All this activity, though often unpleasant, came as a relief to some of our men. Not a few could have been heard complaining about the daily routine of army life in peacetime. Everything from the drills to the monotony of the diet formed the principal discourse among the lower ranks whilst we were stationed at our North of England base. Conditions in our Irish barracks were no different. Had we been permitted to spend much time there I have no doubt that similar complaints would have been voiced. But we were now constantly on the move, marching from one settlement to another. Camping in fields, our food cooked on fires in the open air.
For the officers, too, life had changed for the worse. No longer having ready access to the comforts of the mess or the frequent days away from army routine, able to pursue the normal activities of a country gentleman – hunting, shooting and riding in the daytime, cards, billiards and the theatre, in the evenings – we now found ourselves in demand by the local gentry, not to attend dance parties, but to accompany agents collecting rent.
Such duties, though necessary, were distressing, especially so for those of the men whose own families found themselves in straightened circumstances. A single example from among many will suffice. A small company was detailed to accompany a particularly obnoxious individual on a mission to secure overdue rent from the occupier of a small holding. The poor fellow had no money with which to meet the landlord's demands. The agent therefore determined to remove livestock to the supposed value. The agent and his accomplices set about rounding up 3 skinny cows, their bones clearly visible beneath their hides, which were in turn liberally covered with scabs and lesions. The farmer, his woman and 4 children, all dressed in rags, stood by, wringing their hands.
The ages of the children were difficult to discern, their faces so pinched by hunger they looked like old men and women. They were plainly unable to comprehend what they were witnessing.
The woman's sobs would have plucked the heart strings of any man possessed of one. I could not help but notice the mutterings of my men. I ought to have castigated them, for it is against regulations for an ordinary soldier to engage in any political discourse. I had not the heart to do so. How the agent and his henchmen could be so cold was beyond my understanding. It must have been obvious to them, as it was to me, that, as lacking of meat as the beasts were, they represented the only food that family would have to sustain them for the coming winter. What were they to do? It seemed their only recourse would be the workhouse for the woman and her offspring, and, should he be so fortunate, a public works scheme for the man.
I now believe it was this and other similar incidents that sowed the seeds of my own political enlightenment. The landlord needed the rent in order to pay his dues to the poor law guardians. Those dues, in turn, enabled the guardians to support the family in the workhouse and pay the man his meagre wage on the public works. How much more sensible it would have been to do as my father had done and permit the family to live rent free until next harvest.
As the fourth son I always knew there was little chance of inheriting my father's estate. And in our culture the notion of splitting the estate between siblings was anathema, the preference being for expansion. With yet more brothers younger than me, my father being, or so it sometimes seemed, endeavouring to increase the population of Antrim singlehandedly – not satisfied with the 6 boys and 5 girls he had sired by the time my mother died when I was 13, he went on to procreate a further 2 boys and 5 girls to his second wife, Sarah – it was imperative that we make our own way in the world, seeking our own fortunes. My last tutor, a man enamoured of great literature and no little interest in the sciences, encouraged me to take up a place at Trinity college in Dublin. I found the place to be quite insufferable, full of people with far too high an opinion of their own worth. I determined, therefore, to join the army.
I confess it may have crossed my mind that another fourth son of an aristocratic Irish family had lately become commander in chief after a successful venture into politics, demonstrating that the army offered a man an opportunity for advancement the equal of any other profession. That, however, was by no means the only, or even the principal, reason for my decision. After the studied informality, the detachment from reality, that manifested itself in academia, the discipline of army life and the opportunity to see real life as it is lived in the more exotic and even dangerous places had a great attraction. At the tender age of 17 I signed up with the Enniskillens.
At no time did I regret my decision. Even during the period of training, designed to increase both my physical strength and endurance as well as my proficiency with fire arms and at horsemanship, with which latter I was, of course, well acquainted already, when life was without doubt much harder than that to which I was accustomed, I found solace in the company of others. There was, at that time, a comradeship by which each man helped his peers. Thus I was able to provide support to those who had little knowledge of matters equestrian, whilst another demonstrated to me the best method of driving a bayonet into a sack of oats. Fortunately I was never called upon to practice that technique in a situation where the sack of oats was the stomach of an enemy.
Soon I was aboard ship bound for the Mediterranean and, thence, the Aegean and some of the King's most pleasant colonies. It was on my return from Corfu that I learned of a plan to revitalise a tired regiment, the 68th foot. There was a call for young officers, a call which I answered, purchasing my commission as Captain in the regiment. After a brief sojourn in Edinburgh where we concentrated on drilling the men to bring them back up to the highest standard expected of His Majesty's army and during which we were deployed to put down an insurrection in Glasgow, I was bound once more for the Mediterranean and an uneventful 3 years in Gibraltar.
I was now due a period of home based duties so that, whilst a large portion of the regiment were deployed to Jamaica, I remained at the Barracks in Durham. It was during this period that I began my courtship of a young woman of considerable charms and education whom I had for some while regarded with affection. My status as an officer now secured, I determined to approach the young woman and seek her hand in marriage. Imagine my delight when she agreed to the arrangement, subject, of course, to the agreement of her father. This having been sought and granted we were married in a simple ceremony in the year of 1839. The young woman, Georgina McCartney, now Kennedy, was, of course appraised of the fact that I could be deployed anywhere in the King's empire, and that, were the usual pattern of 3 years per deployment to continue, the next changeover was scheduled for a date less than 2 years after the commencement of our union. Not, I hasten to add, insufficient time for the procreation and arrival of our son, Arty, and daughter Elizabeth.
My happiness in this union was but briefly marred by the unexpected death of my eldest and most beloved and admired brother.
Sure enough, I was placed in command of a detachment deployed to a place which could hardly have offered a greater contrast for those of the men who had lately been in Jamaica. Much plagued by tropical diseases the regiment lost 105 men in this deployment, none in conflict but all as a consequence of disease, and among them some I had regarded with great admiration during our period in Gibraltar.
We sailed in August and, at first, the men found the climate in our new destination most congenial by comparison with that to which they had become accustomed. Not many weeks passed, however, before the arrival of winter and, with it, snow and ice in volumes never experienced before or since. The local population coped by enveloping themselves in the skins of animals. No such luxury was available to us. Only in our quarters was it possible to encounter some warmth, though even here the inside walls and windows streamed with condensation which, at night, froze. Out of doors, leading patrols to reassure the Canadian loggers who were in dispute with others from Maine, one would quickly find one's whiskers caked with ice and one's hands, in the thickest of woolen gloves, numb with cold. This continued through 3 winters and 3 hot summers. Around the anniversary of our arrival a treaty was signed in Washington which settled the disputed boundary between the two territories after which our task contained little or no threat.
With our deployment to Ireland, most of our men and officers were once again separated from their homes by many miles, though the waters of St. George's Channel hardly matched those of the Atlantic. I and my lady Georgina were, for the first time in several years, on familiar territory close to our family homes. Moreover, I was able to install Georgina and our two children in a town house a short walk from the barracks. I was thus enabled to eschew the pastimes preferred by those who were inclined to spend their hours in the officers' mess; I refer particularly to the playing of cards and billiards. It was not so much the games I disdained as the gambling which often accompanied such activities. I could ill afford to lose what little money I had.
The world inhabited by men, especially fighting men, is harsh. There is within it no room for sentimentality. One lives by one's wits. In the company of a woman like Georgina it is possible to forget whatever discomforts the day has brought, and become, if only for a few hours, a civilised being once more. And so it was that I came to crave the end of each day and the blessed few hours I spent in her company.
As the spring rains washed the land causing it to come alive once more, as blades of green grass erupted from the mud, and buds swelled on a thousand bushes, the work schemes were shut down. Now a multitude of men were once more unemployed. Some returned to tilling the fields but it was noticeable that many plots remained uncultivated. The money they had earned on the schemes was barely sufficient to keep themselves and their families alive through the winter, let alone purchase seed.
The Society of Friends provided seed for those who were able to avail of it, but it was mostly for alternatives to the potato: turnips and such. I heard of some landlords, too, my own father among them, who offered such seed to their tenants, waiving the rent payable on land so used.
However plentiful the future harvest, it would not be available for many months to come. Russell's government now emulated the Society of Friends and established soup kitchens in the vicinity of the workhouses. These were attended by crowds that rivaled and even exceeded those who months before had clamoured for work. Once again we were deployed to support the constabulary in maintaining order, though, truth be told, those attending such places were docile enough.
Georgina and I had many discussions about the state of affairs in our native land. It was clear from reports in the presses that conditions in parts of the South and West of the country were far worse than anything I had witnessed in person whilst carrying out my duty. Conditions in the vicinity of the barracks were heart breaking to witness. When a kitchen was opened in the town and the call went out for volunteers Georgina was among the first to offer her time. Now she, too, was enabled to see the condition of the citizens who availed of the hot food provided.
“I wonder,” she said, “how much energy is expended by those who walk miles from the countryside in order to receive a bowl of thin soup? I fear that for some it could be more than they imbibe, especially when the return journey is taken into account.”
“Those making the return journey are few,” I reminded her. We had lately begun undertaking night patrols, for the streets of the town were thronged with destitute countryfolk. The sympathy of the townsfolk towards these invaders waned as rapidly as a harvest moon when they began to exhibit the symptoms of fever or dysentery. It was once again the long suffering infantrymen of Her Majesty's Army who were called upon to break up violent disputes that arose as a consequence.
The summer brought a new assignment: policing election rallies. Many more men were deployed to Ireland and I was put in command of a detachment of new arrivals. These were, like many in the regiment, miner's sons used to witnessing poverty. I could tell they did not believe the stories, told to them by the older hands, about the events of the past winter. It became a kind of sport among the men, relating tales of hardships endured. My own past experience of winters in the North of England assured me that frost and snow of similar proportions to that encountered these past months in Ireland were common place there. However evil the weather in Ireland, I could readily embrace the notion that in the mining villages of County Durham the temperature was lower, the snow deeper. What English men newly arrived in Ireland in summer were quite ill equipped to understand was the average Irish family's lack of food.
Soon enough the newcomers saw for themselves the parlous state of the habitation of fully one quarter of the population. Understanding began to dawn for some. For a few, those able to read, the conditions they observed confirmed the reports carried in English news sheets purporting to show that the inhabitants of this island were an inferior species.
I expected there would be violent scenes at the hustings as the native population protested the conditions they had been so recently forced to endure. It was an expectation evidently shared by those of our superiors who had authorised the increase in numbers assigned to Ireland. To my surprise few such demonstrations occurred. Nor did any candidate for election that I witnessed make so much as a passing reference to the vicissitudes of his constituents. The principle subject of all debate was that of the Union between Ireland and Great Britain, and Mr O'Connell's recent campaign to have it repealed and governance returned to Dublin. The man himself had departed this life about the time the election was called. He was reported to have been on a pilgrimage to Rome when he met his Maker, surely an unwise undertaking for someone who had been unwell since his release from prison three years earlier. His acolytes continued his campaign but with little effect.
With the election over I was summoned to the office of the Colonel. I supposed that we were to be given new orders, perhaps involving departure from Ireland, a prospect that had no appeal for me since my love of the island had been restored by my return, despite the horrors I had lately witnessed. Imagine, then, my surprise when the Colonel raised the issue of those very horrors. Had my opinions about the situation reached the ears of my superiors? Was I to face discipline for harbouring political thoughts?
I framed my response to his query with care. “It is true, sir, that I have often times found it difficult to carry out some of the duties required of us here.”
“As I thought. Then perhaps you will welcome what I am about to suggest.” He went on to inform me that the army had been asked to provide men to join the Poor Law Commission as Inspectors with responsibility for ensuring the collection and distribution of rates. “No need to answer now. Think about it, discuss it with your family. I will need your answer tomorrow.”