This week’s poem is “Cleared” by Rudyard Kipling, a fiery denunciation of certain politicians of his day.
“Cleared”, honourable gentlemen! Be thankful it’s no more:—
Rudyard Kipling (1865—1936)
The widow’s curse is on your house, the dead are at your door.
On you the shame of open shame, on you from North to South
The hand of every honest man flat-heeled across your mouth.
Poem 272. “Cleared”
(In Memory of the Parnell Commission)
Help for a patriot distressed, a spotless spirit hurt,
Help for an honourable clan sore trampled in the dirt!
From Queenstown Bay to Donegal, O listen to my song,
The honourable gentlemen have suffered grievous wrong.
Their noble names were mentioned—O the burning black disgrace!—
By a brutal Saxon paper in an Irish shooting-case;
They sat upon it for a year, then steeled their heart to brave it,
And “coruscating innocence” the learned Judges gave it.
Bear witness, Heaven, of that grim crime beneath the surgeon’s knife,
The honourable gentlemen deplored the loss of life!
Bear witness of those chanting choirs that burk and shirk and snigger,
No man laid hand upon the knife or finger to the trigger!
Cleared in the face of all mankind beneath the winking skies,
Like phœnixes from Phœnix Park (and what lay there) they rise!
Go shout it to the emerald seas—give word to Erin now,
Her honourable gentlemen are cleared—and this is how:—
They only paid the Moonlighter his cattle-hocking price,
They only helped the murderer with counsel’s best advice,
But—sure it keeps their honour white—the learned Court believes
They never gave a piece of plate to murderers and thieves.
They never told the ramping crowd to card a woman’s hide,
They never marked a man for death—what fault of theirs he died?—
They only said “intimidate”, and talked and went away—
By God, the boys that did the work were braver men than they!
Their sin it was that fed the fire—small blame to them that heard—
The “bhoys” get drunk on rhetoric, and madden at a word—
They knew whom they were talking at, if they were Irish too,
The gentlemen that lied in Court, they knew, and well they knew.
They only took the Judas-gold from Fenians out of jail,
They only fawned for dollars on the blood-dyed Clan-na-Gael.
If black is black or white is white, in black and white it’s down,
They’re only traitors to the Queen and rebels to the Crown.
“Cleared”, honourable gentlemen! Be thankful it’s no more:—
The widow’s curse is on your house, the dead are at your door.
On you the shame of open shame, on you from North to South
The hand of every honest man flat-heeled across your mouth.
“Less black than we were painted”?—Faith, no word of black was said;
The lightest touch was human blood, and that, you know, runs red.
It’s sticking to your fist to-day for all your sneer and scoff,
And by the Judge’s well-weighed word you cannot wipe it off.
Hold up those hands of innocence—go, scare your sheep together,
The blundering, tripping tups that bleat behind the old bell-wether;
And if they snuff the taint and break to find another pen,
Tell them it’s tar that glistens so, and daub them yours again!
“The charge is old”?—As old as Cain—as fresh as yesterday;
Old as the Ten Commandments—have ye talked those laws away?
If words are words, or death is death, or powder sends the ball,
You spoke the words that sped the shot—the curse be on you all.
“Our friends believe”?—Of course they do—as sheltered women may;
But have they seen the shrieking soul ripped from the quivering clay?
They!—If their own front door is shut, they’ll swear the whole world’s warm;
What do they know of dread of death or hanging fear of harm?
The secret half a county keeps, the whisper in the lane,
The shriek that tells the shot went home behind the broken pane,
The dry blood crisping in the sun that scares the honest bees,~
And shows the “bhoys” have heard your talk—what do they know of these?
But you—you know—ay, ten times more; the secrets of the dead,
Black terror on the country-side by word and whisper bred,
The mangled stallion’s scream at night, the tail-cropped heifer’s low.
Who set the whisper going first? You know, and well you know!
My soul! I’d sooner lie in jail for murder plain and straight,
Pure crime I’d done with my own hand for money, lust, or hate,
Than take a seat in Parliament by fellow-felons cheered,
While one of those “not provens” proved me cleared as you are cleared.
Cleared—you that “lost” the League accounts—go, guard our honour still,
Go, help to make our country’s laws that broke God’s law at will—
One hand stuck out behind the back, to signal “strike again”;
The other on your dress-shirt-front to show your heart is clane.
If black is black or white is white, in black and white it’s down,
You’re only traitors to the Queen and rebels to the Crown.
If print is print or words are words, the learned Court perpends:—
We are not ruled by murderers, but only—by their friends.
In 1887 The Times newspaper published a series of letters linking Charles Parnell and his fellow Irish members of Parliament with a notorious murder.
There was a growing tendency towards intimidation and outright violence in the ongoing strife between the Irish and their English landlords. Much of Ireland was governed by absentee English landlords who were not merciful in their dealing with tenants, and the history up to that point had been a continuous series of harsh measures meted out by the English interspersed with periods of revolt and rebellion by the Irish. The memory of the potato famine of the 1840s was also still raw and despite the Irish having representatives in Parliament led by Parnell, they made negligible headway in improving the lot of their compatriots.
Five years earlier Lord Cavendish, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Thomas Burke, his Permanent Under-Secretary, had been stabbed fatally while walking in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. The murderers were caught and five were convicted and hanged, while others received long prison sentences as accessories. The letters in The Times directly linked Parnell to the killings and although he initially dismissed the letters as forgeries, another Irish MP sued The Times the following year and lost, forcing Parnell to take action. He requested a Commission of Enquiry which eventually exposed the letters as forgeries and vindicated Parnell who became something of a hero, having already negotiated several key pacts with the Liberal party.
This is the background to Kipling’s poem—he was ever a staunch anti-Liberal and was scandalised by what he saw as a whitewashing of the truth. In response, he wrote this poem which not only denounces Parnell and his Irish colleagues in Parliament but condemns the weakness of Gladstone, the Liberal leader (a favourite target). You can almost hear the venom dripping from the tip of his pen—in “Stalky and Co”, Kipling wrote of his alter ego Beetle that “He had launched many lampoons on an appreciative public ever since he discovered that it was possible to convey reproof in rhyme”—and he certainly conveys more than just reproof here.
The poem opens with a sarcastic entreaty begging help for “a patriot distressed, a spotless spirit hurt” and that “The honourable gentlemen have suffered grievous wrong”—the honourable gentleman (and now honourable lady) being a term used in Parliament, where indirect references to other members are used (supposedly to maintain order and good honour though both, it seems, are now apparently despaired of, if not moribund). In this poem, the word honourable carries a sting, as Kipling implies that the gentlemen concerned are not so.
The second stanza directly references the publication of the letters in “a brutal Saxon paper” and the delay in reacting to it: “They sat upon it for a year, then steeled their heart to brave it” and the outcome of the Commission: “coruscating innocence”.
Nevertheless, in Kipling’s view the murder was committed with the full knowledge of “The honourable gentlemen” despite their deploring the loss of life—Kipling sees this as pure hypocrisy and asks Heaven to bear witness to “the chanting choirs that burke and shirk and snigger”—implying that while these gentlemen chant the hymns in the choir, they also are suppressing the truth. Burke was a Victorian murderer (no relation to Thomas) who suffocated his victims and with his partner in crime took money from anatomists for the corpses—his name passed into the language as a synonym for suppressing or muffling inconvenient truths. According to the court, Parnell and his Irish MPs were innocent of murdering Cavendish and Burke: “No man laid hand upon the knife or finger to the trigger!” The reference to a surgeon’s knife is because the Phoenix Park murders were committed with that instrument.
Kipling goes on to emphasise that although they are guiltless of the murders—“Like Phoenixes from Phoenix Park (and what lay there) they rise”—the Irish MPs are complicit in a wave of civil disobedience, intimidation, and outright violence across Ireland, though “They never gave a piece of plate to murderers and thieves.” Kipling associates them with moonlighters who crippled the cattle of intransigent landlords and accuses them of providing legal assistance to killers.
The next few stanzas are pure invective: alleging the MPs incitement of the “bhoys”—Kipling (and other writers) often inserted extraneous letters into words to suggest a particular accent or dialect—and condemning them for cowards who “talked and went away” leaving others to “card a woman’s hide” (meaning scraping the skin with a tool intended for separating wool strands) and kill.
Kipling’s indictment is quite clear: “The gentlemen that lied in court, they knew, and well they knew.” He is accusing Parnell and his MPs of perjury, and in subsequent stanzas, he pursues and expands his charges to include corruption “They only took the Judas-gold from Fenians out of jail” and treachery “They’re only traitors to the Queen and rebels to the Crown” (the Queen being Victoria, of course).
Kipling’s outrage continues to build and he fulminates that these gentlemen should suffer the curse of every widow made by their supposed incitements, and the open shame of their sins should follow them across the land, with rejection and “The hand of every honest man flat-heeled across your mouth.”
He counters the arguments made by Parnell with sharp jabs: to the point that the MPs were not as monstrous as the Times letter suggested, he responds “Faith, no word of black was said./The lightest touch was human blood, and that, you know, runs red.” He summons the imagery of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in suggesting that the blood is “sticking to your fist” and “you cannot wipe it off”.
The next stanza is a side-swipe at Gladstone and his Liberal MPs who had an alliance with the Irish to get a majority in the House of Commons at the time. Kipling likens Gladstone to “the old bell-wether”—an elderly sheep with a bell that exercises control over younger sheep and keeps them together—and suggests that Parnell and co should make sure of their control of the sheepish Liberals, soothing their alarm at the murders by lying to them too about the smell of blood.
Kipling continues to demolish Parnell’s arguments: “The charge is old” (since it had been printed a year before the enquiry), which Kipling counters with the supposed first murder of Abel by Cain, the oldest murder charge in Kipling’s book, and the Ten Commandments—one supposes the sixth commandment “Thou shalt not kill” is the one Kipling has in mind. Regardless of their weasel words, Kipling condemns them: “You spoke the words that sped the shot—the curse be on you all”.
“Our friends believe”—Kipling once again has a go at the Liberals, suggesting that they are like “sheltered women” who have no experience of violence and murder, and who are secure in their complacency “If their own front door is shut, they’ll swear the whole world’s warm”.
Expanding on the theme, he asks what the “friends” know of the violence and intimidation prevalent in Ireland at the time—and answers for them—nothing. By contrast, the Irish MPs know all that is going on, all the shady activities of their henchmen and minions “Black terror on the country-side by word and whisper bred.”
Kipling reaches the peak of his peroration here, claiming that if he’d been in their position, he’d rather have committed the crimes himself “Pure crime I’d done with my own hand for money, lust or hate” than sit in Parliament and cheering for an acquittal that Kipling clearly considers a whitewash. Again, I suspect that “fellow-felons” here doesn’t just apply to the Irish contingent.
The penultimate stanza refers to the accounts of the Land League, which were lost after the League was wound up—another factor raising Kipling’s suspicions—and sarcastically suggests that these “cleared” men will be helping to make the laws of the country despite having broken God’s laws (the Ten Commandments again), further suggesting their duplicitous nature with a signal behind the back to their confederates to strike another blow while the other hand remains in view “to show your heart is clane”.
He finishes the poem by repeating the lines from earlier about their being “traitors to the Queen and rebels to the Crown” and it ends with his insinuation that “We are not ruled by murderers, but only—by their friends”—once again suggesting that the Irish and the Liberals are in cahoots.
I like this poem because whatever the truth of the matter and despite the poet’s clear bias against Parnell, the Irish MPs and the Liberals, Kipling displays a really ferocious power of invective. The phrases he uses are scathing, and his implication that Gladstone and his party were associated with men that Kipling considered to be perjurers and inciters of violence is cleverly made. In an era where politicians are once again complaining that they have been abused and misjudged, this poem provides a powerful counterpoint, though the message should perhaps be adjusted, since the word I’m thinking of is “Condemned” not “Cleared”.
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a good reading of the poem on YouTube or anywhere else—there is one instance on YouTube but unfortunately it appears to be performed by Alexa or Siri and is rubbish.
Links
- Read about Charles Stewart Parnell at Wikipedia.
- Read about the poem at The Kipling Society.