Doug WaltersBy Doug Walters
First published in November/December, 2008, Volume 5, Issue 4, The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies.
In the Course of Human Events . . .
Or But Thinking Makes It So
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.
—Seneca
“Hello? Oh, it’s you Miss Fitcher. How are—well, yes, I’ve just come in the door here actually. I was over to Fairhaven most of the—What’s that? Oh my! Will you ring him back for me please, Miss Fitcher and—no, I don’t need to talk to him myself. Will you ring Postmaster Whitehead please and tell him I’m on my way over there within the next minute or so? Bless your heart, thank you, Miss Fitcher.”
In the door and out again. Just another day in auld Fall River, I thought to myself. As I headed back toward town and the post office, I hoped I’d find out soon enough why it was John Whitehead wanted to whip Seamus Feeney.
Whatever the ancient animosities prevailing between their respective homelands, there was no trace of anger or hatred in the relationship between John Whitehead and young Seamus Feeney. While you might never quite mistake them for father and son, the two are like enough to easily suggest they are somehow related.
I asked Seamus Feeney once how his Galway grandmother took the news of his working for Mr. John Whitehead, an émigré Englishman.
“Granny? Oh, she took the news well enough I suppose, but I’m fairly sure she broke into the scarlet hives for two days at least after she read my letter,” Seamus Feeney said, snickering.
“This the same grandmother Feeney that Alice learned the Irish from, Seamus? I remember you told me about that some time back, but I had the impression that she had passed on?”
“Granny? Oh, I know what you mean sir. She’s been ‘not long for this world’ now and again for many years, since I was just a wee boy. Granny’s just fine though, had her 73rd birthday the 6th of last month. I’ll tell her you asked about her; she’d be pleased at that.”
“Oh, by all means, Seamus—please do give her my best.”
“I don’t understand it, though,” he said after a few seconds in a genuinely thoughtful voice. “Postmaster Whitehead has been so good to Alice and me—it’s not right at all that folks should think or speak meanly of him. Folks will do as they will, of course, but it’s still not right.”
“Well, I understand what you’re saying Seamus. It makes as much sense, to be truthful about it, as these adverts for jobs that say ‘No Irish Need Apply’ or the like. It’s ignorant and self-degrading. Unfortunately, Seamus feller, the right to base foolishness is one that though it be unwritten, is universally guaranteed.
“You mustn’t pay Granny Feeney any mind at all on this one though, feller. Your granny is not by any means foolish or ignorant, bless her. She has just not had the benefit of your experiences, and that’s the truth.”
Seamus grinned at me and snickered. “The birthday card I sent to Granny, I had Postmaster Whitehead sign his name to it first, then above his name I wrote ‘To Granny Feeney on her birthday—May she be blessed with many more! With Love, Seamus, Alice & . . . ’”
“… ‘and Postmaster John Whitehead?’ Seamus feller, I don’t care what anyone might say contrariwise. You definitely are a genius!”
“For my own part, I don’t care what young Feeney says,” was John Whitehead’s only comment. “Whatever in the way of kindnesses he may have received by my hand or my doing, you may be sure he’s earned each to the last. The only thing I ever gave him was a chance—and that gift has been repaid a thousand times over since the springtime of 1892.”
Actually, in his own way, Seamus Feeney might be called a genius. But brilliance (assessed to whatever degree and regardless of intellectual ability) quite often imparts its own cross which must be borne.
Seamus Feeney’s chief affliction was a soft and giving heart, coupled with a genuine sensitivity to the needs of others. If, for instance, Seamus had word that some illness or disaster prevented collection of the daily mail, he’d deliver the mail to the afflicted party or parties on his way home from the post office (with John Whitehead’s approval, of course), inquire after them, and extend best wishes on behalf of himself and Postmaster Whitehead.
If he got word that someone passed on, Seamus made every effort to visit and comfort the bereaved—no matter if he knew them well or just slightly.
“I cannot really tell you why for I don’t know myself,” he once said. “But the very last duty we have it seems to me, to them who have gone, is to render whatever we might in the way of aid and comfort to them who are left behind, isn’t it?”
I had to own that he was right.
“I’ll tell you this: For the life of me I don’t know how that young feller does it,” John Whitehead said to me one middlemorn in the springtime of 1895.
“He came in this morning as usual. While he was making us up some tea, I noticed something that for Seamus is quite unusual. He keeps his uniform very neatly as you may have noticed by now. It was that I suppose, except that there were what looked to be water stains on the shoulder and left breast of the shirt. It hasn’t rained today, of course, so I inquired about it.”
“What did Seamus have to say for himself, John?” I knew, as did most folks who paid any attention at all, how careful Seamus Feeney was about his working clothes. They were in a way very like a badge of honor, so he kept them accordingly.
“Seamus apologized immediately, of course, and explained that he hadn’t noticed the splotches. They were, he said, remnants of a wake he attended last night.”
“You know Emmaline Fitcher, I think?” Whitehead inquired.
“Miss Fitcher at the telephone exchange, you mean? Yes, I do know her,” I said.
“Well, her sister passed away early yesterday morning.”
“Good lord, John! I hadn’t heard that!”
Whitehead nodded. “She did indeed, poor thing. She’d been ill for several days. Nobody’s really sure what exactly did her in, but there’s some talk of milk sickness or the like.”
I nodded. The malady to which John Whitehead referred is not uncommon but is (so far as I know, anyway) fairly rare in these times. The same illness reputedly killed Mr. Lincoln’s natural mother now these many years ago.
“I presume you know of Seamus’s romance with Emmaline Fitcher’s niece?”
I nodded, and had to laugh in spite of myself. Eligible bachelor such as he was, Seamus Feeney nevertheless had one admirer virtually guaranteed to melt even the hardest of hearts. His young lady-friend had turned up in the company of her mother one afternoon about six months or so previous and was, as the saying goes, immediately smitten. Seamus himself was in no better shape, according to reports. For the vision that met his eye upon that certain day was a petite little slip of a girl clad in a light blue dress and matching bonnet. But for the absence of a shepherd’s crook, one might have easily mistaken her for a very Little Bo-Peep.
She, who would ultimately leave a lasting mark upon the heart of young Seamus Feeney, was just about two years old. It seemed almost right away the two were meant for each other. Seamus, bless him, was done for instantly. All it took were three words from the youngster: “Hullo, Mistah Shaymus,” uttered with a smile beneath curious, but adoring, eyes.
Seamus bent down, slipped two fingers into her tiny hand and greeted her. “Has Little Peeper lost her sheep again?” (She always referred to him as “Mistah Shaymus” and he to her as “Little Peeper” because peeper was an easy word for her to say.)
The child grinned at him. “Nope, I know just where they are, Mistah Shaymus, sir.”
Seamus smiled, saying how fine that was, as he attended to business with the youngster’s mother. Thereafter the two would meet openly in the post office, usually three times a week at least. She always said “Hullo, Mistah Shaymus, sir,” and he greeted her just as at their first meeting, inquiring after the health and whereabouts of her sheep.
“Seamus got to the wake,” Whitehead recalled, “and within just a few minutes there was the child, clad in a similar dress and bonnet, tugging at his coat.
“He bent down and greeted the child in that same fashion the two are so accustomed to. When he asked after the health and whereabouts of her sheep, the youngster toddled a few steps toward him and he carefully took her up into his arms.
‘No trouble with sheep today Mistah Shaymus,’ she said as she looked into his eyes. ‘I have lost Mama though, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever find her again. They say she has gone to a place called heaven. I don’t know just where that is, but I hope she will know where to find me.’
“Being himself, Seamus immediately did what he could to comfort her, although really there was very little he could do. She sobbed quietly there in his arms for a minute or two, the whole of her very small self given over to grief.”
John Whitehead paused long enough to wipe the mist from his own eyes.
“Seamus nodded to one of the Fitcher relations and stepped out with the child into the twilight air.
“‘Look up there little one, see there?’ Seamus directed the youngster’s gaze to the twilight sky. ‘That’s where your Mama is. In fact, she’s right up there winking at us,’ he said, pointing to a bright and shimmering star.
“They passed another minute or two while Seamus explained to the child as best he could what heaven was and why her mother had gone there. The youngster, Seamus said, was much becalmed after just a few minutes—pleased enough apparently that she leaned backward and kissed his nose.
‘Thank you, Mistah Shaymus, sir.’ She sniffled a bit, laid her head on his shoulder and yawned.
“The staining on Feeney’s shirt was, of course, the result of tears shed by that child,” John Whitehead continued. “She had buried her face against his shirt, her tears brimmed over onto it.
“Seamus himself came to tears when he told me about it this morning,” Whitehead said. “When he got himself together again, I told him not to worry another minute about the shirt, but to take a cloth and apply some of the remaining teakettle water to the spots to take care of things.”
Now, Feeney’s affliction manifested itself in other ways as well—in that he simply would not, could not, allow himself to play cards with a certain scribbler-about-town turned lecturer and would-be historian. As I have occasionally noted, Mr. Edwin H. Porter might well have been one of the finest scribes in Mr. George Buffinton’s stable. Where the simplest art and science of card play was concerned, however, the seasoned scribbler turned boob in the weeds on fairly a moment’s notice.
Porter, of course, took great, if somewhat misplaced, pride in his card playing and attributed any loss or misfortune associated therewith to something other than his own poor skill. As he told it, the cause might be a cold or flu, unsuitable weather conditions, or—if Seamus Feeney was part of the game—dishonest scheming perpetrated upon the poor unfortunate by a rotgut-swilling back alley Irishman.
“All right feller, tell me this: How exactly is it Seamus’s fault that you play cards the way a dead dog hunts?” I inquired of Porter one day after a game.
Whatever skill Feeney possessed at card play (“That boy has the luck of the Irish in spades and every other suit,” Pat Doherty once observed during a break in a game of whist), he took as a gift of the Father. Accordingly, he believed that such gift ought not be used in such a way as to afford him an unfair advantage over his fellow players.
If things came out more or less even at game’s end, then all was right with Seamus Feeney’s world. If, however, a certain scribbler-about-town turned lecturer and would-be historian came out rather badly when all was said and done (and this was usually the case, owing to the fact that said scribbler-about-town turned lecturer and would-be historian, whatever else he might have been, was well and truly a boob in the weeds when it came to the simplest art and science of successful card play), Seamus would shake his head sadly, his cheeks afire with embarrassment.
Perhaps in a gesture of atonement (or simply because he really was such a good and decent feller), Seamus always made sure that Porter left the game sufficiently funded so as to get himself home by way of the horse car.
As I made my way from my Eight Rod Way abode toward the post office on Bedford Street (I might just as easily have walked the distance, but owing to the apparent urgency of John Whitehead’s summons decided to hop the car), an old thought came home again to roost. Whatever the summertime horrors, which have ultimately become what seems to be an unfortunate legacy, the springtime of 1892 will ever be marked—at least in the mind of ye humble Compositor—as that season when the Feeneys arrived in Fall River.
TO BE CONTINUED
