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Home , Joseph Plunkett, Patrick Pearse

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Left: Extracts from ’s Field Message Book, or Diary, during the 1916 . MILITARY ARCHIVES Above: , the artist who married Plunkett the day before his execution; Grace’s drawing of her husband (right). MILITARY ARCHIVES Below left: Joseph Plunkett, by artist Brian O’Neill. JOSEPH MARY PLUNKETT Ailing writer who shaped the rebellion

ATRICK PEARSE and James an Irish Brigade remained difficult, he Connolly became the icons of Dr Conor Mulvagh on the military collaborated with on the 1916 Rising as it passed a related project, The Ireland Report, a into history and national dossier outlining a much more ambitious memory. Their edification tactician of the Rising who married shortly rising than that which ultimately occurred. Peclipsed their comrades and, On foot of this proposal, a commitment to of these, among the most interesting before his execution in send a shipment of arms of the southwest backstories is that of Joseph Mary Plunkett. coast of Ireland was given. Plunkett left On the face of it, Plunkett was perhaps Germany for America and there met with an unlikely revolutionary. Biographers schoolboy photographs’ of Plunkett have job at a skating rink in Algiers. Plunkett’s the senior in New York. have variously described him as eccentric, survived. biographer Honor Ó Brolcháin states that By October 1915, Plunkett finally set sail for nervous, and fragile. By far the most As a young man, Plunkett had spent one job offer he received was to manage Ireland after this extraordinary six-month financially comfortable of the Proclamation a significant period abroad. Glandular a skating rink “after the then manager journey. signatories, Plunkett lived a privileged tuberculosis had plagued him since ran away with the owner’s wife”. Monica Back home in , Plunkett existence but also came from a family with childhood and, in 1911, at the age of 23, he Leahy meanwhile states that Plunkett established a rebel training camp at a deep republican credentials. travelled to Italy, Sicily, and Malta with his seriously considered the offer of work as a recently acquired family property at The enduring image of Plunkett is of mother to convalesce. He remained abroad professional skater “being attracted by the Larkfield, in , south-west of him, standing at the altar in Kilmainham, until 1912, spending the winter in Algiers magnificent white costume which went Dublin city. The camp had been founded marrying his bride just before his execution with his sister Moya where he studied the with it”. following the introduction of conscription in the breakers’ yard. However, behind this Arabic language and literature. Some of Algerian adventures aside, Plunkett’s in Britain (but not in Ireland) in January romantic and romanticised representation his most important early poems, including 1915 trip to Germany was conducted 1916. Under the watchful eye of Plunkett is a much more complex figure without those for his first volume of poetry, The through Spain, Italy, and Switzerland and his siblings, the ‘Kimmage Garrison’, whom the Rising would certainly not Circle and the Sword, were written in and he grew a beard and moustache as it came to be known, was assembled have played out as it did. Plunkett was the Algiers. He even reportedly composed some to disguise his appearance. In Italy he out of Irishmen — most of whom had an primary military tactician of the Rising. verse in Arabic. further enhanced his counter-surveillance existing Irish Volunteer or IRB connection Along with Pearse and Éamonn Ceannt, While in Algiers, Plunkett also developed safeguards by adopting the alias of ‘James — who had left Britain not wanting to he was part of the group that conducted his skills at something a little more Malcolm’. Travelling to Germany on trains be conscripted. At Kimmage, they were a feasibility study into holding an frivolous than mystic poetry and revolution: often loaded full of German soldiers, instructed in military tactics and even ran a insurrection in Ireland as early as October roller-skating. Plunkett had skated in Plunkett’s lack of familiarity with the bomb-making factory preparing munitions 1914. Dublin, indeed Frank Nally has recently language — for he knew Latin, Spanish, for the planned insurrection. In his Plunkett was exceptional, too, in that written that skating was something French, Italian, Irish, and Arabic but no statement to the Bureau of Military History he managed to travel to Germany in 1915 of a craze in the city in the early 1900s German — made him fearful that he would in 1948, Séamus Robinson, a member of to link up with Roger Casement both with several rinks operating, the biggest be accused of being a spy. the Garrison, lists 89 comrades who lived to inspect and to assist his foundering of which was the Olympia at the RDS, In Germany, although efforts to raise with him at Larkfield by name. There were efforts to raise an Irish Brigade from which opened its doors in 1909. Such was comings and goings from the property but, Irish prisoners of war in Germany. As an Plunkett’s prowess that he was offered a ultimately, 60 inhabitants mustered on experienced traveller and possessing the Easter Monday 1916. credible excuse that he needed to travel SNAPSHOT abroad to aid his fragile health, Plunkett HE garrison was the most was uniquely placed among the rebel JOSEPH MARY PLUNKETT extraordinary training camp to have Texisted in Ireland during wartime. In conspirators to travel to Germany in Born: Dublin, 21 Nov 1877 wartime. Under the pretence of travelling to a classically Pearsian flourish of rhetoric, Jersey, Plunkett set sail for Spain in March Educated: CUS and Belvedere told the men of Larkfield 1915 on a long and circuitous voyage that in Dublin, Stonyhurst in ; that they were ‘Ireland’s first standing army ultimately led to Germany. Knowing the University College Dublin since the days of Patrick Sarsfield’. gravity of his mission, he went as far as to Affiliation: IRB, Joseph Mary Plunkett’s younger brother, destroy every known photograph of himself the 22-year-old George Plunkett, was Officer prior to his departure. Hence, say one of Career: journalist, poet in Charge of the Kimmage Garrison. Jack, his biographers, only very few ‘strange Died: Kilmainham, 4 CONTINUED ON PAGE 10 >>>

8 | 1916 Collection Irish Independent I 29 October 2015 PROFILE

A portrait of Joseph Plunkett and inset opposite page, a photograph of Joseph Plunkett, his brother George and William Fogarty taken in 1912 on the steps of Spingfield, Kilternan. MILITARY ARCHIVES

29 October 2015 I Irish Independent Irish Independent 1916 Collection | 9 PROFILE Ailing writer who shaped the rebellion

>>> CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8 the youngest of the Plunkett brothers, also fought in the Rising. An iconic photograph of the aftermath of the rebellion shows George and Jack, uniformed and in identical slouch hats, standing side by side under the eye of a sentry in Richmond Barracks. Like their older brother, both were handed down death sentences but, in their cases, the sentences were commuted. This is not the only reason why one should consider the Plunketts’ association with the 1916 Rising as very much a family affair. Joseph Mary Plunkett’s father, George Noble Plunkett, was an important figure during, and especially after, the Rising. He became the first-ever elected Sinn Féin MP in the North Roscommon by-election of February 1917. If family was one important aspect of Joseph Mary Plunkett’s 1916 story, then friendship was the other. Seeking a tutor to teach him Irish so that he could matriculate into University College Dublin in 1909, Plunkett found Thomas MacDonagh, well-known Gaelic Leaguer and then assistant lecturer in English at UCD. The two became firm friends through a mutual interest in poetry, which seems to have ‘I See His Blood taken precedence over Irish in their tutorial sessions. Upon The Rose’ VEN while in Algiers, Plunkett kept up his friendship with MacDonagh Joseph Plunkett UCD’s Dr Conor Mulvagh in front of the Kilmainham Gaol altar at which Joseph Ethrough correspondence wherein Plunkett married Grace Gifford, the night before he was executed. FRANK McGRATH they sent each other their poems. From I see his blood upon the rose 1913 onwards, Plunkett and MacDonagh And in the stars the glory of his eyes, took over the running of a small but His body gleams amid eternal snows, The new bride who became important radical journal, The Irish Review. His tears fall from the skies. It combined poetry, prose, and political commentary. The journal was supressed I see his face in every flower; a widow the same night by the censor under Defence of the Realm The thunder and the singing of the birds legislation in November 1914. Are but his voice—and carven by his The friendship between Plunkett was power UST a few hours before he was enhanced through the fact that they Rocks are his written words. shot, Joseph Plunkett married his Jsweetheart Grace Gifford in the eventually married two sisters. Thomas MacDonagh married Muriel Gifford in 1912. All pathways by his feet are worn, grim prison chapel in Kilmainham. They had a son and daughter born in 1912 His strong heart stirs the ever-beating They had been set to marry a few and 1915 respectively. In December 1915, sea, weeks before, on Easter Sunday, but Plunkett became engaged to Muriel’s sister His crown of thorns is twined with every that was postponed due to Joseph’s Grace. thorn, illness. Her sister Muriel was married In a most unusual twist of history, Joseph His cross is every tree. to Thomas MacDonagh, who was and Grace were due to be married on Easter executed one day before Plunkett. Sunday 1916 in a double wedding with The night before the execution Fr Joseph’s sister, Geraldine, who was engaged Eugene McCarthy of nearby St James to , lecturer in Chemistry at PLUNKETT Church was summoned to the jail in UCD. Joseph was forced to postpone his and THE POET the west of the city. He met with the Grace’s marriage not because of the Rising DR LUCY COLLINS couple and performed the marriage but because he had to undergo surgery on a ceremony just before midnight. The gland in his cheek early in April. ‘I SEE His Blood Upon marriage certificate stated Joseph With Michael Collins as his bodyguard, the Rose’ is a poem in the was a bachelor with the occupation Plunkett left the nursing home in which mystical tradition, expressing of ‘gentleman’, while Grace was a Grace Gifford (above) and a 1915 he was recuperating on Good Friday 1916, the intensity of Plunkett’s spinster who was an ‘artist’. Two letter from Joseph to Grace (below), the day after the Aud, the boat carrying the Christian faith. These simple verses British soldiers acted as witnesses. beginning, ‘Darling Grace, You will weapons he had convinced the German high testify to the presence of the divine in the Some years later, she wrote of the marry me and nobody else...’ command to send, had arrived off the Kerry world, reading in nature the iconography night: “When I saw him, on the day coast. of the crucifixion. At the centre of the before his execution, I found him in the steps and the cuffs were taken off On Easter Sunday, while crisis meetings poem lies the conviction that Christ’s exactly the same state of mind. He him and the chaplain went on with of the Proclamation signatories were held in suffering will never be forgotten, as was so unselfish, he never thought of the ceremony. Then the cuffs were Liberty Hall, Geraldine Plunkett’s wedding long as God’s word remains the bedrock himself. He was not frightened, not at put on him again. I was not alone went ahead as planned with neither her of existence. Here the deeply personal all, not in the slightest. with him — not for a minute. I had no father nor Joseph in attendance. The next becomes universal through an unworldly “I was never left alone with him, private conversation with him at all. I morning, from her bridal suite in the directness of address. even after the marriage ceremony. I just came away then.” Imperial Hotel on O’Connell Street, she Plunkett’s commitment to the was brought in and was put in front The ceremony over, the priest took watched the Rising which she had known revolutionary process suggests how of the altar; and he was brought down Grace back to a house in James Street was coming unfold beneath her window. shared intentions may find where the church bell-ringer lived. Following the seizure of the Post Office, expression in individual action, and There she stayed till 2am, when Geraldine Plunkett Dillon watched her indicates the redemptive power of an army car arrived to return her brother Joseph out on O’Connell Street personal sacrifice. Yet this is also to Kilmainham for a ten-minute erecting barricades from whatever could be a poem about what it is to see — supervised visit to her husband found. He placed a homemade bomb into an about the significance of the act of before she was taken away again empty tram on Earl Street, retreated a safe writing as a form of revelation. It and his execution carried out. distance, and fired a shot detonating the reflects our need to move beyond Grace was 28 at the time of her bomb and immobilising the tram. This was the narrow confines of the self in husband’s death, and although the last time she saw her brother Joe. the search for human meaning. she said she knew nothing of the Rising, later became a committed Dr Conor Mulvagh is a lecturer in Dr Lucy Collins is a lecturer in republican. She struggled to make Irish History at the School of History at English at University College Dublin a living as a cartoonist for many University College Dublin (UCD) with (UCD). She is the curator of ‘Reading years and eventually sued her special responsibility for the Decade of 1916’, a forthcoming exhibition at father-in-law over Joseph’s estate. Commemorations. UCD Special Collections. She died in 1955. GS

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