solitary confinement, irons and flogging are to be the penalties
of introducing the contraband article. And in such a case they
are all spies upon one another, both guards and prisoners. This
condition is hardly human, hardly earthly. The devil is in the
place.
But why all this care and suspicion ? How could my receipt
of public news injure the " Government," seeing I can send
out nothirg, except through the hands of my gaolers ? There
may be reasons for it unknown to me statesmanship is pro-
found.
Aug. qlh. Received to-day a large trunk from home, with
some clothes, a few books, and, what I value very highly, four
exquisite coloured daguerreotypes of Gluckmann's : one my wife
in profile, another has my mother and wife together ; a third,
ss
56 JAIL JOURNAL
John Martin, my staunch and worthy friend by this time, I
suppose, my fellow-felon. What a mild and benevolent-looking
felon ! The Convict Jesus was hardly purer, meeker, truer, more
benignant than this man is. The fourth likeness illuminates my
cell with the right manly and noble countenance of Father
Kenyon. He is standing with his arms folded, and a look of
firmness, almost scornful defiance, but tempered and subdued, in
his compressed lips and clear grey eye. Now, the speaking
images of two such friends as these to say nothing of the first
two will be high and choice companionship for me in my den.
But what do they now ? Where are they ? How fare they ?
Is it possible that my gaolers can keep me fourteen years from
learning what became of the great cause from the 27th of May last
forward ? I do not fear this ; by prudence and caution, and
patience, some bulletins of intelligence will be gained, methinks.
I5/A. Each of these wooden prisons, with its inmates, affects
still to be a ship and crew ; the officer second in command is
called " chief -mate," then we have second-mate, and quarter-
masters ; the rank-and-file of the turnkeys are termed guards.
The prisoners, or ship's company are distributed into messes and
watches ; and half-a-dozen of them who are set apart to man the
boats, swab the decks, and the like, are " boatswain's mates."
All these matters I discover as I walk the quarter-deck in dignified
silence, and observe the daily ongoings of my dismal abode. So
I am to regard myself as one of a ship's company one who may,
by good conduct, rise to be a boatswain's mate ! Rather, indeed,
I seem a solitary passenger, bound on a fourteen years' cruise,
though fast moored by head and stern. The language, too, used
by both officers and prisoners, is altogether ship-shape d
b , or b your b old eyes ! One or other of these is the
usual form of rebuke, expostulation, or encouragement (as the
case may be) employed in the constant routine of duty. The
rhief-mate, the same tall old man who took charge of my finances,
is a man high in authority, and d s and b s all the eyes in
the ship at his pleasure, except mine and the commander's. He
is also the person specially charged to take care of me. It is he
who locks my cell at night, and unlocks it in the morning ; and
besides that, he always pays me a visit about ten o'clock at night,
and three times more between that and morning, to make
JAIL JOURNAL 57
sure that I have not escaped. If I am asleep, or pre-
tending to be asleep, he makes the guard bring near his lantern,
so that its light may fall on my face, and assures himself that it
is I, and no other, who lies there. I see no way of escape, or else,
God knows, I would try it : but I am given to understand this
uneasy vigilance of my old friend the mate is a very peculiar and
unexampled degree of attention. Yet it is not all : since my
return from the hospital-ship I learn that a sentinel from the
barracks keeps guard upon this breakwater all night close along-
side the ship, as well as another sentinel at the place where a
bridge joins one end of the breakwater to the fortifications and
that persons coming to the hulks here after sunset, even the
surgeon and other officers, are obliged now to provide themselves
with passes. Then the poor prisoners are restricted from much
of the little liberty they had before, and must not saunter on the
breakwater as they used. In short, the reins of discipline have
been gathered up so tight for my sake, that I believe the whole
" ship's company " heartily wish I had been sent to Australia or
to the d 1. I seem unconscious of all this, and pace the quarter-
deck in silence, walking the plank.
These planks, I may observe by the way, are undoubtedly the
celebrated " last planks of the Constitution," so often referred to
by an illustrious gentleman deceased ; and I find them to be of
teak.
2oth. The August mail-steamer has arrived : bringing another
month's history of Ireland, but not for me. I have letters from
home, however, all well. Wife and bairns at Carlingford for the
summer. ,
28th. I was right : news do leak, percolating through the
strangest capillary tubes : a man cannot be sealed up hermetically
in a hulk ; and I am not to be fourteen years in utter darkness.
Void ! Government continues to act with vigour : certain Chart-
ists have been holding meetings in London to testify sympathy
with me : whereupon the insulted Government clapped them up
in jail and indicted them ; the record of my conviction as a felon
was produced by my friend Kemmis on their trial as part of the
proof against them. Amongst others, Ernest Jones, an able man,
a barrister, and editor of the Northern Star, has been convicted
and sentenced to two years' imprisonment for attending one oJ
58 JAIL JOURNAL
those meetings, and saying in his speech there, that I, J. M.,
would one day return to my country in triumph, and Lord John
Russell and Lord Clarendon would be transported. Fine vigour
this ! But then possibly Mr. Jones and the rest have had fair
play in respect of juries in London. Of this indeed I can find no
distinct intelligence ; but there is actually Law and a Govern-
ment in their country. If the juries were not packed, they have
nothing to complain of ; if they were fairly tried by their country-
men and found guilty, why, they are guilty.
In Ireland, Meagher has been arrested at his father's house and
carried to Dublin. His crime is a speech at Rathkeale, and
" sedition " only, not " felony ; " therefore he is liberated on bail.
A warrant against Smith O'Brien not yet executed. But John
Martin lies in Newgate charged with felony, committed in the
Irish Felon and where else should felony be found ? Duffy is
also in Newgate, for a like felony done in the Nation ; Kevin
O'Doherty, and R. D. Williams, who established another felonious
newspaper immediately after my kidnapping, under the title of
the Irish Tribune, are also committed for felony : and still more
vigorous vigour the issue of the three papers, Nation, Felon, and
Tribune, was stopped by the police, who even took them away
from the newsmen on the streets : their offices were broken open,
taken possession of and searched for felonious documents ; and,
in short, everything goes on in the genuine '98 style. I like
all this very well.
And poor Williams, with his fragile frame and sensitive poetic
temperament is he to be a martyr felon ? And Martin ! But
perhaps Lord Clarendon may find these two amongst the stoutest
he has yet to deal with.
Now will the philanthropic viceroy deliberately pack a Castle
jury for every one of these criminals ; and again systematically
exclude three parts of the citizens of Dublin from the exercise of
the commonest rights of good and lawful men ? I think he will
do it ; at his peril he must do this atrocity. I told him he would
have to do it, or else give up the government. He dares not
give his prisoners a fair trial : " policy," " statesmanship," and
the " force of circumstances," will imperiously compel him to
cheat these men, to work hideous injustice under colour of law,
to tamper with the administration of justice, which it is his office
JAIL JOURNAL 59
to guard, to outrage Ireland, to lie to England, and to damn his
own soul. Imperious force of circumstances. When will rulers
conceive, in their benighted minds, that common honesty is the
deepest policy, and that by far the cunningest statesmanship
would be to do plain justice ?
At any rate matters are now in train for plenty of excellent
legal work in Ireland : they will know before all is over what fine
laws and constitution they have there : the " law " will develop
itself, and " Crown and Government " will get vindicated properly
jurors, also, one may hope, will learn their duty amidst all this
(I mean the duty they will have to do so soon as trial by jury is
restored) the duty, namely, in all political prosecutions at the
suit of the Queen of England, to find all persons not guilty. Nay,
they must carry it further, and insist upon bringing in special
verdicts in all such cases, finding, on their oath, that the respective
prisoners at the bar have merited well of their country that is,
if they have really delivered a damaging blow to "government."
Either it will come to this, or else the philanthropic viceroy
must pack closer, and ever closer, every Commission ; and tran-
sport and hang men on the verdicts of his own particular trades-
men, " by special appointment " jurors to the Lord Lieutenant
which in the end may work as well.
Lord Fitz william wants to " bring in a Bill " to pension the
Catholic clergy, that is, bribe them to secure the peace of the
country, while " government " is working its wicked will. Mini-
sters appear to think the proposal too palpable and ostentatious
in its corruptness at the present moment : so they are " not
prepared to accede " just now. That small job is to stand over
for a while.
Sept. ist. Three months this day since I sailed away from the
Cove of Cork.
Shall I go on scribbling in a book, making myself believe that I
am keeping a journal ? Why, one day is exactly like every other
day to me. On this fourteen years' voyage of mine, it might
seem that one seafaring practice at least might be dispensed
with keeping a log, namely. For my latitude and longitude,
my course and bearings vary not from day to day : the altitude
of the sun at noon is always just the same, save the season's
difference. Nothing ever happens to me. What have I to
60 JAIL JOURNAL
write ? Or, if I write my nothings, who will ever read ? May
not the " chief mate " come in any morning and take away my
log for his own private reading or, if he think it worth while,
deliver it to the superintendent, who may deliver it to the
governor, who may deliver it to the Prime Minister ? So it may
even come to do me harm another day : for I am in their power.
Yet, notwithstanding all these considerations, I feel much in-
clined to jot down a page or two now and then, though it were
but to take note of the atmospheric phenomena ; or to praise or
abuse some book that I may have been reading ; or, in short, to
put on record anything, whether good or bad, that may have oc-
curred in my mind if one may use so strong an expression as
mind in this seaweed state. After all, in so very long a voyage,
one might well forget from whence he set sail, and the way back,
unless he have some sort of memoranda to refer to. This book
will help to remind me of what I was, and how I came down
hither, and so preserve the continuity of my thoughts, or personal
identity, which, there is sometimes reason to fear, might slip
away from me. These scrawls then will be in some sort as the
crumbs which the prince (I forget his name) scattered on his way
as he journeyed through the pathless enchanted wood. And
there was in that haunted wood no browner horror than I have
to pass through here. The Ancient Mariner, too, and his ship-
mates, who were the first that ever burst into that silent sea
surely they did not neglect to keep their dead reckoning.
For these reasons, and acting upon these examples, I shall go
on with my notes of nothing. It interests me in the meantime :
a vicious tirade discharged into this receptacle relieves me much ;
a dissertation helps me to think, and use reason aright, by means
of a new organon I have invented, called the Method of Rig-
marole : a good rant, like a canter on the back of a brisk horse,
gives me an appetite for dinner. And surely amongst all this
there cannot fail to be some things that my boys will read with
pleasure in future years.
Memorandum. To devise a certain and effectual mechanism
whereby, if I should ever come to be searched for papers, I may
pitch these pages overboard and ensure their sinking.
2nd. As for the books I read, or am likely to read here for
some time (until I can make better arrangements for myself) t
JAIL JOURNAL 61
they furnish small matter of remark. The literature most in
favour here seems to be the very paltriest of London novels
reprinted in America ; and (for " useful reading ") they have
.hose vile compilations called " Family Libraries," and " Cabinet
Libraries," and " Miscellanies," and the like dry skeletons of
dead knowledge ; from which nobody ever extracted anything
but the art of misusing scientific language. It is supposed to
be " popularising " science when a compiler gathers a parcel of
results in some department of knowledge, and sets them forth
in familiar style, never troubling himself or readers indeed,
knowing nothing about the processes whereby those results are
got ; and so your reader of popular literature learns to babble
about the profundity of modern science you must know it is
all modern and to bestow his enlightened pity on ancient
people generally, but above all, on the poor alchemists and
astrologers. Thus, also, in common discourse and the newspaper
dialects, we perpetually find such words as to predicate (in the
sense of to predict) proposition, for proposal conterminous, for
adjoining, and the like.
But apart from the effects on language, and therefore on clear-
ness of ideas, I complain of the universal system of compiling
and scissors-editing, in that books under such treatment cease to
be books are no longer the utterances of individual men, but a
composite gibberish. Here have I been reading an account of
Abyssinia, being a volume of the " Family Library," wherein you
travel one stage (or chapter) with Bruce ; then half a stage with
some Portuguese missionary, and the remainder of it with Salt,
or somebody else : you are never sure of your travelling com-
panion. A book ought to be like a man or a woman, with some
individual character in it, though eccentric, yet its own ; with
some blood in its veins, and speculation in its eyes, and a way
and a will of its own. Then you may make acquaintance with
it, receive impressions from it. But if it be a rickle of bones,
still more if it be a made-up skeleton, collected out of divers
graves by a popular editor with Mr. Bruce's spinal column
wired to Mr. Salt's skull-bones, and Mr. Belzoni's pelvis and ribs,
the thing is disgusting.
Two other volumes of the same Library, to wit : " Palestine,"
edited by Dr. Russell, and " Persia," by Frazer, I have also
62 JAIL JOURNAL
read diligently, not without many wry faces and find them to
be of the same indigestible material.
Howbeit I have swallowed a parcel of these volumes for want
of something better (as Laplanders sometimes dine on blue clay
and tree-bark) : also a sheaf or fasciculus of novels printed in
pamphlet shape by New York and Philadelphia pirates. Vast
oceans of trash ! I have always accounted myself remarkably
eupeptic in the matter of books ; thought that I could devour
much deleterious stuff without evil effect ontnia sana sanis
otherwise, I should presently suffer from a horrible constipation
of garbage. And one has need of a stomach like the organs of
those ducks of Pontus (unto which, as Aulus Gellius saith, poisons
are rather wholesome than hurtful), who adventures to gorge
the current " literature " they compound for the unfortunate
" masses " in this great age. But what will not a prisoner have
recourse to for passing the time.
Not that I mean to submit to this long. Only for the present
I am advisedly letting my intellect lie idle, basking in the sun,
dozing in the shade, grazing upon every green thing. But I never
dream of killing Time for fourteen years if it come to that,
Time would kill me fourteen years would be too many for me :
an occasional half-hour, to be sure, you may kill if you take him
unaware, but to slaughter Time by whole lustra and decades is
given to no mortal. Therefore, I intend, after having been at
grass awhile, to cultivate friendly relations with Time a thing to
be done by working only to get old Time on my side instead of
living against him, that so I may use poor Walter Scott's proverb,
" Time and I against any two." In plain English, if I find that
I am likely to stay long here, and to have, as now, the disposal of
my own time, I will try to procure from Ireland some requisite
books (perhaps 150 volumes in all) and thereafter deliberately
write a certain book, a task which I have long lusted after, and
often wished for leisure to set about. There is leisure enough
now ; and facturusne opera pretium sim, I make no sort of doubt ;
for the task itself, by atoning me with Time, will be its own
reward.
Touching work, I am by no means sure yet that I may not any
morning be equipped in a linen blouse, with the broad arrow on
its back, and sent out in a gang to the quarries to work there. I
JAIL JOURNAL 63
am quite ready : my health is very good. To know practically
how to blast and hew stones, and build, will be no contemptible
accomplishment ; and perhaps I may live and thrive better, earn
a keener appetite for my " rations," and a softer pillow for my
sleep, working with my hands, than writing a book. It is but
fourteen years (more or less) and as for the queen's broad arrow,
they cannot brand it upon my heart within, where many respect-
able members of society in Ireland have it stamped indelibly
men whose souls dwell in a hulk : the queen's arrow may be
branded on my garment, but into their souls the iron has entered.
On this same question whether I, J. M., shall be, or ought to
be, set to work like a convict there has been a good deal of dis-
cussion in Parliament and the newspapers. The " authorities"
would willingly have their forbearance attributed to their tender-
ness for my delicate state of health ; or in the alternative as
public opinion may hereafter make it convenient to put the thing
on the one ground or the other they could ascribe the difference
made in my favour to consideration for a " person of education
and a gentleman." If the authorities do now, or shall ever
account for it on the score of health, the authorities lie not, I
ween, for the first time because I have never once complained
of my health since I came to Bermuda, and never was in better
health all my life. They cannot even plead the trifling illness I
had on my voyage, because while I was in Spike Island express
instructions (I saw them) were sent thither from the Castle, not
to treat me in any way as a convict, or put me into convict
clothes. Moreover, there are hundreds of poor convicts here,
working too, in the quarries, far worse in health than I ever was,
or, I hope, shall be.
In truth, all this great question is very indifferent to me. I do
not much care whether they make me work like the convicts or
no nor how they dress me. I only set down the above facts
because they are facts ; and it may be convenient for me to
remember them some other day.
At any rate work must be had in some shape. Facito aliquid
operis, saith St. Jerome, ut semper te Diabolus inveniat occupatum.
Vel fiscellam texe junco i vel canistrum lentis plecte viminibus.
apum jabrica alvearia texantur et Una capiendis piscibus.
Which reminds me that there is abundance of good fish here :
64 JAIL JOURNAL
mullet, boneto, a thick sort of flat-fish, a red-fleshed fish not very
much worse than salmon. There is also a monstrous kind of
mackerel, three or four feet long, a most powerful and voracious
fish. They cruise to and fro in parties of three or four, and I
have often watched them for an hour at a time swimming about
in the deep green water, and occasionally making a superb charge
amongst the shoals of young fry, like a squadron of Inniskilleners
riding through a mob.
^th-nth. Reading Homer, and basking in the sun upon the
sea side of the breakwater. Weather delicious. Have also been
swallowing autobiographies Gifford's, Thomas Elwood's, Capt.
Crichton's autobiography by Dean Swift. Crichton was an old
cavalry officer, an Irishman, who had served in Scotland under
the bloodhound Dalzell, against the Covenanters : and as he
could not tell his story decently himself, the Dean, while he was
staying at Markethill, took down the facts from the old man and
set them forth in his own words, but using the first person
Crichton loquente. The product is highly amusing : in every
page you see a Dean of St. Patrick's riding down the Whigamores,
or a Sergeant Bothwell in canonicals thundering against Wood's
Copper. But the best thing is that our admirable Dean makes
Crichton (who did not care a button about the matter) deliver
with bitter venom some of his, the Dean's, own Jonathan-Swiftean
opinions about church government, and contradict and vituperate
Bishop Burnet with an odium almost theological, and he a mere
dragoon. William Gifford's account of himself is somewhat con-
ceited and pragmatical, yet natural and manful. I have a deep
and secret sympathy with Gifford. Elwood's, however, is by far
the best of the three, and is indeed one of the most downright
straightforward productions I ever met with. What a book of
books an autobiography might be made, if a man were found
who would and could tell the whole truth and no more than the
truth ! But I suppose such a man will never be found. Nobody,
surely, believes Mr. Gibbon's statement of his own case : and
you cannot well tell what to make of Rousseau's. Perhaps
Evelyn's diary comes as near to the thing as any of these : but
then it is almost entirely objective, not subjective ; besides,
Evelyn was so staid and well-regulated a fellow, so quiet a
citizen and f>oint-de-vice a gentleman, that what he has to tell is
JAIL JOURNAL 65
not so well worth telling as one could wish. I conclude that the
perfect or ideal autobiography no human eye will ever see ;
because they whose inner life is best worth revealing whose
souls have soared highest and dived deepest are just they who
will never make a confidant of the discerning public : or if they
communicate anything, it will be but here a little and there a
little, and not in the name of the Ego, but by way of adumbra-
tion, as in the case of those sybilline paper-bags put forth by the
enterprising publishers, Slillschweigen & Cognie, of Weissnichtwo.
I3//Z. The glorious bright weather tempts me to spend much
time on the pier, where I have been sitting for hours, with the
calm limpid water scarce rippling at my feet. Towards the
north-east, and in front of me where I sit, stretches away beyond
the rim of the world that immeasurable boundless blue ; and by
intense gazing I can behold, in vision, the misty peaks of a far-off
land yea, round the gibbous shoulder of the great oblate spher-
oid, my wistful eyes can see, looming, floating in the sapphire
empyrean, that green Hy Brasil of my dreams and memories
" with every haunted mountain and streamy vale below." Near
me, to be sure, on one side, lie scattered an archipelago of sand
and lime-rocks, whitening and splitting like dry bones under the
tyrannous sun, with their thirsty brushwood of black fir-trees ;
and still closer, behind me, are the horrible swarming hulks,
stewing, seething cauldrons of vice and misery But often while
I sit by the sea, facing that north-eastern arc, my eyes, and ears,
and heart are all far, far. This thirteenth of September is a calm,
clear, autumnal day in Ireland, and in green glens there, and on
many a mountain side, beech-leaves begin to redden, and the
heather-bell has grown brown and sere : the corn-fields are nearly
all stripped bare by this time ; the flush of summer grows pale ;
the notes of the singing-birds have lost that joyous thrilling
abandon inspired by June days, when every little singer in his
drunken rapture will gush forth his very soul in melody, but he
will utter the unutterable joy. And the rivers, as they go brawl-
ing over their pebbly beds, some crystal bright, some tinted with
sparkling brown from the high moors " the hue of the Cairn-