because his Gaelic League Irish history lessons were both broad and deep, would have been aware that Griffith’s parable was deliberately selective and optimistic.63 Nonetheless, it was the moral of Griffith’s story, delivered in what P.S. O’Hegarty described as a ‘cool, aggressive, and logical appeal to intelligence’,64 which impressed him, as much as it did most other readers, so much so that, in later life, he was able to look back and be fully convinced that the effect which it had upon him was both harmonious and uplifting, ‘like a quiet blood transfusion’65 or, as he articulated more prosaically in another encomium, ‘everything he [Griffith] wrote about Ireland inspired and calmed us and steeled our wills at the same time’.66 In practical terms, this effectively meant that, from 1904–6, Mulcahy, unlike Bulmer Hobson and Denis McCullough for example, did not look askance at the prospect of a dual monarchy (what was soon referred to as ‘the kings, lords and commons’ compromise67) but instead was satisfied, certainly in the period 1904–6, to settle for ‘some kind of Home Rule’.68
Next, Mulcahy moved on to The Republic after The United Irishman. The Republic was a ten-page, neat little newspaper which, because of financial troubles,69 lasted a mere twenty-three weeks, 13 December 1906–16 May 1907. It was sold every Thursday at the conventional price of one penny and, similarly to The United Irishman, its general purpose was educational, reaching out to its home readership in Belfast as well as to the nationalist enclaves of Dublin, London, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow.70 But, technically speaking, it was a much better communicator than The United Irishman, in that it was economical in both content and style. It rarely included reportage and cultural copy, though it did have a regular Irish language piece and it was written, for the most part, in a direct manner, with two clearly defined columns per page and with short paragraphing. Equally it utilised well delineated, cleverly exact and sarcastically humorous political cartoons, allegedly sketched by the Belfast artist Jack Morrow.71
Most importantly, however, and differently to The United Irishman, its particular purpose, representing Hobson’s and McCullough’s Dungannon Club, the name of which ‘revived the memory of the Irish Volunteer movement of 1782’72 (referred to above), was unapologetically republican: ‘We stand for the Irish Republic, because we see that no compromise with England, no repeal of the Union, no concession of Home Rule or Devolution will satisfy the national aspirations of the Irish people nor allow the unrestricted mental, moral and material development of the country.’ Moreover, it did not shy away from physical force: ‘a national movement, virile and militant … must be established’.73
It is a pity, therefore, that Mulcahy did not leave behind a record of his reaction to those republican theories as he did in his retrospective admiration for Griffith’s moderate nationalist rhetoric. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that, whereas he did not join the Sinn Féin party until after the German Plot arrests of May 1918 and, in fact, did so in order to pursue a republican agenda, he joined the IRB in 1908, a year after The Republic went out of circulation. Therefore, it seems reasonable to argue that, in the short term, The Republic exerted at least as much of an influence on him as The United Irishman did.
That, then, was the republican mindset of the 22-year-old man who set off for Dublin in August 1908. To the casual observer he might have come across as an impecunious, lower middle-class type, someone who, with boyish features and a small slight frame, superficially exemplified little that was unique or distinguishable, other than being clean and neat perhaps. Plus, he was ‘afflicted with an immobilising shyness’.74 So, while he was determined to overcome that problem, the capital’s cramped physical and social conditions must have proved challenging for someone who cherished privacy and valued his own space. In 1911, for example, the inner city – a densely populated, yet vital elliptical-shaped area, delineated to the north and south by the Royal and Grand Canals – contained close on 240,000 inhabitants.75
Even so, Mulcahy, despite his shyness, was determined to get the best out of the place: ‘when I say that I was conditioned in 1908 to take full advantage of all the opportunities of Dublin, that refers to taking full part in the community of the Irish language movement, taking a full mind review of Irish conditions and Irish circumstances.’76 However, this is not to infer that he sampled the full nationalist fare of the city. After all, he was different to Seán O’Casey, Peadar Kearney, Earnán de Blaghd (Ernest Blythe) and Bulmer Hobson in that he was not interested in the theatre, not even the nationalist theatre of the Abbey, though in fairness not all Irish-Irelanders were pleased with the Abbey, as witnessed by the anger meted out the previous year to John Millington Synge’s faux Gaelic play, The Playboy of the Western World.77 Different too to Harry Boland, he was not attracted to sport, not even to the GAA. And, as has been stated already, unlike Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh and Patrick McCartan, for example, he was not then interested in joining Sinn Féin.
Therefore, notwithstanding his own determination to broaden his palette, his move to Dublin was more of a continuum than a fresh start, in that he fully intended to pursue the same interests, though more deeply. Once again, because self-improvement, with the purpose of moving himself further up the respectable middle-class ladder,78 was already an ambition of his, he availed of the capital’s applied educational courses. He attended evening classes in foreign languages, science and shorthand at the Technical College, Bolton Street,79 and he continued to hone his Irish language skills. For example, he belonged to the advanced class in the Keating Branch of the Gaelic League and he paid return visits to Béal Átha’n Ghaorthaigh, as well as staying in Rinn Ó gCuanach, Dungarvan, on a number of occasions.
However, of the two of these interests, his career and the language, he no doubt enjoyed and was most stimulated by the latter because, apart from anything else, as was intimated earlier, competence in it gave him a definite stature and respect within the young, enthusiastic, nationalist community he had his eye on:80 ‘He was very extreme in his support of things Irish … He talked Irish, wore Irish made suits and boots, and bought only Irish whenever he could. All his letters carried half-penny stamps only – postage that time was a penny and a half-penny. “If you buy only half-penny stamps,” he said, “the British post office has less profit.”’81
But ultimately the most important interest he would develop stemmed from his reading of The Republic and that was his enrolment in the IRB. Jim Kennedy again played an important part here. The pair met when Mulcahy made a brief visit home to Thurles before moving to Dublin. Their conversation turned to national affairs, after which Kennedy gave him the contact address for Mick Crowe, the former IRB divisional centre for Munster.82 Then, two days after arriving in the city, Mulcahy was initiated into the Brotherhood. However, seemingly because Crowe did not ask him to swear, he never actually took the pledge: ‘I never went through any process of oath taking other than whatever kind of process I went through when Crowe showed me the slip of paper out of his waistcoat pocket.’83
In any case, even though such casualness was not conducive to the proper workings of a revolutionary organisation, it was the pally, lenient methods of communication and procedure of the then semi-formal and semi-exclusive IRB which, along with his Irish–Irelandism and his determination to advance himself by acquiring as many of the socially acceptable conventional cues as possible, those being a full education, a prestigious job and financial security, which helped Mulcahy settle into life among the rural migrant community of the north inner city during the next few years, 1908–13.
In a sense, therefore, the other side of his life, viz. his irredentism, especially his physical force separatism, was theoretically at variance with the achievement of his bourgeois aspirations. But this was a contradiction which, at the time, he would seem to have been blissfully unaware of. However, the process of its resolution was soon at hand due to the politico–military domino effect which the issue of home rule would release upon the way of life of the entire island of Ireland.
The event which triggered that seemingly inexorable cascade of dominos occurred on 29 April 1909 when David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Herbert H. Asquith’s Liberal government, introduced his ‘People’s Budget’ to an astonished Commons. However, it was the landed members of the House of Lords who reacted with greatest alarm to his introduction of a supertax, land taxes and death duties. Their response was to scupper the measure by exercising a veto in the knowledge that a constitutional crisis would ensue but also in the confidence that the Conservatives would win