‘Glorious days’: my grandfather’s shop and the Rising

If you have ever visited Dublin Zoo or gone for a walk in the Phoenix Park, chances are you know the shops at the Park Gate on the North Circular Road. For more than 40 years, one of them was owned by my grandfather. One of those years was 1916.

He used to hold my hand. Up the hospital driveway, down Steevens Lane, across the Liffey and up Infirmary Road, past ancient barracks gates, and finally to our house at 2 North Circular Road. He was fond of saying that every year, that hill got steeper. He was nearly 80; I was 12 or 13. My grandfather and I made our journeys on Sundays after Mass, when he came for dinner. I loved walking with him. He was mild and gentle, but best of all, he taught me how to use a billiards cue.

As a teenager, just beginning to awaken to recent Irish history, I would look at the statue of Sean Heuston in the People’s Gardens and wish that our family had some connection to the Rising, some undiscovered hero, some hushed deeds of resistance. But that was not, it seemed, our style. Later on, Black and Tan bullet holes in my great-grandmother’s house were all we could ever show for our revolutionary credentials. In 1916 the Lonergans were just another middle-class family trying to find a foothold on the ladder of success.

ExpandAutoplay

Image 1 of 6

Christopher Frederick (Tussie) Lonergan circa 1950. Photograph: Declan Lonergan

I didn’t know it then, but my grandad had led an interesting life, and latterly, a tragic one. By the time he and I shared those walks up the hill to our home, Christopher Frederick Lonergan (Tussie to his friends) owned a small shop and tea room at the gates of the Phoenix Park.

He had married and had a child, took holidays in the west of Ireland, golfed at Newlands in Clondalkin and enjoyed a beautiful house (complete with tennis courts) at Harcourt Lodge near Inchicore. For many years he lived the good life.

But appearances deceived. Early on, his marriage disintegrated into what we might now call negative territory. He was diagnosed later as manic-depressive. His little newsagent’s suffered along with him, and eventually he declared bankruptcy. That was followed by a distressing decade in St Patrick’s Hospital, where he died in 1962.

Marbled covers

That’s the potted history. All I really knew of him. Until I found the diary. Not a real diary, more a tiny notebook or ledger. It has marbled covers, like a real ledger and it measures 6cm by 10cm: so small he surely kept it in his jacket’s top pocket. By the time I found it I was almost 70, but until that moment it had never really dawned on me that this gentle man had lived through the defining events of modern Irish history. But there it was, at the top of page three: the year was 1916. Could this, at last, be my tiny, tenuous connection to our country’s tumultuous history?

The first entry, for December 31st, 1915, is a summary of the takings of his shop for the last five months of that year. On January 1st, 1916, he begins to enter each day’s net takings. The writing is in tiny copperplate, elegant, made with black ink.

That January the figures run from one pound 16 shillings and seven pence on a bad day to five pounds, 12 and eight on a good one (a Sunday). The notebook continues on like this day in, day out, without much variance. As a record of a revolution in the making, this is not promising.

In February he starts to comment on the weather: Sunday 13th is wet; it snows the following day; on the 15th a storm blows in. True to the Dublin vernacular, on March 19th we get: “pouring”. Then suddenly in April he starts to use the word “glorious”.

April’s fine weather brings the people of Dublin out in droves. They buy sweets, newspapers, cigarettes. My grandad, in turn, buys new wallpaper for his tea room, stocks up on Easter novelties and brings in 600 hot-cross buns to supply to local hospitals and hotels. In Holy Week he does a roaring trade, netting 26 pounds four shillings and three pence.

Sticking to the mundane

By now he has acquired his first house, on nearby De Burgh Street. His marriage, if not exactly happy, is surviving, and his six-year-old son, Declan, is growing stronger, recovering well from traumatic foot surgery. All must seem to be right with the world as he focuses on his small family and his shop. His notebook sticks strictly to the mundane: salaries paid out, money owed or loaned, goods ordered, goods unsold, and always, the bottom line.

There is no indication here of any interest in politics. On St Patrick’s Day, the volunteers, complete with guns and bayonets, parade in the city for two hours in what they call a “Field Day”. Two thousand march. My grandfather doesn’t comment. When Eoin MacNeill’s order to the volunteers to stand down is published in the Sunday papers on April 23rd, it does not make the notebook.

And then, on Easter Monday, everything changes. Instead of lists of what is sold in his shop that day, my grandfather writes: “Saw a soldier shot on Rialto Bridge . . . Sinn Féin revolt in city from early morning . . . Military took over command from police at 3:00 . . . I saw City Hall taken about 12:15 pm”. Seemingly out of the blue, the Rising has begun.

Next day, he records, the gas is cut off and, like many other Dubliners, I suppose, he buys an oil stove. No teas are served that day. He writes: “Artillery in action – North Circular Railway Bridge blown up . . . barricade on the Cabra Road . . . Fierce fighting at Broadstone . . . shelling of Stephen’s Green”. That railway bridge is right behind his shop. The British artillery is as close as Phibsborough, a scant mile away. For a man with a young son, just starting out in life, who is happiest on the golf course, this must be a little too close for comfort.

‘Violent rifle engagement’

All that week, as the action got hotter, the writing in the notebook gets smaller. He squeezes more and more into each day’s comments.

On Wednesday, April 26th, day three of the revolt, he notes that the British navy is in the city, that Liberty Hall has been shelled for two hours, and that there is “violent rifle engagement at Parkgate, NC Rd, and Arbour Hill”.

This is very close to his shop at 1 North Circular Road. Without any direct involvement in what is going on, he must be scared, and not just by the proximity of the gunfire. Many British soldiers – stationed at the Royal Barracks at Arbour Hill (now Collins Barracks), Marlborough Barracks (now McKee Barracks) on Blackhorse Avenue, as well as other barracks at Islandbridge and Goldenbridge – are among his customers. By royal appointment, he delivers newspapers daily to the vice-regal lodge (now Áras an Uachtaráin), seat of the British lord- lieutenant of Ireland in nearby Phoenix Park.

By day four, no longer sure the area is safe, he opens the shop late and closes it early. On day five the copperplate writing reports extensive city fires and rumours that the GPO has been taken back from the rebels by the British.

Even though the new provisional government and the Declaration of Independence is proclaimed at the GPO on Easter Monday, somehow it does not sink in with Christopher Frederick until later in the week.

“Republican government, newspaper and currency said to be established,” he writes on Friday, April 28th. It is unclear if he thinks this is good or bad. The entry continues: “Reported conference of all parties at Vice Regal Lodge. Decided to fight matter out. Sir Roger Casement reported taken prisoner with others and shot.”

From a distance of 100 years, I wonder what he made of all this. He is clearly engaged with what’s going on around him, but his politics are not on his sleeve, and not in his notebook.

Is he elated at the idea of a republic? Is he dismayed by the breakdown in order? Does he support the volunteers? Surely he must be upset at the news about Casement? Is he worried about living so close to so many British army barracks – and just up the road from the Royal Irish Constabulary? He never tells. The only possible clue the notebook gives is that the Freeman's Journal is sold in his shop. But at the time it is considered a moderate nationalist publication, so even that doesn't tell us a whole lot.

Through all the mayhem, and whatever fears he has, he keeps on taking the daily tally. Even though his shop is open only from noon now, he records the take for that fateful week as a healthy 27 pounds, two shillings and two pence.

Burned to the floor

As the weekend arrives, customers in the shop begin to fill in the blanks about what has happened around the city. Heavy British artillery fire continues into Saturday evening, and he learns from a customer that half of O’Connell Street has burned to the ground, and that the main body of the volunteers has surrendered. As he is closing up shop for the night, a stranger asks for lodgings, a man who is later arrested for possession of firearms and ammunition. The bigger guns can still be heard late into the night.

On Sunday it is quiet. By Monday it is almost over. The British not only have the big guns, but many more troops have landed at Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) or arrived by train from the Curragh, and now vastly outnumber the rebel volunteers.

On Monday, May 1st, 1916, the notebook records: “Eighth day of Revolt. Quiet our side . . . All S[inn] F[éin] strongholds taken. Large military encampments in King George’s Hospital fields.” Now a full week after Easter, prisoners are still passing by the shop, rounded up by the British military. He notes that the southside of the city and parts of north Co Dublin are “still unsettled”. On day 10 my grandfather finally ventures into town: “Saw city ruins for first time. Horrified beyond describing.”

And so he describes no more. Nothing more about the thousands of arrests. Nothing about the deaths of civilians or soldiers. Not a word about the 14 men executed at Kilmainham Gaol that May. His silence speaks to me: it is as if he cannot bear it.

All the horror is, of course, good for the newspaper business. The notebook records that after a brief hiatus, Irish newspapers are back in the shop again on the Tuesday, and London papers by Thursday, May 4th. Having been starved of news for more than a week, everyone wants to "read all about it". Grandad's notebook tells us he has ordered hundreds extra Heralds, Mails, Independents and Irish Times from Eason. On Sunday, May 7th, alone, he sells 950 newspapers. By week's end, those sales have contributed to his best week ever: 106 pounds, 11 shillings and fivepence. Not only that, but on May 10th the gas comes back on.

All through this historic turbulence, my grandfather never fails to comment on the weather. St Patrick’s Day is beautiful, Palm Sunday wet. The day the British prime minister, HH Asquith, arrives in Ireland it is showery, but by mid-May there are several “scorching” days.

I check his weather note for Easter week. In his slanted copperplate hand, on each and every day, he has written, “Glorious day.”

• Diane Lonergan grew up on the North Circular Road. She emigrated to Canada in the 1970s, where she was a journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for 25 years