During the summer of 1891 Griffith’s father was made unemployed again after T.D. Sullivan, a clericalist MP, characteristically folded the historic Nation, which was first founded by the Young Irelanders, and sold its franchise to the recently established Irish Catholic, which now became known as the Irish Catholic and Nation. Although he found some work with the Parnellite Irish Daily Independent, acute respiratory problems soon forced the father to take early retirement. This put real pressure on his son to compensate for the loss in family income. Griffith took on extra work as a copyreader and joined the Dublin printers’ union in February 1894.
One acquaintance recalled that the Griffith family established a small shop at this time on Parliament Street, just opposite Dublin Castle.136 This was possibly an investment made from a lump sum received by the father on his retirement. ‘Griffith’s For Bargains’, a small market-stall selling discount household goods, existed in ‘Parliament Street General Stores’ during 1892,137 while a reference exists to a ‘Griffith Hardware and General Stores’ at 16–17 Parliament Street as late as November 1895.138 This shop was short lived, however, and its failure created a debt. Griffith’s younger brother Frank, who was described by one family friend as a ‘most attractive if somewhat feckless’ character, also entered the workforce around this time, but his work as an usher in the Gaiety Theatre (a job that he stuck with for very many years) did little to supplement the family income.139
Griffith’s withdrawal from public meetings in November 1894 coincided with the dismissal by the Irish Daily Independent of many of its staff. It is probable that he lost his job at this time and could not find another. Indeed, it seems that the Griffith family had to give up a rented home near Mountjoy Square, which had been acquired during the mid-to-late 1880s, during 1895 or 1896 and resettle in an unsanitary and crowded tenement flat such as they had lived in during the 1870s.140
Friends later recalled that Griffith fell into a serious depression at this time. George A. Lyons, a young Protestant evangelical clerk of republican sympathies who befriended Griffith in the Celtic Literary Society, recalled how the usually reticent Griffith admitted to him that he felt there was ‘no prospects for him, either as an individual or as a nationalist’. Lyons also noted that ‘some of his old friends suspected a disappointment in love’ as an additional cause of his depression.141
Griffith had only one real girlfriend in his life, namely Maud Sheehan, the daughter of a Catholic middle-class and leisured family (one of her brothers was a keen amateur photographer)142 that lived near Mountjoy Square. Griffith first met Maud during 1892 after he ruled that membership of the Leinster Literary Society should be open to women.143 Later, she often played the piano to accompany singers at Celtic Literary Society social events and music became one of their common interests.144 Like several YIL activists, Griffith was a supporter of women’s suffrage and educational rights for women; the latter campaign being led in Ireland by Edith Oldham, a sister of C.H. Oldham. Maud had attended secondary school, was a devout attendant at Mass and suspected that Griffith suffered from acute ill health during 1895 and 1896 as, like everyone else, she saw very little of him at this time.145 While they would fall in love (ultimately they married, fifteen years later), they rarely met during the mid-1890s as Griffith seemingly deliberately avoided her out of shame at his desperate material circumstances. While associates frequently attributed to Griffith ‘an innate shyness’,146 poverty certainly limited his social self-confidence. In addition, it may well have been that the Sheehan family never approved of the Griffiths.
Lyons suspected that Griffith’s withdrawal from public activities was also influenced by the fact that the IRB, ‘to which in all probability he already belonged, was in a hopeless condition’.147 Maud recalled that John MacBride was disgusted by the fact that the Dublin IRB organisation had become embroiled in dynamiting conspiracies involving agent provocateurs that were designed only to discredit Irish nationalism. She understood that this persuaded MacBride to leave the IRB and to follow Mark Ryan, a London doctor who set up a rival organisation that would concentrate exclusively on the cultural nationalist movement.148 It is likely that Griffith felt similarly to MacBride. Ryan, the leader of the Parnellite National League in London, was notable for having friends in Irish Party circles as well as some secret contacts in various British colonies (Irish republican social networks often overlapped with those of British navy or army personnel). These networks included South Africa,149 where two Irish Party members had recently gone to try gold prospecting. Utilising Ryan’s contacts, MacBride left for South Africa where he found work as the foreman of a goldmine. In turn, word reached Griffith in Dublin that work was available and that a small Irish community existed in South Africa. In the autumn of 1896, Griffith as well as his cousin John R. Whelan made the decision to leave for the proverbial ‘dark continent’.
Griffith’s decision to emigrate coincided with the publication of a significant report by Hugh Childers, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and cousin of Erskine Childers. Based on a Tory government commission of 1893–4, this report on the financial relations between Britain and Ireland showed Ireland to have been a victim of past economic mismanagement and to be deserving of ‘a distinct position and separate consideration’.150 After his return to Ireland, Griffith would use these findings to make a case in favour of an Irish economic nationalism. In time, this would prompt Andrew Kettle, a former Land League treasurer, to credit Griffith with being the only Irishman since Parnell’s very brief flirtation with economic nationalist ideas during the early 1880s to have ever bothered making a rational effort to examine whether or not the idea of an independent Irish state could possibly make the slightest political sense.151 This would do little, however, to reverse the firmly established trend of debate on Irish nationalism being confined largely to the non-political sphere—a supposedly purely cultural ‘separatism’—as if it could inherently have no practical, economic connotation.
During the winter of 1896, Griffith took part in some Celtic Literary Society activities and an event occurred that must have been cheering.152 On 29 December 1896, just before he was due to leave the country, a surprise party was held in his honour and a testimonial was presented to him.153 No testimonial was collected for fellow immigrant John Whelan (until recently, the secretary of the Celtic Literary Society), which probably indicates that Griffith’s poverty was better known than he wished.154 Some public figures attended to wish Griffith well. These included John Clarke, the curator of the Linen Hall Library in Belfast and editor of the Northern Patriot, James Casey, the secretary of the Gaelic League, as well as sub editors with the Daily and Weekly Independent (J.W. O’Beirne and John Murphy) who had recently joined the IRB. Murphy, Patrick Lavelle B.L. and Edward Whelan spoke in Griffith’s honour before Rooney concluded with a speech, noting ‘how much the existence of many national organisations have owed to your support’ and that ‘associated with you as most of us have been for years in national work, we cannot but feel grieved that your counsel and your assistance, valuable and ever ready, are about to be withdrawn.’ The Celtic Literary Society expressed a hope that they would be able to welcome Griffith home again one day.155 Maud Sheehan was evidently impressed by this little event as she recalled, by way of comparison, that when MacBride left for South Africa nobody was there to say goodbye to him.156
Although still completely unknown to the Irish public at large, by the age of twenty-five Griffith had acquired a few notable contacts in the worlds of politics and journalism. He was also sufficiently well informed of intricate dynamics of political developments in recent times to be able to later draw upon this knowledge for various critiques.157 He had not, however, acquired a livelihood or any degree of personal security. The combination of poverty and his individuality, as well as his refusal to abide by Archbishop Walsh’s Christian-democratic shibboleths, may explain his failure to find a career, or a niche in politics, through existing patronage networks. This brought him closer to the revolutionary