Roger Casement

16Lives

Angus Mitchell

• Publisher: The O'Brien Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781847176080
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

A fascinating examination of the extraordinary life of Roger Casement, executed as part of the 1916 rising, fighting the empire that had previously knighted him. Roger Casement was a British consul for two decades. However, his investigation into atrocities in the Congo led Casement to anti-Imperialist views. Ultimately, this led him to side with the Irish Republican movement, leading up to the 1916 rising. Arrested by the British for gun trafficking, he was incarcerated in the Tower of London and then placed in the dock at the Royal Courts of Justice in an internationally-publicised state trial for high treason. He was hanged in Pentonville prison on the 3 August—two years to the day after Britain's declaration of war in 1914.

Chapter One
• • • • • •

1864-1883

Nomadic Upbringing

The plaque commemorating his birth is still visible above the front door of Doyle’s Cottage in a quiet street of Sandycove, where Roger Casement entered the world on 1 September 1864. It is a simple house in a respectable neighbourhood of Dublin, renowned as the area of the city where the Martello tower in James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses is located. This coincidence is highly apposite, as Casement’s life has fascinating connections with the modernist epic of the 20th century; indeed, his name is referenced in the ‘Cyclops’ chapter:

Did you read that report by a man what’s this his name is?

—Casement, says the citizen. He’s an Irishman.

—Yes, that’s the man, says J.J.

On 16 June 1904, the date Ulysses made famous as Bloomsday, Casement’s name was circulating not merely through the pubs of Dublin but in conversations across the globe, from the heart of central Africa to the outposts of the British Empire in India, Australia and Canada. But despite being born in Dublin, Casement spent a comparatively small amount of time residing in his native city; like Stephen Dedalus, he became a citizen of the world. Nevertheless, Dublin would eventually become the site for the rebellion in which he played such a defining part and where his bones would finally come to rest.

Recent genealogical research has shown how the Casements moved from the Isle of Man to Antrim in the early eighteenth century. Different branches of the family held lands in both Wicklow and Antrim, and produced sons who generally went into either trade or the armed forces, and daughters who married into their own social class. Although Casement is inevitably categorised as ‘Anglo-Irish’, this is in some ways misleading. The extended Casement family might have had the airs and graces associated with the ascendancy class in terms of land, a big house and privilege, but for Roger Casement’s own family money was always scarce, and in references to his upbringing there is not the usual sense of either entitlement or advantage.

Roger’s father, also named Roger (1819-77), served in the British army in India with the Third Light Dragoons. In 1848 he sold his commission and returned to Europe to take part in the Louis Kossuth-led liberation of Hungary. Stories relate of how he held strong Fenian sympathies, identified with the Paris communards, and expressed beliefs in the principles of universal republicanism.1 He also dabbled in more esoteric interests, like Sikh mysticism; although, in line with Victorian parenting, he was quite a disciplinarian with his children. In 1855 he married Anne Jephson (1834-73), who was fifteen years his junior.

The background of Casement’s mother Anne is harder to establish with much certainty. In later life, Casement tried to research her connection to an old landed family, the Jephson-Norreys from Mallow in north Cork, but the information he uncovered was sketchy. It appears that she was baptised a Catholic, but quite possibly became an Anglican on marriage. Baptismal records show how she had Roger and his three elder siblings, Agnes, Charles and Tom, all secretly baptised as Catholics in Rhyl in north Wales. In Ireland, where religious difference is so accentuated, this unusual Protestant-Catholic duality is noteworthy, which might help to explain Casement’s early identification with the aspirations of the United Irishmen and his life-long desire to unite Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter.

The little that is known about the circumstances of the family derives from personal reminiscences written by his cousins Gertrude and Elizabeth and his sister Agnes, or ‘Nina’, as she was affectionately called. According to these, the family moved around the European continent, living briefly in France, Italy, London, the Channel Islands and Ireland, although it is not known why they moved so frequently. This state of nomadism would come to define Casement’s life, as he was destined never to settle in any place for any length of time. He lived in a constant state of motion: staying with friends and relatives, living briefly in rented accommodation, moving across the world by steamship and railways, or sleeping rough on his journeys into the African and South American interiors. But in the midst of all this endless travelling, Casement came to develop a particularly deep attachment to Ireland, and this love maintained him wherever he found himself.

The death of both parents by the time Roger was thirteen created a strong bond between him and his three siblings that would last for the rest of their lives. Roger’s relationship with his sister Nina was particularly close and in her memoir she lovingly described how from a very early age her little brother enjoyed the great outdoors. He learned to swim well and developed an exceptionally kind and empathetic nature, along with a hatred of injustice.2 She recalled, too, how he was an avid reader. Among his favourite books was James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, a tale of the demise of Native American culture during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), when France and Great Britain fought for control of North America.

The family home still directly associated with Casement is Magherintemple, a large and rather austere big house adjoining a lovingly-tended walled garden on the hills outside Ballycastle in County Antrim. This belonged to his uncle John, who took the orphaned Casement children in as his wards after the death of their parents. In his youth, Roger – or Roddie, as he was called by his immediate family – spent significant amounts of time at Magherintemple, and he returned there regularly to visit his relations throughout his life. To this day, the drafty rooms contain pieces of African furniture carved from tropical hardwoods, and a cabinet of ethnic curios that he presented like trophies to relations after returning from his African and Brazilian postings. But Magherintemple was not the only Antrim home where he was welcomed, and in several other ascendancy households, as well as the more humble abodes of local families, Roger was always made to feel at home.

He attended the Ballymena Diocesan School, where the principal, the Rev. Robert King, was one of the greatest Irish language scholars of the day, and Casement’s love for the Irish language appears to have been nurtured from a very young age in this environment. In notes written to the scholar and revolutionary Eoin MacNeill (1867-1945), he recalled:

My very old Master, the late Revd Robert King, of Ballymena, spoke and knew Irish well and often preached in Irish in his Protestant church of the Six Towns up in the Derry hills above Maghera and Magherafelt in the 1840s.3 … The first Irish I heard was in Ulster, in Co. Down in 1869, when I remember well often hearing the market people talk in it altho’ I was a tiny child then – also the boatmen from the Omeath Shore.4

By all accounts he was a diligent, quick-witted and intelligent pupil at school, and won several prizes for Classics. He enjoyed acting and singing, building up a repertoire of songs that included The Wearing of the Green and Silent O Moyle. According to Nina, he always stood firmly on the side of truth and integrity, while developing a strong sense of history. He read widely about the 1798 rebellion and how Presbyterian Antrim rose against English oppression. The nine Glens of Antrim, that stunning expanse of countryside within walking distance of Magherintemple, became the formative landscape for his youthful imagination. He took pleasure in linking the histories he studied to the surrounding environment. Nina remembered how he would walk around Donegore Hill, the site of a mass hanging of United Irishmen in 1798, and by connecting the landscape and local memory of sites of resistance to British rule in Ireland, he quickly cultivated a deep identification with the land and its people. ‘He learned much of the history of our country during those years. Long walks and visits to historic remains of antiquity, talking to the kindly Ulster folk who could tell many a tale of ’98 and the horrors perpetrated by the brutal soldiery of George III,’ Nina recalled.5

By his late teens he was writing poetry related to the history of Ulster, influenced by the melodies of Thomas Moore and the poetry of James Clarence Mangan and Florence McCarthy. Another inspiration was the late nineteenth century fashion for epic rhyme, while a familiarity with the Romantic tradition of Byron, Shelley, Keats and Tennyson was also evident. Metaphorically, this poetry was punctuated with the Celticist iconography and Gothic symbolism typical of the time: the silent harp, the mysterious ruined abbey, prophetic and spectral presences, and plenty of violence in the description of battles.6

O’Donoghue’s Daughter7

’Twas a calm Autumn evening, from hunting returning

I wearily spurred my poor steed thro’ the glade—

And on thro’ the glen past the Abbey lights burning,

Beneath its tall oaks and their far spreading shade—

And as nearer I drew to the lake I sent pealing

My bugle’s wild notes o’er the mist-shrouded water

When, oh! Like the voice of an Angel came stealing

From distance the song of O’Donoghue’s daughter.

Around 1880 Casement developed an interest in the politics of the Irish National Land League and the two principal figures involved in agitation for land redistribution and the protection of tenant farmers: the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, Charles Stewart Parnell, and the more radical MP, Michael Davitt. The politics of land became the determining issue of Casement’s life. ‘The land is at the bottom of all human progress and health of body and mind – and the land must be kept for the people,’ he wrote in 1911.8 This comment, made at the very height of his fame as a British government official, was shaped by his own observation of the Irish Land War and a belief that land should be util...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Reviews
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• 16LIVES Timeline
• 16LIVESMAPS
• 16LIVES - Series Introduction
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One: 1864-1883 Nomadic Upbringing
• Chapter Two: 1884-1898 African Roots
• Chapter Three: 1899-1902 Congo Consulate
• Chapter Four: 1903-1904 Heart of Darkness
• Chapter Five: 1904-1913 The Congo Reform Association
• Chapter Six: 1906-1913 South America
• Chapter Seven: 1905-1913 Building an Irish Network
• Chapter Eight: 1913-1914 Raising and Arming the Irish Volunteers
• Chapter Nine: 1914 America
• Chapter Ten: October 1914-April 1916 Imperial Germany
• Chapter Eleven: April-June 1916 Capture and Trial
• Chapter Twelve: July-August 1916 Appeal and Execution
• Chapter Thirteen: 1916-2016 History as Mystery: An Inside Story
• Appendix: The Far-Extended Baleful Power of the Lie
• Bibliography
• Index
• Plates
• Copyright