling the force, determination, urgency with which the missive had been written.
The message sharp and to the point. “At the instruction of my Council (Wexford Town), I have written to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to ask for the release of all Irish political prisoners”. Dated February 1916.
I broke the rules, took out my phone and took a shot. The original thus captured, I placed it carefully back into the box. A fragment of history, captured, boxed and classified. I continued to study the photograph. Later I would break yet another rule. Printing copies. I gave them to the writer’s descendants.
Within a month or so of it’s writing The O’Rahilly would be dead. Within a few years much of the generation of Connolly and Pearse would be gone with him. And before the war of independence began in earnest, the writer of the letter would be sentenced to Spike Island and the uncertainty of indefinite detention. His sister would have escaped to anonymity in England, whilst his brother, a journalist, managed to continue to tell the stories, with but a small sojourn in Wexford goal.
Not wanting to end the moment, I delayed closing the lid. I lingered, in the presence of a fragment of history, a fragment of writing. And after a while ceased to ask myself the question every writer eventually asks of themselves.
(c) David Marshall
