literary transcript
Peter
Costello's
THE
IRISH 100
A RANKING
OF THE MOST
INFLUENTIAL
IRISH
MEN AND
WOMEN OF ALL TIME
________________
INTRODUCTION
This
is partly through those Irish people who have lived and worked in
In
the summer of 1998, a survey of national pride by the
The
survey also showed that many young people had less overall pride than their
elders. This was thought to reflect the
growth of globalism and multilateralism, or perhaps a reaction to the
nationalistic extremism of the past. But
it may be that the younger generation has simply never heard of the great
achievers of the past, whose influence has done so much to shape the world they
live in. The Irish and the Irish
Americans, as communities, have kept alive that pride, and it is reflected in
this book.
The
influence of the Irish can be said to be universal, and the contribution of the
Irish-born to the development of the modern world has been an important
one. Influence, of course, is not a
matter of mere fame. The passing
notoriety of a celebrity such as a film star (of which there have been many
from
Yet
the persons I have chosen presented a problem.
Inevitably, there has to be great difficulty in choosing individuals
from such an array of talented people. I
may seem to have been somewhat arbitrary in my choices. Personal preference has been restrained,
however, in order to collect together as wide and as historic a range of
cultural heroes as possible.
Some
of the persons included here will be familiar, others almost unknown. In any selection based on a specific ethnic
group, as this book is, it has been especially important to choose individuals
with no regard to gender or sexuality.
Likewise, it is too easy to lead with those who have been public figures
in politics over those whose achievements and influence have been in the arts,
sciences, or religion.
Influence
works in strange ways. Though our
newspapers make us aware of the influence which public figures such as
politicians or millionaires think they wield in the world, our everyday lives
are actually more affected by the activities of scientists, inventors, and
trade unionists. We have to be careful
not to take people at their own estimation.
These
days, many people have a great interest in tracing their roots. Irish-American politicians are always keen to
recall their roots. In the summer
of 1998, for instance, no less a person than Newt Gingrich was in Ireland, and
after his talks with the various communities in the Ulster conflict, one of his
purposes was to search out his family connections in Donegal. Thomas 'Tip' O'Neill, one of his predecessors
in the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives, was an old-style
Irish American, but who would have thought Newt Gingrich was too! History is full of surprises, as we shall
see.
Perhaps
a note on the historical background of
The
history of
The
first evidence of Celtic culture in
Irish
history is not a simple tale of heroic Celtic warriors fighting to the death
and brave Celtic women being raped by vicious Englishmen, the caricature that
so often passes for history. Much that
is admired, and rightly admired in the history and culture of the island, is
non-Celtic.
Many
details of Irish history are alluded to in the course of this book, but in such
a limited space it is difficult to enlarge upon them. It is hoped that those using this book will
also consult the books of historical background listed in 'Further
Reading'. Controversies over many
details in the course of Irish history continue, as do disputes about exactly
what it is to be Irish, and indeed who the Irish really are.
Though
many Irish people today are Roman Catholic, it is not the special destiny of
the Irish to be Catholic. The Protestant
culture of
These
days an Irish person is someone who was born in
This
book would fail to present a complete view of the influence of the Irish if it
were necessary for inclusion that a person must have been born or worked in
At
the conclusion of a long process, I am struck not only by the achievements of
those who are included here, but even more by the achievements of those for
whom there was no space.
It
can safely be predicted that the influence which the Irish have had in the past
will be as nothing compared to what they will achieve tomorrow, both in Europe,
in America, and elsewhere.
It
is a matter of controversy whether one of
It
is only too likely that the first person to land on Mars will also be of Irish
blood.
Peter
Costello
________________
THE IRISH
100
1
St Patrick
c. 389-c. 461
Everywhere the Irish are to be found, they
have taken the name of
His
influence over
Who
he was and where he came from are still matters of mystery. He himself tells us in his Confession,
which is really a defence of his life and actions written as an old man, that
he was a native of Roman Britain, born in Bannavem Taberniae, and that his
father was a deacon of the church called Calpurnius. Where Bannavem Taberniae may have been is not
known, though some think it was in the
His
grandfather had been a priest, and his father was not only a deacon, but also a
town councillor, all of which suggests a prosperous background and comfortable
childhood. At the age of sixteen he was
captured by Irish pirates and carried into slavery in
In
his lonely exile he turned to the faith of his fathers, and prayed for
release. After six years, at the age of
twenty-two, he escaped and made his way home, leaving Ireland by a boat from
somewhere on the south coast. However,
he had been marked by his experience. He
relates (again in The Confession) that he heard the voices of the Irish,
calling him to be among them again. He
took this as a personal mission, which he set out to fulfil.
It
seems clear that there were already Christians in
Many
legends surround his name. One of the
most important tells of how he lit the special Paschal fire on the Hill of
Slane in direct disobedience of the rule that no fire could be lit on that day
before the Druids lit the fire of the High King of Ireland in their own pagan
ceremonies. The legend of his encounter
with the High King of Ireland at
As
there were no real towns in
Many
points about St Patrick's life and career are disputed. It has even been claimed that there were two
different men of the same name. But
these are the quarrels of scholars. Patrick
reveals himself in his own writing as an unlearned, straightforward man, but a
man with a mission. It is not the
details of his life that have impressed Irish people over the centuries, but
his vivid personality as the apostle of
Among
the leading figures of the fifth century, he is almost alone in having left us
writing in his own hand, in which he speaks for himself. His voice can still be heard in The
Confession, which includes a moving defence of his life against accusations
of early sin, and his Letter to Coroticus, a British chief who had
kidnapped some Irish Christians. In the
account of his life, he lays great emphasis on his lack of learning and his own
unworthiness, but claims that through the grace God had granted him, he was
able to achieve what might have seemed impossible.
It
is this voice that still exerts great influence. Many of his characteristics - courage,
perseverance, resistance to false authority, a love of nature, a direct appeal
to individuals - are still those of the Irish as a whole. To this day the religious outlook of the
Irish people affects their ideas about many things. Unhappily, the religion which Patrick brought
later led to divisions which are still to be healed.
St
Patrick's Day, 17th March, is a day of celebration in Irish communities
worldwide. It had always been a Catholic
feast day, but the first celebration outside the confines of the church was
held in
The
saint's name is associated with two of the world's great places of religious
pilgrimage: Croagh Patrick in Mayo, which is climbed by believers every year on
the last Sunday in July, and St Patrick's Purgatory in Donegal, a place of
vision and penance, which has enjoyed fame since the Middle Ages and may have
inspired Dante in the writing of the Inferno.
To
St Patrick is ascribed the first use of the shamrock to illustrate the Christian
dogma of the Holy Trinity - the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But over the centuries the little plant
became the symbol of
2
Eamon de Valera
1882-1975
By common agreement of his admirers and
foes, Eamon de Valera has exercised the greatest influence over modern
Through
a long life in which much was achieved as well as left unfinished, he has
become a permanent feature of the Irish historical landscape. He created the party with the largest popular
support in
De
Valera first came to prominence during the Easter Rising against British rule
in
De
Valera was born in
An
intelligent child, he was sent to one of the country's leading schools, where
he excelled in maths. He lived quietly,
working as a teacher. He and his wife
were little known among the vigorous and often colourful cultural circles in
the Dublin of WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS [8].
But
politics soon took hold of him. In 1912
the British government offered
De
Valera joined the Irish Volunteers, a group which was organized to defend
Ireland's rights to independence, and this led to his part in the Easter
Rising, his work as 'President of the Irish Republic' in America, the
controversies surrounding the treaty with Great Britain, and to the civil war
in Ireland, which ended with him being imprisoned again, this time by the new
Irish government.
In
1924 he was released. The anti-treaty
republicans who had fought in the civil war were a disparate group, ranging
from revolutionary radicals to deeply conservative Catholics. In 1926 de Valera split from the Irish
Republican Army (IRA) to form a new republican party, Fianna Fáil, which
quickly built up a following on the middle ground of Irish politics. The party entered the Dáil (
In
1932 de Valera came to power and quickly consolidated his sway over the
country. On the world scene he began to play
a useful but ultimately frustrating role in the
At
home he began to pick at the treaty solution, and in 1937 he introduced a new
constitution which provided for a president as head of state within a legal
framework based on the social teachings of the Catholic church. The idea of a written constitution came from
Adroitly,
he managed to keep
A
solution to
In
a famous speech at the end of the Second World War, de Valera spoke of his
vision of an ideal Irish society based on traditional rural and spiritual
values. But by the time of his death,
De
Valera remains a controversial figure.
The details of his career are still debated. To a generation of Irish people whom he saved
from the scourge of a world war, he was seen as a giant among modern statesmen;
a visionary with an unblemished record of probity.
Like
all people in public life, his political opponents differed. He was often seen, even by his friends, as
aloof and cold. His years as a teacher
of maths and languages had left him with a pedantic attitude of a calculating
grammarian, delighting in the small points of a matter in hand, while others
were impatient to settle larger issues.
Yet
he retained the lifelong devotion to men of great capacity and integrity, and
his certainty of mind gave confidence to many others. He once said that if he wished to know what
the Irish people thought, he had only to look into his own heart. This outlook lies at the heart of the
separation of
A
final judgement can be left to the historian Prof. J.J. Lee of
3
Michael Collins
1890-1922
Though he died fighting in the Irish civil
war at the age of thirty-one, Michael Collins remains for many Irish people the
very epitome of the Irish rebel - bold, handsome, and romantic. He was the man who masterminded the guerrilla
war against the British army in
Michael
Collins was born on
In
In
1919, with the establishment of the first Dáil - the assembly of Irish
representatives who had been elected to the imperial parliament in
A
forceful personality of great energy, he was also famous for his personal
courage and contempt for danger. His
coup in organizing the murder of fourteen British intelligence officers on a
Sunday morning,
The
British prime minister Lloyd George, an astute Welshman, realized that the
excesses of the war fought the length and breadth of
What
might have been the end of
He
had been in his own country, the countryside of his childhood. As
This
was, perhaps, Collins' greatest gift to his people, but his other qualities of
bravery and leadership have given him almost mythical stature in modern
4
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
1917-1963
The election of John F. Kennedy as
thirty-fifth president of the
Kennedy's
eventual visit to
The
existence of that factory was an important development. For those heady days in the 1960s marked a
transition from the older rural
To
many young people, Kennedy seemed to suggest a new kind of model for public
life. Though his reputation has since
been the object of much reassessment, his historical importance in the immediate
days of the 1960s cannot be lessened. To
Irish people everywhere he became the leading example of what the Irish nation
could achieve.
His
great-grandparents had gone to the
Joe
Kennedy was naturally ambitious for his children. After the death of his eldest son, his
ambitions became centred on Jack. Though
Jack's education had been indifferent, he was widely read. As an explanation of why the war had come, he
wrote Why England Slept (1940) during his father's time in
In
1946 he was elected to Congress from the eleventh
In
the book he defined his own outlook: 'A man does what he must, in spite of
obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human
morality.'
He
failed to gain the vice-presidential nomination in 1956, but began a campaign
to secure the Democratic nomination for president in 1960. He gained this, and went on to fight Richard
Nixon. The race was marked by the
innovation of television debates, which many felt Kennedy won. Though he barely won the popular vote, he
carried the electoral college, 303 to 219.
He was the second youngest man ever elected president, as well as the
first Catholic and the first born in the twentieth century.
The
events of his brief presidency were memorable, but the most critical may have
been the Cuban missile crisis. The most
serious East-West stand-off since the end of World War II evolved out of
It
was under Kennedy that the inexorable growth of
At
home, too, Kennedy faced many problems, but on two fronts he made great
strides. He was a young man, and to the
impatient but idealistic generation of the 1960s he seemed to speak with a
recognizable voice. To the black
community, then in the throes of the civil rights movement, led by Martin
Luther King, Jr, he won respect.
Kennedy, too, came from a community which had suffered exile,
segregation, and intolerance. But his
liberal ideas were not always shared by other Americans, or other Irish
Americans. His admirers knew that John
Kennedy had enemies, but they could not have guessed what final form that
enmity would take.
The
achievements of John Kennedy have been eclipsed by the circumstances of his
death (by assassination in
5
Charles Stewart Parnell
1846-1891
One of the great influences on Parnell,
the uncrowned king of
His
grandfather, Sir John Parnell, had been chancellor of the Irish Exchequer in
the last decades of the eighteenth century, when
Parnell
was the son of a Protestant landowner in Wicklow who retained nationalist
sympathies. Parnell was, however,
educated at Yeovil and Chipping Norton, places quintessentially English. He went to
Parnell
was not an intellectual in any way.
However, he took a great interest in practical matters, such as the
mines on his Irish estates, and liked nothing better than chemical experiments
as light entertainment. He was solitary
and difficult to know, but he was a master of men in public life, and of their
emotions.
Elected
member of Parliament from Meath in 1875, he joined the Home Rule group of Irish
MPs at
After
Butt died in 1879, Parnell was a dominant personality in the party, which had
many colourful and energetic people in it.
He was asked by Michael Davitt to become the first president of the Land
League in 1879, and it was through the Land War that he emerged as the
pre-eminent leader of
The
Land War involved a great deal of violence and intimidation, and the British
government arrested Parnell and other leaders.
A compromise, called the Kilmainham Treaty, was reached while they were
in jail in Kilmainham. Parnell was
released, but a few days later a terrorist group murdered the Irish secretary
in the
The
Land League, however, was converted into the National League, and the efforts
of Parnell were now directed not towards land reform, which eventually came,
but to Home Rule - restoring to
This
was not fully acceptable to all advanced nationalists. The Home Rule Bill of 1886 failed, and it was
followed by the sensational accusations a year later by The Times of
However,
later in 1890, Parnell faced another challenge.
For many years he had been living privately with Mrs Katharine O'Shea,
the wife of a fellow Irish member of parliament, by whom he had several children. In November 1890, Captain O'Shea sued her for
divorce and named Parnell as the other man.
The scandal that ensued ruined Parnell in the eyes of many Catholics in
A
few years after Parnell's death, a journalist put it to the prime minister,
William Gladstone himself, that the Irish leader must have suffered intense
pain in that last year. 'Poor
fellow! Poor fellow! I suppose he did; dear, dear, what a
tragedy! I cannot tell you how much I
think about him, and what an interest I take in everything concerning him. A marvellous man, a terrible fall.'
With
him died any hope of Home Rule for the time being, as the Irish party remained
split until 1900. However, no sooner had
it revived itself than it faced a new challenge from the rise of Sinn Féin,
demanding outright independence and not merely Home Rule. Home Rule was granted in 1914, but suspended
for the duration of the war. The Easter
Rising and the following Anglo-Irish war led to the creation of the
He
remains a man of mystery, for he all too often kept his views to himself. He ruined himself over his love for Katharine
O'Shea, and that was also, in the eyes of many of his followers, an admirable
thing.
A
flawed and tragic figure, Parnell survives in the memory of the Irish as one of
their greatest leaders.
6
Mary Robinson
1944-
Irishmen as a whole have often been seen
as male chauvinists. Yet in the past
there have been great and influential Irishwomen, such as Queen Maeve, St
Bridget, GRACE O'MALLEY [46] and
the Daughters of Éireann during the Irish Revolution, such as MAUD GONNE [52] and the COUNTESS MARKIEVICZ [52].
But the rise of the modern women's movement has had its dramatic effects
in
She
was born Mary Bourke into a prominent Mayo family (the Bourkes traced their
origins back to the
She
also studied at Harvard, and her experiences in the
She
became a brilliant master of law at
Her
work as a practising lawyer and legal academic quickly brought Mary Robinson to
the firing line. She thought that
matters of private conscience, such as homosexuality and contraception, should
not be a matter of law. Her legal
practice concentrated largely on constitutional and civil rights matters, and
through her success she was able to make changes that legislators had found
difficult. Though
She
became involved in politics on the left wing of the Irish Labour party, but her
relations with party politics were not always calm. She was elected to the Irish Senate as a
senator from
What
these might be were indicated by her support for and involvement in the newly
emerging women's movement in
But
Mary Robinson was also committed to the European ideal, and this was one area
in which most of her people agreed. At
Though
she had left the party, she was nominated for the office of president of
Mary
Robinson quickly saw that even though she could not involve herself in party
political matters, other social, academic, and cultural areas were wide open to
her. She emerged through the presidency
as one of the new vitalizing influences on
She
served only one seven-year term as president before advancing to a prominent
post with the United Nations as high commissioner for Human Rights. This may well turn out to be as important a
post on a universal scale as the presidency was on a national scale. For all that it has done in the past, the
United Nations has not always managed to have done enough, caught as it so
often was between political rivalries it could not control.
Now,
in a new era, Mary Robinson may be one of those who will give the United
Nations new authority in a still badly divided world. In Mary Robinson the younger generation of
Irishwomen have an extraordinary role model, though their mothers had been
content to live in a domestic scene, exerting a powerful influence over the
formation of Irish life and opinion in that way. She took herself into a wider world and
triumphed. After Mary Robinson, no post
in
7
Patrick Henry Pearse
1879-1916
The leading inspiration of the Easter
Rising against British rule in
Surprisingly
for an Irish patriot, his father was an Englishman, a monumental sculptor who
worked widely on the many Catholic churches which were erected around
He
was born in
From
1895 he was an active member of the Gaelic League, an organization founded to
revive the use of the old native language as the everyday tongue of the people
of
To
further his educational ambitions for
In
1913 Pearse joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the underground movement that
aimed to establish a republic in
Pearse
was largely responsible for organizing the funeral of the old Fenian
revolutionary O'Donovan Rossa in 1915, who had died in exile in
With
the outbreak of the First World War, the Irish Volunteers split. The vast majority went to fight with the
Irish and British regiments on the western front, though a small number were
determined to seize the opportunity for another insurrection. Pearse and his IRB friends planned to have
the rising on Easter week, making use of the general mobilization of the Irish
Volunteers, which was supposed to be a mere exercise. When he heard of these plans, Prof. MacNeill,
the actual leader of the Irish Volunteers, tried to prevent the mobilization. Only a tiny fraction of the original one
hundred thousand volunteers turned out in support of the rising.
During
Easter week he was commander in chief of the Irish army, president of the
republic, and one of those who signed the proclamation. But the uprising failed from lack of widespread
support among the people and its own military ineptitude. The leaders were court-martialled and
sentenced to death.
Pearse
bravely faced execution. In death, his
influence would be far more profound than it had been in life. He remains for Irish nationalists of all
kinds a central figure of history. His
ideas about the Irish language and the sources of Irish nationality are still
those of many, but the growth of
Pearse
was also a poet and a teacher. These
sides of his personality are attractive in ways that the belligerent
comic-opera figure of the uprising is not.
His ideas about education, through child-centred teaching, remain very
potent. Perhaps the real Pearse was not
the militant, but the sensitive poet and dedicated teacher. To later generations, these aspects of his
life may well seem to represent the real importance of Patrick Pearse.
8
William
1865-1939
The first Irishman to win a Nobel Prize
(in 1923), William Butler Yeats combined within himself contradictory elements
of Irish life and culture, but it is from the tension of those contradictions
that his greatness as a universally admired poet emerged. Such poems as 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree'
and 'Down by the Sally Gardens' won immediate appreciation, but he remained to
the end of his long life a poet of increasing power and passion.
His
father, John Butler Yeats, was a painter, and Yeats was reared in a close
family atmosphere where art and poetry were admired and encouraged. As a painter, his brother JACK B. YEATS [26] took after the father, but William's
interests were literary.
His
schooling was unsuccessful, and for many years he had to eke out a living as a
literary journalist and editor of anthologies.
He barely scraped by until he was in his forties, but very quickly, when
he was still in his teens, his exceptional talents as a poet were recognized. The sources of his lyrical verses, which he began
to publish in the late 1880s, lay in the newly discovered ancient mythology of
Celtic Ireland and the landscapes of the west of
To
these elements which would have been widely shared by many Irish artists,
writers, and leaders of the day, he added his esoteric interest in the magical
tradition of
Though
he was born in
Yeats'
own people came from
By
the end of the 1890s, Yeats had been recognized as the most significant poet of
modern
The
Abbey also provided an outlet for the genius of J.M. Synge, whose comedy The
Playboy of the Western World provoked a riot in the theatre in 1907, and
later for SEAN O'CASEY [55], whose
plays of the Irish troubles, such as Juno and the Paycock, are classics
of world literature. For this alone
Yeats would be remembered. His own play,
Cathleen Ni Houlihan, in which his friend MAUD GONNE [52] appeared in 1902, is now seen as
having had a powerful effect on the imaginations of many of those who were
later to be involved in the national movement.
However,
it was as a poet that Yeats made his mark on the world. He began as a lyric poet of misty landscapes
and lost love. His early passion for the
elusive Maud Gonne was one of the great love stories of Irish literature. But she did not take 'dear Willy' too
seriously, and preferred a life devoted to the politics of revolutionary
By
the 1920s he had become one of the most important poets of the century in the
English language. Abroad, Yeats was seen
as a great poet, but in
By
the time of his death he had become, for many, one of the greatest poets of all
time. Though it was his early verse that
made the greatest impact on the general audience, his later poems, in all their
allusive and symbolic complexity, have come to be of central importance to
Irish readers of today. They are often
passionate, yet cold, combining the elements of ice and fire in a mysterious
and powerful manner.
After
a long illness, Yeats died in the south of
9
John Boyle O'Reilly
1844-1890
When many Americans think of Irish poetry
it is not always Yeats or Seamus Heaney that comes to mind, but the Bostonian
John Boyle O'Reilly. His poetry was
quoted by John F. Kennedy when he spoke in 1963 to the Irish national assembly
because it had been the poetry which had made
The
Fenian poet and editor was born the child of William and Eliza (Boyle) O'Reilly
at
A
clever boy, at the age of fourteen John Boyle O'Reilly was apprenticed as a
printer to the Drogheda Argus.
Local newspapers played an important part of the life of rural
He
later moved to
O'Reilly
was one of sixty-three political prisoners deported in 1867 to
Though
he knew nobody in
He
quickly made a name as a writer and lecturer.
His Legends and Ballads went into eight large editions. In 1876, along with Archbishop John Joseph
Williams of
Influenced
by such men as Patrick Donahoe and Patrick Collins, his was a conservative,
constructive, but still anti-British programme of Irish-American
acculturation. The paper supported Democratic
candidates, and his own comments on the developing industrial nature of the
His
novel Moondyne (1879), about his Australian experiences, was also a
success. His volume of poems, Statues
in the Block (1881), was also popular.
Under his charge the Pilot became famous for its noted
contributors, which included WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS [8] and other writers and poets of the new generation in
He
was refused permission to enter
Overworked
and suffering from insomnia, he died from an accidental overdose of his
sleeping potion at his summer home in
He
was a favourite poet for the special occasion, such as the O'Connell Centenary,
or the dedication of the Crispus Attucks monument on Boston Common. He had not fully developed as a poet when he
died. Like many of the Irish poets he
admired, such ass Thomas Davis and D'Arcy Magee, his best work is in
ballads. Over the years many of these
have perhaps faded from the collective memory and modern critics prefer the
shorter poems reflecting his interest in things spiritual.
Though
his name as a poet has declined in
As
editor of the Pilot or patriotic poet, John Boyle O'Reilly was one of
the most influential Irish Americans of his day, reflecting their policies and
piety in the editorials and poems he wrote, but never confusing the two. He was an advocate of
10
Seamus Heaney
1939-
Seamus Justin Heaney, who became in 1995
the fourth Irish person to win the Nobel Prize for literature, was born in County
Derry on 13th April 1939, the eldest son of a small farmer, Patrick Heaney, and
his wife Margaret. It was the family's
farm, 'Mossbawn' at Bellaghy, and the rural way of life around it, that have
provided the constant background, the source and sounding board of Heaney's
poetry. Despite Heaney's later changes
of habitation and the enlargement of his frame of reference, that early home
was where the real world would remain.
Having
attended a local mixed school, Heaney was educated, benefiting from the
Northern Ireland Education Act of 1947 (an extension to Ulster of R.A. Butler's
landmark act of 1944), at St Columb's College in Londonderry (or what Heaney's
Catholic community always called Derry).
He was among the first generation of
At
Queen's University in
At
school he had got to know Seamus Deane, the poet and writer. Later at
His
first poems appeared in fugitive publications, but the publication of Death
of a Naturalist in 1966 seemed to many to mark the emergence of a major
talent, a successor to Yeats. He
compared the work of his father in cultivating the soil and reaping his
harvests, to his own work, cultivating expression in a smaller harvest of
poems. The book was a great popular
success, especially in
In
1969, the year in which he published the ominously entitled collected Door
into the Dark, the present troubles began in
Heaney
had perhaps a distinct advantage for an Irish poet in that his work was
published in
Many
of the important themes of his work were established in that first collection,
though others, such as a fascination with the language and mythology of
He
also had a distinct talent as a prose writer, largely as a critic. He was elected to the Professorship of Poetry
at
His
poetry reflects a modern temperament, much influenced by currents of modern
Anglo-American poetry, in which can still be detected echoes of the older
languages of Ireland, not only Gaelic, of course, but also the particular
speech patterns of his own place, over the small fields of which several
cultures in history have contended for mastery.
However,
the recent experience of
Nevertheless,
despite these few critics, perhaps inevitable in the smaller world of Irish
literature (as Yeats said 'great hatred, little room, maimed us from the
start'), he has undoubtedly brought poetry into the lives of many. With Ted Hughes, another Faber poet, he
edited two vital and enthusiastic anthologies of poetry for children, which
have transformed its teaching for many.
Compared
with his Irish peers and contemporaries, such as Austin Clarke, Thomas
Kinsella, and John Montague, whose poetry speaks with a clarity of language and
image, Heaney's more allusive and elliptical lyrics are also elusive. The influence of Patrick Kavanagh is perhaps
stronger, the same longing of an urbanized man for the muddy puddles of his
childhood; but what was also puzzling for many readers was his careful avoidance
of plain statement.
The
appearance in 1999 of a new version of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, saw
the continuance of Heaney's fascination with the theme of northern life in
Of
all the many poets writing in
11
Wolfe Tone
1763-1798
It is to Wolfe Tone, and his enthusiasm
for the French revolution, that modern Irish republicanism in its various forms
traces its origins. Every year several
political parties of different outlooks make their individual pious pilgrimages
to his burial place in Bodenstown,
Theobald
Wolfe Tone was born in
Like
other lawyers of the day, he turned instead to politics, agitation, and
writing. In 1791 he published what
proved to be a most influential pamphlet, An Argument on Behalf of the
Catholics of Ireland. Along with
Thomas Russell and Napper Tandy, he founded the Society of United
Irishmen. Their aims were 'to break the
connection with
He
was active in the Catholic Committee, and called the Catholic Convention in
It
should be remembered that at this time
In
1794
This
he did, taking his young family with him.
In
An
expedition sailed in 1796, but was driven off by the weather. A second expedition, planned with Gen. Lazare
Hoche, came to nothing with the general's death. When the uprising in
One
expedition landed in Mayo in support of the rebels there. Tone himself reached Lough Swilly onboard a
French ship in October, but was captured.
He was quickly court-martialled, treated as a British traitor rather
than a French officer. Though he pleaded
to be shot like a soldier, the authorities wished to hang him like a
criminal. On the morning of the day
appointed for his execution, in November 1798, he used a penknife to open a
vein in his neck. Inevitably, Irish
nationalists, rather than accept that Wolfe Tone, a deist, had committed
suicide, claimed he had been murdered by the British government.
Though
Tone's influence was immense, his ambition to bring the French to
Though
Tone's words are still quoted today, the development of the French Revolution,
whose support he had sought, cast a shadow over all of Irish nationalism that
has still not been thrown off. Nominally
democratic, the French Revolution quickly became arbitrary. In the cause of one kind of freedom, its
deistic leaders attacked the church.
Despite Tone's rhetoric, none of this could have had wide appeal to the
Irish people, for subservience to Napoleon would have been an even worse fate
than union with
High-minded
and idealistic, the results of his life brought destruction and ruin to
many. Yet in the end they also brought
about the independence of a large part of
Yet
it was the parliamentary tradition which he rejected that the Irish people as a
whole clung to, and which forms the basis of the modern advanced democracy
which
12
George Best
1946-
By the time he was twenty-five, the true
inner purpose of George Best's life was over: he was finished as a soccer
player. Though newspapers in Ireland and
Britain remain interested in the continuing saga of Best's troubles with women,
money, and the effects of fame, his admirers realize that it was what he
achieved in those first years, rather than the sorry decline of his later ones,
that will keep his name alive as one of the greatest footballers who ever
played. In the opinion of Matt Busby,
his manager at Manchester United, he was a player of world class, a young man
who had it all.
George
Best was born in
In
true working-class style his life as a small child centred on his Granny
Withers. At home his father was a gentle
enough man, his mother a strict woman, who administered a good slap as
required. However, the young George was
no tearaway. From soon after he could
walk, kicking a ball around was his joy.
If he was out of sight, his father knew he would be found in the nearest
field, with a tennis ball at his feet.
Dickie Best had played as an amateur up to the age of thirty-six but he
did nothing to force his son's undoubted talents. George honed those early skills playing
street soccer, a thing which has now vanished from the lives of children. He was shy almost to the point of
introversion; though lonely he was not a loner, and had his own gang of
friends. He was essentially a good,
church-going boy. At that time the
troubles were largely in abeyance in
He
won a scholarship to a grammar school, Grosvenor High, but he lost his place,
and so was sent to a secondary modern, the Intermediate at Lisnahannagh. He was not academic, and his father hoped
that he would take up a trade. Printing was the preferred option.
Like
many Irish boys though, he went to local matches played by semi-amateurs, but
his real enthusiasm was for the professional English League. His talents were picked up on, and he flew
across the
At
first his talents were hardly noticed, but when he went down to
Best
was part of the team that won the Football Association Youth Football cup in
1964, and were League champions in the season of 1964/65 and 1966/67, and
European Cup winners in 1968. He made
some 361 League appearances, scoring 137 goals.
He also played in forty-six FA Cup competitions, scoring twenty-one
times and played in thirty-four European competitions, and represented
Fame
and wealth followed. By 1970, for
instance, he was the owner of a chain of men's boutiques - a class of shop
redolent of the swinging Sixties lifestyle which George Best was so much a part
of; smart, superficial and throwaway.
However,
it became increasingly obvious that George Best was throwing it all away. His lifestyle became erratic, as he found
himself unable to cope with the pressures under which he worked. After he left Manchester United in December
1973, he made several efforts at a comeback, playing for smaller clubs in
But
by now he was unstable. Sometime between
1970 and 1973 his drinking had turned into alcoholism. One thing which deeply affected him was what
happened to his mother. True to her
Presbyterian Ulster background, she had never touched alcohol till past forty,
but at forty-three she had an unexpected pregnancy. Post-natal depression set in and it looked as
if all she wanted was a share of the good times with her son. But then she too became an alcoholic and died
at fifty-four, in large part a victim of her son's fame. While she was ill Best was unable to visit
her, and is said to feel guilt about this failure ever since.
A
long line of girlfriends and wives has ended with Best currently married (since
July 1995) to Alexandra Pursey. By his divorced
first wife, Angela James, whom he married in January 1978, he had a son, Calum
Milan, born in 1981. Between, there were
a number of other women, the number depending on his flow of stories. These included Mary Stavin - a Miss World -
and the actress Sinead Cusack.
For
the greatest footballer
Today
Best remains visible through celebrity appearances of all kinds, such as
opening supermarkets, and through football commentaries on television. Aside from this work, he keeps his mind alive
with crosswords and general knowledge quizzes.
Other rewards have come his way since he was voted Irish Footballer of
the Year in 1967. He won the Sky TV
award for Greatest Sportsman and Total Sport magazine voted him
'Greatest Sportsman of All Time'. But
his feelings of guilt, and the underlying fears have not vanished, and were
perhaps made worse by the death of Matt Busby in 1994.
Since
the rise of the professional sportsman in the early nineteenth century, sport
has been the route out of poverty for many a working-class boy. A classic example was the Irish-American
boxer John L. Sullivan in the 1880s, whose career as a boxer had an immense
following in
13
George Boole
1815-1864
Science has never seemed a very strong
part of the Irish tradition, yet Irish people and others whose life's work was
spent in
He
was born in
He
worked alone. At first his main interest
was invariants, without which Einstein's theory of relativity would have been
impossible. He was almost the only
mathematician in the
Boole
was not unambitious, however, and in 1849 was appointed professor of mathematics
at the Queen's College in
By
this time his reputation as an advanced mathematician was already known. A decade before he had published a paper
entitled 'Theory of Analytical Transformation', in the Cambridge
Mathematical Journal. This led to a
long friendship with the editor D.F. Gregory.
He wrote what were then considered two important textbooks, Differential
Equations (1859) and Finite Differences (1860).
But
his most important and far-reaching work was The Laws of Thought (1854),
in which symbolic language and notation were employed to express purely logical
processes. 'The design of the following
treatise,' he wrote, 'is to investigate the fundamental laws of those
operations of the mind by which reasoning is performed; to give expression to
them in the language of a Calculus, and upon this foundation to establish the
science of Logic and construct its method; and to make that method itself the
basis of a general method for the application of the mathematical doctrine of
probabilities; and, finally, to collect from the various elements of truth
brought to view in the course of these inquiries some probable intimation
concerning the nature and constitution of the human mind.'
This
ambitious work was widely influential, being followed up by workers in
As
professor E.T. Bell, the historian of mathematical thought, wrote, 'The
intricacy and delicacy of the difficulties explored by the symbolic
reasoning methods would, it is safe to say, defy human reason if only the old,
pre-Boole methods of verbal logical arguments were at our disposal. The daring originality of Boole's whole
project needs no signpost. It is a
landmark in itself.'
After
writing his masterpiece, Boole did not live much longer. His health had not always been good, and he
worked long hours. He was also involved
in the difficult academic politics of the college, which were often very
overheated and outspoken. Going into
college in the winter of 1864 he contracted a cough, which was followed by
pneumonia, from which he died on
Nineteenth-century
mathematics laid the foundation for twentieth-century physics. Early last century, Boole's work was brought
to a wider audience by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, and it has
been further developed by many others since.
Boole's creative work in The Laws of Thought laid the foundations
for the computer revolution, a fact which only became clear as modern machines
began to develop from the primitive devices of the 1940s. The modern information revolution which is transforming
the whole nature of life itself owes an immense debt to the work and influence
of George Boole and his studies at
14
Seán Lemass
1899-1971
Now seen as the architect of modern
industrialized
A
Dubliner, Seán Francis Lemass was born on
In
January 1915, at age fifteen, he joined the Irish Volunteers, serving at first
in de Valera's own company. He and his
elder brother Noel took part in the Easter Rising in 1916, but because Seán was
so young he was not deported. A
Lemass
began his working life in the family hat shop and drapery business in
In
the summer, after the truce came into force, he was released, but was among
those who rejected the treaty settlement, again following the lead of de
Valera. During the civil war he fought
with the republicans in the Four Courts, an important city centre building,
which had been occupied by Rory O'Connor, in imitation of the Easter Rising of
1916. When the garrison fell he was
arrested, but managed to escape and rejoin the republicans in the field. But he was captured again in December 1922,
and this time was interned in the Curragh in Kildare until the end of
1923. His brother Noel was captured and
murdered by free-state agents, and his body dumped in the
Lemass
was released in December 1923, but by then he had read every book on economics
and history he could find on the camp bookshelves. He was elected to the Dáil (the Irish
assembly) in 1924, and sat for the same constituency until he retired from
politics in 1968. He was already a
leading figure in the new party, Fianna Fáil, which de Valera formed to escape
from the dead end of the civil war.
In
1932, at the early age of thirty-two, he became the minister of industry and
commerce in de Valera's first government.
He began to reverse the sorry state of Irish industry through a
protectionist policy. The war years,
with materials of all kinds in very short supply, were a major challenge to the
country, which he largely dealt with. He
founded Irish Shipping to create an independent Irish merchant fleet. He also set up the Tourist Board, which
created a major new industry in
He
achieved a cover story in Time magazine, which featured a traditional
leprechaun drawing aside a green curtain to reveal a spanking new factory. This coverage was typical of a change in the
international media's interest in
From
now on the dark shadow of emigration and a falling population, coupled with
high unemployment, began to pass from
In
January 1965 he also began a serious rapprochement with
Lemass
resigned as first minister in November 1966, just after the celebrations of the
fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising.
In retirement he left his successors to run the country without having
to look over their shoulder all the time.
This, too, was a sign of a new maturity in the country. He died in
In
time, the shy schoolboy who had taken part in the uprising grew into an
accomplished, if reserved and enigmatic, man of affairs. By far and away, Seán Lemass was the key man
in the making of
15
James Craig,
Lord Craigavon
1871-1940
A central figure in the creation of
Northern Ireland, and a staunch unionist in the face of a rising tide of Irish
nationalism, James Craig, the son of James Craig of Craigavon, a wealthy
Belfast distiller, was born on 8th January 1871.
By
this time
Craig's
childhood was dominated by the emergence of the Orange Order from being a
quasi-secret society. It had once even
been banned, accused of plotting to put the Duke of Cumberland on the throne in
place of Queen
Craig
was privately educated in
He
was elected a unionist member of Parliament from East Down, a strongly
Protestant area of
Craig
was the
By
now home rule, in the old sense, was a dead letter. But if the rest of
Elected
for North Down in 1921, in June of that year Craig became the first prime
minister of
In
1929 he abolished proportional representation, which had been intended to
secure the rights of the Catholic minority in the six counties of the north,
saying the people did not understand the dangers of it. The nationalists had adopted a policy of not
attending the
A
friend spoke of his 'sagacity, honesty of purpose, and courage,' and that he
possessed qualities of a high order, that he was 'a man of undoubted courage,
high character, sound judgement, and devotion to duty, and his powers of
leadership were conspicuous.' To his
political opponents among the liberals and nationalists, he had every appearance
of being bigoted, outdated, and vindictive.
Craigavon
died on 20th November 1940, soon after the Second World War began, leaving
Northern Ireland with an entrenched unionism which would take another two
generations to resolve into a state that had room for all. Yet in politics, the spirit of 'that old bull
Craigavon', as the poet Louis MacNeice called him, roams free whenever the
Orange Order parades through Catholic streets or defies the will of the British
government. Among all the elements that
affect the future of
16
James Connolly
1868-1916
Though his career was brutally cut short,
James Connolly remains the most influential personality in Irish left-wing
politics, and his many writings have remained widely read and influential to
this day, even in an
He
was born of Irish parents living in
At
this time he began to take an interest in socialist and trade union
matters. In 1896 he was sent to
From
these first tentative beginnings grew the Irish Socialist Republican party,
whose main aim was to secure 'the national and economic freedom of the Irish
people'. These activities soon brought
him to the attention of the British authorities, and the secret police in
Life
was hard for his family. Having made a
tour of
But
as an almost unknown figure from
Even
among American socialists he had difficulties.
His Irish nationalism, religious and spiritual ideas, and
Catholic-inspired opposition to divorce were intolerable to many other
socialists, largely of European, and especially German, background. He received little support among American
socialists for the Harp, which soon failed.
He
then turned to the Industrial Workers of the World, and in 1910 became editor
of the Newcastle Free Press, a Wobbly-supported paper published for
workers in the heartlands of the industrial district dominated by the steel
trust.
Convinced
that his American venture had been a regrettable mistake, he went back to
Among
employers there was widespread resistance to accepting trade unions, and this
led to the great lockout in
The
families of the
Afterwards
Larkin went to
But
Irish nationalism would be Connolly's own nemesis. In 1916 he was inveigled into taking part in
the Easter Rising by PATRICK HENRY PEARSE [7] and Thomas MacDonagh, even though the aims of his
organization were very different from those of the Irish Republican
Brotherhood, which they led. He was
appointed military commander of the Dublin district, and the members of the
Irish Citizen army that could be mobilized fought alongside the Irish
Volunteers in the city garrisons. While
in command at the General Post Office he was badly wounded in the leg, but
still gave orders from a mattress laid out on the floor of the building.
After
the rebels surrendered he was detained in Dublin Castle, but after a
court-martial he was executed by shooting, sitting in a chair in Kilmainham
Gaol, on 12th May 1916.
Like
the other leaders of the uprising, Connolly took on even greater significance
in death. His ideas remain influential
not only among members of the general trade-union movement in Ireland, but also
among more radical republicans, in both Northern Ireland and the south. His son and daughter carried on his work in
radical politics into the middle decades of the century.
To
the Irish left, Connolly remains a hero.
To Irish people in general, many of whom would not share all his views,
his life is a constant reminder that social justice, rather than the pursuit of
wealth, must remain the ultimate aim of all social organization. In recognition of his role in Irish history,
a statue of him now stands in Beresford Place in Dublin, facing the new Liberty
Hall, one of Dublin's first high-rise buildings, erected in the 1960s. Times change, and even trade unions change
with them.
17
Brian Boru
c. 941-1014
One of the most important figures in
ancient Irish history, Brian Boru was always thought of in the popular imagination
as having broken the power of the Viking invaders, or Danes, as they were once
called in Ireland. But the actual
situation was more complicated.
When
he was born in north Munster about 941, the Vikings were well established in
strongholds around the Irish coast, and the Irish annalists made much of their
raids into the Irish interior.
Incidentally, at this time the Irish themselves had colonies in Scotland
and Wales, and had made past excursions into Europe itself. The Vikings are now seen more in the light of
colonists and settlers rather than raiders, and their role in Irish culture a
more positive one.
The
problem that faced Ireland was its own political structure. Though the island of Ireland shared a common
culture, it was divided into many small petty kingdoms. To achieve unity among them was a hard
task. (The analogy is with the American
colonies, which would have collapsed if they had not managed to unite in 1786.)
In
976 Brian succeeded his brother as king of Dál Cais, in Thomond, an area now
covered by County Clare in the southwest of Ireland. At once he laid claim to the kingship of the
province of Munster. He became king of
Munster in 978, and then began to grapple with the high king of Ireland, based
at Tara. Brian himself raided with his
armies far into the northern half of the island. Máel Sechnaill, the high king of Ireland, was
eventually forced to concede power to Brian, and in 997 at a meeting at
Clonfert they partitioned the country between them.
However,
in 999 the Leinstermen revolted and allied themselves with the Norse in
Dublin. Brian counterattacked, defeated
them, and seized and plundered Dublin.
But this was not the end of the Norse; rather, it was the beginning of
an alliance with them. Brian married
Gormlaith, the mother of King Sitric of Dublin, and married his own daughter to
the king - a double marriage, cementing the alliance.
Brian
now felt secure enough to make claim to the northern part of the island. Máel Sechnaill failed to obtain the support of
the northern O'Neills, and yielded to Brian, who became high king of Ireland at
the age of sixty-one. In 1005, with a
great army, he marched north to Armagh, the city of St Patrick in which the
church in Ireland was centred, where he made a gift of gold and confirmed the
city's bishop as the primate of Ireland.
Into a page of the Book of Armagh his secretary wrote an
inscription in Latin referring to Brain as imperator scotorum, 'the
Emperor of the Irish'. The next year he
made a circuit of the north, subduing the O'Neills by taking hostages. This was how he got his traditional Irish
name - Brian Boru means 'Brian of the Tributes'.
In
1012 the O'Neills and the Leinstermen rebelled against his authority. Brain, now an old man of seventy-two, laid
siege to Dublin in 1013 but failed to take the city and returned home for
Christmas to his own stronghold of Kincora on the shores of Lough Ree on the
Shannon above Killaloe.
Before
spring, the Norse had summoned help from abroad and allies came from the Orkneys
and Man. The armies met on the field of
Clontarf, a little to the north of Dublin, on Good Friday, 23rd April
1014. The Norse and the Leinstermen were
defeated, though Brian himself was slain by a fleeing Norse warrior while
praying in his tent. Brian's son and
grandson also died in the battle.
This
battle, far from being an attempt to drive out the Norse, was part of an
internal Irish struggle. From recent
investigations, the Vikings have now emerged in modern eyes as the bearers into
Ireland of new cultural norms, such as coinage, towns, ships and international
trade. They are no longer seen as some
earlier version of the English, ravishing the ideal Celtic nation of Ireland.
The
death of Brian marked the last chance Ireland had to create a centralized state
under a principal king, as was emerging all over Europe. Brian was called the Emperor of the Irish in
imitation of the achievements of Charlemagne (who had died in 814), the
protagonist of European unity and Christian culture. Though he had been styled Emperor of the
Irish, his empire was short-lived. Again
the Irish petty kings fell to local quarrels, and the Irish people failed to
create the unitary state which alone would have preserved the integrity of the
island from invasion and usurpation.
As
it was, despite the achievements of Brian Boru, the country and its ill-led
people lay open for a more determined invasion by the Normans, which followed
in due course. Brian ultimately failed
in what he had hoped for, but it was a noble failure of the kind that the Irish
admire, and which her poets and annalists have lamented ever since.
18
Alfred Harmsworth,
Lord Northcliffe
1865-1922
The power of the modern press, for both good
and evil, was created by men like the Irish-born Alfred Harmsworth. His chief titles remain to this day, and the
influence he had hoped to exert through them continues. We live today in an era of immediate mass
media largely because of his activities a century ago. His notions transformed the nature of the
modern world.
Alfred
Harmsworth was born in 1865 in the little village of Chapelizod, just outside
Dublin, the setting for JAMES
JOYCE'S [25] book Finnegans Wake.
But that epic of noncommunication had little in common with Harmsworth's
driving ambition to be a great communicator.
His father was a Dublin-born land agent.
Two years after Alfred's birth he moved to London to work as a
barrister. His health broke down when
Alfred was still in his late teens, so Alfred was largely self-educated. He was also the virtual head of a family.
After
leaving school, Alfred Harmsworth began in a small way as the editor of Bicycling
News in Coventry, where many of the bicycles which were then the latest craze
were made. They were a new means of mass
transport, and changed the lives, and courting habits, of a generation. The mobility provided by the bicycle was a
symptom of the age.
It
was an era of mass demand, and Harmsworth conceived the idea of a new kind of
newspaper which would cater to the new class of readers which had been produced
in England by the Education Act of 1870.
By making elementary education compulsory for all throughout the United
Kingdom, the act had given new importance to the printed word.
The
Reform Act of 1867 had extended the franchise to city workers, and that of 1884
to labourers in the countryside. The
working class, of which the working-class Irish were an important element, was
now of political importance. They were
becoming the new masters, and newspaper proprietors were keen to gain their
support. Harmsworth was one of the first
to sense the new drift of things. After
some years as an active freelancer he decided to go into publishing
himself. His entry into publishing in
1888 marks a distinct new phase in the history of the free press.
His
paper was called Answers to Correspondents, and was exactly what it said
it was, a kind of Notes and Queries for the working classes - or
ill-educated upstarts, as his critics said.
(Notes and Queries was a well-known magazine of the academic
classes.) The title was soon shortened
to Answers, but it was the first outpost of an empire. He was joined by his brother Harold (later
Lord Rothermere), and within five years the paper was selling over a million
copies a week. Other papers and
magazines followed, which became the Amalgamated Press, then the largest
publishing group in the world.
In
1894 Harmsworth bought the London Evening News and returned it to
profit, an achievement in itself. Then,
in 1896, along with Kennedy Jones, he launched the Daily Mail, intended
to be a new kind of newspaper. His staff
was instructed to 'explain, simplify, clarify': it was a paper for the busy
person in a modern democracy. Its circulation
rapidly rose from a daily average of 202,000 in its first year to 543,000 at
the end of its third. Yet many grandees
saw it as a vulgarization of government and public life.
The
essential feature of the new journalism was not to inform its readers or to
support reforming causes, but simply to make money. Its sensationalism was in the cause of pure
commercialism, and circulation figures were all that mattered. The large circulations naturally attracted
the even richer reward of large-scale advertising, and the smaller papers
quaked in the advent of these new giants.
A
weekend paper followed called the Sunday Dispatch. Seeing that 'the new woman' was another force
to be reckoned with, Harmsworth began an illustrated paper, the Daily Mirror,
in 1904. Though originally aimed at the
female market, the Daily Mirror quickly established itself as a cheap
picture paper. Finally, in 1908, he
acquired the Times of London, perhaps the most august paper in the
British Empire, whose reputation as 'the Thunderer' was supposed to make the
great of the world quake. This brought
Harmsworth to the heart of the establishment that ruled the United Kingdom and
the expanding British Empire beyond.
Harmsworth
(like newspaper proprietors in the United States) conceived that his keen touch
for what the public wanted gave him the duty to mould their minds. The backing of the Times was an
important influence in bringing about the settlement of the Irish situation, in
1921. Though his own influence on
politicians was now slight, his later years were marked by a megalomania that
resulted in his breakdown and death on 14th August 1922.
Yet
Harmsworth's real influence over history was in the creation of the advertising
practice which is so well developed today.
Special circumstances brought about the expansion of the press in the
1890s: paper, now made of wood pulp, was cheaper, and machinery was better and
faster. Readers, especially businessmen,
wanted a digest of the previous day's news rather than long opinion articles. All these factors came together for Alfred
Harmsworth.
Modern
daily life in America or Europe is inconceivable without the daily paper and
its range of wonderful advertisements for a consumer lifestyle. Whether or not this is a good thing has become
for many social critics a pressing question of the day, for consumerism affects
everything from the health of individuals to the survival of the planet itself.
Harmsworth
was not self-consciously Irish, but he was representative of those countless
millions from his native land who made their way in Britain, America, and
Australia through their pertinacity for commerce. They are not always counted among the
cultural heroes of Ireland, but in their own spheres they have helped to make
the modern world what it is.
Though
his influence over day-to-day politics was not as great as he would have hoped,
Harmsworth created a whole new market for periodicals. This made his fortune, but it also opened the
way for many others. He remains among
the giants of press history.
19
Edmund Rice
1762-1844
In 1993, Pope John Paul II declared Edmund
Rice, the founder of the Christian Brothers and Presentation Brothers, to be a
man of heroic virtue - the first step on the road to his canonization as a
saint. Among all the Irishmen of his day
and since, Edmund Rice has affected more people than can be imagined through
the foundation of these two Irish teaching orders as a force in education
worldwide. 'Educate that you may be free'
was a maxim of the Irish patriot Thomas Davis.
Edmund Rice helped to make this a reality.
He
was born at Westcourt near Callan, in County Kilkenny, and into a
well-connected family on 1st June 1862.
His father was a prosperous farmer, so he did not lack either material
comfort or an education. He received his
early education at a 'hedge school', an informal school often in the open or in
a cottage, for the children of Catholics living in the Callan area. Having gone on to a commercial academy in
1777 at Kilkenny as a preparation for a business career, he went to work in
Waterford in 1778 with his uncle, who died and left him the business. He married Mary Elliott, the daughter of a
Waterford merchant, in 1785. His great
wealth did little to cushion the shock of his wife's death in 1789, when she
fell from her horse while out hunting.
The child she was expecting was born prematurely and disabled.
Her
death was the turning point of Rice's life.
Having made ample provision for his daughter Mary, he now decided to
retire from business and devote himself to charitable work. At first he thought he might go to Europe and
join an enclosed order. One day he
called on his friend, Fr John Power.
While they were talking they heard the shouts of young boys fighting in
the street outside. Power's sister
remarked, 'Well, Mr Rice, you are thinking of burying yourself in a monastery
on the Continent. Will you leave these
poor boys uncared for? Can't you
do something for them?' He realized then
that a truer vocation lay at home, helping his own people.
In
1796 Rice sought permission from Rome to create a religious society which would
provide the poor with free education, and he helped establish a Presentation
convent for girls in Waterford in 1798. With
the approval of the church authorities in Rome and Ireland, he opened a school
for poor boys in Waterford in 1800. Rice
was joined by two companions, and they began to live as a community in rooms
over the school, which was in a converted stable. Then, in 1803, they moved into a
specially-built school and monastery called Mount Sion. The town itself was a prosperous seaport with
glass and other industries, with a thriving trade to Newfoundland, the United
States, and the West Indies.
Nevertheless, in the midst of plenty, it also had its poor.
This
first venture was a success; other schools followed, but the arrangements for
their control were unsatisfactory. Yet,
from the success of the schools sprang a congregation of men (approved by the
pope in 1820) called the Institute of the Brothers of Christian Schools of
Ireland. These men were not priests like
the Jesuits or other teaching orders, but unordained brothers who nevertheless
took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
As Rice saw it, they were there to serve a pressing need. However, they faced opposition from Bishop
Daniel Murray of Cork, which led eventually to the creation of another
congregation, the Presentation Brothers.
In
1829 came Catholic emancipation, which would open up many new opportunities for
young Catholics to advance their careers.
But it had the rather absurd consequence of bringing with it a new penal
law to provide for 'the gradual suppression and final prohibition' of male religious
orders. This did not apply to the
Jesuits and others, but did apply to the brothers. Rice and his colleagues found they were in an
illegal situation, but though there were some difficulties, in the end the
regulation proved a dead letter.
The
introduction of the National School system in 1831 provided another problem for
the brothers. Though some of their
schools at first joined the state system, it proved unappealing and
controversial, and eventually Rice withdrew.
Rather than depend on state funds, the schools survived through the goodwill
of benefactors.
Rice
himself retired in 1838; there were then twenty-two houses of the Christian
Brothers in the British Isles. Among
them was the O'Connell's Schools in north Dublin, founded in 1828, a place of
great influence in the city. His last
years were clouded by further controversy and dissension within the order, as
his successor found it hard to live so closely with the founder. In 1840 Rice made a farewell tour of the
schools he had brought into being. Soon
afterwards his health and mental faculties began to give way.
Edmund
Rice died at Mount Sion in Waterford on 29th August 1844, but since then the
system he inaugurated has spread with the Irish people throughout the
world. The Christian Brothers combined
practical teaching for boys with deep religious influence and a patriotic
fervour which has marked the lives of countless people since. Their discipline was harsh to present-day
eyes, but they gave to generations of Irish people with few advantages in the
world the greatest boon of all - a decent education.
They
also gave nearly all of them a sense of national identity, fostered through
their own specially prepared schoolbooks, which is seen as one of the most
important elements in the creation of modern Ireland. For everyone in public life who had attended
a fashionable Jesuit school there were scores who had gone to the Christian
Brothers. They all left a mark
somewhere.
20
Daniel O'Connell
1775-1847
It may seem strange to place Daniel
O'Connell only in twentieth place in this list, long after other patriots and
public figures. Gladstone called
O'Connell 'the greatest popular leader the world has ever seen'. His influence was certainly great, but it was
also marred. If he had managed to
achieve all he wished or his people wanted, he would have been further up the
scale. But he did not, and that was his
tragedy and Ireland's.
The
creator of the modern Irish democracy sprang from the old Irish rural world of
Kerry. O'Connell's people were not peasants, however, but Catholic landlords in
their own right, whose wealth derived partly from a vigorous smuggling
business.
He
was born near Cahirciveen in August 1775, and was adopted by his uncle Maurice
(Hunting Cap) O'Connell, the head of the family. Daniel spoke Gaelic and was reared in contact
with the realities of rural Irish life.
He knew country people thoroughly, a knowledge that served him well in
later life, both as a lawyer and a political leader.
As
there were then no schools in Ireland for landed Catholics, he was sent to
college abroad at St Omer and Douai in France.
There he was exposed to the bloodier sights of revolutionary France,
which gave him a lifelong loathing of political violence. The school was expelled from France by order
of the government, the boys being jeered by the crowds and forced to wear the
tricoleur of the revolution. O'Connell's
last gesture as the boat sailed out of Calais was to tear the cockade from his
hat and throw it into the sea. His
contemporary WOLFE TONE [11] saw
such violence as the nation's salvation.
O'Connell was wiser.
He
studied law in London at the Lincoln's Inns and read widely in European
literature. His reading took him to the
position of Catholic liberalism and laissez-faire economics, which would remain
his political view to the end of his life.
He was called to the Irish bar in 1798, the year of rebellion in
Ireland, in which Tone took part. The
appalling scenes throughout the island in the wake of that aborted uprising
confirmed his prejudice against revolution.
In
1805, he married his cousin, Mary O'Connell, raising with her a large and
energetic family. He got up at four
o'clock every morning and worked on his papers till ten. With hard work he became a figure of
substance on the southern legal circuit.
Surprisingly for a Catholic, he was also an active Freemason, involved
in lodges in Tralee, Cork, and Dublin.
Dublin,
of which he was later to be lord mayor and over whose main thoroughfare a huge
statue of him now looms, was resolutely controlled by Protestant
interests. In 1815 he bitterly attacked
the corporation, and the exchange of personalities led to him being challenged
to a duel by alderman John D'Esterre.
O'Connell did not have the reputation as a duellist that D'Esterre did,
but in the duel it was D'Esterre who was fatally wounded. The memory of the duel haunted O'Connell for
the rest of his life. He wrote at once
to Mrs D'Esterre, who accepted a pension from O'Connell for her daughter, which
was paid for thirty years, until his death.
He never went to communion again without wearing a white glove on his
right hand, and in passing the D'Esterre house he would raise his hat and pray
for the repose of D'Esterre's soul.
After
1798, the Act of Union had promised Catholic emancipation, but this was
resisted. In 1823 O'Connell began the
Catholic Association, which introduced a new notion. Hitherto politics had been the preserve of
the few, and was financed by them.
O'Connell now proposed a 'Catholic rent'; 'a penny a month, a shilling a
year' was to be the basic contribution.
Backed by the clergy, it yielded £1,000 a week. O'Connell did not become rich out of this,
for it was for party purposes. But in an
age of democracy it introduced the technique by which political parties of all
kinds would fund themselves.
O'Connell's
great work was toward the achievement of the Catholic Relief Bill of 1829. In Ireland this is often seen as a measure
only for Ireland, but of course it affected Catholics in the public life of the
United Kingdom as a whole. Through the
Catholic Association he created the first countrywide political organization,
the forerunner of the modern parliamentary parties. He was elected from Clare in 1828, and
emancipation was conceded the next year.
Leaving
the bar and relying on an annual collection to maintain his family, he turned
to the frustration of repealing, if he could, the Act of Union. But though he was not a separatist in the way
Wolfe Tone and other republicans had been, the fear of an independent Ireland
(such as had flourished briefly under Henry Grattan in the last two decades of
the eighteenth century) was not appealing to British leaders. Through the difficult 1830s he persisted, but
it was only when the Whigs fell from power in 1841 that the repeal movement
began to take on energy. O'Connell was
elected lord mayor of Dublin, and began to hold enormous meetings around the
country, one at Tara attracting three-quarters of a million people. Another was to be held at Clontarf and people
were already gathering when the government banned it. O'Connell, fearful of exposing his unarmed
followers to army guns, called it off.
This loss of nerve, as it seemed to young men around the nation, was a
turning point. O'Connell was arrested
and jailed but soon released. Old, tired,
and ill, he had no resources left; there were rifts in the association and crop
failures. He left Ireland, and after a
last speech in the House of Commons, set out to visit Rome, but died on the way
in Genoa in May 1847,
Balzac
said that O'Connell 'incarnated a whole people', and his European reputation
among liberals was immense. He remains a
controversial figure, but there is no doubting the extraordinary effect he had
(for all his faults) on the Irish people.
That Ireland remains a democracy, which has been unswayed by the further
assaults of revolutionary violence upon its civic institutions, can be seen as
his greatest legacy. In the distracted
decades since his death it is no small one.
21
Arthur Guinness
1725-1803
Ireland was once seen as a purely
agricultural country. Lacking natural
resources other than its green fields, industry seemed a hopeless dream. The figure who above all helped Ireland begin
the transition from field to factory was the first Arthur Guinness, the founder
of the now world-famous Guinness brewery in Dublin. It is one of only a handful of businesses
that have survived in Ireland from the eighteenth century, and as such it has a
historic and influential place in Irish life.
Arthur
Guinness was a Protestant born in Leixlip, though both his ancestry and his
paternity are mysterious. Though the
family later claimed to be descended from an ancient Ulster clan called
Magennis, this was not so. More likely,
they were the descendants of a Cromwellian soldier from Cornwall called
Gennys. It has also been suggested that
Arthur Guinness was the natural son of Dr Arthur Price, Anglican bishop of
Cashel, who lived in Celbridge, employed his 'father' and left Arthur a legacy
of £100, with which he was able to start his first small brewery.
In
September 1756 he leased a brewery in Leixlip, and this was the first stage of
his career. When he was thirty-four he
moved into Dublin to continue his business there. Such were the regulations against Irish exports
at the time that at first he thought he might move to Wales to work, but in the
end he settled in Dublin.
In
1759 he bought a brewery at St James' Gate from another businessman. At first he brewed beer and ale, but in 1768
he began to make porter, a dark beer made with roasted barley, which was named
after the porters in the London markets who had begun to bring the dark brew
into favour. For a long time, until the
middle of the twentieth century, porter was the mainstay of the business. But stout, a heavier, even darker roasted
beer, came to replace it.
By
1799 the dark beers were the sole product of the firm. At this time he began to develop an export
trade to England and elsewhere. Guinness
was a leading figure among Dublin brewers, and was their member on the city
council. A religious man, he founded the
first Protestant Sunday school in Ireland in 1786. When the Orange Order was founded in Dublin,
the toast was drunk with Arthur Guinness' Protestant beer.
In
1803 Arthur died. The business passed to
his son Arthur, and when he died it passed to Benjamin Lee Guinness (who was
made a baronet in 1867). When he died he
was followed by Sir Arthur Guinness, late Lord Ardilaun. His son Edward Guinness, later earl of
Iveagh, broke the immediate connection with Dublin, as he lived largely in
London after 1900.
His
son, the second Lord Iveagh, presided not only over the growth of the business
in Ireland and Britain, but also in the establishment of breweries in Nigeria
and Malaysia. His son, Viscount Elveden,
was killed in the Second World War, and the business passed to his son. It was in this generation that Guinness
became a public company and control passed from the family.
Arthur
Guinness and his descendants are among the more remarkable Irish families of
the last three centuries. The extent of
their success in business surpassed all others at home. They were also generous to Dublin, to
Ireland, and to charities elsewhere.
Their history was a mixed one, however, heavily marked with personal
tragedies, so much so that many thought some kind of curse hung over the more
recent generations, with deaths by suicide, drugs, and driving accidents. Indeed, the social life of the Guinnesses and
the scandals attached to them have kept countless journalists and several
authors busy over the years. (Books by
the novelist Frederic Mullally and Michael Guinness give details not only of
the main branches of the family, but also the multifarious side shoots, which
are as full of human interest as the main ones.
They include respectable bankers, reckless jockeys, and dedicated
missionaries.)
Yet,
in their overall impact on the Irish economy, they have been, until recently,
one of Ireland's most successful companies.
Naturally, this meant personal wealth for the family, but it also meant
prosperity for Dublin.
The
economic value of the firm was and is immense.
The materials were supplied by Irish farmers; the product employed
thousands of Dubliners to make it, and even more thousands of people to sell
and drink it. Though now drunk and made
around the world, Guinness stout is so closely associated with the image of
Ireland as to be safely called its national drink. It has become de rigueur for visiting
dignitaries, whether American presidents or British prime ministers, to be
photographed drinking the stuff - whether they like it or not.
22
Sybil Connolly
1921-1998
For nearly her whole life, Sybil Connolly
was synonymous with Irish high fashion, a genre she could be said to have
invented. Irish people of fashion had
been accustomed to follow the lead of Paris and London. A la mode meant designs and fabrics conceived
and created abroad. She changed that.
Connolly
was brought up in Wales with two sisters.
As a young girl, she was taken by her mother to see Balenciaga, and this
made a great impression on her. Educated
at the Convent of Mercy at Waterford, she joined Bradleys in London as an
apprentice at the age of eighteen, where she studied design. Almost forgotten now, the firm was one of the
big names between the wars in London, and employed some fifty apprentices. The ninety-eight fitting rooms were always
busy with fashionable customers, and once or twice she was even sent to
Buckingham Palace to assist in royal fittings for the imposing Queen Mary.
At
the outbreak of the war, in 1940, she was persuaded by her family to return to
live in Dublin. There she brought her
London experience to Richard Alan, a leading Dublin shop then owned by Jack
Clarke, of which she became a director in 1943.
The firm specialized in tweedy country wear, stylish but far from high
fashion. The owner of the firm gave her
the opportunity to design her own dress line in 1952. One dress, called Bal Masque, created a
stir. She then established her own firm
in 1953.
Success
on an international scale followed.
Three dresses from the first show went to New York to be shown in an
international show which included the likes of Dior, Jacques Fath, and Hardy
Amies. She held a fashion show at
Dunsany Castle (the ancient home of the Plunketts) for American buyers and
fashion writers. Sheila, Lady Dunsany,
was among her first clients, and when she visited the United States with her
husband Lord Dunsany, she wore clothes designed by Sybil Connolly. This collection crossed the Atlantic and was
shown in 'The World of Fashion' exhibition in Boston along with gowns from
other great European couturiers such as Schiaparelli, Patou, and Fath. She was on the cover of Life magazine,
with five pages featuring her inside.
Gabrielle
Williams, long-time fashion correspondent of the Irish Times, records
that her first shows received immediate and wild enthusiasm. 'She had done the unthinkable: transforming
the clothing of the Irish peasant into haute couture, using traditional Irish
fabrics throughout. It had never been
done before.'
Orders
soon followed from the United States, which she often visited. There she met her great friend, the doyenne
of the American fashion world, Eleanor Lambert.
She also made many visits to Australia.
It
was not merely her flair for line and colour, but her desire to use Irish
fabrics, light tweeds, linens, and lace woollen fabrics of other kinds that
made her work distinctive. From the
beginning her work was distinctive and unmistakable.
She
was, it must be admitted, lucky in her connections, for she managed to
establish herself with Bergdofs in New York, and it was her clientele in the
United States that made her famous worldwide, with features on her work in Harper's
Bazaar, Vogue, Time and other magazines.
She made dresses for Jacqueline Kennedy and other society hostesses in
New York, Boston and San Francisco. Mrs
Kennedy was painted wearing a Sybil Connolly dress for her White House
portrait.
Miss
Connolly diversified her range of designs, moving in fabrics and interiors,
becoming in due course a designer for Tiffanys in New York of china, pottery,
and crystal, all made by Irish craftspeople.
Watercolours of floral subjects were converted into chintzes for
Brunschwig and Fils and bed linens for Martex.
She became a popular lecturer in North America, and wrote two books, In
an Irish Garden (of which she was co-author) and In an Irish House. From time to time she served on various
committees involved with the arts, yet at home she lived quietly enough, as her
imagination and energy was concentrated on the American market rather than the
Irish social scene.
However,
she remained clearly identified with Ireland.
Her own magnificent home in Dublin's famous Georgian area, Merrion
Square, made an elegant showroom for her creations, and for several decades
this was her base, where her clients could view her creations, come for advice
and also buy antiques or other items of Irish design.
Her
most influential years were the critical ones of the late 1950s and 1960s. Today, when fashion has broken out of its old
rigid moulds, Sybil Connolly can be seen as a figure who united the best of
both approaches. Her clothes were lovely
in an elegant, classical way, but they were also bold and often daring in the
choice of materials and colours. She
brought Ireland as a fashion centre into the consciousness of the world, and so
opened the way for two generations of other Irish designers who have followed
her, such as Irene Gilbert, Paul Costelloe, John Rocha and Louise Kennedy.
There
was a deep irony here, in that she based her most successful designs on the
clothes and fabrics of the rural Irish, whom poverty had driven out to
America. Yet in her hands they became
romantic, charming, and beautiful.
23
Thomas Davis
1814-1845
For a man with so short a career, Thomas
Osborne Davis has exerted an influence over generations of Irishmen of all
kinds which is surprising. Arthur
Griffith, the leader of the Irish Free State government in 1922, said Davis was
'the prophet I followed throughout my life, the man whose words and teaching I
tried to translate into practice in politics'.
It is to Thomas Davis, a Protestant, that Catholic Ireland owed much of
its political maturity.
He
was born in Mallow, a town in Cork, on 14th October 1814, the posthumous son of
a British army doctor who had died in September. His mother was a Cork woman. With her child she moved to Dublin, taking a
house at 67 Lower Baggot Street, which was Davis' home for the rest of his
life.
He
was an indifferent scholar, and a worse athlete at school. In 1831 he entered Trinity College, in
Dublin, and enjoyed himself there, graduating in 1835. He then set off on a tour of Britain and
Europe. On his return he was called to
the Irish Bar in 1838. On renewing his
studies for the law at Trinity he became auditor of the college historical
society. He joined the Repeal
Association in 1839, which DANIEL
O'CONNELL [20] had created to campaign to repeal the Act of Union, passed
in 1800, which bound Ireland to Great Britain.
He
found much of the inspiration for his own ideas in the Irish past, then only
being opened up by native scholars, and in a famous speech at Trinity College,
then seen as a bastion of British rule, he pleaded for Irish historical studies. His great slogan was 'Educate that you may be
free'. (The annual lectures by Irish
scholars and writers which are broadcast by the Irish public service are named
for him.)
He
was one of the group of young men, impatient as young men often are with their
elders, who banded together to found the Nation newspaper in Dublin in
1842. The paper was the brainchild of
Davis and his friend John Blake Dillon, another barrister. While walking in the Phoenix Park they
discussed the matter with another friend, CHARLES GAVIN DUFFY [82], who agreed to put up the money.
The
first issue appeared on 15th October 1842.
An augury of things to come, it contained a poem by James Clarence
Mangan. It was in its pages that Davis
published much of his poetry and ballads.
Such songs as 'A Nation Once Again' and 'The West's Asleep' are still
sung today. Among the other contributors
was Jane Elgee, later the mother of OSCAR WILDE [97].
The
paper proved to be a great success and soon the Nation had a countrywide
readership. Rather than the gleanings of
a foreign newspaper, shipping news, and parliamentary reports, which is what
most papers of the day contained, the Nation set about a programme of
practical education and liberal enlightenment.
The songs and ballads were published as The Spirit of the Nation
in July 1843 and became an instant bestseller.
This was the first of a series of inexpensive publications on history
and politics called The Library of Ireland.
Thomas
Davis was one of the founders of Young Ireland, a political movement which
would instigate a rebellion in the summer of 1848. But Davis contracted scarlet fever and failed
to throw it off. He died at the age of
thirty-one in his mother's house in Dublin in September 1845, but his ideas
became the shaping inspiration of generations of Irish people.
The
national ideal as espoused by Davis and his friends might have claimed to be an
ancient notion, but was in fact a new and lately fashionable mystique. All across Europe the provinces of the
empires and large states were discovering their 'nationalities', so Young
Ireland had parallels in many other countries.
Though it was an idea hailed with enthusiasm in the nineteenth century,
it was the cause of two world wars in the twentieth.
The
problem was not in the idea of nationality itself - the sense of a shared
heritage and culture. It lay in the idea
that a nation had exclusive claim to one piece of land and was therefore
entitled to drive out anyone who did not share that culture, or to make them
second-class citizens.
Of
course, Davis and his friends were high-minded idealists, but their ideas were
responsible not only for much bloodshed, but eventually for the partition of
Ireland, for their nationalism could leave no room for other aspirations. It has taken Ireland and other countries of
Europe many decades to undo the damage and to find new grounds for allegiance
in the European Union.
Though
Davis was the Protestant son of an Englishman, many of his ideas have proved influential,
especially that of reviving the Irish language and the knowledge of ancient
Irish history and culture. So, too, were
his ideas about education in Ireland, and the need for the widespread use of
the Queen's Colleges. He was also right
about the industrial development of Ireland, expounding the need to use turf
and water as sources of power. An early
death cut off the full development of his ideas, though what he did manage to
say and publish was wonderfully effective.
24
Michael Davitt
1846-1906
The title of one of Davitt's six books, The
Fall of Feudalism in Ireland, encapsulates the work of his life and his
influence in Irish history. He dedicated
himself to making the Irish the owners of Ireland. His career covers the whole spectrum of Irish
politics, from revolutionary action to parliamentary debate.
Davitt
was the son of a small Mayo farmer, born on 25th March 1846, who saw his family
evicted from their smallholding at Straide in 1851 and forced to immigrate to
industrial Lancashire in England. He
went to work at a very early age. At the
age of eleven, in 1857, he lost his right arm while working in a cotton
mill. However, he never let this
disability restrain him in anything he wanted to do. He might have lost his arm, but he was far
from incapacitated.
He
joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1865 - they were strong among the
Irish workers of the north of England - and became an organizing secretary of
the IRB by 1868. The year before, in
February 1867, he was one of the party of Fenians who attempted to seize
Chester Castle, a preliminary to the general Fenian uprising in March.
In
May 1870 he was sentenced to fifteen years in jail with penal servitude for
arms trafficking - which meant breaking stones in Portland. Through the agitation of Isaac Butt and CHARLES PARNELL [5] he was eventually released on ticket
of leave (a form of release conditional on not re-offending) in 1877. He invited Parnell to join the IRB (on the
train from London to St Helen's in Lancashire, of all places), but Parnell
wisely declined.
Davitt
then left for America, and there, with other former Fenians like JOHN DEVOY [43], he worked out the so-called New
Departure policy, which aimed at gaining for Ireland the twin achievements of
self-government and land reform. It
would also give a new direction to many Fenians, taking them from furtive
rebellion to constitutional activity.
Davitt
returned to Ireland in 1878, but he found the IRB still dedicated to
revolutionary action and Parnell equally reluctant to take up the challenge of
land reform. But he brought Parnell to
speak in Westport, and this was the beginning of the Land League, with Parnell
as president, and of the Land War. This
mean political and social turmoil in Ireland during 1879 and the following
year, at a time when agriculture was passing through a difficult period in
Ireland, with crop failures and new famine.
This
ended with the Land Act of 1881, which gave Irish tenants fair rents, fixity of
tenure, and free sale. The league, however,
also wanted tenant ownership, and this was resisted. The leaders were jailed. Davitt was arrested and returned to penal
servitude in 1881, having broken his ticket-of-leave pledge. Released again in May 1882, just after the
Kilmainham Treaty, he was arrested yet again for a seditious speech in 1883.
Davitt's
followers saw his political slogan, 'Land for the People' as a small-farmer
proprietorship, while what Davitt meant was the actual nationalization of the
land. Davitt was influenced by the American
theorist Henry George, but his notion was not popular. Davitt this lost his leading role in
politics, but he continued in public life.
He was elected MP for Meath in 1882, for North Mayo in 1892, and for
South Mayo in 1895.
He
and Parnell saw the Land War as a step on the road to securing home rule, and
ultimately independence. But the fall
and death of Parnell left the Irish party divided and impotent. Davitt was never again to be quite at the
forefront of Irish politics. His role
became that of a sort of freelance nationalist and democratic reformer working
for Irish independence and social justice through constitutional means. He was widely known as an MP throughout
Ireland and Britain and all over the world.
The last twenty-four years of his life were striking and active.
He
went on to visit Australia, writing Life and Progress in Australia
(1898). He was delighted with what he
saw there, and with the country's progressive political developments, so different
from the state of affairs at home. He
left Parliament in 1899. During the Boer
War, like many other Irish people, he identified with the Boer stand, visiting
South Africa and publishing The Boer Fight for Freedom (1902). He was disappointed that the Irish Americans
had not made more of this situation when they might have aided the Boers, some
of Britain's most resolute opponents. He
also made further visits to the United States in 1901 and 1902.
Unlike
many Irish patriots, Davitt was a man of international interests. In The Crime of Kishineff (1903) he
exposed the contemporary massacres of the Jewish population of the capital of
Bessarabia, north of Odessa. He visited
the city on behalf of the Hearst papers in America. The sufferings of the Jews aroused his every
sympathy, and the book, one of the best he wrote, is a passionate plea for
Zionism.
'When
in Palestine, nearly twenty years before,' his first biographer Frank
Sheehy-Skeffington noted, 'he had been greatly impressed by that country, and
imbued with the idea that something should be done to preserve its unique
character ... But when he saw the evils endured by the Russian Jews, he came to
the conclusion that the root of their sufferings was the fact that they
possessed no national home; and the suggestion that they should be allowed to
settle in Palestine, the original home of their race, appealed to him
irresistibly.' His experiences there
made him not only 'a convinced believer in the remedy of Zionism' but an
effective opponent of anti-Semitism in Ireland, Britain, Russia and elsewhere.
His
most famous work, however, is none of the above, but Leaves from a Prison
Journal (1884), a chilling account of his life as a prisoner of the Queen,
which has achieved the status of an Irish classic.
He
died in Dublin on 31st May 1906. Though
he had requested no ceremonies, huge crowds visited the church in Dublin where
his body rested before it was taken to Mayo for burial at Straide. As a model of what an Irish patriot should
be, Davitt comes high on the list, both as a man of courage and a man of
conviction.
25
James Joyce
1882-1941
Along with W.B. YEATS [8], James Joyce has exerted an immense influence on the
development of modern literature both in Europe and America. Though in his own day Ulysses was seen
as a scandalous work, it quickly achieved the status of a modern classic. There can be few writers since who in some
way or another have not been aware of the literary and moral example of James
Joyce.
He
was born in Dublin on 2nd February 1882, the eldest surviving child of a
Corkman, John Stanislaus Joyce, and his wife, formerly May Murray, whose people
came from Longford. At the age of
six-and-a-half he was sent to the Jesuit college at Clongowes Wood. He eventually transferred to Belvedere
College, a day school in Dublin, from where he went on to University College,
but these, too, were run by the Jesuits.
Joyce revolted against his religious training, but to the end his mind
remained imbued with the tenets and traditions of the Catholic church, his mind
working with and reacting to the Thomistic philosophy of his teachers.
He
was a brilliant, indeed precocious, child.
From an early age he was interested in the use of words and the study of
language. At college he studied modern
languages, and later taught English as a foreign language. Through his studies he became widely read not
only in older literatures, but also in contemporary writers such as Henrik
Ibsen.
He
had abandoned a medical career to go and live in Paris when he was summoned
home to the harrowing scenes of his mother's death from cancer in 1903. After an idle, drifting year, he left Ireland
accompanied by Nora Barnacle, a Galway girl who was to be the mother of his two
children. Though he revisited Ireland
briefly in 1909 and 1912, he spent the rest of his life in Europe, first at
Trieste (then the port city of the Austrian Empire), in Switzerland for much of
the First World War, and finally in Paris until he was forced to flee after the
German invasion. He and some of his
family escaped to Switzerland and settled in Zurich, where he died unexpectedly
on 13th January 1941.
Ireland
was a largely rural country in the nineteenth century, and the art of Yeats and
other writers of the Irish literary revival looked to the ancient traditions
and language of the countryside for their inspiration. Not so James Joyce. He was a distinctly urban genius. The city and its people were the perennial
source of his inspiration. But the
culture and history of the city, as he showed in later work, was as rich in
linguistic and mythological overtones and undertones as the west of Ireland,
beloved of Yeats and John Synge.
He
began his career in an unexceptional way as a poet of some very slight lyrical
poems, but these and some later ones are very minor works indeed, and largely
of autobiographical interest. But with Dubliners
(1914), a collection of sharply observed short stories, he instantly
established his place as a distinctive voice in modern Irish literature. The impression which these stories had made
was reinforced by the publication of the deeply autobiographical novel A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), which provided an account of
an Irish-Catholic upbringing which was often unsparing in its painful detail,
but executed with cool precision. The
character based most closely on Joyce himself, Stephen Dedalus, closes the
novel with a passage in his diary as he is about to leave Ireland: 'I go to
fashion in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.'
He
wrote a play, Exiles (1918), which was largely considered a failure and
even a minor work until it was given a triumphant production by Harold Pinter
in London in 1971, which at last restored its tortured intimacies to their proper
place in the Joyce canon.
If
his short stories had been objective, and his novel subjective, these two modes
were combined in his next work. He moved
on to explore his personal urban world, which he developed in Ulysses
(1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939), which represent, respectively, the
hectic day and the dreaming night of a great modern city. Leopold Bloom, the central figure of Ulysses,
represents the moral conscience of the city through his encounters with its
diverse citizens, while Finnegans Wake, through the dreaming hotel
keeper H.C. Earwicker, contains the backward and forward history of the
universe. Neither work is capable of
simple explication. They have to be read
and experienced for themselves.
But
just as important in Ulysses is the figure of Molly Bloom, the wayward
wife of the wandering Leopold. Joyce's
women are of two kinds, the icy virgin and the voluptuous mother goddess. Molly Bloom's rambling thoughts on the verge
of sleep fill out the end of the novel, and are among the most remarkable
impressions of the female psyche achieved by a male writer. They close with her passing into sleep, the
sleep where Mr Earwicker and his family are discovered at the opening of Finnegans
Wake, reminding us that Joyce's books are not separate items, but parts of
one long and continuous creative work.
These
books, especially Ulysses, broke new ground in that they dealt with
human actions in words which many thought broke down the proper amenities of
literature. However, for writers of the
early part of the century, Joyce's linguistic and technical experiments were of
profound consequence.
In
Ireland he was the inspiration of two generations of writers who found their
material in the life of the city, and his influence can be traced in such diverse
figures as Flann O'Brien and J.P. Donleavy.
In
America, where Ulysses was banned, Joyce was seen as the leader of the
vanguard of modern literature. This was
not a comfortable place to be. It
obscured many of the classical features of his writings and the profound debt
which it owed to the medieval thought of the Catholic Church. Though it might seem that Joyce had
renounced, indeed denounced, the God of his fathers, his own mind and
imagination was deeply grained by the history, culture, and mental attitudes of
the Irish people.
26
Jack B. Yeats
1871-1957
Jack Yeats was the brother of the poet WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS [8], and
the son of the painter John Butler Yeats.
Without doubt, he is the greatest Irish painter of the twentieth
century, in a class which includes whatever great masters one would like to
mention. Some would say he is the
greatest Irish painter of all time.
These may seem to be extravagant claims, but his work has these
important distinctions.
Jack
Butler Yeats was born in London on 29th August 1871, while his father was
living there in hopes of making a career as an artist. But though delighted with many aspects of
city life, it was rural Ireland that awakened the boy's imagination when he was
sent home at the age of eight to stay with his grandparents in Sligo, on the
western coast of Ireland. To the end of
his life his drawings and paintings were filled with images and scenes from the
world that he then began to explore.
Though
his education was skimpy, he began studying in art colleges in his teens, and
contributed black-and-white drawings to various papers and magazines in
London. He even did work for the Boy's
Own Paper. For thirty years,
beginning in 1890, he worked as a professional illustrator at a time when
journalism depended on the facile pens of many artists in a way which is no
longer the case. He also worked in
watercolours, of which he had several exhibitions.
He
married Mary Cottenham ('Cottie') White in 1894, but they had no children. In 1897 they moved away from London to live
in rural Devon. At this time he was a
close friend of the poet John Masefield, who shared his delight in ships,
pirates, and the sea. In 1910 he returned
to live in Ireland - he had never felt fully at home in England. At first he and his wife lived in Wicklow,
but later moved back into Dublin, where Yeats had a studio on fashionable
Fitzwilliam Square, high up in an old Georgian mansion.
He
had travelled in the west of Ireland with John Synge, illustrating the
playwright's articles for the Manchester Guardian with drawings of life
in the west of Ireland. He returned to
these scenes in his book of 1912, actually called Life in the West of
Ireland. He began painting in oils,
at first as a continuation of the close observational style of his earlier
work, but over the years moved into a looser, more mythopoetic style. This growth as an artist was much like that
of his brother the poet, who moved from the lyrical to the great poems of his
old age. Jack Yeats was among the
significant artists who exhibited at the influential show of international
modern art held in 1913 at the New York Armoury.
His
imagination was much engaged by the troubles, and he was far more radical in
his politics than his brother. Jack painted
several scenes of incidents in the troubles, such as Bachelor's Walk - In
Memory and Communicating with the Prisoners, which have become icons
of Irish history. Though his poet
brother supported the Free State and accepted office as a senator, Jack Yeats'
sympathies were with the republicans, and images of heroic defeat which echo
events in the civil war can be found in his later paintings.
Living
quietly in Dublin, he exhibited from time to time. His painting, however, continued to mature
and to become technically looser and more expressionist, with a vivid sense of
colour while beginning to employ a personal symbolism drawn from the life he
loved in the west.
He
was also a writer, but his plays and novels are largely of interest for what
they reveal about the painter rather than for themselves, though all share the
beguiling tenderness for past scenes that makes his work so attractive to
many. His inspiration, he once said, for
both his paintings and writings was 'affection, wide, devious, and sometimes,
handsome'.
He
was brought to the attention of the wider world by the critical writings of Sir
Kenneth Clark, then the director of the National Gallery in London. 'Colour,' he wrote, 'is Yeats' element in
which he dives and splashes with the shameless abandon of a porpoise.' In 1945 a major exhibition of his works was
held at the National Gallery, and another in Dublin. From then he held regular, almost annual
exhibitions in both cities.
Jack
Yeats' friend, the Irish poet Thomas MacGreevy, thought that the painter was
the equal of Titian and Rembrandt: 'If universality of outlook and the last
refinements of artistic technique were attainable for a religious painter in
the little republic of Venice, and for a bourgeois painter in the little republic
of Holland in the seventeenth century, why should they not be attainable for an
artist of the life of the people in the little almost-republic of Ireland in
the twentieth? Universality of outlook
and technical mastery of art are both a question of the capacity to understand,
the capacity that is the second gift of the Holy Ghost, that was the one gift
Solomon asked of the Lord. I am of the
opinion that the Lord bestowed the capacity to understand on Jack Yeats.'
His
work has often been compared with the poetry of his brother, but as an
expression of the Irish imagination he had far more in common with JAMES JOYCE [25].
Both share an early realism, a mature and humane middle style based on
city life, and a final late stage in which the words of Finnegans Wake,
so complex in their symbolic allusiveness, parallel late paintings such as Men
of Destiny. Joyce even owned a Jack
Yeats picture of the River Liffey. Yet,
oddly, despite the fame he achieved in his lifetime, his paintings remained at
a price which enabled many to buy them from his exhibitions.
Yeats
died in Dublin in 1957, but since his death his reputation has grown
continually, and his paintings now achieve astronomical prices which would have
come as a great shock to such an essentially shy and retiring man. His paintings have an intense literary
quality, unusual for a twentieth-century artist, which makes them accessible to
a wide audience. They are a pageant of
the spiritual odyssey of the Irish people over the last two centuries, the full
depths of which are only now coming to be appreciated. In time he will, indeed, be ranked with
Titian and Rembrandt.
27
Archbishop Thomas Croke
1823-1902
Every year the finals of the All Ireland
Gaelic games of hurling and football are held in Croke Park in Dublin. The most important dates in the sports
calendar of Ireland, they draw crowds not only from Ireland but from abroad,
especially from the United States.
The
stadium, now one of the most up-to-date in the country, belongs to the Gaelic
Athletic Association, and is named after Archbishop Thomas Croke, the great
nineteenth-century archbishop of Cashel, who promoted Gaelic games as a
patriotic movement, and so helped to create in a large way the popular national
identity of modern Ireland.
Thomas
William Croke was born in Castlecor, in County Cork, in January 1823. His father William was a Catholic, but his
mother, formerly Isabelle Plummer, was a Protestant, though she converted to
her husband's religion four years before she died. Such mixed marriages were by no means
uncommon in nineteenth-century Ireland, especially in the southern counties
where intolerance was less than in Ulster.
But most Protestants in the south were Anglicans, and hence closer to
their Catholic neighbours than the Calvinistic Presbyterians of the north in
many aspects of their beliefs.
Croke
studied for the priesthood at the Irish College in Paris between 1840 and
1844. He spent a final year, 1847, in
Rome before being ordained. He taught
for a time at the diocesan college in Carlow, and then again in Paris until
1849. Being abroad, he was away from the
devastation caused by the famine, especially in parts of Cork. Yet no-one of any sensitivity could be
unaware of its effect on the Irish character.
During the post-famine years of 1849 to 1858 he did mission work in the
Diocese of Cloyne, in the south of Cork.
He was made the first president of St Colman's College in Fermoy, where
one of his pupils for a brief time was the father-to-be of JAMES JOYCE [25].
He was then parish priest of Doneraile in County Cork from 1865 to 1870.
Croke
attended the Vatican Council as theologian to Bishop William Keane of
Cloyne. This was one of the defining
events for Catholics in the nineteenth century, leading as it did to the definition
of papal infallibility. But for Croke it
had a surprising outcome. From there he
was sent, as so many priests of the day were, from Ireland to New Zealand. The Irish community in New Zealand was an
active one, but not as significant as that in Australia. His stay lasted only five years, as on a
visit to Ireland in 1875 he was elevated to the archdiocese of Cashel and Emly,
one of the most important in the country, covering as it did not only the
fertile areas of Munster, but also the impoverished hill country in the Galtee
Mountains.
Croke,
conscious of these contrasts in Irish life, was a keen advocate of education,
and everywhere he went he promoted the building of churches and schools. Like most Irish clergy he supported the
temperance movement, which had begun in Cork in the 1830s, but he was also an
enthusiast for the Gaelic League and the revival of the Irish language.
These
activities as a pastor were as nothing compared to his national work. In his younger days he had been a follower of
DANIEL O'CONNELL [20] in
his campaign for the repeal of the Act of Union. After O'Connell's death he supported the
Young Ireland movement, that had ended in the abortive uprising of 1848, which
took place in Munster. That unhappy
failure did not prevent him from being a supporter of the Irish Tenant League
in the 1850s at a time when there was no real Irish party, merely a group of
Irish MPs with nationalist interests.
However,
when Croke became archbishop in 1875, a distinctive political movement was
emerging under Isaac Butt, and he also became an advocate of home rule. Butt was followed by the more aggressive CHARLES PARNELL [5], and the Land League. Though these were looked upon with dismay by
more conservative figures like CARDINAL PAUL CULLEN [44], Croke happily embraced them.
Croke
was a nationalist to the core. This
inevitably got him into trouble with the government. The British, through influential English
Catholics, attempted to poison Rome's opinion of him. In 1887 he wrote an unwise letter to the main
nationalist paper the Freeman's Journal, criticizing the government's
use of Irish taxes to fund the repression by the police of those who paid
them. This seemed to have overstepped
the mark, and to be encouraging Catholics to not pay legal taxes, so he was
denounced in Rome. However, his friends
Archbishop William Walsh of Dublin (himself a nationalist) and Cardinal Henry
Edward Manning of Westminster, smoothed the troubled waters.
Croke
was as dismayed, as many other followers of the Irish party were, by the
shocking revelations of the private life of Parnell and Mrs O'Shea, during the
divorce action naming Parnell, brought against her by her husband, Captain
O'Shea, between 1890 and 1891. The Irish
party split when the Irish bishops announced that they could no longer support
such a public sinner. Disillusioned by
party politics, he slowly withdrew from that arena.
But
his enthusiasm for the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) remained. Started in the early 1880s by Michael Cusack and
some other enthusiasts at a time when both rugby and soccer were being
organized on a more professional basis, the aim was to bring the benefits of
healthy sport and competition to the parishes of Ireland. Rugby and soccer were denounced as 'foreign' games,
played only, it was claimed, by the garrison and 'Castle Catholics'. Gaelic football and hurling, which had been
played since time immemorial, were provided with new rules and a league. The GAA was organized everywhere, and soon
had a large following.
Many
of its members shared Croke's disillusionment with the Irish Party and the
older politics. In time, of course, it
formed a parish-by-parish ready-made organization for Irish republicans to
infiltrate in order to promote a new wave of revolution in the early twentieth
century. Croke remained a great heroic
figure to the movement, which now has world-wide links. The promotion of sport has been one of the
great social movements of modern Ireland; its influence has been for the most
part wonderfully beneficial, and is indissolubly linked with the name of
Archbishop Croke.
However,
Croke died at Thurles on 22nd July 1902, and did not live to see the emergence
of the new nation exactly a century after he was born.
28
Cyrus Hall McCormick
1809-1884
History (in the schoolbook sense of the
word) seems to be dominated by political figures who create their own
self-importance. It is often forgotten
what profounder social changes are brought about in the human condition by
those who push forward not political but technical change. Their influence is what really creates and
changes the world.
Americans
in the nineteenth century felt themselves less bound by conventional ideas than
Europeans did, and this was especially true of inventors. The McCormick dynasty, Ulstermen by origin,
are among these. Robert McCormick
(1870-1846) was a farmer dependent on labour, which was often in short supply,
so he contrived many labour-saving devices for work on the farm and fields. In 1809 he invented a reaping machine, which
he improved by degrees over the years, incorporating into it a horizontal reel
and vibrating sickle. Though he was a
pioneer of mechanized farming and popularized harvesting machines throughout
the United States, he was not the first.
The
first application of steam to the plough was patented by the Irish landlord
Richard Lovell Edgeworth (the father of the novelist MARIA EDGEWORTH [91]), but this was not developed until
1852. A reaping machine had been
invented by the Rev. Mr Bell of Carmylie, Forfarshire. But invention was one thing, development for
widespread use another. In the opening
up of the American continent, the nation was faced with what seemed to be limitless
acres of arable land on the western prairies.
As the founder of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Corporation, which
was influential in the introduction of the harvesting machine throughout the
United States, Robert McCormick was the true pioneer of industrialized
agriculture.
His
son was Cyrus Hall McCormick, who inherited his father's interests. He was born in Walnut Grove, Rockbridge
County, Virginia - a name redolent of the older forms of agriculture. In 1831, at the age of twenty-two, he took up
the challenge that had defeated his father, to construct a really workable grain-cutting
machine. His reaper, a development of
his father's earlier and cruder machine, was first used in the late harvest of
1831 and patented in 1834. It
transformed the nature of agriculture and the provision of food to the great
urban centres, which were emerging in America and Europe in the nineteenth
century.
It
should be remembered that in 1820, the population of the United States was 12,
866, 020, centred in Moorefield, West Virginia.
By 1880 the population, now demographically centred in Ohio, had grown
to 50, 155, 783; the state of New York alone had a population of five
million. By the turn of the century the
national population had grown to nearly seventy-six million. It was to feed these teeming masses that
mass-produced food was needed.
The
Irish writer JONATHAN SWIFT [34] had
remarked that whoever could make two ears of corn grow where only one grew
before deserved better of mankind and did a more essential service to his
country 'than the whole race of politicians put together'. Growing ears of corn was one thing;
harvesting them for the market, as the McCormicks did, was just as important a
service to humanity.
Further
years perfected the harvesting machine.
By 1843 McCormick was able to sell the rights, and with the capital set
up a factory in Chicago in 1847. One of
his new machines was exhibited at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 -
perhaps the most important showcase of new ideas ever held. The Times of London, the leading
British paper of the day, said that if McCormick's machine fulfilled its
promise, it alone was worth the cost of the whole exhibition.
Like
most inventors and manufacturers, McCormick was beset by legal problems:
inventors are notoriously litigious.
There were other inventors in the field as well, such as Obed Hussey,
who announced his invention of a reaping machine in 1834. Yet the factory flourished. During the Civil War, McCormick's machines
helped to make the Union victory possible by ensuring a food supply to the
armies in the field.
The
firm expanded in the years after the Civil War, when the western regions of
both the United States and Canada began to develop. New markets were found in Europe and
elsewhere. In 1871 the family, having
lived in Washington, New York and Europe, settled permanently in Chicago. Cyrus was awarded many prizes and
distinctions. In 1879 the Academy of
Sciences in France elected him a corresponding member for having done more for
agriculture than any other living man.
Cyrus
Sr died in Chicago on May 13th, 1884, and was in turn succeeded by his son,
Cyrus Hall McCormick II (1859-1936), then only twenty-four. A serious-minded young man, he was already
well versed in the details of both the machines and the business. He settled all the outstanding legal problems
with fellow inventors, and began a new stage in the development of the firm.
In
1902 the firm became the International Harvester Company, one of the largest
corporations in the world. Inevitably,
the size and near monopoly of the firm attracted the attention of federal
trust-busters, but the company eventually came out of this confrontation
intact. Cyrus II ceased the day-to-day
direction of the firm in 1918, and died in June 1936.
As
befitted their Ulster origins, the McCormicks were Presbyterians and gave
freely to many church and philanthropic causes, especially the Young Men's
Christian Association (YMCA). Yet their
inventions more profoundly shaped western life than any charity. They literally helped put bread on the tables
of the industrial masses for a century or more, and their enterprise lies
behind the extraordinary agribusinesses of today. While such people as Cyrus Hall McCormick may
not always appear in history books, the influence they have exerted over the
shape and structure of modern life is profound.
But mere inventors do not often receive their just honours.
29
Van Morrison
1945-
Van Morrison was born George Ivan Morrison
in Belfast city, Northern Ireland, on 31st August 1945. The imaginative roots of the musical developments
of his later career owe much to the unique nature of that post-war, industrial
city. During WWII American soldiers had
been based in Northern Ireland and had made a great impression, reinforcing in
local minds the style, dash, and vivacity of the American way of life.
His
musical interests owed a great deal to his father George's interest in American
music, especially jazz and the blues, of which he owned a huge collection of
imported records. His mother Violet too
was an opera and jazz singer, and his early tastes were formed by their
repertoire. The young Van was reared to
the sound of recorded American music of a kind the national radio did not
provide in those days.
Largely
self-taught, he learned the saxophone and the guitar while still a
schoolboy. In 1957, he joined a skiffle
group, the epitome of do-it-yourself garage music, called Deannie Sands and The
Javelins, playing in local clubs. He
left school at fifteen, learnt the tenor sax, and became a member of the
Monarchs, a showband that played largely for Saturday night dances in small
halls. The showbands then provided a
touch of glamour and glitz, but would be swept away by the relentless rise of
American rock and roll.
The
band moved away from the usual fare of the showband scene towards rhythm &
blues and soul. With this group Van
toured Scotland, England and American army bases in Germany. While in Germany he was offered and played
the part of a jazz musician in a film.
The Monarchs recorded one single before going their own ways. By now Morrison had developed his talents not
only as a singer, but also as saxophonist and harmonica player, the two
instruments that later gave many of his compositions their unique sound.
Back
in Belfast he opened a music club called the R&B Club and together with
another Belfast group he formed a band called Them in 1964, which played in the
club. Them toured in England in 1965,
and had two hits, one of which was 'Here Comes the Night'. Already Morrison had developed his active
dislike of the pop music and showbiz hyperbole, a distaste that still
lasts. These singles were produced by
Bert Berns, a leading American record producer.
In
1966 Morrison was invited to tour Europe with a group of musicians that
included not only Bo Diddley, but also Little Walter, from whom he learnt a
great deal about harmonica technique. In
May 1966 Them toured in the USA, part of that British 'invasion' that included
The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. They
issued an album, Them Again, with a classic interpretation of Bob
Dylan's 'It's All over Now Baby Blue'.
While in California they played with the emerging group the Doors, who
later recorded a version of Morrison's 'Gloria'.
Back
in Europe Van found himself worn out by the constant work and travel and simply
went back to Belfast, where he tried to recoup himself, writing and planning
what to do next. The band broke up in
1967, but Morrison decided to go back to Boston, where he worked again under
the influence of the producer Bert Berns.
From this period came 'Brown Eyed Girl', and the follow-up album Blowin'
Your Mind, which appeared without his sanction. Though material on this album was mixed and
hurriedly issued, one of the songs was 'T.B. Sheets' in which the free flowing
imagery of so many later songs made its first appearance. This hectic period came to an end with Bert
Berns' death.
During
a year of occasional live sessions, Van set to work on a new album, Astral
Weeks, with the support of a set of talented jazz musicians. The album is now recognized as an important
landmark in modern popular music. Moondance
in 1969 confirmed the range of his talent, establishing elements that would
persist in his work over the following years.
Several others followed, including the disappointing Hard Nose the
Highway, though this was succeeded by the mesmeric It's Too Late to Stop
Now, and by Veedon Fleece in 1974.
Then followed a period of silence in the mid 1970s, the result perhaps
of the mixed reactions to these albums.
Curiously,
though his music and singing has its special intensities, Van Morrison never
quite made it into the class of mega-rock star.
Perhaps this was as well, for his unique style comes from somewhere
else, in the social and literary background of Ireland. After his prolonged absence from the scene he
returned to recording in 1977 with A Period of Transition.
Van
returned to Europe, at first to live in London, later still moving back to
Ireland for long sojourns. As a young
man in Belfast it had been the attractions of American music that had set his
course. Actually living in America
turned his mind back to Ireland and Irish music. The influence of this could be heard on Veedon
Fleece (1974). Morrison never again
lost touch with his Irish background, and from 1974 onwards there was a
conscious combination of Irish elements into his work, in the choice of
instruments such as the uilleann pipes and the use of Irish artists such as the
Chieftains, with whom he recorded Irish Heartbeat in 1988, and in
playing the Belfast Opera House. His
later albums began to reveal a sense of almost Celtic mysticism, with religious
and literary references much in evidence.
From 1974 quasi-religious themes entered his songs, with evocations of
Romantic poets such as Blake. Some
critics attempted to link him with the cult of Scientology, denied in the title
of his 1986 album, No Guru, No Method, No Teacher.
His
song 'Days Like These' has become part of the Ulster landscape, and was used by
the government to support advertisement for the peace process. But that is the sort of thing that affects
one's standing in the eyes of a younger audience, some of whom dismissed
anything after It's Too Late to Stop Now, and speak with greater
reverence of another Belfast group of the period, the Undertones. Such is the price of fame in the music
business, however great a name a singer makes.
Van
Morrison's varied adaptations of music from the disparate sources of modern
rock and roll, as well as the literary dimensions added to later albums, make
an absorbing body of work, one of the most distinctive produced by an Irish
musician. His varied output is well
represented on his 1998 double CD album The Philosopher's Stone - an
allusion to that mystical substance sought by the alchemists of old that was
supposed to turn the dross of daily life into the gold of art. For his steady admirers, retained through a
sustained stream of regular and appreciated albums, Van Morrison remains a
unique and influential artist, a distinctive and exhilarating performer, an
enigmatic icon of Irish music.
30
Richard Croker
1841-1922
On 1st July 1907, the city council of
Dublin elected and admitted Richard Wellsted Croker as the twenty-first
honorary burgess of the city. To a list
that included Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and CHARLES PARNELL [5], Richard Croker, the former head of Tammany Hall and a byword
for civic corruption, made a curious addition.
If the life of the Irish American was city centred, men like Richard
'Boss' Croker were at the heart of it, as the architects of Irish-American
urban politics.
Croker
was born just before the famine in Clonakilty in west Cork in the south of
Ireland on 23rd November 1841. Though in
later years he allowed his followers the impression that he came from an
impoverished peasant background, this was not true. Impoverished his father, Eyre Coote Croker,
may have been, but he came from landed gentry of largely English
extraction. The family, in which there
were nine children, immigrated to New York City when Richard was three. He was educated there in public schools,
beginning his working life at the age of thirteen.
His
first job was as a machinist, but he was big and strong, and in his late teens
was a fighter with a reputation on the Upper East Side as leader of the Fourth
Avenue Tunnel Gang. All his life he
retained the outlook and morality of the street gang.
He
soon entered local politics, disguising his past. He even became a Catholic to forward his
political ambitions. He joined Tammany
Hall, then led by its notorious 'Boss' William M. Tweed, and soon had the
ambition to lead it himself. Croker
became an alderman in 1868, putting his foot on the first rung of city
promotion. He was later appointed
coroner of New York City at a salary of $25,000 a year.
He
succeeded 'Honest John' Kelly, a leading Democrat, as Tammany leader in 1866
and held power for seventeen years. He
added to his positions the equally lucrative ones of fire commissioner and city
chamberlain. Croker had opposed Tweed,
and claimed that his only ambition was to save a great city from that crook's
clutches. However the investigations
into the corruption of local politics made life more difficult for him in New
York. He was already tainted by a rumour
that he had murdered a man. Certainly,
on election day in 1874 an opponent of Croker's was shot and killed. Though Croker later claimed that one of his
henchmen had done the deed, some thought that 'Boss' Croker himself was
responsible.
Through
a system of local patronage, he creamed off the spoils from a great city, allowing,
however, his henchmen their share. The
investigations of the Lexow Committee marked the beginning of a move against
Tammany. In 1894, to put some distance
between himself and the law, he retired to England, though he later moved to
Clencairn, a large mansion outside Dublin.
There
he was the greatest of the 'returned Yanks', as people in Ireland called their
countrymen who returned laden with money from the New World. His income had always been something of a
mystery. The British tax authorities, a
more rigid organization than he was used to dealing with in New York, estimated
his income in 1900 at $100,000, and fixed his tax at $5,000. He adopted the style and manners of the
country squires from whom he sprang, breeding a famous Derby winner, Orby, in
1907 - the first Irish horse to win that classic race. From the chief herald of Ireland he gained a
grant of a coat of arms; given his true family background this posed little
problem. The New York crook had become
the complete Irish gentleman.
When
his first wife, from whom he had long been estranged, died in 1914, he married
Beula Benton Edmondson, a princess of the Cherokee Nation from Oklahoma, who
was many years younger. This alliance led
to disagreements with his children, which continued after his death in 1922,
resulting in a spectacular law case heard in Dublin at which it was alleged
that the beautiful Beula, far from being an Indian princess, was actually the
wife of an Italian plumber. The citizens
of Dublin queued around the block for weeks to hear the evidence.
For
Irish people, 'Boss' Croker was an extraordinary personality, though silent and
reserved. His funeral at the end of
April 1922, when his remains were buried in the grounds of Glencairn, was
attended by leading members of the new Irish government with an honour guard of
Irish Free State soldiers.
Undoubtedly
'Boss' Croker was corrupt to the core, but from the point of view of his Irish
constituents, he was the man who made the system, so long controlled by
American Protestants, serve the needs of the new Catholic Irish. The whole basis of the Democratic Party in
the great cities of the northeast rested on this arrangement. In that he served the interests of his own
community well, Richard Wellsted Croker's influence was immense. What was unforgivable in the eyes of many
others was the corruption of the civic institutions of a great city which
accompanied it.
31
Joseph R. McCarthy
1908-1957
The senator who led the campaign to root
out Reds from the public service and other areas of American life was in his
day seen as a dangerous threat to American civil liberties. This remains true, but there were other
dimensions to the senator from Wisconsin.
He remains perhaps the most controversial Irish-American politician of
recent times, having given his name to a particular brand of free-wheeling
vitriolic political activity.
Joe
McCarthy was born in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, on 14th November 1908. His family were Catholics of mixed Irish and
German origins. His early education was
in the public school system, at Underhill County School rather than the parish
system. Having worked on a farm, he
started his own chicken farm. Then, at
nineteen, he moved to Manawa, enrolled in Little Wolf High School, paying his
way by working in a grocery store and ushering in a theatre. Ambitious, he was also bright, for he
completed the four-year-school course in one.
In
1930 he entered Marquette University to study engineering, but changed to the
law school, graduating in 1935. He was
then in private practice as lawyer until he was elected circuit court judge of
the tenth district in 1939, and he remained a judge until his election to the
US Senate in 1945. Between 1942 and 1944
he fought with the US Marines in the South Pacific.
The
war had been won by a grand alliance of the western democracies and the Soviet
Union. After the way and the occupation
of Eastern Europe, and the establishment of Communist regimes in the countries
under the control of the Soviets, this alliance changed into a cold war. An iron curtain, in Winston Churchill's
famous phrase, divided Europe.
In
1946 McCarthy was elected to the Senate, and served there until his death. In his first year as senator, McCarthy took
up what he saw as the challenge of the penetration of members of the Communist
party into the government and other areas of American life. In this he had the support of a section of
the Republican Party, led by Robert A. Taft.
In 1950, in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, he levelled the charge
that the Communist presence in the State Department was influencing American
foreign policy. This was followed up by
a hearing of the Tydings Committee.
The
House Un-American Activities Committee, also active at this date, gave rise to
alarming notions, though President Harry Truman dismissed these as red
herrings. Yet some two million federal
employees were investigated, 526 of whom resigned and 98 were dismissed. In 1948 twelve Communists were tried for
attempting to overthrow the government.
Under
Truman, McCarthy attacked George C. Marshall, then secretary of state and
creator of the Marshall Plan, to aid the recovery of post-war Europe - a plan
deeply resented by many conservative Americans.
Others
such as Asian adviser Owen Lattimore, who had been involved in policy in the
Far East, were also suspect. A narrow
test of loyalty was espoused that focused on attitudes to the alliance with the
Soviets during the Second World War.
In
1950, the beginning of the Korean War and the conviction of Alger Hiss, the
country was alive to the Communist menace.
Alger Hiss, a State department official, was accused by Whittaker
Chambers of passing documents to communist spies or agents, which he
denied. Hiss was convicted, not of
espionage, but of perjury, and the matter remains deeply controversial to this
day. J. Edgar Hoover announced that
there were fifty-five thousand party members in the United States and some five
hundred thousand sympathizers and fellow-travellers, that is those
non-communists whose radical sympathies for the poor and oppressed in America
were traded upon by communists for the advantage of the party. HUAC had records of 750,000 'subversives'.
The
election of President Dwight D. Eisenhower (who took office in 1953) led to
increased government resistance to McCarthy and his methods. On 2nd January a report by a Senate
privileges committee on the activities of the senator found that some had been 'motivated
by self-interest'. McCarthy's
investigation of the army, conducted in hearings from 23rd April to 17th June
1954, came at a time when he was already losing influence in Washington and the
Eisenhower administration was following a line more or less like that of
Truman. These hearings were televised,
and the counsel for the army, John G. Adams, dramatically defeated McCarthy's
charges.
These
hearings led the army to charge that McCarthy and his counsel Roy Cohn had
attempted to obtain special privileges of leave for a committee aide (with
whom, it seems, Cohn was sexually involved) who had been drafted into the army
as a private. This was controversial and
unpleasant material, though not fully aired at the time.
Eventually
the Republican Party distanced itself from McCarthy, and he was censured by the
Senate. The censure resolution was
passed on 30th July 1954, and in a vote of a special session of the Senate on
2nd December he was condemned for his conduct in chairing the Senate
committees.
His
early death in Washington, D.C., on 2nd May 1957 - he was only forty-eight -
did not, however, end the right-wing attack on either American liberal policies
or Communists in places of influence.
McCarthy had achieved a large following among conservatives of all
religions and had a large Irish-Catholic following. His influence was immense and remained so.
McCarthy's
extravagant style reflected the intense patriotism of an Irish American deeply
anxious to prove his loyalty and that of his part of the community by focusing
on the disloyalty of another one. A
generation before, much of what he said about Communist America had been said
about the Irish themselves as agents of papal power attempting to subvert
American democracy. That had not been
true, and for many, Senator McCarthy's claims also belong to what has been
characterized as 'the paranoid style' of American politics.
With
the fall of the Soviet Union and further investigations by historians, the
actual extent of Communist influence has become clear. Paranoid though McCarthy was, the American
Communist party had nevertheless infiltrated many areas of American life as a
matter of policy.
Yet
even today, when communism has disappeared as a force in international
politics, and so long after his death, Joseph Raymond McCarthy remains a model
of a particular kind of American patriot for a significant number of
Americans. As the journalist Nicholas
von Hoffman points out, he introduced into public life a notion that all men
were suspect, and therefore engendered a culture of total security at all
levels of public and private life that has become the great obsession of modern
times. This shows, adds von Hoffman,
that 'the view championed by Joe [McCarthy], that the world is a perilous place
penetrated by treachery and poised to attack, has gained wide acceptance'.
32
Robert Boyle
1627-1691
Ireland is not always thought of as the
cradle of scientists, perhaps because science at its purest has little in the
way of national character. However, Robert
Boyle is a figure which any country would be proud of. 'Boyle's Law', as we are taught at school, is
a key scientific fact. He was
interesting as both a philosopher and a physicist and chemist. His contemporaries were aware of his curious
position, as a friendly Irish epitaph described him as the 'Father of Chemistry
and the Uncle of the Earl of Cork'.
He
was born on 25th January 1627, at Lismore Castle in County Waterford, in the
south of Ireland, the seventh son of the famous first earl of Cork, an
important figure in the plantation of Munster.
He was a serious child with a taste for study which impressed his
father. He was sent to Eton College at
the age of eight, and there (according to a fragment of autobiography that he
left unpublished) a chance reading of Quintus Curtius 'conjured up in me that
unsatisfied appetite for knowledge that is yet as greedy as when it was first
raised'.
After
four years study at Eton he returned home to be taught by tutors, and was then
sent around Europe with his French tutor, becoming fluent in French and
Italian, then the languages of culture.
In Florence in the winter of 1641 to 1642 he came into contact with the
new ideas of Galileo. These travels were
made difficult because the money sent by his father was stolen, and the party
had to return to England slowly by a roundabout route. In 1644 he returned to live in Dorset, in the
south of England, on an estate he had inherited from his father.
Boyle
was one of what was called 'the invisible college' of scientists and
philosophers, which was to become the Royal Society, and though he was still in
his late teens he acquired an impulse toward investigation that lasted his
lifetime. He visited Ireland in 1652 to
deal with his estates, but found it 'a barbarous country, where chemical
spirits were so misunderstood, and chemical instruments unprocurable, that it
was hard to have any Hermetic thoughts in it'.
Instead, he turned to anatomy, Ireland having a ready supply of dead
bodies in those days. On returning to
England in 1654 he settled in Oxford, where he lived until moving finally to
London in 1668 to be nearer the centre of things in the capital.
He
erected a laboratory where he and his assistants worked, and created a small
scientific society around him. In 1659
he invented, with the help of Robert Hooke, the 'machina Boyleana', the first
air pump, which he used in experiments that led up to the propounding of
Boyle's Law.
His
first experiments with the properties of air were published in 1660. In 1661 he published what came to be seen as
his magnum opus, The Skeptical Chymist ... Touching the Experiments Whereby
Vulgar Spagirists Are Wont to Endeavour to Evince Their Salt, Sulphur, and
Mercy to the True Principles of Things.
In this work he overthrew the Aristotelian concept of the four elements
of earth, fire, water, and air. In
proposing the modern idea of an element as a substance which cannot be
decomposed into simpler ones, he had grasped the idea on which all modern
chemistry was later founded.
His
interests covered many areas, including the possibility of transmuting base
metals into gold. But he is remembered
for proving that air is a material substance, having weight, its volume being
inversely proportional to its pressure.
This relationship is Boyle's Law, which he defined and which Edme
Mariotte later proved. This is still
among the first basic facts of science that all students learn at school.
He
also made observations on the effect of a change in atmospheric pressure on the
boiling point of water, collected many new facts in relation to magnetism and
electricity, and explained the action of heat as a 'brisk' agitation of
particles.
But
it was as a chemist that Boyle excelled.
He was not a theorist, but an experimenter, and as such, the first
modern chemist. He distinguished
elements, mixtures, and compounds, prepared phosphorus (though he did not
discover it), collected hydrogen in a vessel over water (though he called it
'air generated de novo') and inquired into the forms of crystals as an
indicator of their chemical structures.
He introduced the vegetable colour tests for acidity and alkalinity, the
construction of hermetically sealed thermometers, and the use of freezing
mixtures.
He
was also a deeply devout Christian, and learned Hebrew, Syrian, and Greek, the
better to understand the scriptures. He
used a large part of his personal fortune in the propagation of the faith, and
in his will left a sum of money to support the annual Boyle Lectures, eight
sermons a year by a minister 'for proving the Christian religion against
Atheists, Theists, Pagans, Jews, and Mohammedans, not descending to any
controversies among Christians themselves'.
As
a philosopher he thought that God had made the world in the beginning and that
His 'general concourse' was continually needed to maintain its being and
motion. This was a return in part to
earlier Hindu and Islamic ideas of continuous creation and recreation, but also
expressed the physical aspect of the Christian doctrine of immanence.
Boyle
died in London on 31st December 1691. He
was thought by all to be a man of fine character, and was very popular among
his colleagues. His reputation was an
international one, and he was always at the service of visitors to the Royal
Society. But his fame will rest on his
invention of 'the experimental method' by which all scientific research now
proceeds.
33
Hugh O'Neill
1550-1616
The departure in 1607 of Hugh O'Neill and
other leaders from Ireland - what later came to be called the Flight of the Earls,
was seen by many as the end of the old Gaelic order and any chance of its
restoration. If a date is needed for the
start of modern Irish history, with its saga of war, famine, and exile, this
might be it.
O'Neill's
career was a hectic one, in which all the vacillations of Ireland under the
Tudors were displayed. With his
departure and eventual death in Rome, an epoch had been reached. If he had succeeded in what he had hoped, he
might have made himself a king of a united Ireland (fulfilling that old dream
of Brian Boru), and with Spanish aid driven the English out of Ireland. But this was not to be.
Hugh
O'Neill was the son of Matthew O'Neill, himself the natural son of Conn, the
first earl of Tyrone. In Irish eyes the
earl was 'The O'Neill', the English feudal title that had been bestowed on him
by the queen on the surrender and regranting of his (or rather his people's)
land. In 1559 he was taken by Sir Henry
Sidney, the viceroy, to his castle and Ludlow, converted to Anglicanism, and
taught English manners. In 1562 Huge
succeeded his brother Brian as baron of Dungannon.
The
English historian William Camden described O'Neill at this time as a man 'whose
industry was great, his mind large and fit for the weightiest businesses ... he
had much knowledge in military affairs and a profound, dissembling heart, so as
many deemed him born either for the great good or ill of his country'.
O'Neill
returned to Ireland in 1568. Having been
educated in both Ireland and England, he approximated more the English idea of
a nobleman than an Irish chieftain.
Unlike his relative Shane O'Neill, who was cast more in the old Gaelic
mould, Hugh tried to avoid direct conflict with the powerful English. Indeed, he helped them in their campaign
between 1574 and 1587. He was rewarded
for his supposed loyalty by Queen Elizabeth, who made him earl of Tyrone in his
own right in 1587,
But
all was not well. In 1588 he aided the
survivors of the Spanish Armada that were cast up in Donegal. In 1593 he revived for himself the ancient
Irish title of 'The O'Neill', the use of which had been banned under English
law. He was thought to be in league with
Hugh Roe O'Donnell and Hugh Maguire when they rebelled in 1594. Accused of treason, he finally joined their
revolt in 1595.
He
proved to be a great asset to the Irish forces through his skills as a diplomat
and a soldier. He was cool, farsighted,
and calculating. Allowed a certain
number of men under arms, he changed them frequently, so that a large number of
his clansmen were trained in modern arms.
Claiming he needed the metal to roof his castles, he had bought large
quantities of lead and saved it for bullets.
His careful planning and cautious strategy provided the Irish with the
natural leader they have long lacked. He
also sought the help of both Scotland and Spain against the common English
enemy.
The
true campaign began in 1596, and O'Neill led the Irish to a great victory at
the Yellow Ford (on 15th August 1598).
But the English began to strike back.
Anxious for Spanish aid, O'Neill made an interim peace with the Earl of
Essex. But Lord Mountjoy deployed his
army, and O'Neill and his allies were cornered at Kinsale, where he was
defeated after rashly choosing to attack.
The
war went on until O'Neill was pardoned and his land holdings were confirmed by
James I. But it was obvious which way
the tide was running. English
interference continued. Soon O'Neill had
had enough of it all. On 14th September
1607, O'Neill, together with Rory O'Donnell, left Ireland, sailing from
Rathmullen on the shores of Lough Swilly with an entourage of a hundred or so
of the Ulster nobility. Landing in Le
Havre, they made their way to Flanders, and from there to Rome. Outlawed by the Irish parliament, the last of
his estates were now confiscated and planted.
The
Flight of the Earls left the way open for a final solution, so to speak, of the
Irish problem. The lands of O'Neill and
O'Donnell to the west of Lough Neagh were confiscated and planted with settlers
from England and Scotland. Derry became
Londonderry, having been granted to companies in the City of London. This plantation might have worked if it had
been wholesale, but the policy was not consistently applied, and so there
remained enough of the old stock of the Irish to foment further troubles in
later centuries. W.B. YEATS [8] spoke of the Flight of the Earls as one of 'Four bells - four
deep, tragic notes in Irish history'.
Though the Gaelic ways lingered on here and there, they had been badly
damaged by Mountjoy's campaign. The old
rulers never again came anywhere near achieving the success they had had under
O'Neill at the battle of the Yellow Ford.
O'Neill
heard little of this. The last years of
his life were passed in melancholy and idleness in Rome as a pensioner of the
pope and the king of Spain. He died
there on 20th July 1616.
34
Jonathan Swift
1667-1745
Though the author of Gulliver's Travels
is often spoken of as an English writer, he was a Dubliner by birth and death. Though he enjoys universal fame as a writer,
Jonathan Swift also has a more local reputation as an Irish patriot of an
unusual kind.
The
posthumous child of an English father, he was born on 30th November 1667, in a
little square in the shadow of Dublin Castle.
He was educated at Kilkenny College and at Trinity College in Dublin,
where his training was strictly Anglican.
Though he enjoyed literature at the university, he did not care for
either philosophy or the formalities of rhetoric. He was no student, and his degree was
specially granted to him. In 1689,
having sought his mother's advice, he was appointed secretary to Sir William
Temple (whom some have suggested was his real father) at Moor Park near London. There he stayed between 1689 and 1694.
Having
been ordained in the Church of Ireland in 1695, he was given a living in a
small Ulster prebend at Kilroot, outside Belfast. He did not find this agreeable, as the
parishes were rundown and the local people mostly dour Presbyterians. He went home to Moor Park, where, among other
duties, he had to tutor Esther Johnson (or Stella, as he calls her in his
writings), the daughter of a companion of Temple's sister. It has been supposed (again, by a few) that
Stella was also Temple's child, Swift's half-sister.
At
this time he wrote his earliest poems anonymously, as well as The Battle of
the Books, which deals with the superiority of the classics over the modern
writers, and A Tale of a Tub, a satirical account of the consequences of
the Reformation and Christian divisions.
In January 1699 Sir William Temple died, so Swift had to seek another
place. In 1700 he was given another
clerical living in Ireland, at Laracor in Meath. He took a doctorate degree at Trinity College
in 1701. For a while he divided his time
between Dublin, where he was a social success, and London, where he gained a
reputation as a political writer. A
natural conservative, he took the Tory side in politics, satirizing the
dominant Whigs (who had been in power since the fall of James II). His life in the heat of English politics is
described in his Journal to Stella.
She too had gone to live in Dublin after their patron died.
When
the Tories came to power Swift had hoped for a bishopric, but the queen's advisors
influenced her to refuse him. However,
he was given the deanery of St Patrick's in Dublin. The return of his political foes, the Whigs,
ensured there would be no further advancement in the Anglican Church for
him. Initially he saw himself as exiled
in Dublin from the real life in London, and with no hope of an English
bishopric.
When
he returned to Dublin, Swift was followed there by Esther van Homrigh - the
Vanessa of his later writings - whose family had been prominent in the life of
the city. She was infatuated with him,
and he was unable to untangle himself from her.
Swift's relationships with Stella and Vanessa remain shadowy and
mysterious, though the notion that Swift and Stella were half siblings might go
a long way in explaining odd aspects of his behaviour. It may be that he was married to Stella
secretly in 1716, and that he might have had sexual relations with Vanessa, but
none of this is certain.
To
many of his contemporaries he appeared as what one writer called a 'scabrous,
mad misanthrope, faithless priest, and heartless lover'. The modern judgement would be different. Now we are more aware of the literary and
rhetorical devices by which he masked his own personality with that of others,
from Isaac Bickerstaff to Capt. Lemuel Gulliver.
It
was in Ireland that Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels, published
anonymously in 1726. Though this became,
in part, a children's favourite, the book itself has a very adult theme, for it
is filled with Swift's loathing of mankind.
In
Dublin and his own journeys around the countryside, Swift became conscious of
the condition of Ireland itself. The
English politician grew into the Irish patriot.
The Ireland he was defending was, of course, largely that of English
settlement, but Ireland was changing at the time, and the defence of Ireland's
interests was to the benefit of all.
His
satirical writings, such as his essay 'A Modest Proposal' (1729), in which an
'economist' (of a kind we still have with us!) argues that the surplus babies of
Ireland should be fattened for eating, concerned the abuses of English rule in
Ireland. In the Drapier Letters
(1724-25) he defended the economic interests of Ireland against the
exploitation of English adventurers, in particular William Wood of Wolverhampton,
who had been granted coinage rights.
Swift
remained in touch with his friends in England, but his mind slowly gave
way. He was not insane, but it is now
thought he suffered from Ménières disease, which began to affect him about
1736. In 1742 he retreated into
depression, was declared legally insane, and was confined to a home, where he
died on 19th October 1745.
Swift
left all he owned to found St Patrick's Hospital for the mentally ill, an
institution which survives to this day.
At midnight he was buried in his cathedral, beside Stella. His epitaph, in his own words, is on a plaque
above the spot:
Here lies Jonathan Swift, Dean
of this Cathedral.
Go traveller and imitate if
you can
his brave struggle for human
liberty.
That, at least, is the record of the
patriotic dean who was admired by the Dubliners he lived among. Swift was among those who began the process
of creating the identity of modern Ireland as a country with mixed cultures.
For
the world at large, Gulliver's Travels remains one of the great books of
all time. Swift's satiric anger has been
a major influence on writers since. In
clear and limpid language, he lashed out not only at the passing abuses of the
day, but also those perennial failings of human nature which he scorned.
35
George Berkeley
1685-1753
George Berkeley was one of the most
important and interesting philosophers which Ireland has produced, though his
career ranged from England to America.
He was born at Dysart Castle near Kilkenny on 12th March 1685, and educated
at Trinity College. He became a fellow
in 1701, and taught at the university as a fellow and tutor until 1713.
His
main studies were of Descartes and Newton, at a time when Locke's Essay on
Human Understanding (published in 1609) was already influencing
philosophical investigations. From 1705
to 1706, he kept his Commonplace Book (published in 1871) which reveals
the general trend of his thinking. In
this he first outlined his new principle of philosophy that matter, substance,
and cause have no meaning apart from the conscious spirit of man.
His
first books were Arithmetica and Miscellanea Mathematica (both in
1707), and in 1709 he took holy orders.
He made a wide impression in 1709 with the publication of An Essay
Towards a New Theory of Vision. The
idealistic ideas in this were developed further in A Treatise Concerning the
Principles of Human Knowledge (1710).
In 1711 he published A Discourse on Passive Obedience.
JONATHAN SWIFT [34], then at the height of his London
years, introduced Berkeley to the Court and into the intellectual circles of
the city. Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonus (1713) was a popular
outline of his ideas. He told Dr Samuel
Johnson, 'I had no inclination to trouble the world with large volumes. What I have [published] was rather a view to
giving hints to thinking men who have leisure and curiosity to go to the bottom
of things and pursue them in their own minds.'
Though
worked out before he was thirty, his chief ideas were expressed in these
publications. As a philosopher, Berkeley
attempted to solve problems Locke left unresolved. It was Locke's work that suggested to
Berkeley the central principle that nothing existed apart from perception (esse
est percipi, 'to be is to be perceived').
He said that this principle was intuitively obvious and manifest common
sense. Dr Johnson, a bluff,
down-to-earth personality, thought that kicking a stone - what in the world
could be a more densely material object? - was proof enough that Berkeley's
extreme idealism was absurd, and other contemporary people of common sense
would have agreed with him.
Hume
claimed that Berkeley was attempting to show the non-existence of matter, and
that everything in the universe was merely idea.
Berkeley
argued that everything that is seen, felt, or heard, or in any way observed is
a real being, that it actually exists, while a thing not perceived cannot be
known, and without being known (that is perceived by a mind) cannot exist. The only intelligible cause of all phenomena
is mind. Pain and pleasure cannot exist
apart from their being felt.
Between
1714 and 1721 Berkeley travelled in Europe as the chaplain to Lord
Peterborough, and then as the tutor to Bishop Ashe's son, but his mind was as
much on the countries he had left behind, as shown by the publication of a
further essay on the state of the nation, which he blamed on the decline of
religion and public spirit. The collapse
of the South Sea Bubble, a huge investment scheme that swept the country like a
mania and proved a disaster for investors of all kinds, had just taken place
(with an effect rather like the stock market crash in New York in 1929).
Berkeley
was appointed dean of Dromore in 1722, and dean of Derry in 1724. He then became involved in a scheme to create
a college in Bermuda. This was intended
to be an intellectual base from which the American continents could be
Christianized and brought within the pale of civilization. Through Robert Walpole, the prime minister,
he received a promise of a government grant of £20,000 for this, and in 1728
left for the Americas.
However,
he never reached Bermuda, but spent three years (1728-1731) in the colony of
Rhode Island. There he made a
contribution to the growth of American academic life and philosophy. One of his innovations was the introduction
of the seminar as a teaching device. At
last he realized that his grant (as is so often the way with government promises)
would not be forthcoming.
His
Alciphron, or The Minute Philosopher, a defence of religion against
deists and others, was written in Rhode Island and published in London
(1733). A supplement, Visual Language,
showing the immediate present providence of a deity, appeared the next year.
Berkeley
returned to Ireland, where he was appointed bishop of Cloyne, in Cork, in 1734,
through the favouritism of Queen Caroline.
This found him on the verge of a controversy concerning mysteries, that
is, the spiritual, transcendent elements in religion, which rationalists
denied. This arose from a passage in Alciphron. Some free-thinking mathematicians (influenced
perhaps by JOHN TOLAND [38] and
the ancestors of many of today's scientists) held that mysteries were fatal to
the moral authority of religion. The
Analyst (1734) was Berkeley's answer, and The Querist, which dealt
with matters of social economic policy, followed serially from 1735 to 1737.
He
turned his mind to other inventions, maths, the social problems of Ireland, and
questions of religious toleration. In
1739 the diocese of Cloyne was greatly affected by famine and the associated
cholera fever. From his experiences in
America, Berkeley had been much taken with the medicinal properties of tar
water. (Tar water was a preparation of
pine resin, which was steeped in water for several weeks, strained, and then
taken with milk three times a day as a remedy for all kinds of
illnessess.) His experiences set off a
train of thought. In his mind the
properties of tar water became associated with the studies of Plato, the
neo-platonists, and other mystics which he had been following for years. Tar water, as a universal healer, a panacea
in the literal sense, suggested to him the final interpretation of the
universe.
Siris,
published in 1744, was ostensibly about the benefits of tar water, but its
pages contain some of Berkeley's most profound metaphysical speculations. Though it was to be George Berkeley's last
word on philosophy, it was also a most curious book on metaphysics. But his high flights of speculation were
obscured by the controversy that followed on just whether or not tar water was
a panacea.
He
resigned in 1752 due to ill health, and left Ireland to live in the calmer
academic atmosphere of Oxford, where he died in January 1753. Berkeley's idealism was very influential on
both Hume and Kant, but it was not perhaps until the middle of the nineteenth
century that his ideas began to receive more sympathetic treatment. Since then they have had a critical influence
on the development of philosophy in both Europe and America. Among his other Irish admirers was W.B. YEATS [8], who saw Berkeley as an exemplar of that Anglo-Irish
tradition which he elevated to one of the great cultures of the world.
36
U2
late twentieth century
Though Ireland had long been famous for
its poetry and music, these had nearly always taken traditional forms. With the advent of the rock group U2 - a sly
allusion to the famous American high-flying spy plane - the country of W.B. YEATS [8] and JAMES JOYCE [25]
produced a new phenomenon, a world-famous rock band. Completely breaking with what had been
thought of as traditional Irish music, they achieved world-wide fame, and their
style of music and approach to life has proved immensely influential. Their tours, especially of North America,
have brought a new meaning to the words Irish Culture.
The
band consists of four Dublin musicians: Bono, or Paul Hewson, born 10th May 1960; the Edge, or David Evans, born 8th
August 1961, at Barking in Essex; Adam Clayton, born 13th March at Chinnor in
Oxfordshire, England; and Larry Mullen, born in Dublin, 1st October 1960. They were the band's vocals, guitar, bass,
and drums, respectively.
They
met at school on the north side of Dublin, in one of the rapidly expanding
suburbs that represented the new Ireland of today, often rough, raw, and
Americanised. In 1976 Larry Mullen
pinned a note to the notice board of Mount Temple School, a formerly Protestant
school that had been turned into a co-educational comprehensive. He was looking for others to form a rock
band, and out of the responses chose three.
Initially they played versions of the Rolling Stones and Beach Boys as a
group called Feedback, then they called themselves Hype. Their final name, U2, came in 1978.
Hewson
was supposed to play guitar. 'I was such
a lousy guitar player,' he told a local magazine in 1982, 'that one day they
broke it to me that maybe I should sign instead. I had tried before but found I had no voice
at all. I remember the day I found I
could sing. I said: "Oh, that's how
you do it."'
For
the boys, rock would be 'about sweat, about the real world'. In 1978 they won a competition in Limerick
and were taken up by manager Paul McGuinness.
A signing with CBS records followed and a song from their first album, Out
of Control, in 1979 rose rapidly to number one on the Irish charts. This was followed the next year by another
number one, Another Day. Oddly,
CBS did not want to take them on in the United Kingdom, so they signed with the
more innovative Island Records. The
first singles for their new company made little impact, but early in 1980
readers of the Irish music magazine Hot Press voted U2 the number one
band in five categories. They had
arrived.
The
first Island album, Boy, released in October 1980, was produced by Steve
Lillywhite. It drew on all of the
feeling of adolescence in a new style which listeners found both moving and
inspired. But U2 was not studio-bound. They went on tour to support the album, and
the effects of Bono's singing and the tight playing of the others showed them
to be an outstanding new band.
In
November 1980 the band toured the east coast of America - always important
these days in building a universal reputation.
Their second album, October, released in October 1981, had an
impassioned religious feeling powerfully evangelical in its effect. A song inspired by the Polish Solidarity
movement, which had begun to crack open the Communist colossus, was called 'New
Year's Day'. The critical welcome
continued with War (February 1983), on which the song 'Sunday Bloody
Sunday' reflected the same theme of religion and politics. Under a Blood Red Sky reached number
two on the UK album chart.
The
band was now on its way to joining the all-time greats of rock music. Playing with Bob Dylan at Slane Castle, an
Irish venue, united the old guard with the young Turks of rock. As Ireland at this time seemed to be bubbling
with talent, the band set up its own company to bring some of it on.
The
growth of their own talent was seen on Unforgettable Fire (1984) which
won a place on the US charts. The ideals
of the band were supported by their appearance at Live Aid and at Self-Aid, a
similar charity event in Ireland. They
were also involved with Amnesty International.
In these concerns they carried many of their young followers with them,
as posters of U2 and Amnesty International crowded bedroom walls and school
dormitories. A world tour brought them
further audiences outside of their core areas.
The Joshua Tree, released in March 1987, elevated U2 into being
one of the most important bands in the world.
The album rose to the top of the charts in the United Kingdom and the
United States. Two more albums brought
the decade to a close.
Inevitably
in a competitive world, other bands now began to make their appearance. Though U2 continued to grow and mature, its
music had to be seen in this wider musical context. The band commanded immense attention from
Irish commentators and writers. Whatever
the further development of its music may be, it had an authentic voice that had
come out of the contemporary culture of Ireland. Its concerns of spiritual quest, social
commitment, and awareness of the real dangers lurking in the modern world were
those of its admirers. Where in the past
an important Irish poet, at the age of forty-five, might have accumulated a few
thousand constant readers, the lyrics of a rock band such as U2 reach countless
millions. They moved those millions with
the same power which Irish poetry has always had, but in a new context which
transcended the narrow borders of national identity and leaked into the realm
of universal humanity.
There
is little doubt of the stature which the band achieved on the Irish scene. This had great benefit not only for raising the
mood of the young population as a whole, but in demonstrating to other
ambitious bands that no heights were barred to Irish people of talent. They could challenge the world and triumph. But to triumph with material as deeply felt,
and as resonant of centuries of spirituality, was another great
achievement. Though now an international
supergroup deeply committed to selected causes, for U2 rock is still 'about
sweat, about the real world'.
37
James Larkin
1876-1947
Along with JAMES CONNOLLY [16], James Larkin was one of the leading figures in the
development of both the trade union movement and democratic socialism in
Ireland. But where Connolly was more of
a thinker, Larkin was a man of action, a street rebel.
One
of his biographers, the historian Emmet Larkin, wrote: 'His accomplishment was
unique and representative - unique partly because it was representative. His rich and complex personality allowed him
to harmonize the three most dissonant themes of his day. For he claimed to be at one and the same time
a Socialist, a Nationalist, and a Roman Catholic.' His career was representative because it
'mirrored to a larger extent than did that of his equally colourful comrades
[Eugene Debbs, Tom Mann, and James Connolly] those attributes that were the
hallmark of this generation of working-class leaders'.
He
was born in the slums of Liverpool, the great English seaport, in 1876 to poor
Irish parents. As a child he witnessed
not only the grim poverty of the families around him, but also had to watch the
death of his father from tuberculosis.
He had hardly any schooling, but was sent away to spend at least part of
his childhood with his grandparents in Ulster.
He returned to Liverpool at the age of nine, and began his own working
life at the age of eleven.
He
spent some time at sea - he stowed away in search of adventure; and then became
a labourer on the Liverpool docks. When
not yet seventeen he joined the Liverpool branch of the Independent Labour
Party. He rose from docker to foreman. He lost his job for attempting to organize his
men and joined the National Union of Dockers in 1901. In 1905, after a bitter strike at his firm,
he was appointed an organizer for the union.
In
Belfast in 1907, Larkin began the blacking of goods - that is the refusal to
handle any goods which had not been made or transported by unionized
labour. However, he fell out with the
union and went to Dublin, where in 1909 he set up his own union, the Irish
Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU).
Perhaps
no other city had such scenes of poverty as Dublin had then. He strove to improve not only working
conditions, but workers' lives by widening their cultural horizons. His union grew rapidly, and the inevitable
clash with employers came to a head in 1913.
Though the workers were forced back to work, their rights had been
established. Larkin had drawn a line in
the sand.
The
epic days of the long summer of 1913 have entered into the folklore of Dublin -
the hardship caused by the employers' lockout, the riots and deaths on
O'Connell Street, the clash with the clerical authorities over the sending of
workers' children to England to be fed.
For six months, twenty thousand men and women, on whom another eighty
thousand depended for their bread and shelter, were locked out because they
would not sign the pledge of the Employers Organization not to join the
TGWU. For trade unionists throughout
Britain it became the battlefront of the day.
Larkin won support in England and America, and even Lenin, then lurking
in Zurich, had to admire Larkin's revolutionary zeal.
Larkin
then went to America, where he lectured and wrote about the causes close to
him. But socialism was already in
decline. As in Europe, its failure to
resist the First World War had shaken its whole edifice. And there were others problems for
Larkin. He was out of the country during
the crucial years of the troubles, when Ireland took new directions he could
play no part in. In 1920 he was
sentenced to ten years and jailed in Sing Sing for attempting to overthrow the
US government at a time when the United States was passing through its first
'Red scare'. He explained his point of
view as best he could: '[A]t an early age, I took my mind to this question of
the age - why are the many poor? It was
true to me. I don't know whether the
light of God or the light of humanity or the light of my own intelligence
brought it to me, but it came to me like a flash. The thing is wrong because the basis of
society is wrong.'
He
became the focus of an international campaign to free him from prison. In 1923 he was pardoned and released and
returned to Ireland, but once again he fell out with his union, and left it to
set up the Workers Union of Ireland.
Elected to the Dáil (the Irish national assembly) and the Dublin city
council, he continued his struggle for workers' rights.
For
Larkin and the labour movement these were often difficult years. He played an important part in the making of
the new Ireland, where the needs of the economy were tempered with the equally
important needs of the workers. When he
died on 30th January 1947, his funeral was a huge one even by the standards of
political Dublin.
'It
is hard to believe this great man is dead,' the playwright SEAN O'CASEY [55], himself the product of the Dublin
slums, wrote on the day of Larkin's death, 'for all thoughts and all activities
surged in the soul of this labour leader, for he combined within himself the
imagination of the artist, with the fire and determination of a leader of a
downtrodden class.'
Yet
for all his admirers said, there was an element of the maverick in Larkin. His critics could admit that he was a
powerful and charismatic figure, but he was also demagogic, abrasive, and all
too often divisive. His support for the
International and the Communist movements made him anathema to many, but to
others closer to the streets of Dublin he was a giant among men, a prophet of a
better life for all. He remains a
complex but powerfully influential figure, a legend among Irish leaders.
38
John Toland
1670-1722
The Irish hold themselves to be a deeply
religious people, but that religion can often take curious forms. None were more so than the career of the
theologian John Toland, the man who gave the concept of 'free thinker' to the world.
Born
into a Catholic family at Inishowen near Derry on 30th November 1670, Janus
Junius Toland, as he was christened, became a zealous Protestant in 1686 at the
age of sixteen. He was educated at
Glasgow University, where he received his master's degree in 1690. In 1692 Daniel Williams' Presbyterian
congregation sent Toland to Leyden (where he studied with the famous scholar of
the day, Fredrich Spanheim). He had
plans to become a non-Conformist minister.
Losing his faith, he settled to be simply a nonconformist.
By
1694 Toland was at Oxford. In 1696 he
anonymously published Christianity Not Mysterious, or, A Treatise Shewing
That There Is Nothing in the Gospels Contrary to Reason, Nor Above It; and That
No Christian Doctrine Can Be Properly Called a Mystery, a book which
aroused immense controversy. Toland
wished to show that true religion (deism, in fact), and natural morality were
practically synonymous. Any notions
which transcended reason, such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, and Grace, ought
to be discarded as mere superstitions.
What he sought was a religion (or more properly an ethical position) 'as
old as creation' and not dependent on church views. Though these were scandalous notions in the
seventeenth century, such ideas can be found today among advanced theologians
of many Christian outlooks.
He
acknowledged the book as his own on its second edition the same year, and was
prosecuted for irreligion by the grand jury of Middlesex, which covered part of
London. He escaped to Dublin in 1697,
but found further troubles in his native land.
He was attacked by churchmen and others, and in September the Irish
parliament ordered his book burned by the common hangman for being godless and
subversive of morals. An order for his
arrest was made. In a country rife with
persecution, Toland was soon driven back to England.
The
term free thinker was used for the first time in history by William
Molyneaux of Dublin in a letter to John Locke in 1679, in which he calls Toland
'a candid free thinker'. (Molyneaux's
own book, The Case of Ireland Stated, advocating Irish independence, had
also been burned by the hangman in Dublin.)
Fifteen years later JONATHAN
SWIFT [34] referred to 'atheists, libertines, despisers of religion,
that is to say, all those who usually pass under the name Free Thinker'. It is an achievement of the first order to
bring a new concept and term like this into use.
Toland
later wrote A Life of Milton, which proved almost as controversial. In the manner of so many outspoken young men
since, intent on shocking their elders, he referred to 'the numerous
suppositious pieces under the name of Christ and His apostles and other great
persons'. He was accused of doubting the
authentic nature of the New Testament, and replied to these charges in a book
entitled Amyntor, or a Defence of Milton's Life, which attempted to open
up the whole question of the canon of scripture and how it had come down to
us. This is still a vexing question in
this day, but in Toland's time a critic of biblical texts put his life in
danger.
Toland
was in Hanover in 1701 as part of a government embassy, and was received by the
Electress Sophia on account of his recent book Vindicius Liberius
(1702), a defence of the Hanoverian succession which, of course, affected the
throne of England. In this book he
admitted that Christianity Not Mysterious had been 'a youthful
indiscretion'. In 1703 he was again in
Hanover and in Berlin, where he was received at court once more.
His
travels to Hanover and Prussia brought him into contact with German
philosophers and contributed in a small way to the emergence of the German
enlightenment. In a book which resulted
from these visits, Letters to Serena, he attacked Spinoza and
anticipated some of the ideas of modern materialism. In 1707 he also published his An Account
of the Courts of Prussia and Hanover, which remains an important source for
the career of Frederick the Great.
The
rest of his life was lived in some obscurity.
He seems to have been a spy for the British government from time to
time. He continued to publish on
politics and religion, and in 1709 was in the Hague, where he published Adeisidaemon
and Origines Judaicae. Another
theological work appeared in 1718 called Nazerenus, or Jewish, Gentile, and
Mahometan Christianity. In this he
claimed that the early Christians of the first century had been Jewish
Christians following the old Mosaic law.
They were the later Nazarenes (or Ebionites) and Elkesaites, condemned
by the church as heretics. To Toland's
mind it was nicely ironic that the organized church should persecute true
Christians, so to speak.
His
Pantheisticon (1720) introduced the term pantheism, that is an
identification of the deity with the universe, of God and Nature, and it
outlined a society of pantheists. This
caused as much offence to the pious as his first book. To his critics, it seemed that he had reduced
God to the material universe and to have made him little more than a mechanical
law of nature.
Toland
lived these years in great poverty, sinking to the position of a semi-political
hack writer, dependent on the patronage of Harley, Shaftesbury, and
others. He died, pen in hand, in Putney
outside London on 11th March 1722.
In
1726 a collection of his writings was published, which included his History
of the Druids, a key work in the development of ideas about the ancient
past of Ireland. He asserted that the
Druids (about whom little is known) were, like him, pantheistic
philosophers. This view is maintained to
this day by the Druid orders. One of
these, the British Circle of the Universal Bond, claims to descend (through the
poet William Blake) from a group organized by Toland in 1717 at a meeting on
Primrose Hill north of London. This
curious claim may have arisen from a group related to the Socratic Society,
which Toland wrote about and which he seems to have been organizing at the time
of his death.
Toland
was one of the most influential Irish philosophers; deism as a notion begins
with him in 1696, largely a consequence of the application of the Cartesian
method to religion. The
eighteenth-century encyclopediaists in France, the German enlightenment, and
the religious debate in England continued his ideas and developed them as an increasingly
rationalist approach to religion.
Deism
was never a mass movement, though its influence can be seen in the Unitarian
church. Toland's ideas were effective
elsewhere, for deism easily moves away from any kind of theism and into
atheism. He certainly contributed to the
beginning of the decline of religion as a social force.
His
ideas about pantheism can be traced through some of the poets and writers of
the Romantic Movement, and even among some like Wordsworth, who were
Christians. Again, like deism and free
thought, John Toland had brought a new idea before the world. He can therefore be seen as an important
source of many New Age notions which remain current to this day.
39
Tony O'Reilly
1936-
Today, Tony O'Reilly is widely seen as one
of the most remarkable Irishmen of his generation. His extraordinary career, not just as chief
executive officer of H.J. Heinz in Pittsburgh, but as the owner of a host of
companies around the world, makes him one of the most notable Irishmen of all
time.
Born
in Dublin during the difficult years of the Depression, he had to work hard for
success from early on. He makes no
secret of his illegitimate birth, but it seems to have given him a drive that
many of his Irish contemporaries lacked.
He never rested. He was educated
by the Jesuits at Belvedere, JAMES JOYCE'S [25] old
school. There he was a success, in the
classroom and on the sports field. At
college he played rugby for Ireland on the international level.
His
first job was with the Irish Sugar Company, a state-owned and directed firm which
was organized along old-fashioned, semi-socialist lines. The Irish economy was not very developed
then, and the Irish Sugar Company was among one of the country's larger
employers. In an economy where
agriculture was a core business, the Irish Sugar Company was important.
O'Reilly
took over from a former military man who had run the business with an eye on
the best interests of the small farmers who supplied the sugar beet to the
factories. O'Reilly promoted new
management techniques and introduced new products. In these early days his greatest coup was the
rebranding of Irish butter as Kerrygold for the British and European markets,
and it remains one of the most successful operations of its kind.
Some
of these ventures were done in association with Heinz, and in 1969, when
O'Reilly was only thirty-three, he was head hunted for their London
operations. Four years later he was made
president of the company, and in 1979 he was named CEO of Heinz.
O'Reilly
had undoubted business flair, but this was based not only on his great
intelligence but also his immense charm.
'He has a million stories and tells them well,' according to Richard M.
Cyert, a fellow director at Heinz. 'When
you sit down to lunch with him, it's like going to a movie theatre for
entertainment.' O'Reilly's native-Irish
wit was only part of his character. He
could also make hard decisions.
He
proved to be a charismatic leader of the company, among the most important in
the United States even then, and he quickly revived its fortunes through the
1980s. Investors on Wall Street were
impressed. He cut expenses, improved
Heinz's market share, and expanded sales worldwide. Profits rose rapidly. The total shareholder returns averaged 31 per
cent a year in the 1980s, which was twice the average stock index of 16.8 per
cent. He had his reward, for during the
first six years of the 1990s he earned $182.9 million, placing him near the top
of the world's highest paid executives.
But this was by no means all there was to Tony O'Reilly.
Though
he spent much of his time in the United States, he remained an Irishman. Through an Irish investment company called
Fitzwilton he bought into such international household names as Wedgewood
China. He bought up the Irish
Independent newspapers, Ireland's largest newspaper chain with several
national and provincial titles.
Newspaper interests were also developed in Australia and South
Africa. He owns the Sowetan, one
of the most influential papers among black readers in the politically sensitive
townships around Johannesburg. This
makes him an important player in the public life of South Africa, struggling to
overcome the disadvantages of decades of apartheid.
In
Ireland he is also the major shareholder of Dromoland Castle, a country mansion
hotel of world class, and through Arcon, an Irish oil-exploration company, he
shares in the new fields being sought around the coasts of the British Isles.
By
the middle of the 1990s his investments were values at over $787 million,
moving him up among the richest men in the world. In any year he may travel up to three hundred
thousand miles around the world on business matters. Though always keen to improve and expand his
interests, especially in the rapidly developing area of telecommunications,
O'Reilly never lost sight of Ireland or her historical problems.
In
the United States he became one of the driving forces behind the establishment
of the Ireland Funds, now an international trust with associations among Irish
people not only in the United States, but also in Canada, Australia, and
elsewhere. The aim of the fund is to
support the social and cultural infrastructure in Ireland, north and south, and
in this way to promote peace and reconciliation, social development, and
economic welfare. Since its inception,
the Ireland Funds have had a major impact providing seed money and support for
countless projects, large and small. In
many ways they transformed aspects of Ireland.
In North America, businessmen of Irish descent saw a way of sharing
their good fortune with a country which their ancestors had had to leave
generations before, often in great poverty.
In Ireland this aid was much appreciated.
Tony
O'Reilly has emerged as a new kind of Irishman, deeply imbued with pride in his
country and its achievements, keen that these should be improved upon and
appreciated, but also a man whose influence reaches far beyond Ireland or the
United States. At home in Ireland or
elsewhere, he and his family lead a hectic social life, which is all part of
the life of modern businessmen of his stature.
Yet in a small country like Ireland, where social life was once lived on
a less lavish scale, he has brought about a change of style which is widely
influential.
In
financial circles in the United States and in Europe, he is a man widely
respected for his achievements. Upon his
retirement from Heinz he was able to devote more of his time and energy to his
own business interests. These included
not only those already in hand (like Waterford Wedgewood), but also new
acquisitions, such as the London Independent in 1998.
O'Reilly
is also the sort of man from whom great surprises can be expected in the
future. He was even talked about as a
possible president of Ireland. Though this
is a non-political office of honour, it would have been a final crown to his
career, and some think a just tribute to his achievements.
40
David Trimble
1944-
It takes a man of talent to lead people in
a new direction, and over the recent years, some have hoped that David Trimble
may be the man to resolve the Ulster situation.
He
was born on 15th October 1944, the son of William Trimble and his wife Ivy, and
baptized William David. He was educated
at Bangor Grammar School, before taking a law degree at Queen's University in
Belfast. In 1978 he married Daphne Orr,
the daughter of Gerald Orr of Warrenpoint, and they have two sons and two
daughters. Trimble currently lives in
Lurgan Town.
All
of these places, Bangor, Warrenpoint, and Lurgan, are strongly Protestant, and
Unionist, parts of Ulster. This early
background has defined David Trimble's emotional attachments to his own place
and his own kin.
From
1968 to 1990 he taught in the law faculty at Queen's, first as a lecturer, and
then from 1977 as a Senior Lecturer. He
was called to the Northern Ireland Bar in 1969.
At this time he edited the Northern Ireland Law Reports, as well as
publishing a work on Northern Ireland Housing Law (1986) - housing having a
central and contentious role in the politics of Northern Ireland. He was also co-author of Human Rights and
Responsibilities in Britain and Ireland published in 1986.
David
Trimble began his political career as an extension of his profession. For him the law was there to protect his
community, and he was keen to insist on the letter of the law. Good intentions were not enough - in life, as
in law, good faith could only be shown by acts.
In pursuit of this he was a founder of the Vanguard Unionist group.
Elected
as member for South Belfast to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention
of 1975-76, he was also chair of the Lagan Valley Unionist Association between
1985 and 1990. He has been the member
for the constituency of Upper Bann, the same strongly Protestant area of his
youth, since 17th May 1990, after winning a by-election. Trimble became the Ulster Unionist Party's
spokesman on Constitutional Affairs in 1995.
As an outcome of the debate over the Framework documents, James
Molyneaux, the leader of the Unionist Party, was forced to resign on 28th
August 1995. On 8th September 1995, in
what some saw as a surprise outcome, Trimble, who had been prominent in
demonstrations at Drumcree earlier that year, was elected leader instead. In 1996 he was elected to the Northern
Ireland forum, and was appointed to the Privy Council.
As
an outcome of the Good Friday Agreement, Trimble was elected First Minister of
the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998, though that body remained inactive until
a further settlement was reached on the contentious issue of arms still
remaining in the hands of terrorist groups on both sides of the community
divide.
In
the autumn of 1998 he and JOHN
HUME [57] shared the Nobel Prize for Peace, an award posited on the
idealistic notion that the Good Friday Agreement meant peace at last in
Northern Ireland. However, though the
guns were silent - for the most part - the 'troubles' were very far from over.
As
an indication of his political outlook, he was not only in favour of the
introduction of the death penalty for killing a policeman, he has been
resolutely anti-European in his attitudes.
Though he voted for keeping Sunday Special, he abstained on the
proposition to reduce the age of sexual consent for minors to sixteen in
February 1994 - a matter on which many persons of a conservative outlook were
highly excited.
This
social conservatism married nicely with his strong Unionism. But it is perhaps his legalistic mind that
dominates his activities, a care of the meaning of words and the interpretation
which they might bear. Lawyers are
nothing new in Irish politics, but academics as leaders are a recent
phenomenon. An Orangeman, he has from
time to time made populist appearances at such contentious places as Drumcree
in July 1996, a place around which much of the fears and anxieties of the
Unionist community crystallised, but baiting and brawling do not seem to be his
métier (as they are for Ian Paisley). A
local residents group, motivated by Sinn Féin workers, prevented Orangemen
marching along a 'traditional route' through the Nationalist estate on the
Garvaghy Road in Portadown.
Once
the Ulster Unionist party had been dominated by working-class Orangemen led by
landed grandees and rich captains of industry.
Many of Trimble's followers, however, belong to that upper working
class, lower middle class, shopkeeping class, that have always lived in fear of
social and political change. The broader
middle class has, as a whole, abandoned politics to Ulster's loss but Trimble,
as a former academic and a middle-class Protestant, may be able to provide the
right leadership to carry the elements of the Unionist party into a new harmony
with their fellow citizens.
Whether
his skills as a lawyer and speaker and his nimbleness as a politician can help
him carry his party forward, past their demand to the IRA of 'No Guns. No Government.' remains to be seen. With wise counselling Trimble may be able to
achieve the breakthrough that returned local rule to Ulster, but without the
gerrymandering and Protestant domination that it involved in the past. It will also remain to be seen if the member
for Upper Bann and leader of the Northern Ireland Assembly can continue to be
the actual Prime Minister of an evolving state.
Late
in 2000 David Trimble has struggled to balance the demands of his party against
the needs of the Ulster people. His
legalistic mind is very different from that of previous Unionist leaders, yet
his public attitude of toughness, appealing to a small section of his own
community, may be what is needed to make progress towards the peace that the
majority voted for. His has been perhaps
the hardest task in leadership, and his efforts should be appreciated for what
they have achieved in moving on the outlook of the nineteenth century into the
twenty-first century. Against angry
voices within and without his party, David Trimble maintained his course. But as always the future could bring sudden
and devastating reversals.
41
John Louis O'Sullivan
1813-1895
If there is one phrase that sums up the ambitions
of many Americans in the nineteenth century for the future of their young
republic, it is 'manifest destiny'. That
highly influential idea was the original concept of John Louis O'Sullivan. He came from a long line of Irishmen involved
in the struggle for Irish freedom, a lost cause in the eyes of many sensible
men. O'Sullivan saw that the future lay
in America, but he espoused it with all the enthusiasm of his ancestors for
their native land.
His
great-grandfather, John O'Sullivan, who had been born in Kerry, was an adjutant
general in the army of Prince Charles that invaded England in 1745, and was
lucky to escape from the field of Culloden when the Jacobite cause was finally
defeated. His grandfather, T.H.
O'Sullivan, had been a member of the Irish Brigade in the service of France,
but during the American Revolution he had fought with the British in New
York. His father had settled in America
as merchant and sea captain, and served in Francisco de Miranda's expedition of
1806 to liberate Venezuela.
According
to family tradition (not always a reliable source), John Louis was born on a
British warship in the harbour of Gibraltar in November 1813. He was educated at a military school in
France, then at Westminster School in London, and finally entered Columbia
University. He received law degrees in
1831 and 1837 and practised law in New York City until 1837.
In
that year he began publishing the United States Magazine and Democratic
Review in Washington, D.C., with S.D. Langtree. Later they moved the journal to New York
City. O'Sullivan's aim, so he claimed,
was 'to strike the hitherto silent string of the democratic genius of the age
and the country.' America was in an
expansionist and nationalist mood, and the westward course of empire excited
him and his friends. They saw it as
enclosing not only the whole North American continent (including Canada), but
also Cuba. It was in an article he wrote
in the summer of 1845 for the July issue of the magazine that O'Sullivan coined
the phrase 'manifest destiny'. No words
could better have exemplified the nationalist spirit of the day. Dealing with the annexation of Texas the year
before, which had basically been seized from Mexico by America, he wrote of
'our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for
the free development of our yearly multiplying millions'.
Soon
the terms gained wider currency in the dispute with Britain over the Oregon
Territory and the border with Canada. It
was also made use of by those interested in seizing Cuba from Spain. To many Europeans, the 'freedom-loving'
Americans were merely on a course of colonial occupation, leading to the
creation of an American empire.
There
was another side to the journal, for it had contributions from Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, William Cullen Bryant, and many
others. This was a splendid gallery of
talent. Among his other interests were
the New York Morning News, which he edited from 1844 to 1846. He was also a member of the New York state
legislature, in which he advocated for the abolition of capital punishment, a
novel and progressive idea for that day and age.
He
married a daughter of Dr Kearney Rodgers in 1846, and from 1849 to 1851
supported Narisco Lopez on his expeditions against Cuba, then a Spanish
colony. Twice he was charged with
violation of the neutrality laws. Though
he was not convicted, he later claimed that through these schemes he had 'been
ruined for Cuba'.
However,
in February 1854 he was made chargé d'affaires in Portugal and later resident
minister. He stayed there until 1858,
expounding the doctrines of American expansion and manifest destiny. In 1858 he resigned and lived first in
Lisbon, then in London, and finally in Paris, until 1871.
O'Sullivan's
last years were spent in obscurity in New York.
Julian Hawthorne, the son of his old friend the novelist, knew him
during these years. He described
O'Sullivan as 'handsome, charming, affectionate and unlucky, but an optimist to
the last'. He died in New York City on
24th February 1895. By that time, the
idea of manifest destiny had returned again to inspire the American
imagination. The United States had
already taken California and the south-western states from Mexico, and a large
part of Oregon from Britain. Alaska had
been bought from the Russians. Part of
Samoa was placed under American control in 1889. In 1898 the United States annexed Hawaii
(American settlers having overthrown the native government of Queen
Liliuokalani in 1893 with the assistance of three hundred US marines). At the end of the Spanish-American war in
1898 the United States seized Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from
Spain. Cuba was liberated under American
domination, while Spain assumed its national debt.
Many
Americans were appalled. The steel
tycoon Andrew Carnegie even offered to buy the Philippines for $20 million and
give the people their freedom. But other
Americans invoked John Louis O'Sullivan's heady concept of manifest
destiny. This was the beginning of imperial
America as a world power, which would eventually see the decline of the other
imperial powers, including the British, from whose grasp the O'Sullivans had
fled.
Later
still, America would hold further territories in the Pacific and seek to maintain
its influence in China before the Communist revolution, and later in Laos and
Vietnam. What began with ambition in
1845 ended in tragedy in 1975 with the fall of Saigon. John Louis O'Sullivan's manifest destiny was
a concept that changed the course of world history.
42
Cardinal James Gibbons
1834-1921
Cardinal James Gibbons served fifty-two
years as a bishop and thirty-five years as a cardinal of the Catholic Church
during a period which saw the emergence of modern America. He became symbolic of the place won by both
the Irish and the Catholic Church in the new, vigorous life of what had becomes
almost inevitably the world's most powerful nation.
James
Gibbons was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but at the age of three was taken back
to his father's native Ireland. A decade
later Thomas Gibbons died, and in 1853 his widow returned to the United States
and settled in New Orleans with her children.
James began his working life in a grocery store, but feeling a call to
the priesthood, he entered a college in Maryland and went on to the local
seminary. He was ordained in June 1860.
At
first he worked as a local pastor and as a chaplain to the Civil War soldiers
stationed nearby. Then, in 1865, he was
appointed secretary to the archbishop of Baltimore and began his own rise to
ecclesiastical eminence. In the changes
after a Plenary Council in 1866, he was made a bishop (with a title in partibus
infidelium - that is, a title to an ancient bishopric in one of those lands
lost to the church by the advance of Islam, as in North Africa) in 1868, and
was placed over the new Vicariate Apostolic of North Carolina.
At
that time the Catholics in North Carolina were few and scattered. Gibbons attended the Vatican Council (October
1869-July 1870) but returned to find his district suffering in the aftermath of
the Civil War under the excesses of carpetbagging rule. He was appointed to Richmond in 1872 and
almost alone carried the heavy burden of a difficult period in the history of
the South.
From
his varied experiences, in 1876 he wrote The Faith of Our Fathers, a
simple exposition of the Catholic faith which would be of use not only to
members of the church but to potential converts. This became the most successful work of its
kind ever published in North America.
In
May 1877 Gibbons was named coadjutor bishop of Baltimore and succeeded to the
See in October. He was now in charge of
the leading Catholic See in the United States.
This made him at once one of the leading figures in the American
Catholic church, and the world. As the
archbishop of New York was of a retiring personality, Gibbons stood out as the
leader of Catholics.
Gibbons
was not an initiator in a cutting-edge fashion, but once a scheme was under way
he gave it all his energy. This was the
case with the Third Plenary Council, and the creation of the Catholic
University of America. His successes led
to Gibbons being raised to the status of cardinal in 1886. He also became chancellor of the university
and was instrumental in saving it from ruin in 1904 when it fell into grim
financial difficulties.
The
last decades of the nineteenth century were ones of great change and great
difficulty for America and for the church.
There was a huge increase in emigrants from Europe, many of whom were
Catholics from Germany, Poland, and Italy.
These new Americans transformed the nature of not only American society,
but the largely Irish nature of the Catholic Church. Gibbons played a major rule in contriving
solutions to the problems of the day.
America
was an industrial democracy and had needs different from the old nations of
Europe, with which the officials in Rome were most familiar. Gibbons counselled against too hasty a
condemnation of 'secret societies' and supported the Knights of Labour,
preventing that movement from being condemned.
He also prevented the writings of Henry George from being placed on the
Index (the Church's list of banned books), though these had been the cause of
much dissension in New York, where a priest named Edward McGlynn supported
George for mayor. Catholic workers were
central to the growth of America, and Gibbons represented to Rome that the
American way had its own protections, and that it would be harmful to the
church to act the same as it had in Europe (for instance in Ireland, where many
nationalists felt that Rome acted more at the behest of the British government
than the Irish bishops.)
'It
is necessary to recognize that, in our age and in our country, obedience cannot
be blind,' he remarked, apropos of the church and the unions. 'To lose the heart of the people would be a
misfortune for which the friendship of the few rich and powerful would be no
compensation.'
Gibbons
worked to create a sense of unity among the various Catholic nationalities,
emphasizing that whatever their backgrounds they were all now united as
Americans and as Catholics. Yet he also
defended the Catholic Church’s claim to its own parochial school system (as
against an imposed state system), and also against European writers who saw the
emergence of a new kind of heresy in what they identified as 'Americanism'.
Gibbons
had sprung from Irish roots, but his greatest pride was in being an
American. He admired the American
Constitution as the greatest document ever to spring from the pen of man. A strong American patriot, he drew admiration
from many other Americans such as William Howard Taft and Theodore
Roosevelt. Indeed, in 1917 Roosevelt said
that 'taking your life as a whole, I think you now occupy the position of being
the most respected, venerated, and useful citizen of our country'.
His
emphasis on the benefits of the separation of church and state were very
American and not always echoed by European writers, but in America they were
important in creating a climate of religious tolerance in which the church
could flourish. The civil government
provided the protection in which the civil liberties of all could be exercised.
Gibbons
died in Baltimore in March 1921, after a long and active life. He had ordained 2, 471 priests and
consecrated twenty-three bishops, a record which remained until the end of the
Second World War. These figures alone
speak of the extraordinary growth over which he presided, and the vitality
which this Irish American brought to the creation of modern America.
43
John Devoy
1842-1928
When John Devoy died in Atlantic City, New
Jersey, on 29th September 1928, the eighty-six-year-old Irish patriot was
virtually penniless. The last of the old
Fenian leaders, he had given his whole life to the cause of Ireland. In its report of his death, The Times
said he was 'the most bitter and persistent, as well as the most dangerous
enemy of this country which Ireland has produced since Wolfe Tone'. He had lived to see Ireland gain her freedom,
but it had brought him no reward beyond the joy of being proved right.
Devoy
had been born in Kill, County Kildare, on 3rd September 1842, the son of a
small farmer. His father was involved in
both the movement for Catholic emancipation led by DANIEL O'CONNELL [20] and in the more revolutionary Young
Ireland. Their house was full of debate
on the future of Ireland and what direction it should take. For John Devoy there would be no doubt: it
was to be the revolutionary road.
After
the famine, the family moved to the city, where his father worked in a
brewery. While working as a clerk, John
also attended some courses at the new Catholic University (then in the charge
of its founder, the famous priest John Henry Newman). He joined the Fenians, and in 1861 the French
Foreign Legion in order to learn the art of war. He spent a year in Algeria, which the French
were in the long process of subduing.
Returning
to Ireland in 1862, recognized as a born conspirator, he was placed in charge of
the Fenian scheme to subvert the British army by placing Fenians widely
throughout its ranks. Efforts were made
to arrest him in September 1865, but it was not until he was captured in the
aftermath of the escape of James Stephens, the Fenian 'Head Centre', in
February 1866, that he was betrayed and sentenced to fifteen years in
prison. In 1871 he was released with
four other Fenians on condition that they left the British Empire.
Devoy
immigrated to the United States, where he and his friends were greeted warmly
by the Irish community. He joined the New
York Herald as a reporter, and rose to being in charge of the foreign
desk. But in 1879 James Gordon Bennett
dismissed him for supporting CHARLES
PARNELL [5], whom the proprietor opposed.
In
New York, Devoy worked in succession on the Daily Telegraph and the Morning
Journal, and on the Herald and Evening Post in Chicago. Then, in 1881, he set up his own paper in New
York, the Irish Nation, and became a leading figure in Clann na Gael,
the Fenian party. From 1875 to 1876 he
helped to organize the rescue of the exiled Fenian prisoners from Fremantle
Prison in Australia. He obtained funds
from the Clan to support the work of the submarine pioneer John Philip Holland
in building his Fenian Ram, intended to help destroy the British
navy. But his greatest achievement was
through his journalism and his role as a pivotal figure around which others
banded.
In
1878 MICHAEL DAVITT [24]
arrived to lecture in the United States.
In October, he and Devoy called for a new policy for the Fenian
movement, which was to be called the New Departure. This meant that the revolutionaries would
rally behind Charles Parnell and the parliamentary party in Ireland and support
the Land League. Devoy then sent a
telegram to the party, offering conditional support to Parnell. He travelled to Europe, but at a meeting in
Paris in January 1879 the supreme council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood
rejected the notion of the New Departure as put to them by Devoy and
Davitt. In April and June, Devoy and
Davitt met Parnell in Dublin, and the New Departure went ahead.
Devoy
reported on his mission to Europe at the Clan na Gael convention in August in
Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. The Irish
Americans were left divided among themselves over what should be done. Their interests were now involved both in
Ireland and, more complexly, in America.
In
the US census of 1880 the Irish were estimated at 27.8 per cent of the
foreign-born population. The children of
Irish-born parents were estimated at 2,756,054.
At a convention of the New York Irish Republicans in Saratoga, John
Devoy and others planned to detach the Irish vote from the Democrats and move
it, if they could, to the Republicans.
In
1882, a crucial year in Irish history, which saw the murder of the chief
secretary of Ireland and one of his officials in Dublin's Phoenix Park by
terrorists, and the reintroduction of rigorous measures to suppress protest and
discontent in Ireland, Devoy published The Land of Erin, a statement of
his views on the terrible past and the possible future of the country. In the Irish Nation he focused on
trying to break the relationship between England and America, but the paper was
closed down in 1885. On 30th August
1900, before the US presidential election, Devoy formed with Patrick Egan and
Patrick Ford the Irish-American Union to oppose the policies of the Republican
William McKinley, who they saw as advocating imperialism and an understanding
with Britain. Instead, they urged
support for William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic and populist candidate - a
reverse of what they had wanted in 1880.
McKinley won.
In
1903 Devoy founded a weekly, The Gaelic American, which expounded the
ideas of the Fenians and Clan na Gael, which had now withdrawn its support from
the reunited Irish party. With Judge
Daniel Cohalan, Devoy then worked in the coming decade to unite the disparate
aspects of the Irish movement.
During
the first years of the First World War, up to 1917, when America came in on the
Allied side, Devoy was in touch with German agents eliciting support for the
Irish cause by way of guns for the Easter week uprising and defence funds for ROGER CASEMENT [94].
Yet when the new nation emerged and EAMON DE VALERA [2] visited America as president of the
Irish republic in 1920, relations were difficult; the leadership of Ireland was
evidently passing from Irish Americans back to native Irish. This generated a certain sense of ill
feeling. However, Devoy supported the
Irish Free State when it came into existence, and he finally returned to
Ireland on a brief visit in 1924, the year after the civil war ended. As an American, he opposed the League of
Nations and the World Court, those brainchildren of Woodrow Wilson's 'new
order', because he felt they posed entangling external alliances to American
freedom.
He
was then working on his memoirs, Recollections of an Irish Rebel. His collected correspondence has proved a
rich source for historians interested in the details of the Irish revolutionary
movements. He kept alive the old Fenian
tradition, at last passing it on to a younger generation who had fought in 1916
and in the troubles. For that reason his
remains were brought back for burial in Ireland, with honours from the new
government, but his best work had been the creation of not only the modern
Irish state, but the unity of the Irish-American community.
44
Cardinal Paul Cullen
1803-1878
At the Vatican Council held in Rome in
1870, Cardinal Cullen is said to have drafted the terms of the dogma of papal
infallibility. This was typical of the
man, who since he had been appointed archbishop of Armagh in 1850 had sought to
impose on the Catholic church in Ireland a rigid and unquestioning obedience to
authority.
Paul
Cullen was born at Ballitore in County Kildare on 29th April 1803, just after
the Act of Union. His first studies were
at a nearby Quaker school and then at Carlow College. In 1820 he went to Rome to study at the
College of Propaganda in Rome, where he was ordained a priest in 1822. His first appointment was as professor of
sacred scripture and Hebrew in the college.
He was then made rector of the Irish College in Rome in 1829. The influence of British diplomats was very
strong in the Vatican, for the popes were, at all times, keen to secure the
favour of the great powers. In Ireland
this was seen as a distinct disadvantage.
Cullen acted as the Roman agent of the Irish and Australian bishops in
making their views, which did not always coincide with those of the British
government, known to the Vatican.
One
of these issues, which arose in 1840, was the question of the national school
system, which the government proposed.
This would have provided for a type of school in which the bishops
thought that state influence might overwhelm any Catholic or Irish ethos. Cullen cautiously proposed to Rome that each
bishop should be free in his own diocese to choose whether or not to join the
scheme. In the end, the schools passed
under the management of the local parish priests (or rectors in the case of
those for the Protestant communities). A
secularizing scheme was defeated.
Cullen,
however, opposed the Queen's Colleges; Rome duly condemned these, and urged the
Irish bishops to establish a Catholic university. In Rome he witnessed the excess of the
Italian revolution of 1848. When the
Roman republic was established and overthrew the papal government, Cullen was
made rector of the College of Propaganda.
When the republican authorities ordered the closure of the college,
Cullen called upon the protection of the US minister to protect his American
students and so saved the institution.
But this experience gave Cullen an abiding distaste for revolutionary
republicans of any kind, especially in Ireland.
For
the rest of his life he sternly countered any revolutionary action in Ireland,
while supporting the constitutional parties that respected the position of the
church. He was appointed archbishop of
Armagh in 1850, despite the fact that he had absolutely no pastoral or
administrative experience of the country.
At Thurles in 1850, the year from which the reorganized church in
Ireland can be dated, he called the first synod of the church in Ireland since
the twelfth century.
Cullen
was the chief architect of what is now thought of as the 'traditional' Irish
Catholic church, with its discipline, modes of devotion, and social and
political attitudes. He was often at
odds with other leaders, such as John McHale of Tuam, but Cullen had the ear of
Rome, and that was what counted.
His
activities were varied and of consequence.
He defended tenants' rights, championed poorhouse reforms, advocated the
creation of industrial schools, and sought to raise the quality of education. He brought Newman to Ireland to help
establish the Catholic University that he had urged upon the hierarchy. Because it could not grant degrees this was a
failure, though it medical school survived and flourished. He founded Clonliffe College to improve the
training of Irish priests.
To
generations of Irish nationalists, the theme of Cullen's whole career, to make
the Catholic Church the dominant force in Irish society, was one to be
approved. But it has left the country
was a tragic heritage. Before Cullen
there had been a growing sense of accommodation between the different churches
and traditions in Ireland. Cullen's
extreme ultra-montanism thwarted this and threw up barriers between them. Cullen, it has been said, had no political
theories, but only the interest of his own church at heart.
'Once
Ireland began to be regarded as a Catholic nation,' Professor F.S.L. Lyons
wrote, 'there was built into the separate identity an element of puritanical
exclusiveness very far from the vision of a WOLFE TONE [11], or a THOMAS DAVIS [23], of an Ireland in which the different cultures would
eventually be reconciled.
Though
it would have appalled Cullen to think of it, in due course his brooding
influence brought about the long, quarter century of war in Northern
Ireland. Seeking only to ensure the
influence of his own church, he cast his country into the hands of
revolutionaries merely interested in using the Catholic identity of their
community as a mask for ambitions that stood totally opposed to his.
By
seeking to make the Catholic Church ascendant in Ireland, Cullen had
contributed to its decline. His
contemporaries in the United States, who sought to benefit from the protection
offered by the constitution of a pluralist republican society, were much wiser.
Cardinal
Cullen died in Dublin on 24th October 1878. He left a church outwardly powerful,
triumphantly self-satisfied. But his
policies had sowed within it the seeds of its own decline a century later.
45
Eugene O'Neill
1888-1953
The first American to win the Nobel Prize
for literature (in 1936), Eugene O'Neill was also the major dramatist of the
Irish community in America. All his
plays, with their sense of doomed misfortune, reflect not only his own personal
experience but also those of many Irish people, in Ireland and abroad.
His
grim patriarchs, his doomed mothers, the curse of alcohol - all of this was
presented with an almost Greek sense of tragedy as an essential part of the
human condition. After his death, Time
magazine commented that 'Before O'Neill, the US had theatre; after him it had
drama.'
The
Nobel citation said that the reward was 'for the power, honesty, and deep-felt
emotion of his dramatic work, which embodies an original concept of
tragedy'. That sense of tragedy arose
from his experiences as an Irish American.
Eugene
Gladstone O'Neill was born in a New York hotel room on 16th October 1888. His parents sprang directly from Irish
roots. His father, James O'Neill, was a
prominent actor and a theatrical idol of the day; his mother was Ella
Quinlan. James O'Neill had been born in Ireland
in 1849 and was brought to America by his parents at the age of five. He was on the stage and getting leading roles
in New York when he became typecast in 1882 as Edmond Dantes in The Count of
Monte Cristo. Such was his success
that he played the role over six thousand times. An Irish nationalist, he gave his son the
second name of Gladstone out of admiration for the British prime minister who
introduced the first Irish home rule bill in 1886.
Ella
O'Neill was neurotic, shy, and mystically inclined, and the over-emotional
nature of his parents' relationship deeply affected Eugene. Both his parents were Catholics, but despite
his education from the Sisters of Charity and the De La Salle Brothers, he had
lost his faith by the age of fifteen and refused to go to church any
longer. Religion became merely an
episode of growth, but it lingered in the depths of his feelings
nevertheless. Here there is a strong
parallel with that other creative artist of the Irish tradition, JAMES JOYCE [25].
At this time O'Neill also learned that his mother had become addicted to
the morphine she took to ease her post-childbirth pains. All his life he would struggle with a sense
of the cruel nature of God, fate, or the universe, whatever it was that made
people's lives hell.
O'Neill
completed his early education at Betts Academy in Stamford, Connecticut, in
1906, and secured entry to Princeton University. But this lasted only a year, and he was
thrown out. His only other formal
education was a playwriting course taken in 1914 at Harvard in Professor G.P.
Baker's famous Forty-seven Workshop.
Between
1907, when he dropped out of college, and 1913, O'Neill did many things. For a while he lived a rakish life in
Greenwich Village; he toured with his father's production of The Count of
Monte Cristo as assistant manager, worked as a secretary, sailed as a
seaman, prospected for gold in Honduras (where he suffered from malaria), and
starved as a newspaper reporter. He
wrote poetry, and later contracted tuberculosis. He also tried to commit suicide. If nothing else, these adventures gave him a
wider view of life than the college classroom would have provided.
While
recovering from tuberculosis, then an often fatal condition, he began to
write. Thirst, his first play,
was produced in 1916 by the Provincetown Players, and started a long
association. However, it was his next
play, Beyond the Horizon, in 1920, that confirmed the arrival of a major
new American dramatic talent. It won the
Pulitzer Prize, and brought recognition to O'Neill as one of America's most
important playwrights.
This
was followed by Anna Christie, Emperor Jones, and The Hairy Ape. All were vivid, powerful plays. Of Anna Christie (1921), he said, 'The
play has no ending. Three characters have
been revealed in all their intrinsic verity, under the acid test of a fateful
crisis in their lives'.
He
produced an immense body of work, some forty-five plays, varying from elaborate
tragedies to light entertainments, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize four
times. The Nobel Prize was his final
crown. During his career, in search of a
deeper meaning and a broader significance to life, O'Neill moved to more
symbolic and experimental forms.
Though
the influence of Euripides, Strindberg and Nietzsche can be traced through his
work and outlook, there is also an important personal strain. This lies not only in the highly
autobiographical nature of his plays (especially Long Day's Journey into
Night), but in the general attempt to recreate the American experience
onstage. He was the first important
playwright to attempt this.
Just
as important was the influence of his father, whose always popular melodramas
Eugene claimed to despise. Yet he could
not escape his theatrical childhood, nor could he quite escape the Catholic
religion, so deeply ingrained in so many Irish Americans. His own marriage and family life was
painful. He brooded on his sense of sin
and guilt, but his characters find little or no forgiveness, grace, or
reconciliation. They are pitted against
each other in a narrow space, his themes drawn from the incidents of his own
life but given no larger context. This
makes his plays often seem airless and claustrophobic, but this, too, reflects
much of the inner American experience.
Illness
forced him to give up writing, and after long years of isolation, Eugene
O'Neill died in a Boston hotel room on 27th November 1953. His last words reflected his sense of doom:
'Born in a hotel room - and God damn it - died in a hotel room.' Arthur Miller, a playwright of the new
generation, said: 'O'Neill was the great wrestler, fighting God to a
standstill. The theatre will forever
need the towering rebuke of his life and his work and his agony.'
In
Eugene O'Neill, America possessed a great writer, one whose life and work
influence both his contemporaries and a younger generation of writers. But the heart of this American dramatist drew
on the inner life of the Irish-American community, and on the dark secrets of
the emigrants that success in business and politics often hid.
46
Grace O'Malley
1530-1603
Ireland has had many women heroes over the
centuries, but few have been of such romantic stature as Grace O'Malley, the
courageous pirate 'Queen of the West'. She
has come down to us in legend as one of the most remarkable women of Irish
history.
The
western province of Connaught has always been something of a 'Wild West', the
last frontier which the invaders had to face.
It is a place that has long lived by the sea, and Grace came from a
family of seafarers. Her name in Gaelic,
Granuaile, means 'Grace of the Short Hair' - suggesting a manly cast of
features. She was born (it is thought)
about 1530, and was the only daughter of Owen O'Malley, the chief of the
O'Malleys who ruled the western coast from Achill Island in the north to
Inishbofin in the south.
At
the age of sixteen she married Donal O'Flaherty, one of the clan who held the
lands to the south of the O'Malleys in Connemara. These were lawless days, with feuds, raids,
land grabbings, and piracy, though English historians perhaps made it all sound
even wilder than it was. Donal was
nicknamed the Cock due to his flashy courage in battle. He was murdered by the Joyces, who held the
land to the east. Bereft of her husband,
Grace did not despair. She rallied her
own people and had to defend his castle, Castlekirk, on the shores of Lough
Corrib, earning herself the title the Hen - hence the Gaelic title of the fortress,
Caisleàn na Circe - the Hen's Castle'.
Grace
established her own base on Clare Island, one protected by a ring of forts
around the shores of Clew Bay. From this
lair, her fleets of ships and galleys would sail out to prey on the cargo
vessels that were rounding the Irish coast en route from Spain to
Scotland. She also built
Carrickkildavnet Castle, which stands guard over the mouth of Clew Bay. This is an elegant fifteenth-century tower
house, but was only one of her strongholds.
In
1566 Grace married again, this time to Richard Burke, the chief of the Mayo
Burkes, another powerful clan. Legend
has it that when she married Richard, they agreed that either of them could
annul the marriage after a year. Richard
had his own stronghold at Carrighowley Castle, where they lived in what seems
to the modern eye to have been very cramped quarters. A year later, when Richard returned from one
of his own expeditions, she had locked the castle door. From the parapet above she called down to the
unfortunate man, 'I dismiss you'.
In
1577 Grace was captured while looting the territory of the earl of Desmond in
Munster, and was imprisoned for eighteen months in Limerick. She was released on condition that she reform
her old piratical ways. Law of a new
kind was coming to the west of Ireland - English law. When the viceroy Sir Richard Bingham began to
enforce that law by violent means in Connaught, Grace decided she would appeal
directly to Queen Elizabeth I, as one queen to another. She left Mayo to seek an audience with the
queen in London, and got her wish. In
September 1593 the meeting took place.
Lively
Irish legend asserts that Grace O'Malley did indeed speak ass one sovereign to
another, and was forthright to the point of insult. She was offered the title of countess, and
retorted that Queen Elizabeth had no right to think of offering such a title,
for they were equals; she was no vassal.
However, the reality may have been different. It is likely that Queen Elizabeth admired the
powerful intelligence of the pirate queen.
Grace
was allowed to return to her home in the west and to live there
unmolested. She is thought to have died
about 1603, though this, like other details of her life, is uncertain. Today she remains a legend of the west, and
at Louisburgh in Mayo an interpretative centre presents her life and legend for
visitors. Her son, Tiobaid na Long,
'Theobald of the Ships', was murdered in 1629 near Ballintober, where his
elaborate tomb can be seen in the de Burgo (or Burke) chapel.
Whatever
legend has done to enhance the life of Grace O'Malley, she remains a striking
figure and a reminder that the role of women in past periods of Irish society
was not always a subservient one. In the
feudal society of the fifteenth century, men did not always have their
way. The legendary queen became
something of a model for the powerful women who ran Ireland's homes in later
centuries.
The
sad remains of her tower house can still be seen on Clare Island. The house was used as a coastguard station in
the nineteenth century, but is a ruin today.
A mile and a half across the island are the remains of a Cistercian
church from the Middle Ages. Here there
is a tomb that is said to be the final resting place of 'the Pirate
Queen'. The O'Malley crest is carved on
the stonework, bearing the proud O'Malley motto: Terra Marique Potens,
'Mighty by Land and Sea'.
47
St Columban
c. 543-615
In the age when Ireland was 'the island of
Saints and Scholars', St Columban was one of its leading figures, a personality
of international reputation.
Also
known as Columbanus, Columban was born in Leinster about 543. He studied at the monastic school of St
Sinell at Cluaninis, on the shores of Lough Erne in Ulster. He then entered the monastery of St Comgall
at Bangor, which was renowned for both its sanctity and learning. Here he taught for some thirty years, wrote a
commentary on the psalms, and composed poems.
About
583 he was sent by St Comgall with twelve others to conduct a mission to
Europe. He preached in Brittany and the
Vosges, having been invited there by the Merovingian kind Childebert. He settled in Burgundy and founded the
monasteries of Anegray, Luxeuil, and Fontaines.
From these three motherhouses some two hundred other monasteries were
later established. (From Anegray, St
Killian later travelled to Germany to Wurtzburg and founded a monastery in 742;
St Emmeram went up into Regensburg and founded one in 739.) St Columban also composed sets of rules and
regulations for both monks and hermits.
Coming
from Ireland, he was dismayed with what he found in Burgundy. He thought the local clergy were degenerate,
the Frankish court immoral, and some of the local customs shocking. With missionary zeal he introduced the strict
Irish system of penance, which involved auricular confession - personal confession
to an individual priest, an innovation which the church has maintained.
He
also kept to the Celtic style of tonsure and celebrated Easter by a different
calculation than the rest of the church.
He had difficulties with the local bishops about this confusing matter,
and tried to enlist the support of Pope Gregory I to his position. In this letter he used the term totius
Europae, 'the whole of Europe', to express the Irish concept of the West as
a common cultural unit.
Columban
was eventually expelled in 608 from Burgundy by King Theudric, whom he had
attacked for maintaining a concubine (these Irish monks were nothing if not
strict). He passed through Neustria,
where he had been invited by King Clothar, and settled near Zurich in what is
now Switzerland, where his companion St Gall founded the monastery of St
Gallen. But he was driven out by the
natives for his attack on their paganism.
He
passed over the Alps into what is now northern Italy and founded yet another
monastery at Bobbio in 612. From this
new foundation his influence spread over all of Europe. He died at Bobbio on 23rd November 615, and
was buried in the church abbey, now dedicated to St Columban.
Columban's
letters, monastic rules, and poetry belong to the great canon of Irish medieval
literature. One of these is a song of
encouragement to his companions rowing against the current of the Rhine. Austere though their religion may have been,
these monks found new delight in nature, and the margins of the manuscripts for
which their monasteries are famous have scribbled in them delightful little
verses about the birds and trees and waters that surrounded them.
They
had a lasting effect on the high culture of the Middle Ages. In Ireland, the culture of Christian civilization
was preserved during the long night of the barbarian invasions. It was then carried back to rekindle the
civilization of Europe as a whole - the totius Europae of St Columban.
His
successors at Bobbio, however, ameliorated the strictness of the Irish rule he
had introduced with less severe elements from the rule of St Benedict, and
exercised important influence on Western civilization. for centuries to come, the Irish monasteries,
from Clonmacnoise in the West to Vienna in the east, provided Europe with its
scholarship.
St
Columban's work marked the dawn of a new age and the rise of Charlemagne and
the Carolingian empire, which gave Europe a new sense of its identity, to which
the new European Union looks back.
48
Samuel Beckett
1906-1989
Yet another of Ireland's Nobel Prize
winners, Samuel Beckett, in his spare, bleak plays, seems to many of his
admirers to epitomize the sense of despair many felt immediately after the war,
the sense of alienation and isolation, of suppressed rage with life, which
characterize the modern age. In 1969,
the citation of the Nobel committee spoke of 'his writings, in which - in new
forms for the novel and drama - the destitution of modern man acquires its
elevation'. According to Robert Hogan,
'He remains perhaps the century's most acclaimed and influential avant-garde
writer'.
Samuel
Barclay Beckett was born in Foxrock, a genteel, largely Protestant suburb of
Dublin, on 13th April 1906. He had a
comfortable upbringing in a material sense.
He was educated at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen in Northern
Ireland – OSCAR WILDE'S [97] old
school. He entered Trinity College in
the autumn of 1923, where he studied modern languages (French in particular)
and took his bachelor's degree in 1927.
For a few months he taught French at a Protestant school in Belfast
before going to the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris as a lecturer.
It
was in Paris that he made friends with the Irish poet and art critic Thomas
McGreevy, through whom he was introduced into the circle of JAMES JOYCE [25].
Joyce was to be the greatest literary influence on Beckett's own
work. He was one of a number of the
friends who assisted the nearly blind Joyce by reading and researching material
for 'Work in Progress' eventually published as Finnegans Wake. Beckett was also one of the young men in whom
Joyce's daughter took a romantic interest.
Beckett
had literary ambitions of his own. His
first publications were a long poem called 'Whoroscope' in 1930, and a short
study of Proust for a London publishers in 1931. In the autumn of 1930 he went back to Dublin
to teach French at Trinity College, where McGreevy introduced him to JACK YEATS [26], whom Beckett deeply admired. Indeed the later pictures of Yeats, with
their isolated figures and blasted landscapes, have much in common with
Beckett's writing.
Beckett's
stay in Dublin was fraught with ill health and personal and emotional problems,
especially with his demanding mother.
Having taken his master's degree, he went back to Paris in December
1931. There he began a novel (which
remained unpublished till after his death) and a collection of stories, More
Pricks Than Kicks, which makes use of familiar Dublin in a unique way,
pointing towards his later work.
Beckett
now identified with his French friends, and during the occupation he worked
with the French Resistance, though in 1942 he was forced to flee south to
Roussillon. Later he was awarded the
Croix de Guerre. Ireland may have been
neutral - Samuel Beckett was not.
On
his return to Paris, Beckett settled into his major period of production. He was now writing in French rather than
English. Molloy was finished in
1948, and was followed by Malone Meurt.
By the first months of 1950 he had finished L'Innommable.
But
these books, when published, either in French or English, made little impact
compared with the sensation that was caused by the production of his play En
Attendant Godot in a theatre studio early in 1953. As Waiting for Godot, it was
successfully produced in London and New York.
Its novelty and strange atmosphere at once made it a talking point not
only among the avant-garde, but the general public. It was the beginning of the Theatre of the
Absurd, which many saw as growing out of the existential philosophies of Sartre
and Camus.
His
earlier work came back into print, often in his own translations. In 1956 came Fin de Partie (Endgame
in English). He ceased to write novels,
and his plays became briefer and more etiolated. In 1961 he married his long-time companion
Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil. Though they
maintained flats beside each other in Paris, much of their time was spent in
the country or in North Africa. In July
1989 Beckett's wife died, and he himself passed away on 22nd December.
The
following year one critic observed that 'by the year 2000 Beckett criticism
will equal that of Wagner and Napoleon, who are the most written about personae
in history'. Beckett himself was an
obsessively private person, and his biographers have not even yet fully plumbed
the depths of his experiences. It is
clear now, however, that though he wrote in French and published in Paris as a
European author, much of his initial inspiration draws on his early experiences
in Dublin. Indeed, it was the ambition
of the actor Peter O'Toole to film Waiting for Godot in the bleak rocky
district of the Burren in the west of Ireland, as its windswept acres seemed to
echo the barren isolation of the play.
Like Joyce, who influenced him greatly, Beckett never escaped from
Ireland, and a haunted childhood and illness were major matters in his
life. Many would now regard as his best
work not the later briefer items, but the more closely grained world of his
novels and early plays.
When
the Nobel committee spoke of destitution, they seemed to be thinking of the
bleakness of life and soul which his work reflects, and thinking how
appropriate this was for an era threatened with annihilation at a moment's
notice. Personal courage would have no
place in an atomic war, but for Beckett, waiting for the end had become
intolerable, while life itself was even more so.
Quite
how his work will wear with time is still a matter of controversy, but his
influence on the literature of the late twentieth century was very great. 'Beckettian' is an adjective that everyone
understands the meaning of, even if they cannot understand the meaning of
Beckett.
49
George Bernard Shaw
1856-1950
In contrast to SAMUEL BECKETT [48] and EUGENE O'NEILL [45], George Bernard Shaw epitomizes a sense of optimism about man
and his achievements. He was another of
the Irish artists to be awarded the Nobel Prize for his work, 'which is marked
by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with
a singular poetic beauty'.
These
comments provide an insight into the work of one of the world's most important
dramatists, who was born in Dublin on 26th July 1856, a decade after the
famine, and lived to see the arrival of the atom bomb. His family was middle-class, decayed gentry,
in financial difficulties. A poor
student at school, Shaw found employment in an estate agent's office, but did
not find the work agreeable.
In
1876 he migrated to London to join his mother and sister. There he found desultory work as a
journalist. He attempted to write novels,
but these were either failures or sold badly.
But he was tenacious. He later
commented that poverty threw his mother into the struggle for survival, and
vowed never again to do 'an honest day's work'.
He thought his later success validated this early decision to disregard
'all the quack duties which lead the poor lad of fiction to the White House'.
From
his mother he had inherited a love and knowledge of music; music, indeed, had
been the constant factor in his upbringing.
And it was as a music critic, and then an art critic for the newspapers
that he began to be better known. He
then added drama critic to the list.
Having commented on the work of others, he thought that he might do
better.
Since
1884 he had been a socialist and member of the Fabian Society, a group of
socialists who worked for the evolutionary improvement of society rather than
immediate revolution. He had been
converted to socialism after hearing the American Henry George speak in London. He was deeply involved in the society,
editing Fabian Essays in 1887.
For many years he was also involved in municipal politics.
For
thirteen years Shaw wrote for a wide range of newspapers and magazines, his
views on art and drama proving effective in their impact on taste. Influenced by Henrik Ibsen, he railed against
the settled, comfortable nature of London theatre. He was also a champion of Wagner. His strong opinions about art, society, and
politics proved from the beginning to be the material for his plays.
Between
1885 and 1913 he wrote some twenty-five plays, of all lengths. Over the length of his career, up to 1939, he
wrote an average of a play a year. These
were not only produced, but were published as books, equipped with long
prefaces treating not only the plays, but their subject matter and background,
some of which dealt with medicine, housing, religion, and so on. These were published by the author himself,
his ostensible publisher being his agent, so that Shaw could control all details
of their production.
His
first play was Widower's Houses, which attacked slum landlords. This was followed by Arms and the Man
in 1894, which lampooned the romance attached to soldiering, especially in the
British Empire and America. Mrs
Warren's Profession, which dealt with a prostitute of great capacity who
runs a series of brothels, continued his attack on social problems. It was so shocking that it was banned by the
censor and not produced until 1902.
His
plays have little in the way of mere mechanical plot. They are dramas of conflict and debate, the
clash of the old and the new, the young and the aged. He remained at work until the age of
eighty-three, when he wrote In Good King Charles' Golden Days. Mentally he remained alert and caustic till
the end of his life.
In
1898 Shaw married Charlotte Payne Townshend, an Irish heiress. Though he maintained a London flat, in 1906
they moved to 'Shaw's Corner' at Ayot St Lawrence in Hertfordshire.
In
old age Shaw became one of those public figures whom the newspaper could rely
on for comments on everything from nudism to the atom bomb. To a vast public unacquainted with his plays
and books, he became best known for My Fair Lady, a musical based on his
play Pygmalion. The estate of
this strong-minded socialist benefited by many millions of dollars.
Eccentric
to the end, he had also left money for alphabet reform, another one of his
quirks. A novel revision of the alphabet
was eventually awarded a prize, and a version of Androcles and the Lion
was published, using the new forms - but alas the Shaw alphabet failed to gain
acceptance.
Stripped
of all its merely ephemeral details, Shaw's career is still an extraordinary
one. His plays are still alive on the
stage. Though many of the issues which
he addressed are now dead ones, his hatred of hypocrisy and cant is still very
much alive. He was, in the eyes of many
of his admirers in Europe and America, the greatest dramatist of the twentieth
century, and a rival of merit to William Shakespeare.
Shaw
had hated his youth in Dublin and was glad to leave it, but he and his wife and
family had financial interests there.
The perennial problems of Ireland came under his review in John
Bull's Other Island, which dealt with the mental barriers between the
natives of both islands. Here, the
Englishman Tom Broadbent is mystically enchanted with Ireland's romantic past,
while his friend Larry Doyle is a realist, intent on transforming the dying,
dreaming nation. In this debate Shaw's
own mouthpiece is the former priest Peter Keegan, whose middle way is an ideal
state, a Shavian socialist commonwealth.
The play was written for the Abbey Theatre in 1904, but rejected by
them, and only performed in Dublin in September 1916, a year which had seen
other kinds of dreamers at large with guns on the Irish streets.
In
her will, his wife left her money to an institution to improve the manners of
Irishmen - perhaps a common on her husband's own abrasive nature. When he died Shaw left part of his estate,
later enriched by royalties from My Fair Lady, to the National Gallery
in Dublin, where he had spent so many happy hours as a young man. It was from the great European masters of
that collection that he gained his first hint that the ideal of the artist was
'to shew us to ourselves as we really are'.
As
Shavian scholar William F. Feeney put it: 'Shaw, young man of Dublin, senior
citizen of the world, continues to stand before us on his soapbox,
Mephistophelian, nimble, provocative, outrageous, teasing, or brow-beating us
to hear him out.'
50
Finley Peter Dunne
1867-1936
Finley Peter Dunne, the creator of Mr
Dooley, one of the most famous Irish characters of all times, was born on 10th
July 1867, and reared among the Irish of Chicago. His parents were Irish immigrants who had
come to America as children. His
father's sister was a prominent educator in Chicago, while a cousin was
archbishop of San Francisco.
Dunne
was educated at a public school in Chicago.
When he left school in 1884, he went to work as messenger boy at the Chicago
Tribune, which was his introduction to the hectic life of the
newspapers. He was promoted to reporter,
and by the age of twenty-one, the talented young man was city editor of the Chicago
Times. He was also a staff man on
the Chicago Evening Post (1892-97) and editor of the Chicago Journal
(1897-1900).
From
1892 he had been writing short humorous pieces for the Post in the Irish
brogue. It was only when he began
writing for the Journal a series featuring the observations of life and
current events by a tavern keeper, Mr Martin Dooley, that he achieved
fame. These were published widely, and
even in England the Newnes press, and publishers like Routledge and Grant Richards,
brought them to the attention of the British and Irish public.
The
first collection was called Mr Dooley in Peace and War (1898) - the war
being the controversial Spanish-American War.
It was Martin Dooley's ironic commentary on that imperial enterprise
that made Dunne even more famous. His
influence over foreign policy was recognized, and one of his biographers, Elmer
Ellis, called him 'the wit and censor of the nation'.
Dunne
was on friendly terms with Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, and William C.
Whitney, politicians then, as now, being careful to cultivate influential
columnists. Many other collections
followed, leading up to Mr Dooley Says (1910). These widely read and influential books made
Dunne world famous as the creator of a truly original character, and a humorist
with a sharp eye.
At
the turn of the century he moved to New York City to edit the Morning
Telegraph - that was when New York had a wife range of papers. He married Margaret Abbott of Boston, by whom
he had four children. In New York he
rose to become part owner of the American Magazine, and later still
editor of Collier's Weekly. In
these journals he wrote nondialect columns which were acute and witty, but did
not achieve the same universal fame as the Mr Dooley pieces.
As
is so often the case with creative talents, the money he received (more than a
million dollars) snuffed out his talent as a writer. He retired to Long Island in 1911. After 1920 he wrote very little, though in 1936
he wrote some autobiographical pieces which his son Philip eventually edited as
Mr Dooley Remembers (1963). He
died in New York City on 24th April 1936.
Aside
from his journalism, the only books Dunne published dealt with the musing of
his saloon keeper philosopher Mr Dooley.
There were ten books in the series, nine of which appeared before his
retirement.
Philip
Dunne saw his father's writings as being in the American rural cracker-barrel
tradition of the humour of Poor Richard, Hosea Biglow, Artemus Ward, and Mark
Twain. But they had been rural writers,
humorists of America's frontier experience.
Dunne was something new, an urban humorist, perhaps the first of a long
line of Irish, Jewish, and Italian humorists in the twentieth century. The dialogues of Mr Dooley are written in
what native Irish writers might regard as a stage-Irish idiom, and they derive
in part from the popularity of the Irish comic on the contemporary American
stage. But the language was in fact
close to that actually spoken on the broadwalks of Chicago and New York.
Mr
Dooley represents not only the few whimsicality of the Irish temperament, but
also all the solid common sense of a race underlying it, which had taken on the
American ways, and won the fight.
At
an earlier time Mr Dooley would have been rejected. His popularity derived in large part from the
prominent, indeed, essential role which the Irish had begun to play in the life
of urban America. In a sense, Chicago
and New York were Irish cities.
Dunne,
too, represented the gift of the Irish through language and storytelling,
skills beyond their more taciturn neighbours in the cities, both American and
immigrant. Like JAMES JOYCE [25], Dunne was a bravely experimental
writer who realized the full potential of the Irish brogue.
The
city is 'where there is nawthin' to eat but what ye can buy', says Mr Dooley to
a friend. 'Where the dust is laid be th'
sprinklin' cart, where th' ice-man comes reg'lar an' the roof garden is in
bloom an' ye wake not by th' sun but by th' milkman, I says. I want to be near th' doctor whin I'm sick
an' near eatable food whin I'm hungry, an' where I can put me hand out early in
th' morning an' hook a newspaper. Th'
city is th' on'y resort fr a man that has iver lived in the city.'
The
Irish had come as emigrants, but by the turn of the century policy was turning
against immigration. Mr Dooley had his
comment on this as well. As his son
later pointed out, Dunne's humour 'always had a social purpose. Mr Dooley was a weapon against hypocrisy and
cant, the pompous and the predatory, in politics, business, and society in
general'.
Mr
Dooley's 'philosophy' was widely shared by his Irish compatriots, many of whom
lamented his later silence. It coincided
with the emergence of a modern Ireland with new notions, where the city was
rejected. Here in part was the emerging
difference between Ireland and her exiled American children.
51
Archbishop Daniel Mannix
1864-1963
During a long and remarkable life, Daniel
Mannix saw the transformation not only of Ireland, but also of Australia, his
adopted land, from a frontier country into a leading nation of the world. His was a crucial presence in the development
of the Irish community in Australia.
He
was born in Charleville (now Ráth Luirc) in County Cork in March 1864, the
third son of a family of four boys and a girl.
He was educated by the Sisters of Mercy and the Christian Brothers in
Fermoy, and then went on to study for the priesthood, like so many clever young
men in those days. He was ordained at
Maynooth in 1890, becoming professor of theology in 1894, and president of the
college in 1903.
This
would have been an important enough career, but in 1912 he was sent out to
Australia as co-adjutor (or deputy) to the archbishop of Melbourne, eventually
taking the position himself in May 1917.
He
arrived in Australia in 1913. During
those crucial years of the First World War he came to the fore as a leader of
the Irish community's opposition to conscription for overseas military service
(not always seen as a patriotic position, however, by other elements in
Australian society, where the returned servicemen's organizations are very
powerful). After the Easter Rising he
also supported Ireland's claims for independence.
He
also fought for the independence of Catholic schools within the Australian system,
an echo of a struggle that had gone on in Ireland and the United States. He supported the creation of Newman College
at the University of Melbourne, and to Corpus Christi College at Werribee.
In
1920 Mannix had to visit Rome to make a periodic report to the pope in
person. He travelled to Europe by way of
the United States, where he was met with great enthusiasm from Irish-American
communities from San Francisco to New York.
On the way he made inflammatory speeches. 'All that Ireland asks of England is this -
take one of your hands off my throat and the other out of my pocket.'
The
ship he was travelling on was met by a British warship off the coast of
Cornwall, and he was arrested by order of Prime Minister Lloyd George 'in view
of his disloyal statements'. Mannix was
told that he was free to stay in England, but he was not to visit Liverpool,
Glasgow, or Manchester, the Irish population centres. Instead he stayed in Leeds. He could not go to Ireland, and was also
forbidden to speak in England.
Inevitably, this left him with a tremendous reputation as an Irish
patriot.
He
served for forty-seven years as archbishop, establishing new parishes, building
schools, and opening colleges. There had
been sixty parishes and 180 churches in 1917; by 1963 there were 176 parishes
and 300 churches. He also promoted
Catholic Action, the movement for Catholics to directly involve themselves in
politics, and encouraged the Catholic press and Catholic social action. In 1937 he established the National Secretariat
of Catholic Action and assisted in the creation of the Catholic Social Movement
in 1941. Since his elevation he had
opposed the influence of communism in Australia, and when the great labour
split occurred in 1955 he supported the industrial groups.
However,
theologically and liturgically he was very conservative, like many other Irish
bishops, but so also was the community he led.
He died in Melbourne in November 1963, on the eve of the vast changes in
the church which were to be wrought by the Second Vatican Council. By this time the Irish community in Australia
had moved to a central position - emigration from non-white countries was
beginning. Though the rhetoric of the
Australian Irish might often sound revolutionary and radical, as in the Labour
party, it was also imbued with the same deeply held conservative views that
marked Daniel Mannix.
Mannix
had many characteristics. In
Irish-Australian folklore he was a great patriotic hero. He was also the subject of many humorous
anecdotes. Every day he would walk four
miles from his home to the cathedral, and so came to know many of the city's
poor. Giving money to a drunk, Mannix
warned him not to spend it in the next bar.
'No, Your Grace. Well, then,
which one would you recommend?'
His
most important contribution was his public leadership. He derived his public style from the Irish
examples of John McHale, archbishop of Tuam, and Thomas Croke, archbishop of
Croke, men who identified the Catholic Church with the national aspirations of
the Irish people. It was a tradition
(found elsewhere, of course) of combining ecclesiastical position with public
leadership, championing the national cause against spiritual and political
oppression.
This
was not only style. There were other
bishops who supported British rule, and those like CARDINAL CULLEN [44], who concentrated on the interests
of the church alone. To Australia he
brought the experience of Irish history, the role of the Catholic clergy in
Irish communities, and shaped a course which still influences the public life
of the southern continent.
In
1917 Mannix had seen that there was an emerging Australian interest which was
not to be identified simply with the interests of the British. Though this was controversial then, it has
become the state of things today, when Australia finds itself having more in
common with its own part of the world, and with the United States. Mannix was one of the important influences on
the emergence of an Australian national identity in the twentieth century.
He
had helped to mould the Irish-Australian community, but that community would
have to face great changes, such as the rise in Asian immigration, which their
English-speaking emigrant background made them unfamiliar with. By the time he died, a new Australia was
emerging, racially mixed, increasingly republican, which would provide many new
challenges to the old faith of the Irish.
52
Maud Gonne MacBride
1866-1953
Constance
Gore-Booth,
the Countess Markievicz
1867-1927
Given that Irishmen have, in general, a
reputation for being male chauvinists, it is all the more remarkable that women
have played major parts in all national movements. Among the most outstanding and charismatic were
Maud Gonne and Constance Markievicz.
Even more astonishing was the fact that these champions of the poor and
the oppressed came from socially privileged backgrounds.
Constance was born Gore-Booth, of a Sligo
landed family (members of which still serve in the British Foreign
Service). She was presented at court in
1887 and hailed as 'the new Irish beauty'.
She wished to become a painter, and was already a friend of W.B. Yeats
and others in the Irish literary revival which was making such a heady, creative
ferment at the time. In pursuit of her
ambitions as an artist she went to London, and later to Paris.
In
Paris she met and married Casimir Markievicz, a Polish nobleman by whom she had
a daughter. Though he had extensive
estates in the Ukraine, they returned to live in Dublin, where they involved
themselves in many artistic movements.
The count was a genial man, and with his wife helped to found the Dublin
Arts Club.
Constance,
however, became interested in Irish nationalism and joined her friend Maud
Gonne in her organization, the Daughters of Eireann, the feminist side of the
nationalist cause. In 1909 she
established her own group of boy scouts, Na Fianna, who were taught the use of
weapons as well as woodcraft. Her
husband did not find these activities quite so appealing, and returned to the
Ukraine. She never saw him again.
She
was involved in the Lockout of 1913, running a soup kitchen for the workers,
who were verging on starvation. She also
took part in the Easter Rising, commanding the garrison which was installed in
the College of Surgeons in St Stephen's Green.
She was sentenced to death, but reprieved because she was a woman.
In
the general election of November 1918, she was elected from a Dublin
constituency, the first woman ever elected to the British Parliament - itself
an historic achievement. It might have
been more notable if she had taken it up, but along with the rest of Sinn Féin,
she refused to take her seat in London, and instead was one of those who met in
Dublin in January 1919 and proclaimed the independence of the Irish republic to
the world.
She
minister of labour in this government, which existed underground during the
troubles. When the war with the British
came to an end, she opposed the treaty settlement and supported the republican
cause. She continued in politics, being
elected again in 1923 after a defeat in 1922.
Arrested, she went on a hunger strike.
A founding member of Fianna Fáil, she was re-elected to the national
assembly in 1926, but by now her activities had undermined her health, and she
died on 15th July 1927.
Maud
Gonne, another social beauty, the daughter of a British army officer, was also
the beloved of WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS [8]. But she refused to
marry him, and instead devoted her life to the cause of Ireland. Her love life was centred on a French
politician, Lucian Millevoye, an ultra-nationalist supporter of General Georges
Boulanger, whom she met in France in 1890 while recuperating from a serious
illness. They became lovers but never
married. By him she had two children, a
boy who died, and a girl, Iseult (later Mrs Francis Stuart), who was described
for many years as her niece, and who Dublin gossip saw as the daughter of
Yeats.
In
Paris she edited a paper which supported Irish extremists and broke with her
lover because of his failure to support her cause after Boulanger committed
suicide. She acted as an active gadfly
of the period.
When
Queen Victoria visited Dublin in 1900 to thank the Irish for their support of
the Boer War, Maud Gonne organized a counter-celebration. She was still involved with literary matters
- she acted in Yeats' play Cathleen Ni Houlihan in 1902. She married Major John MacBride, who had
commanded a Boer unit, and by him had two more children. However, MacBride was, in Yeats' words, 'a
drunken, vainglorious lout', from whom she soon separated. He was one of those executed after the Rising
in 1916.
Maud
worked for the White Cross and ambulance service during the troubles and
opposed the treaty. To the end of her
life, she and her family remained deeply involved in republican
activities. She wrote an account of her
life, A Servant of the Queen, in 1938 - the queen in question being
Ireland rather than Victoria.
Maud
died on 27th April 1953, by which time her son Seán MacBride had risen to be
foreign minister for Ireland, after a controversial career in republican
politics. It was his government that
finally declared Ireland a republic and took it out of the commonwealth. Her funeral was attended by huge crowds,
gathered not only to see the passing of the grand dame of Irish politics, but
the woman whose beauty in her youth had captured the heart of Ireland's
greatest poet, W.B. Yeats.
These
two women, in very different ways, are representative of thousands of others
who were involved with the labour and republican causes in Ireland and
America. At a time when women were seen
as secondary figures, they created their own organizations and gathered their
own followers. For a while they were a
significant force in Irish life and politics, and generations of women after
them were less content with their conventional roles. The Irish constitution of 1937, which
recognized the special place of women as being in the home, seemed to many
radicals to be a snub to the achievements of gallant women like Maud Gonne and
Countess Markievicz, with men once again claiming the political arena
exclusively for themselves. When the
women's liberation movement came to Ireland in the late 1960s, however, it was
to Maud Gonne and Constance Markievicz that it turned for role models. They remain icons of the women's movement to
this day.
53
John O'Donovan
1809-1861
Eugene
O'Curry
1796-1862
A nation's identity depends on more than
patriots and politicians. A crucial ingredient
is a knowledge of its past and its traditions, and those traditions are bound
up in many ways with the nature and history of the land itself. In Ireland these had almost been lost when
the appearance of the scholars John O'Donovan and Eugene O'Curry saved the
remnants of the past that remains influential to this day.
John
O'Donovan was born on 9th July 1809, at Attateemore in rural Kilkenny. His father died when he was a child, but he
was educated in Dublin, thanks to the care of his uncle, Patrick
O'Donovan. Patrick proved to be an
influential figure in the boy's career, for he was a native Gaelic speaker and
loved all aspects of the old Gaelic culture, and he taught the boy about these.
In
1826 John O'Donovan began his working life in the Irish Record Office, filing
and translating Gaelic manuscripts, working on old law tracts, and assisting in
the research for Peter O'Connell's English-Gaelic dictionary. In 1829 he moved to the Ordnance Survey,
which was then engaged with the first full-scale survey and mapping of
Ireland. In preparation for this
O'Donovan travelled the country, visiting every townland (the basic land
division of which there would be several per parish), to record and investigate
locally and in manuscript sources the history of the place names. He reported back to the head office in a
series of letters that later filled fifty edited volumes. At the time, however, only the first survey,
relating to Derry, was published before the project was suspended. The British authorities feared that the
recording of the actual history of the places in Ireland, a record of
dispossession and eviction, was not appropriate. (This work lies behind Brian Friel's play, Translations.)
With
Eugene O'Curry he established the Irish Archaeological Society, which undertook
the publication of a long series of scholarly works by both writers. The greatest of O'Donovan's wide-ranging
achievements was the editing and translating in seven volumes of the Annals
of the Four Masters between 1848 and 1851 - a remarkable feat of applied
industry and scholarship.
At
this time he contemplated immigrating to America, but in 1852, when the Brehon
Law Commission was established, he was employed there at a much improved
salary. These laws were the old Celtic
legal system, which had been supplanted by feudal and statutory law but which
was vitally important for understanding all aspects of ancient Irish culture.
His
work was recognized with an honorary doctor of laws degree from Trinity College,
but his real fame has come in the praise which later generations have heaped
upon his skilled pioneering research into the manuscripts of ancient
Ireland. O'Donovan had lived in
difficult circumstances all his life, and his health had never been good. He died in 1861, before the appearance of the
materials he had been working on. He was
only in his middle fifties, and left a widow, six small children, and an estate
valued at a mere £570.
Eugene
O'Curry was also born in rural Ireland, at Dunaha in County Clare, in
1796. He was never formally educated,
but his father had a vast store of knowledge about the traditions and
antiquities of Ireland and ancient Irish literature. This he passed on to his son, and it was an
education in itself.
O'Curry
worked on the small family farm and then struggled for four years to earn a
living as a teacher. With his brothers
he moved to Limerick about 1824, and worked as a labourer and later a ganger. He then managed to get appointed warden of
the Limerick mental home. At last his
own scholarly skills were recognized, and he was invited to join the staff of
the Ordnance Survey in 1835.
He
was employed on the survey with John O'Donovan, working with him on the survey
of Clare, and when this project ended, in 1837, he was employed to catalogue
and arrange the ancient Irish materials in the Royal Irish Academy, Trinity
College, and the British Museum in London.
The
important person in the survey was George Petrie, an artist who became a member
of the council of the Royal Irish Academy in 1829, and instigated the
collection and recording of Gaelic manuscripts.
So O'Donovan, O'Curry, and Petrie came together. O'Curry then began the even larger task of
editing and publishing some of these manuscripts.
When
John Henry Newman established the Catholic University in Dublin, he was hired
as the professor of Irish history and archaeology in 1854. This was the first professorship of
archaeology in the world. His inaugural
lectures, published in 1861, covered the whole range of Irish manuscript
materials. Though he died on 30th July
1862, a further set of lectures, The Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Irish, appeared in 1873.
The
importance of the pioneering work undertaken by these two relatives (O'Donovan
was married to O'Curry's sister-in-law) cannot be overestimated. It laid the foundation for all further
inquiry and research into what they revealed to be one of the most ancient
cultures in the Western world, even older than Greece in some respects.
What
Patricia Boyne, the recent biographer of O'Donovan, wrote about the one,
applies to both: 'His work was responsible for the marked growth in the study
of Irish language, history, folklore, and poetry in the second half of the
nineteenth century. It promoted an
awareness of the significance of the Irish language and of Irish antiquities,
and of their value to the Irish people.
It also proved seminal to the great upsurge of drama and poetry
manifested in the Irish literary revival.'
A
writer of an earlier generation, Patrick McSweeney, saw the matter in a more
nationalist light: 'In the battle for intellectual freedom it is true to say
that O'Donovan, O'Curry, and Petrie are national heroes. They loved Ireland and the Irish people with
a lasting love. They cherished the Past
of Ireland, they reverenced it; and they believed in it. They determined that the Ireland of the
Future should be bound to the Ireland of the Past by the links of knowledge and
of love. They forged these links in the
white heat of patriotic research. They
were, in every true sense of the word, Nation-builders; and we, their heirs,
must not forget them.'
Today
their pioneering work is continued by scholars in university departments and
institutions around the world, but especially in Ireland and America. The true value of what they did lies in the
love of many millions for the ancient culture they uncovered.
54
Horace Plunkett
1854-1932
Though he was born and died in England,
Horace Plunkett was a scion of the Dunsanys and passed much of his early life
at Dunsany Castle, the ancient family seat of the Plunketts, in County
Meath. He was born in Gloucester on 24th
October 1854, and was a son of the sixteenth Baron Dunsany and the uncle of the
well-known writer, Lord Dunsany (a family in whose ancestry lay the Irish
saint, Oliver Plunkett).
Having
been educated at Eton and Oxford, he was sent to Wyoming in 1879 to recover his
health, and remained there for a decade.
It is often forgotten just how large the investment of Britain was in
the cattle lands of the American west in the late nineteenth century.
In
1888 he published an article on the value of cooperative stores for
Ireland. When he came back to Ireland in
1889 he threw himself into the cooperative movement, which aimed at improving
Irish agriculture for small farmers. By
1891 some eighteen societies had been formed by over a thousand farmers. From 1894 to 1899 he was president of the
Irish Agricultural Organization Society, which he founded. He was appointed to the Congested Districts
Board, where he served from 1891 to 1918, and was elected MP for South Dublin
in 1892 as a Unionist. Until 1900 he was
a staunch advocate of the claims of Irish agriculture in the British
Parliament.
He
was largely responsible for achieving the establishment of the Department of
Agriculture and Technical Instruction in Ireland. He employed the poet George Russell to edit
the movement's paper, the Irish Homestead, in which JAMES JOYCE'S [25] first stories from Dubliners
appeared.
Plunkett
was convinced that the solution to the social and economic problems of rural
Ireland depended on a mixture of self-help and state aid, but he had to fight
hard for his cause against the lethargy and opposition of vested interests. Nor did he believe in 'compulsory
cooperation' - the Marxist solution.
The
Irish Agricultural Organization Society was one of the most influential
agencies in the remaking of modern Ireland, and its influence can still be felt
through the giant cooperative dairies which flourish all over Ireland and are
now among the biggest businesses in the country. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society
in 1902, and was made a knight commander of the Victorian Order in 1903.
His
book, Ireland in the New Century, published in 1904, caused immense
controversy, as he claimed that one of the drags on social and economic
development in Ireland was the Catholic Church, which stifled any sense of
personal enterprise. This was angrily
rebutted by Catholic apologists. As a
Protestant, Plunkett may have exaggerated the power of the church, for later it
would be unable to hinder Irish rebels undertaking often radical reforms. The inertia lay in the poor education and
traditionalism of the farmers themselves.
The
controversy may well have damaged Plunkett in the eyes of the rising generation
of Irish nationalists. However, he was a
Unionist in politics, and hoped to keep Ireland whole under one government. He was strongly opposed to the partition of
Ireland in 1922. Like many, he saw the
development of Canada and Australia as having relevance to Ireland. He founded the Irish Dominion League to keep
the Irish Free State within the British Commonwealth, but Irish nationalists
were intent on full independence.
He
was a senator in the Irish Free State in 1922 and 1923, but republicans burned
his house down and he left Ireland in some bitterness to pass the rest of his
life in England, where he continued to promote the cooperative movement
worldwide. In 1924 a major conference on
agricultural cooperation in the British Empire was held in London, over which
he presided. He visited South Africa in
1925, and in 1927 made a special study of the benefits of cooperation in India.
In
1919 Plunkett endowed a trust under his name which encouraged the development
of agriculture through cooperation. He
published other books, and to the end of his life was active in the causes to
which he had devoted himself. He died in
Weybridge, in Surrey, on 26th March 1932.
He never married, but for much of his life retained a strong affection
for Daisy Fingal, with whom many thought he was in love.
Though
Plunkett's enthusiasm might not have endeared him to the rich graziers and
strong farmers of Ireland, the country, as a whole, has done well due to
cooperation. Some co-ops were tiny
operations to begin with. In the early
days, perhaps the most famous co-op was at Templecrone in Donegal, largely the
creation of Patrick Gallagher. But since
1906, when that enterprise was founded, co-ops have grown into immense
operations. Small farmers were able to
sell their milk or pigs into the co-op facility, where they could take their
share of the profits through a monthly or even weekly cheque. The co-op cheque became an essential feature of
Irish rural life from the 1930s onwards.
The driving force behind the enterprise would often be a local priest,
though today the small co-ops have almost disappeared.
The
transformation of Ireland that Plunkett had hoped for has been achieved, and it
brought just the social changes he had hoped for. Horace Plunkett was one of the great men
whose services Ireland lost through the narrow sectarian action of political
extremists, but his vision has survived all opposition.
55
Sean O'Casey
1880-1964
Sean O'Casey is among the most famous
Irish dramatists of any century, largely due to his set of plays about the
Irish troubles. His life was a long and
controversial one, and he affected life and literature in many other ways.
He
was born in Dublin on 30th March 1880.
His family had been upper-working class, but with the early death of the
father, their social fortunes declined.
As an infant, Sean developed trouble with his eyes, an affliction which
was to haunt him all his life. The first
volumes of his autobiographical series, I Knock at the Door and Pictures
of the Hallway, describe these early years in vivid if often overcoloured
detail.
As
a young man O'Casey combined hard manual work with omnivorous reading. Like so many working-class writers, he was
largely self-educated. He delighted in
all kinds of writers, from Shakespeare to Shaw.
He was also an energetic churchman, involved in the parish of St
Barnabas. He was an early and
enthusiastic member first of an Orange lodge, then of the Gaelic League, and
finally he joined the IRB.
He
was a follower of JAMES LARKIN [37] and
was involved in the founding of the Irish Citizen Army (of which he wrote the
first history), though he had broken with it before his comrades took part in
the Easter Rising. His early reading of
Marx and Engels had convinced him that their social analysis was correct, or at
least true to his experience. For the
rest of his life he remained a Communist, or at least a Communist supporter, if
not a party member.
His
ambitions as a writer were encouraged by Lady Gregory, and eventually, after
several rejections, his first serious play, The Shadow of a Gunman, was
produced to great success in 1923. This
was followed by Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough and the
Stars (1926). If J.M. Synge had been
a triumph of the Abbey Theatre's early years, O'Casey was the counterpart of
its maturity. His plays were both
critical and commercial successes.
He
was now able to give up his life as a labourer, and moved, temporarily he thought,
to London, where he married a young Irish actress in 1927. But that year his next play, The Silver
Tassie, about the First World War and its aftermath, was rejected by W.B. YEATS [8] and the Abbey management, largely for ideological
reasons. Nevertheless, the play had some
success in London in 1928. It has been
revived several times since, and is viewed by some as the necessary conclusion
to the earlier trilogy, bringing the experience of another way, which half a
million Irish shared in, home to Dublin.
O'Casey
then vowed to stay out of Ireland, and never returned to Dublin. He wrote many other plays, and remained a
controversial personality into his old age.
These later works never achieved the stature or success of the early
ones set during the years of revolution.
The plays of the late 1930s received only lukewarm critical praise and
were commercial failures. They were
coloured by a vigorous anticlericalism and an overheated Marxism.
However,
for many of his admirers, his six-volume autobiography, which he began
publishing in 1939, is a far greater work than his later plays. Having left Ireland, O'Casey cut himself off
from his roots. His memory of a lost era
in Dublin life sustained his creativity, and he was one of the most admired writers
of the Irish literary revival, especially in America.
He
and his young wife were settled in Devon with their three children, where he
remained for the rest of his life. His
new plays, such as The Star Turns Red, were produced by small companies;
he was no longer a feature of the commercial theatre. Two of his plays, The Bishop's Bonfire and
The Drums of Father Ned, were produced in Dublin, and caused delightful
rows of a peculiarly Irish kind.
By
now he was becoming of increasing interest to academic writers. With the completion of his autobiographical
series in 1954 his reputation began to climb again. This was due in part to the appreciation of
the autobiographies as works of art in their own right.
O'Casey
remains a figure of controversy, yet there is no doubt that the story of his
own life and his early plays had shaped a view of Irish life, in all its
tragedy and comedy, which has come to be better known outside Ireland than its
real history. When many think of
Ireland's troubled past they think of it as Sean O'Casey showed it.
He
died at St Marychurch, near Torquay, in Devon, on 18th September 1964. Whatever the final verdict of history will
be, he will remain one of Ireland's, and the world's, greatest dramatists.
56
William Cosgrave
1880-1965
Though he had taken a large part in the
Irish revolution, to W.T. Cosgrave fell the harder task of establishing the new
Irish state in 1922. That modern Ireland
is an open stable democracy is largely a result of his work and it remains his
greatest memorial, whatever the claims of other figures such as MICHAEL
COLLINS [3] and EAMON DE VALERA [2].
Born
in 1874 in the shadow of the Guinness brewery on St James Street, from his
earliest years he was involved in nationalist activities. He was educated by the Christian Brothers,
then a certain way of being introduced to the notion of Ireland's special
destiny. His father, Thomas Cosgrave,
had at one time been an elected town councillor and a poor-law guardian, these
being the main offices of local government in Dublin.
W.T.
Cosgrave entered the grocery trade as a lad and seemed set to follow that
mundane vocation. But perhaps due to his
education he was attracted to Sinn Féin.
From his business background he had a sound grasp of finance, and in
1916, another significant year, he was elected chairman of Sinn Féin's finance
committee.
In
1913 he joined the Irish Volunteers, which had been formed the year
before. When the volunteers, who then
numbered about one hundred thousand men, split in August 1914 over the issue of
the First World War, he was one of the ten thousand who refused to follow the
lead given by John Redmond. When the
uprising was under way he was one of those who followed Pearse and Connolly, disobeying
the order of Eoin MacNeill to stand down.
Only 600 men, a very small fraction of the Volunteer movement, took part
in the Easter Week rebellion. He was
arrested after the uprising and interned at Frongoch in North Wales until July
1917, when most of the prisoners were released.
In
1917 Cosgrave was nominated to stand in the Sinn Féin interest in a by-election
in Kilkenny. By now Sinn Féin had moved
from its original non-violent espousal of a dual monarchy for Ireland to being
a republican party. In the December 1918
post-war election he was elected for Kilkenny County. He was a member of the first Dáil that met in
Dublin in January 1919 and declared the Irish republic. He was appointed minister for local
government in the underground administration because of his own experience in
that area.
During
the troubles his main task was to coordinate the refusal of local authorities
in Ireland to cooperate with the British authorities at Dublin Castle. All this time he was on the run, and was more
than once imprisoned.
When
the treaty was signed in December 1919, it split the movement again. In the Dáil treaty debates, Cosgrave's speech
was one of the very few that attracted widespread comment. In the government of Arthur Griffith and
Michael Collins, he was once again minister of local government, now charged
with easing the transition from the old administration to the new without a
hitch.
In
the summer of 1922, when tensions were building toward the outbreak of the
civil war, Cosgrave was appointed Griffith's deputy while he was in London
discussing the administration of the treaty.
On 12th August 1922, Griffith suddenly died. In his place, Collins was chosen as president
of the provisional government. Ten days
later, Collins was also dead. These two
ill strokes of fortune moved W.T. Cosgrave, the straightforward Dublin man of
business, into the chief place in the government of the Irish Free State. Griffith had been a national figure since the
turn of the century. Michael Collins was
the adored hero of the masses. Cosgrave
was almost unknown in comparison.
Troubled
times need heroes, but stable administration needs something else. When the government came together again,
Cosgrave made it plain that what was now required to run the country was not
the clash of personalities, but effective teamwork. There was a newly drafted constitution to be
passed by the Dáil, a military campaign to finish, the cost of the civil war -
estimated at the then astonishing sum of £7 million - as well as all the normal
business of good government. Some of his
cabinet, such as Kevin O'Higgins, were strong men in their own right, but
Cosgrave held them all together. But
more than that, he managed, through the appointment of Protestants and former
Unionists to the Senate, to bring the Protestant minority into the councils of
the Free State. The appointments to the
civil service, the judiciary, and the Senate reflect merit rather than
friendship, religion, or politics.
The
civil war petered out and ended. In September
1923 Cosgrave was welcomed to the League of Nations as the representative of
the Irish Free State, and the following month he attended a conference of the
Dominions, those self-governing states, such as Canada, South Africa, and
Australia, that formed what later became the British Commonwealth.
With
the end of the fighting, order returned to Ireland and the task of rebuilding
began. Finances were a pressing concern,
and there were handled in a careful, even mean manner. But after the government had decided to keep
the size of the force in line with peaceful conditions some army officers
mutinied, and Cosgrave faced down what might have been a very serious threat to
the new democracy from the military and the right wing. A few months later another minister took over
without a fuss. Unlike Collins or de
Valera, Cosgrave had no messianic ambitions, but his steady course and good
sense won overseas admirers of the new state.
It
was under Cosgrave that the great task of building the Shannon hydroelectric
plan was begun. Though the taxes were
high, the government spoke of free electricity in a decade, a promise it could
not hope to keep.
Cosgrave's
party in the Dáil faced opposition only from the Labour party and some smaller
groups. The main body of the real
opposition, de Valera's party, and the other republicans were outside the
Dáil. This was not a healthy situation
and could not long continue. In August
1927 the minister of justice, Kevin O'Higgins, identified by many as the real
strongman of the new state, was assassinated by a republican splinter
group. Legislation was passed that
forced anyone standing for election to take their seat if they won. This forced the hand of de Valera and Fianna
Fáil, and they came in out of the cold.
In October an election left Cosgrave's party the largest. But a coalition of other parties could now
outvote the government. With the support
of the Farmer's Party he maintained a narrow majority.
In
early 1928 Cosgrave paid a state visit to the United States, where he was
received with great warmth not only by the Irish-American community, but also
by President Calvin Coolidge. He
addressed the Senate and then went on to visit Canada before returning in
triumph to Ireland. He had achieved a
recognized place for Ireland in the community of nations. It was his greatest moment.
In
the election of 1932 de Valera gained a narrow majority, which he improved by
quickly calling another election in 1933.
Cosgrave, however, remained the leader of his party, but these were to
be troubled days. His was by nature a
conservative party, but it harboured within it a right wing that cast admiring
glances at developments in Europe. A
fascist group under General Eoin O'Duffy, popularly called the Blueshirts, came
into existence out of the Army Comrades Association, an anti-republican
group. There were street clashes between
them and the republicans, by now a Communist group.
De
Valera acted with decision to deal with these elements. Cosgrave split with O'Duffy, and something
approaching normal politics was restored.
Ireland had had a very close brush with fascism and communism, but
thanks to the leadership of de Valera and Cosgrave, avoided the disaster.
Cosgrave
was still party leader when the war broke out in September 1939. He supported the measures of national unity,
which the war entailed, until he retired from politics in 1945.
His
son, Liam Cosgrave, was the leader of Fine Gael, the successor party to his
father's. W.T. Cosgrave died in 1965, having
lived to see the old divisions of the civil war effectively buried in the
progress of the new Ireland. That nation
owed him a debt which the perspective of history will only enhance. Though naturally cautious and careful, he
carried his people through a perilous period, succeeding where a lesser man, or
a more headstrong personality, would have failed. For a quiet man, it was a great triumph.
57
John Hume
1937-
In 1998 John Hume, along with the Ulster
Unionist Leader DAVID TRIMBLE [40], was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Since
1969, during the long purgatory of the Northern Ireland troubles, John Hume, as
leader of the largely Catholic Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), has
carried the burden of the majority of the nationalist community. He has tried to reach a permanent and just
settlement in the face of Unionist determination to retain the tie to Britain
on the one hand, and the terrorism of the IRA and the demands of Sinn Féin for
a united Ireland on the other. He has
sought to achieve reform, reconciliation, and, eventually - very eventually -
reunification. Hume has proved very
important to the breaking of the mould into which history has cast the politics
of Ireland as a whole.
John
Hume is a Derryman, a native of a city that plays a large part in the imagined
history of Northern Ireland. To
Catholics, Derry means Daire, the monastery founded by the great ST COLUMCILLE [58].
To unionists it is Londonderry, the brave city that closed its gates
against the army of James II and resisted a long siege in the cause of William
III. Though its people share a common
soil, they live in different countries.
Derry's politics has always been volatile, though it lacks the wealth of
Belfast and was cut off by partition from its natural hinterland in Donegal.
John
Hume was born on 18th January 1937, the son of Samuel Hume, of Derry. He was educated at St Columb's College in
Derry, and at St Patrick's College in Maynooth, taking a master's degree from
the National University of Ireland. He
married Patricia Hume in 1960. They live
in Derry, where they have reared a family of two sons and three daughters.
John
Hume was of the first generation of Ulster people to benefit from free
secondary and university education provided by the Education Act of 1944. He worked first as a teacher in Derry, but
emerged into public life initially as a community leader, involved especially
in the credit union movement, which was so important in working-class areas of Ireland,
and served as president of the Credit Union League of Ireland from 1964 to
1968.
With
these strong roots in the community, he was inevitably drawn into a full-time
political career, being elected MP to the Northern Ireland parliament for Foyle
in 1969. This was the year that the
present troubles began, though for nationalists there had been troubles as far
back as the 1880s. When Stormont was
dissolved by direct rule from London, Hume was elected to the British
Parliament for Londonderry, now Foyle.
He was minister of commerce in the short-lived power-sharing executive
of 1974. He has also been a member of
the European Parliament since 1979.
Hume
was a founding member of the Social and Democratic Labour Party (SDLP), serving
as its deputy leader from 1970 to 1979.
He was elected leader in 1979, and since then has played a central and
increasingly influential role in the resolution of the Ulster problem. The party was intended to provide Ulster
politics with a new beginning. The old
nationalist party was hopelessly out of touch with the new situation, and the
resurgence of Sinn Féin posed as much of a threat to Catholics as to
unionists. The SDLP was intended to
provide a party which was social democratic, would cross community boundaries,
and provide a common party for the working-class voters of all traditions.
Inevitably,
however, it developed as a largely Catholic party due to the nature of
community politics in Northern Ireland.
But the party has never lost its initial aspiration, and remains
involved in the world-wide social democratic movement. John Hume himself served on the bureau of the
socialist group in the European Parliament - the largest political grouping in
that body.
But
the growth of a new sense of unity that has affected the lives of all Europeans
could not eradicate overnight the long and tangled history of Hume's
homeland. This is where John Hume's real
purpose in life was to be. The
settlement in Northern Ireland, reached on Good Friday 1998, was due largely to
his patience in drawing Sinn Féin and the IRA into a more conventional form of
politics.
Ireland
has now moved on. The Good Friday
Agreement, representing the first time since 1918 that the whole island voted
together on one issue, has hopefully provided a new way ahead. The claims to a mandate by the IRA and the
other terrorist groups have been shown to be empty. A new way of dealing with the relations
between the communities in the north, and the governments, north and south,
east and west, may be developing.
If
this is so, Ireland as a whole owes John Hume (who retired at the end of 2000
as party leader) an unrepayable debt. He
and his party have brought about a sea change, but as is ever the case the
future is not always in the hands of good men.
Though the Northern Ireland Assembly has become functional, Northern
Ireland remains among the troubled places of the world.
58
St Columcille
521-597
Along with ST PATRICK [1] and St Bridget, Columcille (also known as Columba of Iona) is
one of the three patron saints of Ireland, whose life's work was critical in
the formation of early Christian Ireland.
The year of his death coincided with the arrival of the mission of St
Augustine, in Kent.
The
two aspects of Western Christianity, the Celtic and the Continental, clashed
for many decades until the Synod of Whitby extinguished the Celtic
customs. But the mission of Augustine
was largely a failure. The long
Christian tradition of Scotland and England owes much more to the determination
and courage of Irish missionaries such as Columcille than is often realized.
He
was born at Gartan in Donegal on 7th December 521, of aristocratic stock, being
one of the clan of Conall, and an O'Donnell, who were the princes of
Donegal. He was educated at the monastic
centres of Moville by St Finnian; at Clonard, where he was a pupil of another
and greater St Finnian; and later at Glasnevin, in Dublin. In 544 a plague forced his return to Ulster.
He
was ordained a priest in 541, and established his own monastery at Derry in
545. He spent some fifteen years
founding monasteries throughout Ireland, at Derry (546), Swords (about 550),
Durrow (about 553), and at Kells (about 554).
He
was accused of being responsible for the bloody battle of Culdrevy in 561
between his own people, the Dalriada Scots, and King Diarmid, the overlord of
eastern Ireland. Taking his doubts to
his own confessor, he was given the penance of going into Scotland to spread
the gospel there.
In
563 St Columcille went into exile with twelve followers as a missionary among
the pagan Picts of Scotland. The Irish
had already carved out a kingdom along the western coast of Scotland. (At this time the Irish were called Scots.) He established a monastery on the island of
Iona in Argyll, which was presented to him by his kinsman Conall. From there he and other missionaries set out
to spread the faith among the Picts of northern Scotland. These journeys are described by his early
biographer, Adamnan. (On one of them he
is reported to have encountered the Loch Ness monster.)
The
important result of this mission was not just to convert the Picts to
Christianity, but to provide the ground on which the Scots and Picts could
unite, and so create the nucleus of the modern kingdom of Scotland. He revisited Ireland itself on only two
occasions, and acted as a mediator at the Assembly of Druim-Cetta in 575. He was the supposed author of poems in Latin
and in Gaelic. The oldest surviving
manuscript of the Gallican Psalter, the so-called Cathac, is said to be
in his own hand. The record of his life
by Adamnan gives a good account of the rule he established, and this too was
also widely influential in the church.
His
ascetic way of life often led to him withdrawing from his companions and into
the woods to pray and fast. He impressed
everyone with his holiness.
Among
some Protestant writers, the independence of the Celtic church has been
overemphasized, while its essential loyalty to Rome was overplayed by Catholic
writers. In many ways, the atmosphere of
this church was similar to the Ethiopian church; both worked beyond the bounds
of the old Roman Empire among pagan tribes and out of direct communication with
the more metropolitan centres.
Iona
was also a scholarly centre. The Celtic
church, however, developed its own extraordinary culture, especially in
illuminated books, many of them produced by the monasteries with which
Columcille was associated. A key figure
in the development of Scotland, he was thus a seminal person in the development
of Western European civilization. As
Toynbee and other historian have pointed out, these monks were an essential
link in the transmission of the older classical cultures of Greece and Rome, to
their revival during the Middle Ages, following the Dark Ages, which fell upon
most of the continent after the barbarian invasions.
According
to an old tradition, Columcille died while kneeling before the altar of his own
church on Iona in 597. He was buried on
the island, but his remains were later removed to Kells in Meath, and some to
Dunkeld. The famous Stone of Scone, on
which the ancient kings of Scotland and later the kings of England were
crowned, is thought by some to actually be the pillow of St Columcille.
The
anniversary of his death in 1997 was the occasion of pilgrimages from all over
Britain and Ireland to Iona. As Scotland
begins a new political era under its own parliament once again, it is now
appreciated that Columcille's mission marks the beginning of the history of Scotland
and the Scottish people.
59
John Scotus Eriugena
c. 820-877
The first Irish philosopher to attain
universal fame, John Scotus Eriugena was a figure of controversy. He was, as John O'Meara pointed out, 'the
most considerable philosopher in the Western world between Augustine and Thomas
Aquinas and the greatest Irish philosopher (with the possible exception of
Berkeley) ever'.
John
Scotus Eriugena (not to be confused with Duns Scotus, as he often is)
introduced a radically new view of the universe, anticipating Copernicus by six
hundred years. But despite this
eminence, Ireland has taken little interest in a man who was in the eyes of
some, as one scholar notes, merely a boozy Irish monk given to sitting up and
talking through the night.
The
date of his birth and his family background are unknown, though it seems
certain that he was born in Ireland (for that is what the name, Eriugena
means), and that his formidable learning, which included Greek and philosophy,
was gained there.
The
year 851 found him at the court of the west Frankish king Charles the Bald,
where he was in charge of the palace school.
But he had been trained as a theologian, so he also took part in the
learned disputes arising from the doctrines of Gottschalk, a monk from Soissons,
who had become indoctrinated with a heretical view of predestination and died
in prison in 868. There is, however, no
real evidence that Eriugena was himself either a priest or a monk.
He
wrote a treatise, De Praedestione, which was condemned by the Council of
Alence in 855; his ideas were called pultes scotorum, 'Irish
stirabout'. At the request of Charles
the Bald, he translates the works of pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite into
Latin; afterwards, these were to have a tremendous influence on the future
development of medieval thought.
Eriugena's
own chief work was called De Divisione Naturae, which was also condemned
by Pope Honorius III in 1225. As late as
1658 it was seen as a danger to faith and morals, and was placed on the index
of prohibited books by the Catholic Church.
He was not a scientist in the modern sense of the word - he did not make
measurements or conduct experiments - but was more what the eighteenth century
might have called a natural philosopher.
In
his system Eriugena placed the sun at the centre of the universe at a time when
others believed (with Ptolemy) that the earth was at the centre. He came to the conclusion that God and Heaven
did not need to be physically above the stars, as was commonly conceived, nor
was Hell located underground (as Dante was to imagine). For these radical ideas Eriugena was accused
by another theologian of being a pantheist - of identifying God with the
material world. But he was not in fact a
pantheist. As a rational person, he
thought with firm logic and dismissed many superstitions. On the evidence of Eriugena and his learning,
the Dark Ages, so called, were not really quite so dark at all.
After
Charles the Bald died in 877, Eriugena was forced to leave France, suspected of
being a heretic. Some scholars assert he
never left Europe and died there in 877.
But an early tradition asserts that he was called into England by Alfred
the Great and was made abbot of Malmesbury.
Having lived by the pen he died by it, for he was murdered by his
students - a fate wished upon many teachers, one suspects. They stabbed him to death with their writing
implements.
Yet
Eriugena's theories, neglected for so long, now appear to modern scholars fresh
and newly relevant to a complete understanding of the early middle ages.
60
Fr Charles Coughlin
1891-1979
In a world seemingly dominated by
television, it can be forgotten what a powerful force radio once was in the
United States - and still is in other parts of the world. As the Canadian media guru Marshal McLuhan observed,
it is a hot medium, ideal for broadcasting of powerful nationalistic or
political messages, and it remains much favoured by demagogues of the third
world.
One
of the earliest exponents of the power of radio was Fr Charles Edward Coughlin,
'the Radio Priest' whose views dominated the public affairs of America in the
days of the New Deal. To a modern medium
he brought the enthusiasm and passion of his Irish ancestors.
He
was born in Canada, in Hamilton, Ontario.
His father, Thomas J. Coughlin, was a sailor on the Great Lakes
waterways and also a church sexton.
Thomas Coughlin was a US citizen, while Mrs Coughlin, Amelia Mahony by
birth, was a Canadian.
The
Irish-Catholic culture was strong in Canada, and Coughlin was reared in a very
traditional way. He was sent first to St
Mary's Elementary School in Hamilton, and then to St Michael's High School in
Toronto. His best subjects were maths
and athletics. He went on to St
Michael's College, where he played rugby - too often seen as an upper-class
sport - and made a name for himself as a debater.
His
religious upbringing prompted a vocation for the priesthood, and in 1911 he
entered the novitiate for the Basilian order who ran St Michael's. He was ordained in 1916 - the year of the
Easter Rising - and sent to work at Assumption College in Windsor,
Ontario. Though his productions of
Shakespeare were popular, he also taught English, psychology (from a Catholic
point of view, a new, and potentially dangerous subject) and logic.
Though
Canadian, Windsor is near enough to Detroit to be heavily influenced by the
culture of the United States. When the
Canadian Basilians separated from their French parent order, Coughlin became a
priest under the rule of the archbishop of Detroit. Like all the northern industrial cities,
Detroit had a significant Irish population.
Fr Coughlin worked in the parish church of St Leo's, where his outspoken
sermons became popular. The local bishop,
Dr Michael Gallagher, selected him to establish a new parish in the suburbs of
Royal Oak.
Though
the Irish might have been well represented in the cities of Michigan, in the
country it was different. Fr Coughlin
was welcomed into Royal Oak by the local Ku Klux Klan burning a fiery cross on
the presbytery lawn. Aside from this
Protestant intolerance, typical of attitudes towards Irish Catholics at the
time, there were few actual parishioners.
For
the masses, radio, literally broadcasting, was new. The British Broadcasting Corporation had been
established in 1922, and commercial radio was only getting under way in
America. In the northern cities many
people were of European origin, and though they spoke and understood English
they could not read it. Coughlin hoped
to teach them through radio. On 17th
October 1926, he made his first broadcast over WJR, the Detroit station. He was an immediate hit, and soon his
on-the-air sermons were being relayed to many other stations. At first his message was purely a religious
one, and he talked about the gospel message of Christ's life and told simple
parables extolling traditional Christian values. It was a very typical God-spot routine, as
broadcasters of today would call it.
But
the times were changing. In 1930 he
began to attack bolshevism and socialism, which were making their way through
the emigrant communities of the United States.
From this external threat of the new, godless philosophies, he moved on
in 1931 to attack President Herbert Hoover for his failures to counter the
rising unemployment of the Great Depression that was now sweeping the United
States. In Europe, the economic downturn
was a fertile ground for the rise of Communist and Fascist parties.
The
message proved a popular one. Fr
Coughlin received over a million letters from listeners supporting his
views. He had touched a nerve, and
though to some the departure of a priest into the hurly-burly of politics
seemed improper, his radio 'sermons' from then on dealt with political, social,
and economic matters.
To
his critics, he could point to the church's own concern with these matters,
through the teachings outlined in Rerum Novarum (New Things), the famous
and forceful papal encyclical of Leo XIII.
The church's social programme, and its care for the needs and legitimate
aspirations of workers, was based on this document. The pope had emphasized the duties of the
capitalists to the workers whose labours created their fortunes. This was not always a popular message, and
Coughlin went further. His enemies were
the international bankers, those scapegoats of so many radicals and reformers
between the wars. By manipulating
capital and credit they were controlling the world. Real power lay not with the citizen, but with
the shadowy men behind boardroom doors.
Coughlin
had used contribution from those millions of listeners to build a church in
Detroit called the Shrine of the Little Flower - the cult of St Thérèse of
Liseux was then a popular one. He
broadcast on Sunday afternoons, the radio signals going out from a high granite
tower beside the church.
These
colourful activities made good copy.
Soon newspapers and magazines were running stories about the Radio
Priest and his views. The first edition
of his complete radio sermons became a mammoth bestseller, selling a million
copies in 1933. By the following year he
was getting ten thousand letters a day, many with contributions in cash. He had four secretaries and a staff of over a
hundred. The simple sermons had become
big business, and with size came influence.
Personally,
Coughlin was a charming and convivial person.
He had that special confidence of the born preacher and exuded a
certainty that he had all the answers for an increasingly worried nation. He was also a broadcasting genius, his firm
voice with the slight Irish intonation was said to be 'without doubt one of the
great speaking voices of the twentieth century'.
In
1932 he had become an active supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt. His support, he thought, had been partially
responsible for bringing FDR to the White House - a large claim. He insisted that 'the new deal is Christ's
deal', and it was 'Roosevelt or ruin'.
But the wise president kept his distance from this overzealous support.
The
Columbia Broadcasting System, of which the Detroit station was an affiliate,
had already asked Fr Coughlin to calm his rhetoric. In the course of a broadcast in January 1931
he exposed their efforts to 'censor' him, and the network bosses were deluged
with letters in support of Coughlin. The
priest now felt he could say what he wanted, with no regard to the church or
capitalism. CBS cancelled his contract.
Coughlin
was unfazed. He put together a network
of forty stations, crossing the continent from Maine to California. His sermons, if they could still be called
that, were heard at times by the largest radio audiences in the world,
sometimes as many as forty million people.
He was the father of the radio and television evangelists which are now
such a feature of broadcasting in North America and elsewhere.
FDR
was conscious, as all presidents must be, of the Irish-American and Catholic
vote. Coughlin's own solution to the
Great Depression was to put more money into circulation, and claimed that FDR
was planning to do this. Such inflation
would have been ruinous; it had undermined democracy in Germany, and many felt
it could do the same in America. This
was not to be the policy of the New Deal, and Coughlin began to call for the
nationalization of credit, money, and the Federal Reserve.
From
broadcasting, Coughlin's ambitions moved to actual politics. In 1934 he founded the National Union for
Social Justice. This was not claimed to
be a political party, but a movement to protect the rights of the workers. It ran a newspaper, Social Justice, to
carry its message. Its one victory was a
campaign to prevent the United States from joining the World Court, which he
saw as undermining national sovereignty.
Though its membership rose to five million, it never again achieved the
same impact as it had in the early 1930s.
Now
anti-Roosevelt, Coughlin established the Union party to fight in the election
of 1936. But third parties never do well
in the United States, and their candidate polled only a million votes, even
though it had drawn together the fragments of other political movements on the
radical right.
Failure
left Coughlin undaunted. He only moved
further to the extreme right. He
reprinted the bogus 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion' in his paper, and
accused the Jews and international Jewish financiers - those bogeymen of the
right and left - of being responsible for America's problems. Here he had the sympathies of some, like
Henry Ford, who should have known better.
Coughlin said the Jews were behind communism and began to defend the
Nazis.
Some
of his sentiments were shared widely in society, both in the United States and
in Ireland. In August 1938 he organized
the Christian Front as an anti-Communist movement, but his young supporters
spent their time attacking Jews. Though
he might defend this, using the example of Christ and the moneychangers in the
temple, it was bringing the street politics of Europe into America.
His
enemies now confronted him. At last, in
1940, his broadcasts were finally stopped by the National Association of
Broadcasters. Never again would a
demagogue have free access to the airwaves of the United States in the
unrestricted and unregulated way that Coughlin had had in the 1930s.
Pearl
Harbour and the entry of the United States into the war brought his career to
an end. He was silenced by his bishop in
May 1942, and his papers were banned from the US mail. He remained the parish priest at the Shrine
of the Little Flower until he was forced to retire in 1966, and then lived
privately in Birmingham, Michigan, until his death on 27th October 1979.
He
was, notes Francis R. Burns, 'undoubtedly one of the most powerful figures
outside the government during the Depression era'. The influence he exerted over the American
people was powerful and immediate, but in the end the institutions of both
church and state were stronger than a demagogue who had hoped to be America's
Hitler. At one time he was the most
influential Irishman in the world, but in the end the will of the people
prevailed.
61
Ian Paisley
1926-
Since the middle of the 1960s, the bulky
figure of Ian Kyle Paisley has dominated the politics of Northern Ireland,
causing concern in both Britain and America, as his fiery rhetoric has
contributed to the dangerous situation there.
But Paisley's opinions are not his alone. He represents the culmination of a long
tradition of Presbyterian independence, and his religious views are widely
shared all over the world.
He
was born in Armagh on 6th April 1926, the son of the Rev. J. Kyle Paisley, a
Baptist minister who had been a member of Carson's Ulster Volunteers in
1912. But as his name suggests his
cultural connections are with Scotland and the United Kingdom. It is these connections he has worked much of
his life to maintain.
When
he was two his family moved to Ballymena, where he was reared on the vivid
prose and sensational illustrations of Foxe's Book of Martyrs. He was educated at Ballymena Model School,
Ballymena Technical High School, and the South Wales Bible College in the
Rhondda Valley. His further studies were
at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological College in Belfast, though his
honorary doctorate in divinity came from the Bob Jones University in America,
in 1966.
He
was ordained a minister of the Free Presbyterian Church in 1946, and was
elected its moderator in 1951. Since
1946, his own ministry has been at the Martyrs Memorial Free Presbyterian
Church at Ravenhill in Belfast, which he erected. He is also a director of the Protestant
Telegraph (founded in 1966), a newspaper which expounds his views, and president
of a local Bible college. He is married
to Eileen Emily Cassells, and has twin sons and three daughters (one of whom,
Rhonda, has written a warmly affectionate account of him as a family man).
As
befits his public life, Paisley is interested in history (who in Ireland is
not?) and in collecting antiquarian books, especially of religious
interest. 'One of the worst
contributions that the other media have made is to take people away from the
art, the pleasure, and the gain of literature,' he told his daughter. He is also, surprisingly, a fellow of the
Royal Geographical Society - as a boy he had ambitions to be a sea
captain. He is a humorous and jovial man
- though not all his fellow citizens would appreciate him calling his pet
collie 'Bishop'.
His
political career only started in the mid-1950s in answer to, he claimed, 'the
call of the people'. He founded the
Ulster Protestant Volunteers - harking back in title to the heady days of
Ulster revolt before the First World War in the summer of 1914. He was imprisoned twice for his street
politics, once in 1966 and again in 1969.
This activity was all before the present renewed IRA campaign. His street-corner speeches were one of the
factors that contributed to the real sense of fear felt by besieged Catholic
communities in Belfast and Derry, and to which the Provisional IRA was an
initial response.
In
due course Paisley was elected to Stormont, as the Northern Ireland Assembly
was called, and campaigned for the assembly to be restored after it was
suspended by the British government following the imposition of direct rule on
the troubled province by Westminister, in 1972.
He was elected to the United Kingdom Parliament in 1970 as the MP for
North Antrim, a largely rural and agricultural area with strong conservative
traditions.
His
original political vehicle had been the Protestant Unionist party, but in 1974
he and other leaders came together to create the Ulster Democratic Unionist
party, which he still leads today. He
was re-elected as a member of the European Parliament in 1979, a post he still
retains. He is the highest polling
politician in Northern Ireland, but in the fractured politics of Ulster he
still represents a minority view. Among
his own constituency, he wins over 50 per cent of the votes.
He
made a symbolic resignation from his North Antrim seat in 1985 as a protest
over the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which has been the basis for what political
progress has been made. He saw the
agreement as a step towards a united Ireland, which allowed the government of
Ireland a say in the affairs of a portion of the United Kingdom. In reality, the government and people of
Ireland no longer have ambitions for a united Ireland; what they want is peace,
and are fearful that the turmoil of Northern Ireland could be imported into the
south. However, the government of
Ireland is bound to give support to the nationalists in the north. Paisley was re-elected to the seat in 1986. Talks on the future of Northern Ireland
proved inconclusive in 1991, but since then, largely through the work of many
others, affairs have moved on to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. But Ian Paisley remains firmly committed to
the maintenance of the union, so the road ahead will still be a rocky one. Paisley and his party remain determined to
undermine the Northern Ireland Assembly.
As
a local MP, Ian Paisley has a good reputation, and in Westminster he works hard
to obtain all that he can for his own constituents, and for Ulster in the
councils of Europe. In this area he does
not regard people's religion.
Nevertheless, belonging as he does to the extreme wing of
Presbyterianism, he still believes that Roman Catholics are damned to
perdition, that the pope in Rome is the Antichrist spoken of by St John the
Divine, and that only through the retention of the union can the Protestant
faith of Ulster be retained. For him,
personal and religious freedom are intertwined.
For
Ian Paisley, salvation is a gift, and only Christ can mediate between God and
man. This places him in opposition not
only to the majority of Irish people, but to the majority in Britain. Nevertheless, his views are those espoused by
many millions across the United States.
Just as Irish nationalism has found rooted support in the cities of the
north, so Ian Paisley finds support in parts of Canada and all across the
southern states.
Though
presented as an ogre by the media, to many who meet him or hear him preach he
expresses the fundamental truth. He has
carried into his politics the sense of personal witness he feels in his
religion. That courage has made him one
of the most powerfully influential men in Irish history.
62
Bernardo O'Higgins
1776-1842
The apostle of Latin American independence
was the natural son of Irish-born Ambrose O'Higgins, who was governor of Chile
and viceroy of Peru. Ambrose had been
born near Dangan Castle, in County Meath, in 1720. He was sent to Spain to be educated by a
Jesuit uncle in Cadiz. However, he found
he had no vocation for the church, and went to South America. Landing in Buenos Aires, he later went on to
Lima, Peru. He first worked as a pedlar,
then as a road contractor. He eventually
joined the army and rose to the rank of brigadier general. In 1786 he was made intendant of Conception,
and was ennobled. He was governor
general of Chile and later was made viceroy of Peru, a country he defended
during the war of 1797. He died suddenly
in Lima on 18th March 1801.
Bernardo's
mother was Chilean, and he was born at Chillán, on 20th August 1776. When he was fifteen he was sent to Europe to
complete his education. For three years
he lived in Richmond, outside London, attending a Catholic school. There he met Francisco de Miranda and other
Latin revolutionaries. He joined a
Masonic secret society dedicated to undermining the rule of Spain and the
Catholic Church in Latin America. In
1802, on inheriting his father's estate, he returned to Chile, becoming mayor
of Chillán. He also remained deeply
involved in the plots against Spain. An
opportunity came in 1808, when Napoleon invaded Spain and overthrew the royal
house. In September 1810 the revolution
began, and the National Congress of Chile was called in April 1811.
O'Higgins
and his reformist ideas stood out, while the Chilean patriots ineffectually
argued among themselves. In September
1812, José Miguel Carera declared himself dictator. O'Higgins became a member of the junta, but
resigned to care for his farms. Though
the revolutionaries had been inspired by the American example, their revolution
was taking a different course. At this
time O'Higgins was ill, and was planning to leave Chile when the Spanish
imperial forces arrived in 1813. Faced
with this new danger, he returned to public life.
He
was given the rank of colonel and fought at San Carlos, Chillán, and El
Roble. His battlecry, which urged on his
troops, was 'Let us live in honour or die in glory'. He was promoted to army commander, but had to
come to terms with the Spaniards in May 1814.
However, the agreement was accepted by the viceroy in Peru, and the
government that made it was overthrown by Carera. The war went on, and O'Higgins, though he
disapproved of the coup, joined Carera.
The Chilean Army was defeated at Rancagua in September 1814. In the first days of October, O'Higgin's
escape from the town square, by opening a path through the barricades with the
help of some soldiers, was a moment of epic heroism in his life.
O'Higgins
fled to Argentina, where the government gave him a command in an army which San
Martin was organizing to cross the Andes, invade Chile, and defeat the
Spanish. The campaign went ahead and the
Andes were traversed. On 12th February
1817, the Spanish were defeated at the battle of Chacabuco. Soon afterwards the capital was seized and
O'Higgins was proclaimed dictator of Chile.
A
further victory by the patriots at Maipo, in April 1818, secured Chilean
freedom. In 1820 O'Higgins began to
organize a naval expedition to attack Peru, but the campaign did not go
well. He promulgated two political
constitutions, intended to reinforce his position. O'Higgins lost ground, largely because he had
lost the support of the conservative elements in Chilean society, though he
gave ample evidence of his abilities as an administrator. He attempted to inaugurate land reforms,
educational advances, and restrictions on gambling and bullfighting. These seemed to threaten the landed class and
the macho style of Latin American life.
Distrust of his liberal policy led to revolution in Chile in 1822. Early in 1823 O'Higgins was forced into exile
in Peru, where he lived until his death in Lima on 24th October 1842. His ashes were brought back by the Chilean
government and interred with state ceremonies in 1869, and in 1872 an
equestrian statue of O'Higgins was dedicated in Santiago. (Bernardo's son, Demetrio O'Higgins, a rich
estate owner, died in 1869.)
O'Higgins
is representative of the many Irish people who lived and worked in Latin
America, some in the days of the Spanish Empire, others in more recent
centuries. Like O'Higgins, these people
brought to their new countries a love of freedom, courage, and a conviction
that was often at odds with the typical Latino temperament. Having often left Ireland and great hardship,
they sought to build a new life in a new continent. Yet their experiences were not as happy as in
the United States or Australia, and Irishmen were always to be found among the
small vanguard that kept liberal ideas of freedom alive in the republics of the
south. Their pervasive influence was,
and is, of great importance.
63
Bob Geldof
1954-
Though he first made his name in the field
of music, Bob Geldof was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for an
extraordinary feat of organization which both astonished and delighted the
world.
Though
Geldof himself seems essentially Irish in his outlook and attitudes, his
grandfather was a Flemish pastry cook who ended up in Dublin. He was born in middle-class Dublin. His mother died when he was only seven,
leaving his rearing largely to an older sister.
His father was now a businessman, which meant they were at least well
off.
He
was educated at fashionable and elite Blackrock College, where he did not, he
thought, do well. Youthful
rebelliousness took him away from home to England and then to Canada. He took a series of varied jobs, as a truck
driver, factory hand, street entertainer, and English language teacher. He also did a stint as a pop music journalist
on a newspaper in British Columbia called the Georgia Strait.
However,
his break came when in 1975 he returned to Dublin to start his own free
community paper in the city and with others set up a rock group called the
Boomtown Rats, of which he was the lead singer.
The band quickly achieved a certain local fame in their native city, due
in part to Geldof's own personality and flair for publicity.
In
March 1977 they went to London, where they were signed by a record
company. They had two important hits,
'Rat Trap' in 1978 and 'I Don't Like Mondays' in 1979. The early albums also sold well, but the band
depended on Geldof, whose range was never wide, and the band began to fade in
the early 1980s. This was due largely to
Geldof's own attitude to the music business, which he saw with refreshing cynicism. In San Diego, in 1979, when they were playing
a showcase gig that would have launched them onto US television and radio, he
urged the crowd of youngsters to boo and heckle the radio company bosses
sitting in the balcony. The albums, not
unnaturally, had their playtime cancelled.
This penchant for speaking his mind made him many enemies, though many
others found him friendly, frank, and engaging.
Geldof
returned to London. In October 1984
reports of the famine in Ethiopia appeared on British television; indeed, they
were said to have contributed to the overthrow of the Emperor Haile Selassie
and the installation of the Communist regime, which was equally unable to cope
with an increasingly dire situation. Children
and adults were shown dying of starvation on the nightly news. Many were moved, but Geldof decided something
must be done.
He
organized his friends in the music business, and to aid Ethiopia they recorded
and issued a single called 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' The group was called Band-Aid, and that
season the song became the biggest-selling single in British history, making
over £8 million for the appeal.
This
was success enough, but Geldof was on a roll.
He now pulled in even more favours and from his base in London organized
the Live Aid Concert, held simultaneously in both London and Philadelphia on
13th July 1985. The show was a huge
success, and was broadcast live around the world to an audience said to have
numbered more than one and a half billion viewers. It raised some £50 million, and a further
effort in 1986 called Sport Aid raised yet another £50 million. Geldof was chairman of the Ethiopian appeal,
and for some years was actively involved in the distribution of the monies raised. It was recognized that this achievement was
due very largely to Bob Geldof's nerve and determination. Whatever he had not been taught at school, he
had been taught not to turn back.
In
1986 he published his autobiography, Is That It?, which became a
bestseller in Europe and America. By
now, however, his own musical career was dead.
His talent and drive were harnessed to various projects and companies in
television. A relationship with the
television personality Paula Yates ended in separation, and was later followed
by the tragic death of her new companion and of Paula herself in 2000.
Heroes
in the past had often been held up as being all of a piece, people of exemplary
virtue in every way. Geldof showed this
was not the case. He remained his sarky
and abrasive self, despite receiving an honorary knighthood from the queen of
England in July 1986.
Yet
he had shown what could be done on a universal scale to aid those unfortunate
victims with which the modern world is filled.
No-one expected him to become a saint, and he didn't. But he had given an example of what could be
done with enthusiasm and passion when the right man met the right cause. He had found that rock 'n' roll was not
enough - even rock stars have to grow up.
For
anyone reared in Ireland, famine has a special meaning. From the grim days of the Great Famine in the
1840s the Irish have been inspired when they can help the less fortunate though
development aid and missionary work. The
efforts of Bob Geldof carried this national aspiration through the most
spectacular ultimate achievement. For a
few days he enabled the whole world to feel as one.
64
Archbishop James Ussher
1581-1656
Though his name may not be widely known
today, James Ussher, the Church of Ireland archbishop of Armagh in the early
seventeenth century, is among the most influential men who ever existed. For millions of Bible Christians, he is the
one who settled the date of creation of the world, which they find printed in
the margins of their King James translation of the sacred scriptures.
Though
most people today accept that the world is many millions of years old, for
those who hold a literal, fundamentalist view of the Bible, the date of 4004 B.C., which he put forward, is not to be gainsaid.
James
Ussher was born in the parish of St Nicholas, in the city of Dublin, on 4th
January 1581, a generation after the Reformation had begun. From an early age his education was keenly
Protestant. He was sent to a school
which had been set up in the city by two political agents of James VI of
Scotland, the Presbyterian heir apparent to the English throne, who wished to
establish a Presbyterian party for himself in Ireland in the event of Queen
Elizabeth's death. His education
continued at Trinity College, then an almost new establishment, which had been
founded with the blessing of Queen Elizabeth I by his uncle Henry Ussher. He entered the college at the age of
thirteen.
He
was admitted as a fellow of Trinity in 1599, earning his master's degree in
1600, and was ordained both a deacon and Anglican priest in 1601. In 1607 he was given his bachelor in
divinity. He was chancellor of St
Patrick's Cathedral and rector of Finglas, just outside the city. In 1607 he was also appointed regius
professor of divinity at Trinity, and received his doctorate in 1614.
His
education had filled him with enthusiasm for the Reformation, and he began an
extended and intensive study of the Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church
(such early scholars as St Augustine and St Jerome) in order to defend its
positions. In 1613, his first
publication, though not his first composition, was a history of the church
between the sixth and thirteenth centuries.
He
was vice chancellor of Trinity in 1614 and 1617. During a two-year period in London he was
presented to King James (now monarch of England as well as Scotland), was
appointed bishop of Meath, and preached before the House of Commons at
Westminster. In 1625 the king
transferred him to Armagh as archbishop and primate of all Ireland.
Ussher
was bitterly opposed to Catholicism. In
1626 he prevented the viceroy from granting Catholics partial relief from the
penal laws. He objected to the use of
Gaelic in the services of the established church, which was being promoted by
William Bedell, who had made the first Gaelic translation of the Bible to be
printed. He was largely responsible for
the Calvinistic canons drawn up for the Church of Ireland in 1634, though these
were never accepted. But he was also
opposed to efforts to make the Church of Ireland conform in all points of
teaching with the Church of England, which he felt was still tainted with
Catholic ideas. He was perhaps largely
responsible for the austere outlook of the Church of Ireland, which was faced
with a largely Catholic population in Ireland.
He
had a European reputation as a scholar and Protestant theologian. He made many trips to England, searching out
books to build up the library at the new Dublin University. He was on friendly terms with such scholars
as Sir Thomas Bodley, Sir Robert Cotton and the antiquarian William
Camden. While in England on a scholarly
research trip the Great Rebellion broke out.
This was in 1641, and Ussher never returned to Ireland again. During the rebellion he lost his house and
property in the city of Armagh. He had
pleaded with Charles I not to abandon Strafford, but in vain. He remained in England, and to compensate him
for the loss of Armagh he was given the monies from the vacant see of
Carlisle. He refused a seat in the
Assembly of Divines at Westminster in 1643 and never held office again, but
spent his time preaching and writing.
During
the civil war he left Oxford and sought refuge in Wales. He returned to London in 1645, and in 1647 he
was appointed preacher to the lawyers at Lincoln's Inn. In 1648 he discussed the question of the
episcopacy with Charles I on the Isle of Wight, but the following year he
witnessed the execution of the king at Whitehall.
His
greatest scholarly achievement was his work on the epistles of St Ignatius of
Antioch. In 1644 he added an authentic
text of the seven genuine surviving letters, eliminating the spurious ones and
later interpolations.
By
temper, Ussher was a Calvinist. As a
young man, his association with Walter Travers, the provost of Trinity, had
given him Puritan sympathy with their position against the Anglicans. His work Reduction of Episcopacy was
written as a conciliatory attempt to prevent the outbreak of the civil war when
tensions increased in both England and Ireland.
It proposed a scheme by which the Anglican and Presbyterian traditions
could be united into an established church throughout the British Isles. However, it was published only after his
death.
His
works were eventually collected by the Irish scholars C.E. Elrington and James
H. Todd (between 1847 and 1864). The
most influential of these was his Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti,
published in two volumes in Dublin between 1650 and 1654.
His
lengthy studies gave rise to his famous chronology of the Bible, which placed
the creation of the world in 4004 B.C. by
calculating the lives of the patriarchs as given in the texts. The chronology he proposed was shortly after
inserted into the margins of the authorized King James Bible, though by what
authority it is not known. Later it was
even included in some editions of the Catholic Douay Bible, an indication of
how wide its acceptance was.
As
A.D. White comments in the History of the Warfare of Science with Theology
in Christendom, it was 'soon practically regarded as equally inspired with
the sacred text itself'. (In a less
famous work published in 1642, Dr John Lightfoot of Cambridge suggested that
'man was created by the Trinity on 23rd October 4004 B.C. at nine o'clock in the evening'.
This chronology was widely accepted and could be found in many influential
books, such as Joseph Hadyn's Dictionary of Dates, well into the
nineteenth century. Though historical
and geological research during that period completely undermined his
chronology, it is still widely accepted by many Protestants.
Ussher
died at Lady Peterborough's house at Reigate in Surrey, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey by order of Oliver Cromwell.
His personal library, amounting to some ten thousand volumes, among
which were many manuscripts in Gaelic and Oriental languages, was purchased by
the state and eventually donated to Trinity College in Dublin. But his real memorial may be in the millions
who still follow his chronology and accept his date for the creation of the
world unhesitatingly.
65
Patrick Sarsfield
c. 1650-1693
Patrick Sarsfield, early of Lucan, is one
of Ireland's legendary military heroes, whose name was constantly evoked by
patriots of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He was brave and dashing at a time when war seemed
a calling still fit for gentlemen.
He
was born, it is thought, about 1650, at Lucan, where his family had an ancient
castle (now replaced by a mansion built in 1772). He was the second son of Sir Patrick
Sarsfield, by Anne, daughter of Rory O'Moore, the leader of the Catholic
confederacy in 1641. The estate had been
confiscated under Cromwell, but was restored to the Sarsfields in the 1670s.
His
early life is obscure, but he followed a military career from an early age,
being educated at a French military academy.
In 1675, following the death of his elder brother, he unexpectedly
inherited an estate valued at £2,000. In
1678 he was a captain in Monmouth's regiment in France. He returned to England with the regiment and
remained there till 1685.
This
was the period, between 1678 and 1681, of the political turmoil that arose from
the false allegations of Titus Oates that Catholic conspirators were plotting
to overthrow the Protestant regime in England.
It led to some twenty-five executions and continued intolerance and
distrust of many Catholics, especially Irish Catholics. It was difficult being a Catholic officer in
the army, especially because one depended on royal patronage. The accession to the throne of the Catholic
king James II improved matters.
Sarsfield was commissioned a captain of dragoons in June 1685, and later
a lieutenant in the Horse Guards. At the
battle of Sedgemoor, in July of that year, he was wounded while fighting for
the king against Monmouth.
After
this he returned to Ireland, where he served the Catholic viceroy Lord
Tyrconnell in reforming the army in Ireland.
He was granted land in Kildare to add to his own estate, and married
Honoria de Burgh, the daughter of the early of Clanrickard.
Promoted
to colonel in 1686, he was a strong supporter of the cause of the ousted James
II. In 1688 he was given command of a
force of dragoons, which fought William III in England. Later he joined James in France, returning to
Ireland with him in 1689. It was James
who raised him to the title of Lord Lucan in February 1691, and promoted him to
the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Sarsfield
drove the Williamites under Lord Kingston out of Sligo, gaining control of
Connaught, and he fought in every important engagement of the Williamite
wars. In a more minor role he served in
the king's own bodyguard at the battle of the Boyne in 1690. As deputy military commander in Limerick, he
forced the English to raise the siege of the city - his greatest triumph - by
destroying the supply train of their army.
With the help of a Catholic bandit named 'Galloping Hogan', he ambushed
and blew up the train in August 1690 at Ballyneety. The siege was raised in September. He opposed the ageing viceroy Richard Talbot,
Earl of Tyrconnell, who wished to end the war, and secured the line of the
Shannon against the Williamites.
The
Irish army, which was poorly paid, were largely Irish and Gaelic speaking. The Williamite army was largely made up of
foreign professional soldiers from Holland, Germany, Denmark, Scotland, and
France, along with Irish Protestant and French Huguenots commanded by a
Dutchman, Baron von Ginkel.
The
French general St Ruth arrived in May to take overall command. Through vanity he lost the vital crossing of
the Shannon at Athlone, and decided to make his stand at Aughrim on 12th July
1691. Sarsfield protested. He did not wish to hazard all on one throw of
the dice. He was sent to the rear of the
army and given no hint of St Ruth's plans.
In fact, St Ruth refused to share his plans or intentions with any of
his officers, so confusion reigned when a cannonball struck his head. The Irish army, which had held the high
ground until then, broke up.
'Chance,
skill, and treachery all hit the mark,' the Irish poet Richard Murphy
said. 'The soldiers panicked, thinking
God had struck.' Colonel Luttrell
betrayed the Jacobites to the Williamites and all was lost. The battle of Aughrim was a bloody disaster
in which some nine thousand soldiers died.
The bodies covered four miles of ground, like a flock of sheep. It was the last decisive battle in Irish
history.
After
this catastrophe for the Irish, Sarsfield miraculously led the defeated army
back to Limerick, which was finally forced to surrender in 1691. The Treaty of Limerick was signed in
September, Limerick was given up on 3rd October, and Sarsfield went into exile
in France with most of the Jacobite army, some twelve thousand soldiers.
James
II had already fled after the Boyne.
Afterwards, Sarsfield reportedly told the English, 'Change kings and we
will fight it over with you again'. But
he was never to have that chance. This
was 'the Flight of the Wild Geese', what the poet W.B. YEATS [8] saw, with the flight of the Earls, as the two great disasters
of the modern Irish nation. With the
ascendancy of William III, the Protestant conquest of Ireland was now
complete. The terms of the Treaty of
Limerick relating to civilians were soon broken.
The
historian Conor Cruise O'Brien has written, 'The tragedy could not have been
averted, or even notably softened, by the wisdom or humanity of any ruler. The people of Ireland had been caught and
crushed in the play of international and ideological forces ... English and
Irish, pressed into closer contact by these forces, discovered how diversely
history had formed them ... The weaker party was doomed to be oppressed, and
the weaker party was the native population of the smaller and more remote
island.'
James
gave Sarsfield the overall command of the Irish Brigade, which had been granted
to him by France for an intended invasion of England in 1692. But this scheme was abandoned. Sarsfield continued to serve under the French
king, fought at Steinkirk in 1692, and as a maréchal-de-camp was
mortally wounded at Neerwinden, the French victory over William of Orange,
during the battle of Landen on 19th August 1693. He died a few days later in the village of
Huy, in Liege province, in what is now Belgium.
On seeing his bleeding wounds, he is said to have exclaimed, 'Oh, that
this was for Ireland'.
Patrick
Sarsfield was almost the last of a great Irish family. He left a son, on whose death in 1719 the
title became extinct. The estate at
Lucan then passed to a niece, who married a Vesey, and from them it passed by
marriage to the Colthurst family. They
were Protestants.
It
was a tragic and pointless end to a man who had been 'the darling of the army'
in Ireland. An officer had exclaimed,
'The king is nothing to me. I obey
Sarsfield'. It was this almost mythical
figure that entered the imagination of later generations of soldiers and
poets. His exploits were the stuff on
which the military enthusiasm of young Irish people of previous generations
were fed. He was the last cavalier of
the Jacobite cause in Ireland.
66
William Thompson
c. 1785-1833
An Irish precursor of Karl Marx may seem
an historical anomaly, but William Thompson, a wealthy landowner and apostle of
social justice, was just such an anomaly.
According to Sidney and Beatrice Webb, the British socialists, Marx was
'Thompson's disciple'. At one time,
before the fall of communism, a bust of William Thompson was among the items
displayed at the International Communist Museum in Prague.
Perhaps
the first Irish economist, William Thompson was born in Cork about 1785. His father was Alderman John Thompson, a
prosperous Protestant merchant who had been mayor of the city and high sheriff
of the county. In those days all such
posts were not open to Catholics. When
his father died in 1814, William inherited not only the lucrative family business
in Cork itself, but also 1,500 acres at Cloonkeen near Rosscarbery, overlooking
Glandore harbour.
He
was now a man of property himself.
However, the social conditions of his own tenants, and the population of
Ireland as a whole, led him into a course of wide reading in political
economy. He was not much interested in
increasing his wealth. He lived in a
large town house with a fine library, and was a prominent member of many of
Cork's literary and scientific groups.
But his ideas were not those of his own class.
Thompson
was atheist. From his travels in Europe,
he had returned filled with enthusiasm for the French Revolution. He walked around his lands in Glandore with
the tricolour tied to his walking stick.
In elections in 1812 and 1826 he supported Catholic interests, to the
disdain of his relatives.
On
inheriting the estate he gave his tenants long leases and began to work for the
improvement of the land and his tenants' lives.
He neither smoked nor drank, and by the end of his life had become a
vegetarian. 'I am not what is usually
called a labourer,' he remarked. 'Under
equitable social arrangements, possessed of health and strength, I ought to
blush in making this declaration.'
After
studying the writings of Jeremy Bentham, he became an enthusiast for
utilitarianism and socialism. He became
an intimate friend of Bentham. He also
supported the cooperative community which the Scottish pioneer Robert Owen had established
at New Lanark.
Thompson
made his own mark as a writer, making important contributions to early
socialist thought, anticipating the theory of surplus value which Marx was to
later expound at length in Das Kapital.
'It
is this exposition of the social right of the worker to the full product of his
labour,' writes the Irish economist Dr Patrick Lynch, 'that makes Thompson the
founder of "scientific" socialism and the most important forerunner
of Karl Marx.' Marx, of course, was far
wider ranging in his study of economics than Thompson, and there is only one
specific reference to Thompson in Das Kapital. But his ideas are there.
Thompson
was also a pioneer in the advocacy of equal rights for women. His most important book was An Inquiry
Into the Principals of the Distribution of Wealth, Most Conductive to Human
Happiness: Applied to the Newly-Proposed System of Voluntary Equality of Wealth,
published in 1824. He considered
unearned income from rents and stocks, as well as private property, as leading
inexorably to social injustice. He saw
the just distribution of wealth as the key to political economy and the advance
of social progress.
His
friend Robert Owen had based his appeal for social justice on the rich. Thompson realized that if the working class
was to move forward, it must rely on its own efforts. Again, in his assessment of the influence of
the economic environment on the shaping of political attitudes, he was
certainly a most important pioneer in socialist thought. But he did not believe in state intervention;
what he had seen of it in Ireland had been corrupt. He envisioned the state withering away to be
replaced by a cooperative commonwealth.
A
visit by Robert Owen to Dublin had inspired one cooperative experiment on an
estate in Clare, which lasted until 1833.
In 1830 Thompson himself published a work on establishing such
communities, and pushed ahead with plans to transform his own estate at
Glandore. He drafted a constitution for
it, giving women equal rights and allowing for the exclusion of the idle and
the vicious.
In
these projects he had the assistance of Anna Wheeler, the daughter of an
Anglican archbishop and the granddaughter of Henry Gratton. With her help he had written his Appeal of
One-half of the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half,
Men, to Retain Them in Political and Then in Civil and Domestic Slavery.
He
died at Cloonkeen, Rosscarbery, in West Cork on 28th March 1833. Though he was without religion, a nephew who
assumed he was his heir, had him buried as a Christian at Drumbed. But Thompson had left his body for
dissection, stipulating that the skeleton was to be preserved in a museum on
the grounds of the first cooperative community to be established in the British
Isles according to his ideas.
What
became of his remains is now a mystery, though the doctor who exhumed the body
said that the bones had been sent to Anna Wheeler 'as a memento of love'. When the will was read, the nephew was
astonished to find that he and the family had been left nothing. William Thompson
had left his estate to the benefit of the poor, to be run along the lines of
New Lanark and according to the principles of Robert Owen. But after a quarter of a century of legal
litigation, this will was set aside.
Naturally, the lawyers profited the most.
The
memory of William Thompson the man has faded.
As Dr Patrick Lynch pointed out, 'His place in international socialist
thought, and in the social democratic tradition in Ireland, deserves to be put
into the proper setting and perspective.
Irish [people], at least, should recall the Cork landlord, who, like the
United Irishmen, supported the people of no property; and who, in addition,
furnished an important footnote, at least, to the history of economic thought
wherever and by whom it is written.'
67
Michael O'Clery
c. 1590-1643
If there is one work in Gaelic which has
proved to be more influential than any other, there would be general agreement
that it must be The Annals of the Four Masters, which the lay Franciscan
brother Michael O'Clery and his three colleagues were responsible for. It is the essential work of reference to
which everyone interested in the history of Ireland has to have recourse.
Michael
O'Clery (in Gaelic Micheál ó Clérigh) was born in Donegal in Ulster
about 1590, though the earlier date of 1575 has also been suggested. He was born the son of a local Gaelic chief
at Kilbarron Castle, near Ballyshannon, and was baptized Tadhg, or
Timothy. The O'Clerys had inherited the
office of historian of Tir Chonaill, and Michael O'Clery was imbued with the
love of history and poetry from an early age.
He
was educated at various schools in Ireland before he went abroad to study in
Europe, going into the Spanish Netherlands before 1621. He became a Franciscan brother, taking the
name in religion of Michael in or about 1622 at Louvain, where Franciscans from
Ireland had established a college in 1607.
Many
writers and scholars of importance had been attached to this college, and it
was a recognized centre of learning in things Irish. It was intended to create religious literature
in Gaelic that would be sent among the Irish in Ireland. A printing press, set up in 1611, produced
many books over the next sixty years.
When
O'Clery arrived, there was already in hand a plan by Fr Hugh Ward, Fr Patrick
Fleming and others to collect and publish the lives of the Irish saints. O'Clery already had a reputation as a
historian, and in 1626 he was sent back to Ireland by the head of the college
to collect materials for this work. He
was to stay in Ireland for the next eleven years.
While
he was collecting and copying manuscript materials, such as the Book of
Lismore, which he studied in 1629, O'Clery also assembled works of his own
calendars of saints' feasts, and genealogies of the families of kings and
saints, which he finished at Athlone in November 1630. He completed his copy of the Books of
Invasions at Lisgoole, Fermanagh, in December 1631. He also edited earlier works.
It
was in collaboration with three other scholars that he completed his greatest
work, The Annals of the Four Masters (in Gaelic, Annála Rioghacta
Eireann, 'Annals of the Kings of Ireland'), between 1632 and 1636. His helpers were Farfasa O'Mulcrony,
Peregrine O'Clery, and Peregrine O'Duignan.
These
annals had been collected from various earlier ones and edited into
coherence. They cover the history of
Ireland from the remotest days of its legendary past reckoned from the day of
creation up to 1616 A.D.
Though the early entries are sparse bare notes of lootings, burnings,
murders, battles, and the deaths and reigns of kings, as time advances towards
the compilers' own day the entries fill out to provide an almost continuous
narrative.
The
book was compiled in a little house on the banks of the River Dowse where it
flowed from Lough Melvin into Donegal Bay.
It was begun by the four of them on 22nd January 1632, and finished on
10th August 1636. The work was given its
more familiar name, The Annals of the Four Masters, by Fr John Colgan as
a tribute to the compiler and his friends.
It was dedicated to their patron, Fergal O'Gara, lord of Moy Gara, the
prince of Coolavin. In his preface
addressed to Fergal, O'Clery explains his purpose: 'I thought that I could get
the assistance of the chroniclers for whom I had most esteem, in writing a book
of annals in which these matters might be put on record, for that should the
writing of them be neglected at present, they would not again be found to be
put on record even to the end of the world.
All the best and most copious books of annals that I could find
throughout all Ireland were collected by me - though it was difficult for me to
collect them - into one place to write this book.'
O'Clery
was right about the dangers. Hardly any
of the original materials he saw have survived to this day, many perishing in
the turmoil of the Cromwellian and Williamite wars.
The
great Dr Douglas Hyde, later the first president of Ireland, observed of the
annals: 'It is not too much to say that there is not an event in the whole of
Irish history from the birth of Christ down to the beginning of the seventeenth
century that the first enquiry of the student about it must not be: "What
do the Four Masters say about this?"'
In
1637 O'Clery returned to Louvain, where he set about compiling a glossary of
obscure words, a work which was printed in 1644, the year after his death. His collections were later used by Fr John
Colgan in his Acts of the Irish Saints, his triple work on the three
patrons of Ireland - Patrick, Bridget, and Columba. The original plan to publish the lives of the
Irish saints as a whole came to nothing with the death of Colgan's
successor. In due course most of the
material made its way into print during the nineteenth century, with the
revival of interest in the Irish past.
The annals themselves were translated and annotated by John O'Donovan,
and it is his much praised edition which is usually read today.
O'Clery's
own manuscripts are preserved in the Burgundian Library in Brussels. His died as he had lived, a poor scholar in
the service of his country's past.
68
Ernest Walton
1903-1995
Science has not always been seen as an
area in which the Irish have been seen to be pre-eminent, but with Ernest
Walton, one of Ireland's Nobel Prize winners, the idea is invalid. Walton was at the leading edge of research
into atomic energy, which has proved to be both the most contentious and most
dangerous area of science in the twentieth century.
When
the first atomic bomb was exploded at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on 16th July
1945, it was the end result of what Walton had begun, and the beginning of a
new era of danger, and of awesome responsibility, for the United States. Such are the profound changes that a
small-scale scientific inquiry can precipitate.
With
his colleague John D. Cockcroft, he achieved the first artificial
disintegration of the atomic nucleus. In
simple language, they 'split the atom' and opened the way for the atomic and
hydrogen bombs.
Ernest
Walton was born in Dungarvan, County Waterford, in October 1906. His father was a Methodist minister, while
his mother came from a Protestant family long established in Armagh.
He
was sent to the Methodist College in Belfast, where it quickly became clear
that he had a talent for mathematics and science. He went on to study at Trinity College in
Dublin, where he took a bachelor's degree in 1926, and a further master's
degree in 1934.
In
1935 he went on to Cambridge, where he joined the Cavendish Laboratory, then
led by Ernest Rutherford. Though the Irish
student was given little working space, he found congenial company in T.E.
Alibone and John D. Cockcroft. At
Rutherford's suggestion, he first began work on an experiment to increase the
velocity of electrons by spinning them in an electric field produced by a
changing circular magnetic field as a method of nuclear disintegration. The initial experiment was not a success, but
it cleared the way for a more important one.
The
problems they faced were illuminated by the arrival of the Russian (later American)
physicist George Gamow. He had been
working with Niels Bohr in Denmark, where he had worked on a wave mechanical
theory of penetration of the particles.
His ideas opened the way for Walton and Cockcroft, and Rutherford gave
them both permission, money, and space to continue. With a budget of £1,000 they created the
first accelerator for atomic particles.
Today the machine itself can be seen in the South Kensington Science
Museum. It now looks like an amateur
relic of the past, which it is, but its importance was immense.
It
was on 13th April 1932 that Walton and Cockcroft found that their first
experiment had been successful. Walton's
first observation of the telltale scintillations that marked the breakup of the
nuclei were quickly confirmed by the pair.
Their
achievement was historic for several reasons.
It was the first time that scientists had produced a change in the
atomic nucleus in a controlled situation.
In the process they had found a new, and seemingly boundless, source of
energy. They had confirmed Gamow's
theory about the movement of particles, and also Einstein's theory that energy
and mass are interchangeable.
Their
discovery was announced in a letter to the science journal Nature, and
described at a meeting of the Royal Society in London on 15th June 1932. The news created a sensation worldwide. Their work inspired many other scientists
with results that transformed scientific knowledge and the social life of the
late twentieth century.
In
1932 Walton received his Ph.D., and in 1934 he returned to his alma mater,
Trinity College in Dublin. In Dublin he
was seen as a quite unflamboyant personality.
He was not given to small talk, a very Ulster-like characteristic. He had married Freda Wilson, who had also
been a student at the Methodist College, and they had two sons and two
daughters.
Walton
was content to develop his department in the Dublin university, and in 1946 was
appointed Erasmus Smith professor of natural and experimental philosophy. Eventually, in 1951, Walton was awarded the
Nobel Prize for physics along with Cockcroft.
This was a recognition of the highest order, but his wife told a
neighbour that for his family the prize meant they could now buy a car.
Though
his friend had followed a more high-profile career, Ernest Walton was content
to concentrate his attention on more local developments in his native
country. In 1952 he became chairman of
the school of cosmic physics at the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies (which
had been established by EAMON
DE VALERA [2] to provide a base for the German
scientist Erwin Schroedinger, exiled by the Nazis). In 1960 he was elected a senior fellow of
Trinity College, where the physics laboratory now bears his name. He died on 25th June 1995, having lived to
see both the triumph and, as many would think, the failure of the atomic age.
69
Phil Lynott
1951-1986
Whatever may be his final reputation as a
musician, rock star Phil Lynott will gain a place in history as the first
pre-eminent black Irishman.
His
mother was a Dublin girl who had gone to England to work as a nurse in the
Midlands. Black men, either American or
West Indian, were then a novelty rather than a distinct class in Britain. The father of her child was in fact a
Brazilian, but as much a descendant of a freed slave as any other black in the
Americas.
Philip
Lynott was born on 20th August 1951. At
the home where his mother gave birth to him, efforts were made by the nuns to
have him given up for adoption: a young girl like her would not want to be saddled
with a baby, especially a black baby.
However, his mother was stubborn and strong willed, and kept him. But it was a difficult choice, and eventually
little Phil was sent home to his grandmother and was raised as an Irish
Catholic on a Dublin council estate along with his nephews.
One
of the earliest photographs of the rock musician is one taken of him in a
demure suit on the day he made his first communion, the essential rite of
passage in Irish culture. Though a black
child naturally stood out in the Dublin crowd, Phil Lynott grew up happily
enough, well supported by his family, and encountered very little in Dublin by
way of racial prejudice.
From
very early on, his mother noticed that he had a stage presence, and as he grew
up in the developing era of rock and roll, he fell into playing music almost
inevitably. Music was as important to
Phil and his friends as the air they breathed.
In
1969, along with Eric Bell from Belfast, and Brian Downey from Dublin, he
formed a band called Thin Lizzy.
Initially they made a name for themselves as something new at music
venues in Dublin, before they were signed by Decca. They made two albums, which went almost
nowhere commercially, never getting into the charts.
But
everything changed for the band when they made a rocked-up version of an Irish
traditional song called 'Whiskey in the Jar'.
It was a case of Irish folk meets rock and roll, and was a wondrous and
instant success. It reached the Top Ten
chart in Britain, and popularized the band's curious combination of folk and
hard-rock guitar.
But
as is the way with rock bands, changes caught up with Thin Lizzy. Gary Moore replaced Eric Bell on guitar, and
two other session men were hired. Two
other guitarists were then recruited, a Scot, Brian Robertson, and Scott
Gorham, an American.
The
band was now fixed, and began the main phase of its musical development. In 1976 they released an album called Jailbreak,
which mounted the charts. A single
called 'The Boys Are Back in Town' went into the Top Ten in Britain and the Top
Twenty in America, and was voted single of the year by the New Musical
Express in London. There were a
series of concerts during 1979 which developed their reputation.
In
1980 Phil Lynott married Caroline Crowther, the daughter of popular British
television personality Leslie Crowther.
This was not a marriage made in heaven so far as Crowther was
concerned. Lynott reunited with the band
after some solo work. The hectic details
of the changes of the band did not prevent its further progress.
Since
he moved out of his family home Lynott had been living the customary life of
the modern rock musician, which meant sex, alcohol, and especially drugs. Eventually it all caught up with him. He had split up Thin Lizzy in the summer of 1984,
and at the end of that year an album called Life-Live was issued. But Lynott was on borrowed time. After a drug overdose towards the end of
1985, his body systems finally collapsed.
His mother finally realized it was the end when a priest was called. On 4th January 1986, Phil Lynott died in an
English medical centre from pneumonia and heart failure, compounded with almost
total liver dysfunction. His death at
thirty-four was a great shock to his fans.
His remains were brought back to Ireland for burial near his mother's
home on the north side of Dublin.
In
May 1986 Thin Lizzy was reformed, with BOB GELDOF [63] replacing Lynott for the charity concert in Ireland called
Self-Aid, an offshoot of Band Aid, aimed at raising funds for young people.
Along
with BOB GELDOF [63] and
U2 [36], Phil Lynott had been among the best known of Irish musicians and most
influential in modern Ireland. His
extraordinary presence and power made a deep impression on a generation. Only in England and elsewhere did he feel any
resentment or prejudice against him because he was black. At home in Ireland the Irish-Brazilian was
treated as part of the scene.
His
memory has been kept alive by a series of books, one by his mother, and by
reissues of his and Thin Lizzy's material.
'Whiskey in the Jar', with its mixture of Irish folk and imported rock,
was truly representative of Irish culture as it had evolved since 1945. But in time Phil Lynott may well come to have
a greater significance for cultural historians as the first window into the
coming multiracial Ireland of the future.
70
Peter Lalor
1823-1889
The role of the Irish in the drama of
creating the very idea of Australia is summed up in the career of Peter Lalor,
and of the events at the Eureka Stockade in the goldfields of the 1880s.
Born
at Tinnakill, County Laois, on 5th February 1827, he was the younger brother of
the Irish political leader James Fintan Lalor (himself a man of continuing
importance in the Irish republican tradition), the child of a wealthy farmer
and member of Parliament. His father had
radical views and had resisted the imposition of tithes and was an advocate of
the repeal oft he Act of Union. The
family remained in good circumstances until the famine. Latter in life, Lalor's father claimed, 'I
have been for upwards of forty years struggling without ceasing in the cause of
the people'. Some of this passion was
passed on to his sons.
Peter
Lalor was educated at Carlow College and Trinity College in Dublin, and became
a civil engineer. As a youth he did not
share his family's political activities, and had no desire to mix himself up in
them.
Like
so many of his countrymen, the discovery of gold at Golden Point, Victoria, in
October 1851, tempted him to immigrate to Australia with his brother
Richard. They arrived in Melbourne in
October 1852. At first he found work as
an engineer on the construction of the Melbourne-Geelong Railway. He and his brother also had an interest in a
provisions store in Melbourne.
Richard
returned to Ireland, where he was later a Parnellite MP. In 1854 Peter moved to Ballarat (seventy-six
miles west-northwest of Melbourne), where he held rich gold claims. He intended to continue the provisions supply
business in the fields.
He
was involved in a protest by the miners, though not as a leading figure. 'The people,' he said, recalling the language
of Irish politics, 'were dissatisfied with the laws, because they excluded them
from possession of the land, from being represented in the Legislative Council,
and imposed on them an odious poll tax.'
The protest was one familiar to colonial America: no taxation without
representation.
A
miners' strike broke out when they refused to continue paying a licence to the
crown. This had its origins in the
imprisonment of three miners after Bentley's Hotel was burned. The Ballarat Reform League then developed a
programme of reforms. A mass meeting was
held on 29th November, 1854, to hear what the governor had to say, but his
concessions were not enough. The twelve
thousand miners, over whose head flew a Southern Cross flag, were for
resistance.
The
next day soldiers and police were sent to the goldfields, where they arrested
some miners and withdrew with their prisoners.
Other miners crowded onto the scene and occupied Bakery Hill, where they
raised their flag. Lalor was the only
one of the committee now present, and he called on the miners to arm and
resist, swearing by the Southern Cross to defend their rights and liberties.
The
next day the miners marched from Bakery Hill to the Eureka site. Lalor was elected commander, and a stockade
was erected. This followed the pattern
planned by the Young Irish rebels that Lalor's brother Fintan had led. Peter Lalor, however, had no military
background, and an American was appointed to deal with military matters.
The
stockade was not intended as a complete defence. The miners returned to their tents for the
night, leaving only 120 men, mostly Irish, in the stockade. Early on the morning of 3rd December, police
and soldiers attacked. In the fighting
at the stockade over thirty miners were shot dead and twelve wounded. Some 125 miners were then arrested.
Lalor,
who had been leading the striking miners, lost his arm but escaped in the
confusion. In due course the goldfields
were granted representation, and Lalor was elected to the assembly as the
member from Ballarat in November 1855.
In the next half century the mines there produced £70 million, making
them of crucial importance to the Australian economy as a whole.
Lalor
defended the interests of the miners but did not follow their views on all
matters. He was especially conservative
in his outlook. He was not, he
explained, actually a democrat if that meant 'Chartism, communism, or
republicanism', but 'if democracy means opposition to a tyrannical press, a
tyrannical people, or a tyrannical government, then I have ever been, I am
still, and will ever remain, a democrat'.
His
political career belongs to the history of Australia, but his views, which were
liberal but not fully democratic, were influenced by the ideas of Young Ireland
and the Americans who had flooded into Australia from California. In subsequent years Peter Lalor held several
posts, such as Postmaster General and commissioner of customs. He was Speaker of the House from 1880 to
1888. He had to resign because of ill
health, but was voted a grant of £4,000 for his patriotic services. He died at Melbourne on 10th February 1889.
The
Eureka Stockade has entered into the mythology of Australia. It was acclaimed by no less a person than
Karl Marx as a truly revolutionary episode, but the later career of Peter Lalor
and modern historians suggest otherwise.
The myth remains, enshrined in histories, novels, and films. And that myth, of a people's uprising, still
influences the populist politics of Australia.
Lalor brought to the new politics of Australia something of the passion
that had informed his brother's efforts for land reform in Ireland. Ever since, in the politics of Australia, the
Irish element has been just as important as it has been in America.
71
James Gandon
1743-1823
Although widely accepted as the greatest
Irish architect, a man who put his mark on the city of Dublin's public
buildings in no uncertain manner, James Gandon was not Irish by birth.
His
father was a French Protestant with mystical leanings who nearly ruined himself
with experiments in alchemy. Young James
was made of more practical stuff and from an early age he educated himself in
the classics, drawing, and maths. At
fifteen he became an assistant in the office of an architect, Sir William
Chambers, and later became his apprentice.
A few years later, about 1765, he struck out on his own. In 1767 he published with John Woolfe a
continuation of Colin Campbell's Vitruvius Britannicus, which was
completed in 1771. He won his first gold
medal for architecture at the Royal Academy in London in 1768. He continued to exhibit his drawings there
between 1774 and 1780.
In
1769 he won second prize in a competition for a design for the Dublin Royal
Exchange; years later, having turned down an offer to go to Russia, he settled
instead in Dublin, in 1781, to work on the new Customs House.
There
was a great deal of local opposition from the merchant classes to the cost of
the new building, over which there were riots.
There was even armed opposition from residents near the old customs
house further up the river. However, it
was brought to a triumphant conclusion in 1791.
By then Gandon had been asked to design an extension to the Houses of
Parliament and the new Four Courts, and plan the King's Inns, the main base of
Irish lawyers.
He
resigned in protest over interference with his plans in 1808 and retired from
practice to a house in Lucan, outside of Dublin. He was an original member of the Royal Irish
Academy when it was established in 1785.
It was thought that when George IV, the first king of England to come to
Ireland in peace, visited in 1821 that Gandon would be knighted. But the visit passed without the old man
receiving this indication of royal esteem.
However, with the admiration of his friends, Gandon had no need of royal
favours.
For
many years Gandon had suffered from gout.
He died at home on 23rd December 1823.
Three days later he was buried as he had wished, in the same vault as
his friend, 'the bibulous and altogether delightful antiquary' Capt. Francis
Grose, in a private chapel in Drumcondra graveyard.
Gandon's
work in Dublin represents the culmination of the eighteenth-century confidence
that had elevated the ambitions of Grattan's parliament. But that was to end with the Act of Union and
a more uncertain future. In 1942, to
mark the two-hundredth anniversary of Gandon's birth, the Royal Institute of
Architects in Ireland erected a plaque to his memory in the Drumcondra church.
In
1846 Gandon's biographer commented that Gandon was a man 'whose urbanity of
heart and blandness of manner converted acquaintances into friends, rendering a
long-protracted life one continued exercise of benevolence and affection'. Gandon had made and kept a host of friends,
but as Maurice Craig, the premier historian of Dublin's architecture, observed,
'even these private virtues are as nothing beside his services to architecture
and to Dublin'. Gandon was the man who
did the most to create the stately appearance of the city, an appearance which
has ruled and influenced the lives of Dubliners ever since. The dignity of Dublin as the capital of
Ireland is largely his creation.
72
William Parsons, Lord Rosse
1800-1867
William Parsons, third earl of Rosse, is
among the giants of nineteenth-century science and one of the most remarkable
Irishmen of his day. Born in York on
17th June 1800, into a leading Irish family, he was a son of Lawrence Parsons,
the second early of Rosse. He was
educated at Trinity College, where he became a student in 1818. In 1821 he went on to Magdalen College in
Oxford. That year he was also elected to
Parliament as the member for King's County (now Laois). He held the seat until 1834, but resigned in
order to pursue his scientific interests.
After he inherited his title he was a representative Irish peer at
Westminster from 1845.
He
was already deeply interested in astronomy and had made experiments with
telescopes at his father's estate at Parsonstown (now Birr). The key element in a reflective telescope,
such as Parsons had in mind, was its mirror.
William
Herschel had already been working with reflecting telescopes, but he had never
published any information about how he cast and polished his specula. Parsons had to make his own experiments. He described his work in 1828 in the Edinburgh
Journal of Science. His speculum
metal combined copper and tin in proportions to make a brilliant alloy. Because this metal was very brittle, his
first mirrors were made up of a number of thin plates of the metal soldered on
the back of a strong light framework of a brass composed to have the same
expansion rate. He needed sixteen plates
for a three-foot mirror.
In
1839 the three-foot mirror was finished and mounted, but it presented
difficulties due to its expansion, so Parsons decided to cast a solid
three-foot mirror. He achieved this,
overcoming yet more technical difficulties, in 1840. In 1842 he began work on an even larger
six-foot mirror, which was finished in 1845.
This
was to be mounted in an instrument which came to be called the Leviathan, and
was the largest telescope of the nineteenth century. If was fifty-four feet long and the tube was
so wide that a man could walk upright through it.
The
mirror of Leviathan was seventy-two inches wide. The instrument took seventeen years to bring
to completion. Using local craftsmen -
the sons of tenants on his estate whom he trained as technicians and chemists -
he had first to build a steam engine to drive the tools needed to polish the
mirror. Five years were then spent on
the composition of the metal alloy for the mirror. At last he managed to compose an alloy of tin
and copper of exceptional brilliance.
His first mirror was three feet wide, but this was followed by a
six-foot one which weighed four tons.
This was mounted in the fifty-eight-foot wooden tube. He let a ball and socket into the solid rock,
and on this base laid out a platform of oak trunks over which were laid
twenty-seven cast iron plates. On this
machinery the telescope could swing from left to right by a chain drive. It was protected from the winds by two walls. It looked for all the world like part of the
Gothic castle in which the earl himself lived, surrounded by drawbridges,
ladders, and the moving tower in the centre of it all.
Strange
as it appeared, this was not amateurish work.
The sheen which Parsons and his team achieved was created by polishing
off a layer 1/10,000 of a millimetre thick from the pre-polished mirror, evenly
from the centre to the edge. This
remarkable feat of precision made the mirror almost free of distortion, and was
rightly considered an optical marvel.
The
Leviathan established Birr as a leading astronomical site for decades, for this
was the largest telescope in existence until 1878. Rosse and fellow astronomers invited to use
the telescope made many extraordinary discoveries. Parsons himself brought to light the spiral
form of nebulae, those strange cloudlike formations in the distant reaches of
the universe. The telescope was powerful
enough to reveal many previously unknown features of these mysterious
objects. A special study was undertaken
of the nebulae of Orion, and the large drawings which resulted from the
observations gave a remarkably clear idea of these objects.
Though
it was eventually stripped down, the telescope itself survives, and its
speculum is kept in London at the South Kensington Science Museum. Rosse's wife was a noted photographic
pioneer; his son, the fourth earl (1840-1929) was a noted astronomer, while his
third son, Charles Parsons (born in 1854), was the inventor of the steam
turbine engine in 1884, which revolutionized shipping and was later applied to
airplane jet engines. Rosse was
president of the Royal Society from 1849 to 1854, and chancellor of Dublin
University in 1864.
Though
wealthy and indulgent of his scientific interests, Lord Rosse was also a good
landlord, especially so during the grim famine years at Parsonstown. He died at Monkstown on the seacoast south of
Dublin on 30th October 1867.
His
great telescope continued to probe the deepest mysteries of the universe from
the small town in the Irish midlands.
The discovery of the size and nature of the universe has been one of
man's great intellectual adventures, probing as it does into the very first
seconds of life itself. Lord Rosse made
his country a part of this great adventure.
73
James Armour
1841-1928
One of the most remarkable of Ulster's
Presbyterians, 'Armour of Ballymoney', still remains a potent example of what
human generosity can achieve in any community divided against itself. Though he lived most of his life in a small
country town, the Ulster writer Robert Lynd observed, 'his qualities of brain
and heart made him one of the most eminent and ultimately beloved Ulstermen of
his day'. James Armour's life carries a
moral for all the world.
He
saw all too clearly that the rival factions in Ireland were contending for and
against a concept of empire that had ended at Yorktown. He was a liberal and a democrat, and believed
that no danger came to anyone, his opinion or religion, from the extension of
liberal policies and democratic values.
James
Brown Armour was born at Lisboy, near Ballymoney, in County Antrim, the most
Protestant part of Ulster, on 20th January 1841. He was educated locally at the Ballymoney
Model School. Later he attended the
Royal Academical Institute, the leading Presbyterian school in Belfast.
He
then studied classics at the University College in Belfast, and the Queen's
College in Cork. This experience of
living in the deep Catholic south of Ireland affected his outlook in many ways. He taught school to support himself during
his studies, though his ambition was to become a barrister. However, he gave way to the wishes of his
family to become instead the Presbyterian minister in Ballymoney in 1869.
Ballymoney
is a small linen and agricultural centre between Coleraine and Ballymena. A few miles away was the family home of
William McKinley, the twenty-fifth president of the United States. Lying in the heart of an area of good
agricultural land, Ballymoney was very typical of the planter towns, created
and settled by Scottish families who came over during the seventeenth-century
Plantation of Ulster. Here they
developed a prosperous linen industry and gave the little place its graceful
airs with wide streets, fine Georgian terraces, and a final touch, the Masonic
Hall, in 1852. Ballymoney was all very
typical of loyal Ulster.
Unlike
the McKinleys, Armour stayed in Ulster.
In March 1883 he married a widow who had two sons by her first
husband. Just as he had taught school to
support his own studies, so he returned to teaching to support his new
family. In 1883 he became an assistant
at Magee College in Derry, where he remained for twenty-three years.
Like
many Presbyterians, Armour was a man who valued not only private judgement, but
forthright speech. He spoke out from his
pulpit and elsewhere on all the issues of the day. From 1885 onwards these revolved largely
around the issues of Ulster's future, raised by the Orange Order.
These
were largely issues of identity. The
Ulster people tended to favour union with England, while in the south the Irish
party was moving towards home rule. In
March 1893 the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, whose
members lived largely in the four counties of eastern Ulster, met in special session
to debate the entire matter of home rule, and to condemn the Home Rule Bill.
Armour,
however, moved an amendment to the resolution in favour of self-government in
Ireland, allied with protection for all the rights and interests of the
Presbyterian Church. This speech, as he
might have expected, was hissed and booed.
He lost his amendment, and the original resolution was passed by a huge
majority. But it never worried a
Presbyterian conscience to be in the minority.
At home in Ballymoney his congregation remained loyal to their minister. However, his fellow churchmen and other
unionist Ulstermen shunned him for a while.
Armour
campaigned for his views, collecting the signatures of 3,535 Presbyterians to a
petition supporting the Home Rule Bill, to be sent as a memorial address to
Gladstone, the British prime minister.
He had always supported the tenants' rights movement and condemned
landlordism. In a debate with Dr Anthony
Traill of Trinity College, he argued in favour of the nationalists against the
ascendancy (the largely Protestant landed class) in Ireland, which Traill
represented.
One
of the great interests of many Catholics had long been the hope of establishing
a Catholic university - Trinity and the Queen's Colleges being regarded as
Protestant institutions. A campaign was
under way to dissolve the Royal University in Ireland and replace it with a
truly national university into which the other colleges could be subsumed. At the assembly in 1900 a report was
presented condemning the proposed establishment of the Catholic university. Armour opposed its adoption.
With
a relative now an official in Dublin Castle, Armour had a conduit to those in
power, which he used well after the Liberal party victory of 1906. Two years later he was told he had a critical
heart condition, forcing him to leave public life. At this time, many tributes were paid to him
by all shades of opinion.
But
Armour of Ballymoney was not quite done with affairs of state, heart or no
heart. In 1912 the general assembly had
decided that politics should not be allowed to bring divisions among
Presbyterians. This was the period of
the unionist revolt.
The
following year a Layman's Memorial (a motion by church members) from the floor
against home rule was introduced to the assembly, and Armour moved an amendment
to reaffirm the previous year's decision.
In the heated atmosphere of the day this aroused great anger from his
opponents. Only forty-three members
voted with Armour, against some 921 for the resolution. He described the agitation being led by Edward
Carson and James Craig, which had led to the setting up of the Ulster
Volunteers to defend the Union, as 'a wicked bluff'. The partition of Ireland which they proposed
would be ruinous for Ulster.
At
the time of the Easter Rising he rightly pointed out that the insurgents had
only been following the lead of the Ulster Volunteers. As Prof. Eoin McNeill pointed out, Ulster had
begun the rise of armed political parties in Ireland by smuggling in guns from
Germany. The summer of 1914 had very
nearly brought about a mutiny in the British army.
Armour
warned the assembly of the dangers of denouncing minority views: 'If you deny
the right of private judgement and of free speech, how much do you have of
Protestantism worth keeping?' he asked.
'Nothing at all.'
Armour
was in favour of the First World War and helped to recruit for the imperial
army; he also acted as an honorary chaplain to the viceroy. To Armour, unionism meant the unity of all
Ireland. At the general assembly he again
spoke out against the Government of Ireland Bill which brought Northern Ireland
into existence. He said that would only
promote racial and religious division in the province, and ruin the moral and
economic prospects of the whole island.
But, yet again, he was voted down.
His
son later wrote, 'One characteristic seems to have struck every observer, his
fearless courage, his indomitable spirit, and the tenacity with which he held
his ground against all-comers.' An
American admirer once wrote that he was 'fifty years before his time, an
inconvenient gift in a province and indeed in a country, where past traditions
are strong'.
After
fifty-six years, Armour finally retired from his ministry at Ballymoney, in
September 1925. He died on 25th January
1928. To many of his countrymen, to whom
the very notion of Presbyterianism means the union with Britain, Armour of
Ballymoney is a beacon of another passage through the stormy waters of Irish
history.
74
Charles Bianconi
1786-1875
With remarkable energy, this Italian
emigrant to Ireland transformed the communications system of the country,
helping to change what might have remained a poor country into a developing
one.
Joachim
Carlo Giuseppe Bianconi was born at Tregolo, in the duchy of Milan (now Lombardy),
on 24th September 1786. Leaving school,
where he had been an indifferent student, he set out from home to make his
fortune. He arrived in Ireland at the
end of 1802 as an apprentice to an Italian print seller, bringing the benefit
of 'art pictures' to the Irish. A pretty
boy who appealed to ladies, he became his employer's travelling salesman. He soon went into business on his own,
setting up his own shop in the country town of Carrick-on-Suir, and later in
Clonmel. This business thrived and he made
many friends, including DANIEL O'CONNELL [20].
The
end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 - Waterloo had been fought on 18th June -
brought ex-military horses onto the market at cheap prices, as well as the end
of the carriage tax. Having accumulated
a little capital, Bianconi bought a horse and a jaunting car, and on 6th July
1815 he began a car service between Clonmel and Cahir in the south of Ireland.
The
idea prospered, and his cars, popularly called the 'Bians', were a common
feature of the Irish roads. By 1823 his
services ran over some 1,800 miles of road from twenty-three centres. By 1845 this network had grown to 3,800 miles
and 120 centres. In 1857 he told the
meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Dublin,
that he still ran some nine hundred horses and sixty-seven cars over 4,244
miles a day. In 1864, income from
passengers and parcels amounted to £40,000.
He
charged passengers one-and-a-half pence per mile. This made his service cheap enough to be of
very real benefit in rural areas, where those of small means could travel
about. In 1843 Bianconi himself
explained that 'the farmer who formerly drove and spent three days in making
his market, can now do so in one for a few shillings; thereby saving two clear days
and the expense of his horses'.
The
improvement of roads followed. A report
of 1838 noted that 'even small portions of those roads were scarcely out of the
engineers' hands before they were covered with the carts of farmers, eager to
take advantage of the improvement'.
People moved their cottages nearer the new roads, and new villages and
towns grew up at their junctions, especially in the west of Ireland. Charles Bianconi had become one of the agents
of the social and economic transformation of Ireland.
The
improvement in service brought with it an increase in tourist traffic, and the
beginnings of the tourist industry which is now of such importance to
Ireland. The advent of the tourists
brought about an improvement in the hotels and inns, and an overall improvement
of life for the local people as well.
Bianconi,
who was elected mayor of Clonmel in 1844, was a sincere Catholic, a fervent
supporter of Daniel O'Connell, and a promoter himself of Catholic emancipation
(which came in 1829). He generously
donated to many Catholic charities, including the foundation of the Catholic
University of Ireland, for which he purchased what is now Newman House.
In
his annual report for 1857, the British postmaster general said that 'no living
man has ever done more for the benefit of the sister kingdom'. In the development of his extensive transport
system, Bianconi displayed extraordinary energy as well as ingenuity. While the promoted the social connections of
Ireland, he also increased its economic resources by promoting increased
trade. His cars were the first stage in
the development of increased speed in communication and transport, marked by
the introduction of the railways and the electric telegraph in the 1830s, and
by the use of telephones after 1875. The
nature and quality of life in Ireland was changed by these means. In 1815 parts of the country might as well
have been in the seventeenth century; by the time of Bianconi's death,
communication with America was instantaneous.
The
heyday of the cars was soon over. The
railways, promoted initially by WILLIAM DARGAN [75], had arrived.
Bianconi saw where the future lay and bought shares in the new
companies, and used his cars to provide local feeder services to their
stations. He retired in 1865, selling
off his business to his agents in the county towns across the country.
He
lived out the rest of his life at Longfield, his house near Clonmel, in
Tipperary, and died there on 22nd September 1875. His daughter had married Daniel O'Connell's
son Morgan John O'Connell, and in 1885 she published a biography of her father.
Later
still, the cars became a part of fond memories of many nineteenth-century
childhoods. The painter JACK YEATS [26] had especially happy recollections
of them, for as a child he had travelled to and from Rosses Point in Sligo on
one. The first play he ever saw was the
wild melodrama The Shaughran (1874), by the Irish-American Dion
Boucicault. In his painting In Memory
of Boucicault and Bianconi, he has the hero and villain of the play at a
local beauty spot striking poses in front of a long car. What Bianconi had started as a business
enterprise had entered the mythology of Irish art.
75
William Dargan
1799-1867
On the lawn outside the National Gallery of
Ireland in Dublin there stands a slightly larger-than-life statue. On the plinth is carved a single word:
Dargan. This is a memorial not only to
the originator of the National Gallery itself, but also to the creator of the
first railway in Ireland. Dargan (like
Bianconi earlier) transformed the nature of life in Ireland for every one, both
economically and culturally.
William
Dargan was born in County Carlow on 18th February 1799, the year after the
great rebellion, which had deeply shocked the whole island. His father was a farmer, but William was sent
out of Ireland to be educated in England.
He began his working life with an apprenticeship in a surveyor's office.
One
of the first important jobs in which he was involved was aiding Thomas Telford,
the great civil engineer, in laying the new road to Holyhead, the little port
in north Wales from which the Irish ferries were to depart. When this was completed Dargan came back to
Ireland and worked on several other developments. But the advent of the railways gave him his
first real opening as a businessman.
He
found backers for his own scheme, a railway to run from Dublin to Kingstown, as
it was then called, where the boats from Britain docked. The construction was authorized in 1831 by
Parliament. The first train ran out of
Dublin on 17th December 1834, and caused great excitement.
Dargan
now turned north to develop the Ulster railway, which opened on 12th August
1839. This was planned to link up with
the Ulster Canal (also his work) so that a new transport route was available
across the province. He created the line
to Carrickfergus and Ballymena, and a line along the coast to Bangor.
This
was the heyday of the railway boom.
Tracks were being laid down everywhere, and Dargan was one of the main
contractors for the jobs. He grew
wealthy, but railways were not the last of his innovations.
Inspired
by the great exhibition at the Crystal Palace, which the Prince Consort had
promoted in London in 1851, he suggested that Dublin should also have a great
exhibition. A committee was gathered,
and he agreed to underwrite the scheme.
A part of this exhibition was to be a display of fine art drawn from
collections all over the British Isles, and from several European nations.
This
exhibition opened on what was then called the Duke's Lawn, the open area on
Merrion Square behind the Duke of Leinster's townhouse. The exhibition premises were huge, and it
proved to be very popular when it was opened in May, 1853. It was visited in August by Queen Victoria,
who was much amused by what she saw.
However, Dargan lost money on it.
By now he was living in a large country house, Mount Anville, just
outside Dublin, where Queen Victoria visited him and his family. Dargan, however, refused the title she
offered him.
The
pictures gathered for the exhibition inspired the idea of a National Gallery,
which opened after many vicissitudes in 1864.
Though Dargan had inspired the idea, many other people were involved,
including civil servants of the treasury.
As a result, the negotiations over the scheme, the planning and erection
of a building to stand on the exhibition side, and the gathering of pictures
for a collection, became a complicated sage in its own right. Dargan's portrait was painted by the
gallery's first director, George Mulvany.
A plaque on the east wall of the gallery recalls that it was erected 'by
the contributions of the fellow-countrymen of William Dargan, Esquire, aided by
the Imperial government in commemoration of his munificent liberality founding
and sustaining the Dublin Industrial Exhibition of 1853'. The last touch put to the building before it
opened, in December 1863, was the hoisting into place of Farrell's statue of
Dargan, more than a decade after his exhibition had opened.
In
the meantime, Dargan had been involved in many other schemes, one of which was
a flax mill in Chapelizod on the Liffey.
However, not all of these ventures were successful. In 1854 he opened the New Line to Bray and
Wicklow, which was to lead to the development of Bray as a resort and even a
commuter town. By now he was chairman of
the Dublin-Kingstown Railway, which, as the initiator of the railway age, had
an important effect on Ireland's history.
Though it brought about many economic improvements, the railway also
hastened the departure of emigrants to England and beyond.
Dargan
had always tried to keep the reins of his businesses in his own hands. In 1866 he suffered a riding accident and was
laid up, and matters began to go awry.
As a writer of the time remarked: 'His affairs became disordered and his
health and spirit were undermined.'
Mount Anville had to be sold to an order of nuns who used it as an
exclusive girls' school. He died in his
town house on 2nd February 1867.
Dargan
had played a part in many things: bringing the railways to rural and seacoast
areas, promoting the development of resorts such as Bray, and the development
of large-scale industries. It was all
very much in the nineteenth-century style of the pioneering man of business.
Yet
it may well be that the National Gallery was among his most important
inspirations. Generations of Dubliners
have certainly thanked him for it. It
was a haven of peace and enlightenment for GEORGE BERNARD SHAW [49] when he was a young man in the
1870s, when the gallery was almost the only beacon of culture and civilization
in the city of Dublin.
76
Sir William Hamilton
1805-1865
As a mathematician, William Hamilton is to
be ranked with Descartes and Fermat, though to many the crown of his life's work
(as he saw it) seems strange and obscure.
He
was born in Dublin at midnight between 3rd and 4th August 1805. Though there was always some dispute about
his origins, he always claimed to be Irish, and hoped his life's work in
mathematics would reflect on the national credit of Ireland.
His
father was a successful attorney, an exuberant and eloquent man, but one also
given to overindulgence in drink.
Hamilton inherited some of his characteristics, but his brains came from
his mother, who died when he was only twelve.
By
then he had been sent away to live with his uncle, a clergyman in Trim who was
a formidable scholar. He imparted his
love of languages to his nephew; Hamilton read Hebrew by the age of seven, and
Latin, Greek, and four European languages by the age of twelve. By then he had also acquired a smattering of
Syrian, Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Hindi and Malay - an extraordinary
accomplishment even for a genius. These
language studies were posited on his father's notion that he might work for the
East India Company. In retrospect, all
this seems to have been an extraordinary waste.
However,
even as a boy his mathematical talents became apparent. When he was ten his mathematical skills were tested
in a contest with Zerah Colburn, the now forgotten American child prodigy
nicknamed 'The Calculating Boy', and did not come off too badly. He read Euclid, doubtless in the original
Greek, and soon moved on to Newton's Arithemetica Universalis and then
the Principia. By 1822, it was
clear that he could understand much of this, and he continued to pursue these
studies, becoming largely self-taught as a mathematician.
At
the age of seventeen, while reading the Celestial Mechanics of Laplace,
his discovered an error. This introduced
him to Dr Brinkley, the astronomer royal for Ireland, whom he astonished with a
paper on the osculation of certain curves of double curvature. Clearly, this widely read young man was a
mathematical genius of the first order.
He also caught the attention of Sir John Herschel and Professor George
Airy, the leading British astronomers of the day.
In
1823 he entered Trinity College in Dublin.
'This young man,' his friend Dr Brinkley remarked after Hamilton had
presented his paper on light rays to the Royal Irish Academy, 'I do not say will
be, but is, the first mathematician of his.' To some it seemed that a second Newton had
arrived. He proved that certain rays of
light emerge from a crystal, not as single or double rays, but as conical
pencils. This led to his convincing
proof of the 'undulatory theory of light'.
In
1827, while he was still an undergraduate, he was appointed Andrews professor
of astronomy in the Dublin university.
He entered his undergraduate career by being elected Astronomer Royal at
the age of twenty-two without even applying for the position, many
distinguished astronomers being passed over.
But it gave him a post in which he could develop not only his astronomy,
which had interested him since the age of fourteen, but have the time to do
other work as well.
This
involved the elaboration of some 'curious discoveries' he had made at the age
of seventeen, which he eventually published as A Theory of Systems of Rays. The techniques he introduced were to prove of
fundamental importance to the development of theoretical physics in the
twentieth century. His methods were just
what was needed for the theory of wave mechanics associated today with quantum
theory and the theory of atomic structure.
He presented an abstract of his work to the Royal Irish Academy in April
1827.
He
had well-developed literary tastes, and was a friend of Wordsworth and
Southey. His own poems, which one critic
said, 'retain a straightforward clarity, strength, and dignity', were collected
by his biographer, Robert Perceval Graves.
Wordsworth himself thought that Hamilton was one of the most remarkable
men he had ever met, next only to Coleridge, his fellow poet.
Hamilton
had had two unhappy love affairs before he married an invalided lady. It was a bad match which brought him little
comfort. After ten years he realized
that he was slipping into alcoholism and gave up the conviviality that had been
a feature of his younger years. He was
never quite free of this threat.
While
he and his wife were out walking one day (16th October 1843), he was suddenly
struck by the notion of quaternions, his great discovery. This was a new method of dealing with the
science of space mathematically. (It was
a new system of algebra and geometry that expressed relations of space in
regard to direction as well as quantity, and was based on the application of a
new interpretation of what had been hitherto considered 'impossible
quantities'.) Having no paper on hand,
Hamilton scratched the maths involved onto the stonework of a bridge over the
Royal Canal at Ballyboggan, near Cabra.
A contemporary, Professor Peter Tait, later claimed that Hamilton's
method was one 'which can only be compared with the Principia of Newton
and the Mécanique Céleste of Laplace'.
The
last two decades of Hamilton's life were devoted to the elaboration of
quaternions and their application to many fields; Elements of Quaternions
was published after his death. He left
behind manuscript books and a huge collection of papers, which were found to be
in an extraordinary muddle, largely due to his domestic difficulties. Hidden deep in the piles of papers, dinner
plates were found with still uneaten chops on them.
The
now reclusive Hamilton died in Dublin of gout on 2nd September 1865. He had been described as the greatest man of
science that Ireland ever produced.
Among the many honours that came to him (including a knighthood in
1835), none pleased him more than a last tribute awarded to him as he lay
dying: he had been elected the first foreign member of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States.
77
Edmund Burke
1729-1797
Outside Trinity College in central Dublin
stand two statues, one of the poet Goldsmith, the other of Edmund Burke. For the nineteenth century, they represented
the two aspects of Anglo-Irish culture which the college was most proud
of. Though Goldsmith is still much
admired, it is Burke as a political writer and statesman who has come to be
seen as the most influential. He remains
the great philosopher and expounder of the anti-revolutionary philosophy that
Ireland has produced.
Like
that of his country, Burke's was a divided, perhaps even confused,
identity. His father came from a
Catholic family, but being an attorney he had conformed to the Church of
Ireland for professional reasons. His
mother was a Catholic from rural Cork.
Burke himself seems to have been born not at his father's house in
Dublin but at his uncle's house in rural Cork.
As a small child he was sent to live among his Cork relatives, where he
would have absorbed the Catholic culture.
From there he entered Trinity College, which he seems to have found
intellectually stimulating, and where he distinguished himself. He was to be a lawyer and was sent by his
father to study at the Middle Temple in London.
In London he married a Catholic, Mary Nugent (who remained a Catholic
all her life). Burke's view of
Christianity was an inclusive one, covering both the Catholicism of his mother
and the nominal Anglicanism of his father.
In later life he was secretive about his background and his relations,
as the nature of his upbringing might not have appealed to many in London
political circles.
Burke
did not care for the law; his father did not care that his son wished to be a
writer. Breaking with his father, Burke
entered on the lower rungs of a political career. In 1756 he made his name with a satire on
Bolingbroke called A Vindication of Natural Society, but the irony was
easily misunderstood. Far more
successful was his essay on 'The Sublime on the Beautiful'. His literary career continued, and among his
books was one dealing with the political settlement with America, a continent
always of interest to him. He began the Annual
Register, a record of political, social, and criminal events which still
continues, and from the beginning proved a success and an essential source for
later historians.
When
WILLIAM HAMILTON [76] was
made Irish secretary, Burke accompanied him to Dublin. His views on the social situation of his
native country were reinforced by this stay.
As John Morley, himself immersed in Irish affairs, later wrote: 'He
always took the interest of an ardent patriot in his unfortunate country; and
made more than one weighty sacrifice on behalf of the principles which he
deemed to be bound up with her welfare.'
Though
he was entitled to a small pension for his services, Burke quarrelled with
Hamilton and gave it up. England was now
passing into a period of political change under George III, who wished to break
with the settlement of 1688 and rule with more authority rather than the
permission of a set of great families.
In July 1767, Lord Rockingham became prime minister in a reversal of
fortune for the king, and appointed Burke his secretary. This remained a lifelong friendship. But Rockingham fell from power, largely
because he was not supported by William Pitt.
This ended any possibility of a wise policy toward the American colonies. Burke had now been elected a member of
Parliament. From the day of his election
until 1790 he was to be one of the essential guides of a revival of the Whig
party, from which, in due course, would spring the great Liberal party of the
nineteenth century. In opposition, Burke
showed by his writings and speeches that he had a wide-ranging and firm grasp
of the details and prospects of political life that was unrivalled.
Oddly
enough for a man who had been a penniless scribbler a few years before, Burke
was now able to buy an estate costing £22,000, which brought him £500 a year in
rents. His finances were another
mysterious aspect of his life. He spent
more than he made - far more - for he was a friendly man who kept up with his
friends and others of interest in London.
Burke
was more than a politician; he was an eminent man of letters. Until very recently, his description of Marie
Antoinette was among those pieces of famous prose which every schoolchild in
Ireland studied.
The
main themes of his political life, aside from his sympathy for Ireland, were
the fate of the American colonies, the beginnings of the British imperial
adventure in India, and the French Revolution.
These events inspired Burke's most eloquent pieces. His desire for a policy of reconciliation in
Ireland led to the loss of his seat. But
he was soon re-elected for another borough and held several offices in
government. However, these were small
matters compared with the saga of the impeachment of Warren Hastings for his
highhanded and cruel actions against the natives of India, which Burke pursued
from 1787.
In
1790 he published Reflections on the Revolution in France, which
appeared in eleven editions at the time, and drew fierce responses from the
romantic admirers of the bloody events in Paris; one of these being Tom Paine's
Rights of Man. Though it gained
Burke a universal reputation, it also led to a break with the leader of his
party, Charles James Fox, a more radical man than Burke, in May 1791.
When
the long trial of Warren Hastings concluded with his acquittal in April 1795, Burke
gave up his seat in Parliament. Though
his writings and speeches on the whole defended the value of tradition and good
order, he was not a great admirer of the landed oligarchs of the Whig party. He was a representative of 'the new man', the
sort of person who rose through the ranks of British society and would become a
great feature of the nineteenth century.
Burke
died at his house in Beaconsfield on 9th July 1797. He remains an outstanding figure, a proponent
of a view of society which has many admirers.
Like many other Irishmen later, he had made a career for himself in
British public life. 'There have been,'
his admirer John Morley concluded, 'many subtler, more original, and more
systematic thinkers about the condition of the social union. But no one that ever lived used the general
ideas of the thinker more successfully to judge the particular problems of
statesmen. No one has ever come so close
to the details of practical politics, and at the same time remembered that
these can only be understood and only dealt with by the aid of the broad
conceptions of political philosophy. And
what is more than all for the perpetuity of fame, he was one of the great
masters of the high and difficult art of elaborate composition.'
It
has been the lament of many Irish people since that these amazing talents could
not have served his native country more directly than they did. But Burke was caught by the political
circumstances of his day, and like all leaders of men had to make what he could
of them.
78
Ernest Shackleton
1874-1922
There have been notable Irish explorers
who have made their contribution to the slow unveiling and discovery of the
world. Such figures as Sir Richard
Burton, Admiral McClintock, and Surgeon Major T.H. Parke are well known. But none achieved more, and more bravely,
than Ernest Henry Shackleton, the polar explorer.
He
was born on 14th February 1874, at Kilkee in County Clare in the west of
Ireland. His family were of Anglo-Irish
stock, and he was educated at Dulwich College (also the alma mater of P.G.
Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler). He
entered the British merchant marine because it was a career likely to offer
adventure.
In
the first of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott's expeditions to the Antarctic, from
1901 to 1904, he acted as a lieutenant.
Their ship Discovery had been specially built for the purpose of
ice exploration. It was the plan that
the ship would remain for a winter in the ice of McMurdo Sound after a
preliminary cruise along the coast of what Scott called King Edward Land. It took a little time to develop the right
techniques for sledging on the ice, but then the expedition began a series of
shore journeys. The principal one was
made by Scott, Shackleton and Dr Edward Wilson over the ice towards the
south. Though they lost many dogs, they
reached 82 degrees, 17 minutes south.
But on the return leg, Shackletons's health gave way and he had to be
sent home on the relief ship. He missed
out on the excitement of the second year.
On
his arrival in London, Shackleton began planning another expedition of his own,
which started in 1908 from a port in New Zealand in a small whaler called Nimrod,
reaching a position ninety-seven miles from the South Pole. This expedition made use of Mongolian ponies
rather than dogs. Its greatest
achievement was a journey made by Shackleton himself with three companions up
the Beardmore Glacier, opening a route to the polar plateau and the goal of the
South Pole itself. In all the annals of
polar exploration, this ranks as one of the greatest journeys by sledge ever
made without the aid of supporting parties.
(These days, so-called explorers have everything, including journalists,
flown in by air.) They narrowly escaped
death from the cold and exhaustion, much the same causes that led to the
disaster that overwhelmed Captain Scott and his party on their return from the
pole in 1912. But Shackleton managed to
preserve his party and return to the ship, all without losing a single man. On his return to the United Kingdom he was
knighted, in 1909. He described the
adventures of the expedition in a book Heart of the Antarctic (1909).
On
7th August 1914, unperturbed by the death of Scott, Shackleton left England on
the Endurance, for the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which he had
carefully planned. It was intended to
cross the continent from the Weddell Sea to the Ross by way of the South
Pole. The Endurance reached the
Weddell Sea in December 1914, soon after the First World War had begun. It moved slowly south, but though they made
some significant discoveries, they could find nowhere to land, and drifted
north again with the ice. On 27th
October 1915, the ship was crushed to destruction in the ice and had to be
abandoned. The party of twenty-eight
camped on an ice floe. They drifted
north on this for 457 days, until it broke up.
The survivors took to their small boats, and six days later landed on
Elephant Island, where they recamped on a small patch beneath the great cliffs
of ice.
Shackleton
and five of the men now set off on an even more hazardous voyage. By small boat they succeeded in reaching
South Georgia, 759 miles away. He then
tried to return to the men on Elephant Island but failed. However, with the help of a Chilean trawler,
he managed to rescue all of the men on 30th August 1916.
Though
the men under Shackleton survived, some of the party in the Ross Sea perished
when they were carried away by the ice.
Despite that, this epic boat journey, which had tested Shackleton's
skills as a leader, is the most famous episode in the history of
exploration. His courage and sense of
command seems to some to be superior to the often foolish attitudes of Scott
and his party, who killed themselves by hauling their sledges to the pole and
back by hand. Shackleton's last book, South,
published in 1919, describes the hazards of his trip. The boat journey has been described in more
detail in a book by one of the party, Cmdr F.A. Worsley, which is a classic of
its kind.
Shackleton
had to wait until 1921 to mount another expedition. In September 1922 he set out a third time, on
the Quest. But this was to be his
last expedition. On 5th January 1922, he
died on South Georgia of angina following influenza. His companions buried him on the island, and
the expedition continued its work under the command of Frank Wild.
Frank
Worsley said of the funeral: 'When looking at Shackleton's grave and the cairn
which we, his comrades, erected to his memory on a windswept hill of South
Georgia, I meditated on his great deeds.
It seemed to me that among all his achievements and triumphs, great as
they were, his one failure was the most glorious. By self-sacrifice and throwing his own life
into the balance he saved every one of his men - not a life was lost - although
at times it looked unlikely that one could be saved.'
79
William James Pirrie
1847-1924
For a long time, Ireland was seen only as
an agricultural country. When heavy
industry did begin to develop it was around Belfast, contiguous with
Clydeside. This was in the heartlands of
Presbyterian Ireland, and naturally an association was seen between its firm
Scottish principles and the fecklessness endemic in other, more Catholic parts
of the country. This concentration of
industry was to play a part in the eventual partition of the island in 1922.
A
key figure in the industrial development of Ireland, and of the shipping
business worldwide, was William James Pirrie.
He was, in fact, born in Quebec in May 1847. His parents, however, were Irish: James Alexander
Pirrie came from Little Clandeboye, his wife from Antrim. The boy was brought up back in Ireland at
Conlig, near Belfast, where he went to school at the Royal Belfast Academical
Institution.
When
he left school at sixteen he entered the shipbuilding firm of Harland and Wolff
as a pupil. His native talent was soon
manifest, and he was rapidly promoted, becoming a partner in 1874. He was then only twenty-seven. The rest of his life was spent at Harland and
Wolff, which he saw grow into one of the most important shipbuilding companies
in the world. When it was converted into
a limited liability company he became chairman of the board.
Pirrie
began his career at an opportune time.
The transition from wooden to steel-built ships was under way, and he
followed, indeed promoted, many of the most important developments in the
industry over the next few decades. The
shipping business was the making of Belfast.
In 1800 it was little more than a market town - the population was only
20,000. The Queen's Island shipyard was
opened in 1851, and by 1880 the population had grown to 230,000. By 1901 the population was 348,965. Whereas the population of Ireland as a whole
was shrinking due to emigration, Belfast was happily expanding, with most of
its citizens depending on the shipyard.
And by then, though much could be made of the city's radical past, it
had become the centre of Protestant resistance to home rule.
Though
there had been giant ships before (Brunel's Great Eastern, for
instance), Pirrie could be said to be the creator of the large modern
ship. As the decades advanced, the ships
which the firm built grew larger and larger.
The Oceanic, the Celtic, the Cedric, and the Baltic
were famous in their day. This line of
ships culminated in the Olympic (1912), the Titanic (1912), and
the Brittanic (1914). But these
ships were unfortunate, the Titanic sinking on its maiden voyage in
spectacular and famous circumstances; the Brittanic being sunk in the
First World War while being used as a hospital ship. That, too, was a mysterious event. The superstitious spoke of a curse on the
shipyard because of its intolerance to Catholic workers.
Most
of the advances made both with regard to the design of the ships and their
engineering arose from suggestions made by Pirrie himself in these first
decades of expansion. As the ships grew
in length and width he was conscious of the need to ensure strength in the
frames through new methods of construction.
The
Pirrie ships were the first to place the passengers' accommodations amidships,
and to create many of the arrangements and amenities now familiar to
ocean-going liners. There were also
great changes on the engineering side.
New kinds of balance and expansion engines reduced vibration and
improved efficiency.
One
important development was the change from coal-fired ships, which depended on a
world-wide bunker system, to vessels that used oil and later diesel,
engines. This development was to have
important consequences for the development of the oil industry, as marine
shipping became a major consumer.
The
firm had connections with many important shipping companies, and was sole
builder for the White Star Line in England and the Bibby Line in the United
States. It also built ships for the
Peninsula and Orient line for use on routes to India and Australia, and for the
Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, among others.
As the ships and their capacity grew, the firm also emphasized the need
for harbour facilities to develop in tandem.
In
1902, Pirrie was one of the movers behind the creation of the Merchantile
Marine Company, which brought many smaller interests on the North Atlantic
routes into a more efficient conglomerate, or cartel. Pirrie grew Harland and Wolff into a business
filling 23 acres on the Belfast and Clyde shorelines, employing some fifty
thousand men. The First World War
affected the yards dramatically.
Slipways were converted to war use, and gunboats and warships were built
quickly. A new airplane department was
added as the fighter plane became the new instrument of war.
In
March 1918, Pirrie was made controller general of merchant shipping, in
reaction to the effects of the German U-boat campaign against shipping on the
Atlantic. This he tackled with typical
energy.
Pirrie
had been given a peerage in the House of Lords in 1906, and when the king
visited Belfast to open the first sitting of the new parliament of Northern
Ireland he was made a viscount. He died
at sea on 6th June 1924, while on a trip to see the ports of Latin America, and
to urge the governments there to think of expanding their facilities to meet
the rising trade in the post-war years.
By
1922, 180 people had been killed in East Belfast in the sectarian struggles
that arose over the partition of Ireland.
Again, in 1935 and in the 1960s troubles stalked the shipyards. (This was the background to Ulster dramatist
Sam Thompson's famous play Over the Bridge.) The yards that Pirrie created became the core
of the community strife in Northern Ireland.
But in serving the world-wide needs of shipping, he had also created the
employment much needed by the Belfast community. That the benefits would be shared by all was
a problem beyond him to solve; that it was beyond the communities, too, is the
tragedy of Ireland. Yet, in August 1969,
some eight thousand workers who remained in the Pirrie yards voted at a mass
meeting to maintain 'peace and goodwill in the yard, and throughout the
province'. It may yet come.
80
Fr Theobald Mathew
1790-1856
When the United States embraced
Prohibition in the 1920s, it was the culmination of a temperance movement that
had begun a very long time before. Among
the first movers of the crusade against drink was an Irish priest known to all
as the Apostle of Temperance.
Theobald
Mathew, called Tobias by his family, was born at Thomaston Castle, outside
Cashel, in County Tipperary, on 10th October 1790. His father, James Mathew, was a distinguished
Catholic, and Theobald was the fourth of twelve children by his mother, Anney
Whyte. His charm and kindness stood out
from childhood: 'Darlin' master Toby, a born saint', proclaimed his mother, who
was hopeful that he would fulfil her dream of having a priest in the family.
At
the age of twelve, Mathew was sent to St Canice's Academy in Kilkenny, where he
stayed for seven years. In Kilkenny he
came under the influence of two Capuchins and in 1807 he entered Maynooth
College to study for the priesthood, but left.
The following year he was accepted into the Capuchins. He was ordained on Easter Sunday, 1813, and
spent a year in Kilkenny before being sent to join the Capuchin friars in
Cork. There he soon distinguished
himself with his gentlemanly ways. Based
in the Little Friary, he set about creating a school, industrial classes, and
benefit societies. He created a cemetery
for Cork's Catholics by buying up the botanic gardens in 1830. In 1822 his superiors recognized his talents
and appointed him provincial of the Capuchins.
He held this post for twenty-nine years, eventually resigning because of
ill health.
In
Ireland, the temperance movement had been begun among the Quakers, but in 1838
Fr Mathew became head of the Cork Total Abstinence Society after much urging
from a close friend. The first meeting
was held on 10th April 1838, and Fr Mathew was the first to record his own
pledge of total abstinence. He proved to
be a wonderfully charismatic leader.
Very soon he had persuaded many thousands to 'take the pledge' not to
drink again.
The
political situation was, as so often in Ireland, disturbed by troubles of one
kind or another. Fr Mathew kept the
movement a non-partisan one and retained and expanded his support among
Protestants in Munster.
He
had an extraordinary presence, and many simple folk credited him with healing
powers, although he was always anxious to deny them. As a preacher, Fr Mathew drew thousands all
across Ireland to him. He was in
Limerick in 1839, and in Dublin in 1840.
By 1843 he could write to a friend, 'I have now, with the Divine
Assistance, hoisted the banner of Temperance in almost every parish in
Ireland'.
The
English novelist William Thackeray, no lover of either the Irish or the
Catholic Church, met him during a visit to Cork in 1842. 'Avoiding all political questions, no man
seems more eager than he for all the practical improvements of this
country. Leases and rents, farming
improvements, reading societies, music societies - he was full of these, and
his schemes of temperance above all.'
Thackeray's own countrymen would share in his crusade. During the years 1842 and 1843 Fr Mathew
travelled in Scotland and England, preaching temperance and signing up
thousands more to the pledge. It is said
some two hundred thousand people were enrolled.
The
grim shadow of the famine passed over Ireland, beginning in 1845. Fr Mathew had been among the first to alert
the government as to what was happening, as want and distress grew in Cork and
other areas of Munster. In the cities he
was deeply involved in famine relief; he even stopped the work on the Capuchin
church and gave the money for food.
Ireland was left stunned by the disaster, and the temperance movement
lost ground. In 1847 Fr Mathew was the
choice of the local clergy for bishop of Cork, but he was passed over by Rome.
In
the spring of 1848 his untiring work finally caught up with him; he suffered a
stroke. Despite his evident ill health,
he went to America in 1849 and visited twenty-five states, pledging some
hundreds of thousands of people. These
numbers seem extraordinary, but it is claimed that he enrolled up to seven
million people in his travels at a time when the population of Ireland was
6,552,367 (1851 census).
Temperance
was not unknown in the United States. In
1836, 'cold water societies' had been introduced by the Rev. Thomas Hunt, who
provided pledge cards to children to take home for others to sign. The first Prohibition law was passed in
Tennessee in 1838. By the early 1840s,
temperance societies were much in vogue, supported by both Protestant clergymen
and mill owners, who thought sober workers would be better for business. A temperance novel by Lucius Sargent, My
Mother's Gold Ring (1834), sold 113,000 copies. By 1872 a Prohibition party was able to hold its
first convention to nominate a candidate for the presidency. With all this enthusiasm in America, it is
not surprising that on his travels Fr Mathew managed to sign up a total of
six-hundred thousand pledges.
In
December 1851 he returned to Cork, his health broken. He was saddened that many of those millions
who were said to have taken the pledge had gone back to the drinking once his
presence had passed. He felt his mission
had failed, but his name and reputation would enable many others to carry on
his work in later years, not only in Ireland but elsewhere in the world. As the American experiment showed, there is
no easy answer to the problem of drink, to which has now been added the even
worse scourge of drug addiction. But the
success of Fr Mathew, as limited as it was, shows what can be done about social
problems through energy, persistence, and personal charm. Fr Mathew died in Queenstown (now Cobh), just
outside Cork, on 8th December 1856, and his simple grave soon became a place of
pilgrimage.
81
Turlough Carolan
1670-1738
Traditional Irish music, as performed by
the Chieftans or the Riverdance Company, has swept the world in recent
decades. But these high-profile
performers owe much more than they may realize to the lonely talent of the last
of the old Irish harpers, Turlough Carolan, 'the last of the Irish bards'.
Also
known as O'Carolan and the descendant of an ancient family, he was born about
1670 at Nobber, in County Meath.
Sometime about 1684 the family moved to Ballyfernon, in Roscommon. There they were patronized by the MacDermott
family, who owned the local iron foundry.
Turlough was reared and educated with the children of the house. At the age of fourteen he lost his sight due
to smallpox. Mrs MacDermott then took
charge of his future. She apprenticed
him to a harper, and he was trained to play be ear. In 1691, when he came of age, she provided
him with a horse, a man to hold it, a small sum of money, and off he went on
his travels about Ireland as a harper.
It was his custom to call on persons of rank and high station in big
houses and play for them for either money or his supper. His talents were equally popular among the
poor of the cottages. Carolan was not
just a harper; he was also a composer, and would dedicate the tunes he composed
on the road to the person who gave him food and lodging at the end of the
day. Though he found his way into most
counties of Ireland, much of his time was passed in northern Connaught or
southern Ulster. He was welcomed not
only by the old Gaelic families, but also by the newer, largely Protestant,
gentry.
The
historian Charles O'Conor of Belangare said that Carolan was moral and
religious, but convivial and 'seldom surprised by intoxication'. He also wrote poems, addressed in a personal
way to the ladies of the houses where he lodged. Some two hundred of these are known.
Carolan
married Mary Maguire from Fermanagh, and they had seven children before she
passed away in 1733. He himself became
ill at Tempo in Fermanagh in 1738, and returned to the only place he could then
call home, the house of the MacDermotts at Adleford, in Roscommon. He died there on 25th March. In a manuscript diary, Charles O'Conor, his
patron, recorded: 'Saturday the XXV day of March, 1738, Toirrdealbach O
Cerbhallain died today, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. The mercy of God may his soul find, for he
was a moral and pious man.' Carolan was
buried at Kilronan, at Lough Meelagh, and it was said that his well-attended
wake lasted four days.
Donald
O'Sullivan, who gathered all that could be learned of Carolan fifty years ago
collected some two hundred tunes which had survived. Some had been reprinted in his lifetime,
others after his death by his son. These
surprisingly are lost. Some fifty of his
tunes were collected by Edward Bunting, the pioneer collector of Irish
music. Carolan worked in the very
ancient tradition of Gaelic music, but he was also open to other European
influences, notably the Italian music then fashionable in Dublin. His harp is preserved in Clonalis, the home
of the O'Conor Dons, in Roscommon. James
Handiman collected some twenty of his poems, and Dr Douglas Hyde another
twelve. An edition of some of his songs
was published in Dublin by John and William Neale about 1720. This is the earliest surviving example of
music printing in Ireland. Thomas Moore,
in the settings of his poems, utilized some of Carolan's airs. Others were introduced into the ballad operas
popular in the eighteenth century.
It
is to Carolan, in one way or another, that the tradition of Irish music
returns. Much of what is played today is
in fact eighteenth-century dance music, but his original compositions from the
late seventeenth century are redolent of the thousands of years of Irish
culture which lie behind them. The
harpers that followed him were not composers but merely players, who dwindled
in number. The harp itself, which had
been well adapted to earlier forms of music, could not play the music of the
eighteenth century well. So it was displaced
by the harpsichord, the violin, and then the piano.
To
preserve some of this heritage, harp festivals were held at Granard, in
Longford, in 1781 to 1785, and in Belfast in 1792. This last was organized by Edward Bunting,
and it is to his notations of the tunes as eventually published some years
later, that we owe much of what is known about this ancient music of
Ireland. The use of Carolan's music by
Moore kept later generations in some way in touch with Ireland's music. Now, three hundred years after his birth, a
later generation is able to still enjoy the vital heritage of Carolan's genius.
82
Charles Gavan Duffy
1816-1903
As an Irish revolutionary and Australian
statesman, Charles Gavan Duffy had a remarkable career indeed, for in both
roles he was a man of importance and influence.
The
son of a shopkeeper in Monaghan, he was born on 12th April 1816. His total formal education was a few months
at a local school; otherwise he taught himself.
He read widely and voraciously, as perhaps only the genuine autodidact
can. Almost inevitably he grew up to
become a journalist, contributing from an early age to the Northern Herald. In 1836 he moved to Dublin, where he joined
the staff of the Morning Register.
In 1839 he moved to Belfast to work as the editor of a new Catholic
paper, The Vindicator, and remained in Belfast till 1842. He found the time to study law and was called
to the Irish bar, but he did not practise.
Returning
to Dublin in the summer of 1842, he came in contact with two young barristers,
THOMAS DAVIS [23] and
John Blake Dillon, with whom in October he founded the Nation, perhaps
the most influential newspaper ever published in Ireland. It supported DANIEL O'CONNELL [20] and the Repeal Association, and its efforts helped to fill
the association's meetings. O'Connell
was duly grateful. When the government
prosecuted O'Connell in 1844, Duffy was tried with him and afterwards joined
him in Kilmainham Gaol.
All
across Europe this was an era of reviving nationalism, as a younger generation
rejected the cautious precedents of those who had survived the Napoleonic
Wars. In 1834 an international
association of republican societies had been formed, which included Young
Germany, Young Italy, Young Poland, and Young France. In Britain, however, Young England was a
reactionary group of young Tory aristocrats who sought a return to medieval
ideals. And so, in Ireland, a Young
Ireland party was formed in imitation of the Continental movements.
Among
his most valued contributors, Duffy included the leading figures of Young
Ireland. The stated ambition of the
paper was 'to create and foster public opinion in Ireland and to make it racy
of the soil'. As most of the writers were
staunchly middle class, they did not mean anything crudely vulgar by this,
rather, that all they wrote would have a national reference. The paper was widely read and deeply
influential. From its pages were
gathered the songs and ballads that made up The Spirit of the Nation,
which became a bestseller and was read everywhere, or rather sung everywhere,
for it contained the patriotic ballads that passed almost at once into popular
currency, and are today part of the folk tradition of Ireland.
Impatient
young men that they were, the Young Irelanders soon broke with the ageing
O'Connell. The repeal movement had been
a failure, and the famine had devastated the country. The outbreak of rebellion across Europe in
1848, first in Paris, in February, and then in the German states and elsewhere,
inspired Young Ireland also to rise in arms.
But in July 1848 Gavan Duffy was arrested and his paper suppressed. This did not prevent a brief flurry of
insurrection by William Smith O'Brien and others in Tipperary, but it was
quickly put down and the leaders were imprisoned.
Though
some of the Young Irelanders were deported, Gavan Duffy survived four trials
unconvicted and was released in 1849. He
revived the Nation and became involved in the land reform movement along
purely constitutional lines with Frederick Lucas and others. They founded the Tenant League in 1850, and
at the general election of 1852 forty MPs (including Gavan Duffy from New Ross)
were elected to Parliament, pledged to its aims and independent opposition. This was the beginning of a true Irish
party. But its aims were betrayed when
two leading members accepted offices from the government. Lucas died, the reform measures failed in the
House of Lords, and Gavan Duffy was in despair.
Duffy
left Ireland in ill health. In 1855, he
immigrated to Australia where he began a law practice. He felt he had had enough of public life, but
he could not resist politics. He was
elected to the colonial assembly in Victoria and became minister of public
works, minister of public lands, and chief minister in 1871. A knighthood followed in 1873.
He
championed the labourers and farmers, many of them Irish, against the
capitalists and squatters (farmers with large spreads of land). By the time he retired he had gained a
reputation as one of the most distinguished Australian public figures.
Duffy
left Australia in 1880 and went to live in the south of France. There he wrote a biography of his friend
Thomas Davis, two histories of the Young Ireland movement, and his
autobiography. This last was called
appropriately My Life in Two Hemispheres. After he died, in Nice, on 9th February 1903,
his remains were brought back to Ireland and were interred in Glasnevin, with
the other heroes of Ireland. His son,
George, was a lawyer who acted for SIR ROGER CASEMENT [94], while his daughter, Louise, was a
republican and educator. To have
radically influenced the public life of two countries, in two different parts
of the world, is an achievement that ranks Gavan Duffy high in the pantheon of
the great Irish.
83
Eileen Gray
1879-1976
In a culture for a long time dominated by
words and music, artists and designers were once rare things in Ireland. Eileen Gray was an even rarer thing: a
designer in the modernist European style, a stylist whose influence is only now
being appreciated.
She
was born in Brownswood, near Enniscorthy in County Wexford, on 9th August
1879. She was the daughter of James
Maclaren Smith (who died in 1900), and his wife, formerly Eveleen Pounden (1841-1918);
the family home Brownswood belonged to Eveleen.
The Pounden family was of English origin, long settled in Ireland: an
ancestor had died fighting the rebel Irish at the siege of Wexford in 1798. Eileen's maternal grandmother had been Lady
Jane, sister of the Scottish aristocrat the 14th Earl of Moray. In 1895 her mother inherited the title
Baroness Gray on the death of her uncle, and shortly after the family changed
their name to Smith-Gray, afterwards simply Gray.
This
landed, wealthy, aristocratic background marked Eileen Gray for life. In later years she often felt that she lacked
any real education, for this had been placed in the hands of a series of
governesses selected more for their pleasing manners than their sharp minds.
Yet
hers was a happy childhood. She had fond
memories of boating on the River Slaney, and perhaps some of the swirling
shapes and colours of her later work derive from sights there. On a rare later visit to Ireland she was
disappointed to see that her brother had decorated the family home in a very
provincial style, showing little imagination.
Her
father had worked as an illustrator in the 1870s - he showed some designs for
wall decorations on Homeric themes at the Royal Academy in 1873. Other work included landscapes of England and
Switzerland, and illustrations to The Pearl Fountain, a children's
book. Though he ceased to exhibit after
he married, he continued to paint, and often took his daughter on paintings
tours of the Continent.
The
rest of Eileen Gray's time was divided between Ireland and her mother's home in
London. A noted society beauty of the
day, Eileen led an adventurous life, even going ballooning with Mr Royce, the
car maker, and flying in early airplanes.
She
enrolled at the Slade School of Art in 1898 and it was in London that she
learnt the difficult art of lacquer work in the workshops of D. Charles in
Soho. Leaving the Slade in 1902, she
migrated to Paris, to study drawing at the Académie Julian and at the Académie
Colarossi, between 1902 and 1905. She
learnt yet more from the Japanese artist Seigo Sugawara in Paris, developing
her skills in applying lacquer to furniture which would be her early claim to
fame as a designer. Sugawara urged her
to be adventurous. In 1905 Eileen fell
seriously ill with typhus and to recover her health she visited Algeria, seeing
there for the first time the traditional white, plain-walled, flat-roofed
houses of the North African Berber culture, which were to affect all her later
work. (The vernacular cottage style of
her native Ireland should not be overlooked, however, in the search for
influences towards her minimalist style.)
She
did not plan to stay in Paris for the rest of her life; it just turned out that
way. In 1906 she bought an apartment at
21 rue Bonaparte that remained her base to the end. Her ambition was to 'make useful things', but
also she said on another occasion that she wanted 'to create things for our own
time', in contrast to the persistent taste of Britain and France for sombre
classic styles of furniture and design.
It
was her original interest in lacquer work which had brought her to Paris, and
her furniture and designs using this material were seen as both imaginative and
exotic, for of course lacquer work originated in the cultures of the distant
Orient, but its tones and surfaces were very much in the modern idiom. However, this rich decorative style had
little in relation with the kind of architecture she evolved later on.
Since
1909 she had been working for herself as an interior decorator and furniture
designer, adding textiles and carpets to her repertoire in 1910. These were made in her studio in the rue
Visconti which was in the charge of her friend and colleague Evelyn Wyld. Though all her life she was shy of publicity,
by the end of 1913 she was well established.
She exhibited that year at the Salon de la Société des Artistes
Décorateurs, and her work was already being purchased and collected by Paul
Poiret and by the couturier Jacques Doucet whom she met first in 1912. When the Great War broke out, she worked as
an ambulance driver with the French army in 1914 and 1915.
With
her mentor Sugawara, Eileen opened a workshop in London in 1915, which returned
to Paris in 1917. The British edition of
Vogue published a long and enthusiastic article about her that year and
an important commission followed in 1919 from Mme Mathieu-Levy, for whom she
created a sensational lacquered brick screen.
From
1922 to 1930 Eileen Gray was director of the Jean Désert shop and showrooms (217
rue du Faubourg St Honoré), this lasted to 1930. She showed her 1923 designs for a
Bedroom-Boudoir in Monte Carlo at the Salon des Artistes Moderns where it
attracted much attention. In 1926 she
created an interior for an exhibition, which was so unusual that it brought
with it critical disdain. Her ideas
attracted the attention of the artists associated with the de Stijl group in
Holland, where her work was admired and exhibited, and the Dutch journal Wendingen
devoted an issue to her in 1924, but from 1926 her interests veered more
towards architecture, working with Jean Badovici (1893-1936), a Roumanian-born,
Paris-educated theorist of architecture.
At
Roquebrune, Cap Martin, in 1926 she created E.1027, her 'Maison en Bord de
Mer', working with Badovici, which was for her personal use. In 1929 she undertook the conversion of a
Paris apartment for Badovici in rue de Chateaubriand. At Castellar she built another house, again
for her own use, 'Tempe á Pailla' at Castellar near Menton - a house in which
Graham Southerland later lived. In 1939
she created the interior design and decoration of a small apartment for herself
at St Tropez, then beginning its rise as a chic resort.
These
and other schemes and projects led to a connection with the modern movement,
represented by Gropius and Le Corbusier.
Her own house at Roquebrune, designed with Jan Badovici, attracted very
great attention. This was furnished with
her own work, in tubular steel, glass, and aluminium - her use of steel and
other 'new materials' was a hint of the international style that was to emerge
in the 1950s in Europe and America.
Badovici, one of the leading exponents of modernism in France, was the
editor of L'Architecture Vivante, and the major influence in moving her
from interior design to total architecture, from making the furniture to
creating the environment. It was in a
special issue of Badovici's journal that E.1027 was displayed to the
architectural world, and acclaimed a classic of the period.
She
built other houses for herself, and did work for private clients, but all too
many of her schemes remained merely design projects. These included a holiday camp, for she had
foreseen the effect that the introduction of paid summer holidays in France
would have, though not all its consequences for her beloved Mediterranean
littoral. This was exhibited at the
invitation of Le Corbusier, a friend of Badovici, at the 1937 Paris
International Exhibition. Her furniture,
Le Corbusier admitted, had introduced the 'transatlantic style' two years
before his better-known innovations.
From
1937 onwards, through awards and exhibitions, her unique role as a modern
designer was recognised. In 1938 Le
Corbusier painted, without her leave, a large mural of three female nudes in
E.1027, which she thought ruined the house.
This ungracious act to a fellow architect's work led to a falling out
with Le Corbusier. Perhaps it was this
split that caused her professional eclipse, though as a woman, a bisexual, and
an Irish émigré in Europe, she was an outsider by nature in the world of
modernist architecture. In contrast to
the dehumanising public schemes of Le Corbusier, Eileen Gray's designs are
small, private and intimate, and so retain their appeal to this day. (Ironically, Le Corbusier was to drown while
swimming off the rocks below E.1027.)
From
1938 onwards her achievements became obscured by the emergence of other artists
and designers over the next two decades.
During the war she was interned as an enemy alien and she returned to
find her homes had been wrecked and much of her work destroyed: her small
apartment in St Tropez was gone, and the house at Castellar vandalized.
Much
of her later work also went into projects.
Her idea for a culture and social centre (1946-49) remained unrealized,
even though it was published in a professional journal in 1959. In 1956 she gave up 'Tempe á Pailla' and
returned to Paris, only to begin work in 1958 on converting a small barn
outside St Tropez into a small summer home ('Lou Pérou'), once again deploying
many of her most characteristic ideas.
Unrealized
projects aside, Eileen Gray's talents were remarkable. What placed her was the fact that she was one
of the very few women working in architecture and design during the Art Deco
and modern period between the wars. In
1968 the Dutch architectural historian Joseph Rykwert wrote a critical article
on her work, bringing her, after a thirty year period of obscurity, to the
attention of a new generation of designers and artists.
In
1972 a screen she had made in 1913 for Paul Drouet was sold to an American
collector in a Paris auction for £18,000, a record price. At an auction in the Hôtel Drouet in 1973 the
collection of Jacques Doucet, her first real patron, included a screen sold for
$41,700, a sofa for $31,000, and a table for $15,000. The notion of monetary value had a wonderful
effect on journalists who flocked to interview her.
Commercial
fame was followed by professional reappraisal.
An exhibition was held of her work at the RIBA Heinz Gallery, and at the
Royal Institute of British Architects in 1973, followed by others in Paris, in
1976, and at the V&A in 1979. She
was elected a fellow of the Royal Institute of Irish Architects in 1973. New editions of her furniture designs came on
to the market.
In
her nineties Eileen Gray was once more as famous as she had been in the 1920s,
her contributions to the trend of modern art and modern lifestyles fully
recognized. She lived on in the rue
Bonaparte apartment, protected by her somewhat fiercesome Breton companion and
housekeeper.
She
reminded one Irish visitor of one's very demure maiden aunt, but it had been a
far from demure life that Eileen Gray lived.
At first she had developed her father's artistic tastes on the basis of
clients in her mother's sort of wealthy social circle, eventually breaking
through these to provide a modern minimalist house for an entirely new way of
life that emerged in the decades between the wars. All in all, it was a life of extraordinary
achievement. She died in Paris on
30th/31st October 1976, a much fêted lady.
Earlier that year she had told another visitor from Ireland, who was
interested in her family's past, 'I am without roots, but if I have any, they
are in Ireland.'
84
Count John McCormack
1884-1945
In the summer of 1932, at the climax of
the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, John McCormack sand the 'Panis Angelicus'
at an outdoor mass in the Phoenix Park, before an immense million-person
audience, and a further radio and cinema audience worldwide. This great religious gathering, in
retrospect, represented the high point of the influence of the Catholic Church
in modern Ireland. For McCormack, too,
Ireland's greatest tenor, this was indeed the summit of his career.
McCormack
had been born in Athlone, a provincial market and barracks town in County
Westmeath on 14th June 1884. His parents
were Scottish in origin, his father working in the local woollen mills, the
largest employer in the town. His father
was perhaps not the most encouraging person.
McCormack recalled later that 'My father told me I would never amount to
anything in this world'.
The
family was not well off, but John was a bright child. He was educated at the Marist Fathers school
in Athlone, and later won a scholarship to Summerhill College in Sligo, also
run by the Marists. Singing and music
was a feature of his home life and the remarkable qualities of his voice were
recognized very early. But his ideas of
a career lay elsewhere. At first he
thought he might become a priest, but he was also good at languages and
maths. He just failed to earn a
scholarship to the Royal College of Science, and turned to the Civil Service
instead.
A
friend in Dublin brought him to the attention of Vincent O'Brien, who was then
in charge of the famous Palestrina choir at the Catholic Pro-Cathedral. Having sung at small concerts locally, in
1902 he won the gold medal for tenors at the Feis Ceóil in Dublin, winning a
scholarship to study for a year in Italy and in 1903 he studied there with
Vincenzo Sabatini.
Back
in Dublin, on one occasion in the summer of 1904 he shared the platform with JAMES
JOYCE [25], who was given higher billing! (This earned McCormack a passing reference in
Ulysses as a singing partner of Mrs Bloom.) McCormack was now studying with Vincent
O'Brien. His singing with the Palestrina
Choir at services made his name, and was followed by a tour of the United
States. He sang with the choir at the St
Louis Exposition in Missouri in 1904.
Along with J.C. Doyle, he was now recognized as a leading figure in
Irish music.
McCormack
made his operatic debut at Covent Garden in London in Cavalleria Rusticana. Further operatic engagements followed over
the next few years, in New York, Chicago, and Boston, with an Australian tour
in 1911.
He
left the opera stage two years later, beginning a second career as concert
singer. These popular personal
appearances were enhanced by recordings, which brought him even wider and
greater fame. In all, he made 561
recordings, some of which have been reissued in more recent years. He sang not only with such operatic
luminaries as Nellie Melba, Geraldine Farran, and Luisa Tettrazini, but also
with popular crooners like Bing Crosby.
Some professional opera singers disdained his move to the concert hall,
and his even more appalling penchant for ballads and sentimental Irish songs,
but these were an essential element of his appeal to the mass audience he
commanded.
In
1914 he applied for United States citizenship, which was granted in 1919. This and his support of the cause of Irish
independence annoyed some early British admirers. However, this did not seem to affect his
general popularity when he returned to England in the 1920s, and during World
War II he injured his health by singing at Red Cross concerts, at one of which
he collapsed.
An
ardent Catholic, he was involved in charity work in several countries, and in
recognition of these endeavours he was created a Papal Count in 1928. As an even greater honour, the title was made
hereditary, devolving in turn on his son, Cyril.
In
England he had lived in style in a mansion called Esher Place. During the 1930s he and his family lived in
an Irish Gothic mansion, Moore Abbey at Monasterevan in Kildare, where he could
indulge his very Irish fondness for horse racing. It was all a great contrast to his youthful
poverty in Athlone, about which he retained a certain sensitivity to the end of
his life.
In
his last years he lived in a house at Booterstown, looking out over Dublin Bay
towards Howth Head. There he died on
16th September 1945. His wife, formerly
Lily Foley, whom he had met at that Feis Ceóil in 1902 and married in 1906, and
by whom he had two children (another was adopted), wrote the story of their
life together in her autobiography I Hear You Calling Me. This had been the title of the song which had
been a very great favourite with concert audiences throughout his career, but
which had a special resonance for her, recalling as it did the very early days
of their happy marriage before the Great War.
To many, Count McCormack remains one of the greatest figures not only of
Irish but of world music. The folk
museum in his native Athlone is not the only collection where recordings of his
truly powerful yet lyric tenor voice are still treasured.
85
Joe McGrath
1887-1966
The founder of the Irish Hospitals
Sweepstakes was one of the most remarkable Irish businessmen of his generation,
a man who never said no to a challenge.
Joseph
McGrath was born in Dublin, and showed his talent by joining a firm of
accountants, Messers Craig Gardner. He
also joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood and fought at Marrowbone Lane
during the Easter week rebellion. He was
arrested and jailed in Wormwood Scrubs and Brixton. In the general election of 1919 he was
returned on the Sinn Féin ticket for the St James division of Dublin. In early 1920 he and Robert Barton were among
the prominent members of Sinn Féin arrested by the authorities, but by August
1921 he and Barton were acting as messengers between EAMON DE VALERA [2] and
Lloyd George, after the truce between the two sides, and again to Gairloch in
September with Harry Boland. He
supported the treaty, and in January 1922 was named Minister for Labour in the
provisional government of the Irish Free State.
During the civil war he was a member of what might be called the War
Cabinet. In September his title was
changed to Minister of Labour, Industry, Commerce, and Economic Affairs. In the first election of the Irish Free State
he was elected from north-west Dublin.
In the Free State government of 1922 he was Minister of Labour from
January to August 1922, and then of Industry and Commerce from August 1922 to
April 1924, in the interim being elected deputy from North Mayo.
Early
in 1924, at the time of the army mutiny (when some conservative officers
protested at government reductions in the army), he supported the officers, and
later that year he and eight others of the national group resigned from the
Dáil, protesting at what he described in the group's paper the Nation as
'government by a clique and by officialdom of the old regime'. He resigned his Dáil seat in October 1924,
and left politics.
One
of the first great enterprises of the Free State government was the Shannon
Hydroelectric Scheme at Arnacrusha. In
1925, McGrath became labour adviser to Siemens-Schuckert, the German electrical
firm contracted to build the giant installation.
This
was only part of his business interests.
In 1930 he and two others, Richard Duggan and Spencer Freeman, launched
the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes, after the Free State government had legalized
charity sweepstakes. The Irish hospital
system was in danger of collapsing through lack of funds. The first race on which they ran a sweep was
the November Handicap of 1930. They sold
an unbelievable £658,000 of tickets, about £22 million in today's funds. The hospitals got £132,000, or one-fourth of
the total expenditure of all the hospitals in the Irish Free State. The promoters got £46,000. And so it went, earning McGrath and his
friends millions.
Though
illegal in many places, including the United States and Britain, the tickets
were still sold. In the United States,
Joe McGrath was able to use the old IRA to outlet the tickets. His contacts left Clann na Gael and went into
business, their 'physical skills' as revolutionaries deterring the Mafia from
moving in on the act.
Though
it was suspended during the war, the sweepstakes resumed in 1947 and went on
till recently, when the need for it was no longer apparent. Its overall value to the Irish economy was
astonishing. Tony Farmar notes: 'For the
Sweep as a whole, the net income to Ireland in 1932, after deducting the
overseas prizes, was £3.5 million - more than the government's receipts from
income tax'.
Its
huge success, with tickets being sold worldwide, made Joe McGrath and his
family exceptionally wealthy. This
provided him with the capital to enter into other areas of business, such as
the long established Dublin Glass Bottle Company. In 1950 he became involved with efforts in
Waterford to revive the glassmaking industry.
This was the real beginning of Waterford Crystal, a firm which he built
up over the next fifteen years into one of the most famous brand names in the
world, worth another fortune in exports to the Irish economy.
In
his leisure time he was an avid racing fan, and became a well-known owner and
breeder of racehorses. In time his
horses won all the classic Irish races, and Arctic Spruce won the Epson Derby
in England in 1952.
McGrath
was a member of the Irish Racing Board from 1945 until his death, its chairman
from 1956 to 1962, and president of the Bloodstock Breeding Association of
Ireland in 1953. He died at his
Cabinteely home, outside Dublin, in March 1966.
In
a land starved for capital, Joe McGrath was perhaps its first real capitalist,
a figure rare in Ireland at any time in the past. He touched Irish life at so many points that
it must have been hard for many to get a clear view of his achievements. But the creator of the Irish Hospitals
Sweepstakes and Waterford Crystal belongs in a special gallery of achievement.
86
Thomas Francis Meagher
1823-1867
To his contemporaries, Thomas Francis
Meagher was simply known as Meagher of the Sword. It was a tribute to his dramatic rhetoric,
but though he had lived as a soldier for much of his life, he left his country
several important inheritances, including the national flag of present-day
Ireland.
Thomas
Francis Meagher was born on 3rd August 1823 in Waterford, where his father was
a prosperous merchant. The family
fortune had been made a generation before in the Newfoundland trade, which was
an important part of the economy of the thriving seaport. His father, Thomas Meagher, had been an MP
and mayor of Waterford.
Thomas
Francis was educated at Clongowes Wood College, a select college run by the
Jesuits. From there he was sent to a
sister school, Stoneyhurst, in England, which provided elements of a university
education. At these schools Meagher was
noted for his rhetorical and literary skills, both from reading the speeches of
DANIEL O'CONNELL [20] and
debating with other students.
At
first he became involved in Daniel O'Connell's Repeal Association, having been
dismayed at the incompetence of the authorities in the face of the famine. But this was a constitutional movement which
did not appeal to his more ardent nature.
In 1845 he joined the more revolutionary Young Ireland movement, and in
1847 was one of the founders of the Irish Confederation.
In
February 1848 revolution broke out in France.
Meagher went with William Smith O'Brien to Paris to support the
revolutionaries as part of an Irish delegation to Lamartine to congratulate the
people of France on the establishment of a republic. He returned to Dublin with a French gift to
the Irish nation - a new tricolour in imitation of the French flag. It was green, white, and orange, as he
explained that it was to represent the union of the two traditions in Ireland
in peace. This became the accepted flag
of the republican movement, and is now the official flag of the Irish state.
His
highly dramatic and inflammatory speeches led to his arrest and prosecution,
but the jury disagreed. In July 1848,
the Irish Confederation established a 'War Directory', of which Meagher was a
member. He and Smith O'Brien travelled
throughout southern Ireland urging revolution among the people. But the Young Ireland uprising in July 1848,
Ireland's response to the European year of insurrection, was a comic failure
and again led to his arrest. He was
tried for high treason and in October was sentenced to hang.
His
death sentence was commuted. Instead, in
July 1849 he was deported to Van Diemen's Land (now the Australian state of
Tasmania) with Smith O'Brien and Terence Bellew MacManus. In 1852 he made a dramatic escape from the
penal colony, and when he reached New York in May he received a tremendous
welcome from his countrymen.
Meagher
then took up the law and was admitted to the New York bar in 1855. His talents soon brought him into prominence
the leaders of the Irish community. He
founded and edited the Irish News, first issued on 1st June 1856, and
was much in demand as an author and lecturer.
For Harper's Magazine he made two exploring trips through Central
America, which provided new material for his lectures.
When
the Civil War broke out, Meagher raised, in New York, a company of Zouaves, of
which he was the captain. (The Zouaves
had a distinctive uniform with baggy trousers, derived from those worn by
native troops of the French army in Algeria after 1840, which had been
suggested by Lincoln's friend, Elmer E. Ellsworth, for wear by the company of
volunteer firemen from New York City who fought in the Civil War.) They went to the front line with the 69th New
York Volunteers and took part in the first battle of Bull Run, in July
1861. Returning to New York, he
organized an Irish Brigade for the Army of the Potomac. On 3rd February 1862, he was promoted to
brigadier general and appointed its commander.
He led his brigade through the Peninsular Campaign to the Battle of
Chancellorsville, and it proved itself at the battle of Fair Oak in June 1862,
and at Richmond, Antietam, and Chancellorsville. At Fredericksburg, on 13th December 1862, the
brigade was cut to pieces and Meagher was wounded in the field. In December 1863 he resigned, complaining
that he had not been allowed to withdraw his soldiers to recover their morale.
However,
he was recommissioned in December 1863, and was given command of the military
district of Etowah, with his headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Here he saw incidents of brutality by the
Union Army against the Southern civilian population that reminded him of the
worst excesses of British rule in Ireland.
After a very short time he resigned, and was then assigned to Sherman's
army in Savannah, Georgia, from which he was discharged when the war ended.
Meagher
supported President Andrew Johnson's reconstruction policies. The president then appointed him territorial
secretary of Montana, in July 1865, and he was named acting governor in
September 1866. He had many problems in
the gold-mining camps and plains settlements.
His support of Johnson and the Catholic religion did not make him a
welcome figure to the powerful local vigilantes who actually ruled the
territory. His efforts to root them out
were a failure.
While
on a scouting trip against hostile Indians near Fort Benton, on the night of
1st July 1867, he fell from the steamer on which he was travelling and drowned
in the Missouri River. His body was
never recovered. Unfriendly critics said
he was drunk.
It
was the English novelist William Thackeray who gave Meagher his nom de
guerre, Meagher of the Sword, as a consequence of a typically fiery speech
the young man gave extolling the virtues of the sword at a meeting of the
Repeal Association in Dublin, in July 1848:
The
soldier is proof against an argument - but he is not proof against a
bullet. The man that will listen to
reason - let him be reasoned with, but it is the weaponed arm of the patriot
that alone can prevail against the battalioned despotism.
Then,
my Lord, I do not condemn the use of arms as immoral, nor do I conceive it to
be profane to say that the King of Heaven bestows His benediction upon those
who unsheath the sword in the hour of a nation's peril.
Abhor
the sword? No, my Lord, for in the
passes of the Tyrol, it cut to pieces the banner of the Bavarian.
Abhor
the sword? No, my Lord, for at its blow a
great nation started from the waters of the Atlantic, and the crippled colony
sprang into the attitude of a proud republic - prosperous, limitless, and
invincible.
Daniel
O'Connell prevented him from saying more, so Meagher and the Young Irelanders
turned their backs to him. This appeal
to the sword, to physical force, thrilled his audience and countless later
admirers. Meagher stands squarely in the
centre of the Irish revolutionary tradition to this day, but as O'Connell
realized, and as Meagher himself came to see in Tennessee and Montana, the
sword may do in wartime, but the affairs of any community cannot be ruled by it
on all occasions. To prosper, the
republic he was so proud to serve needed peace.
As a rhetorician Meagher was outstanding, but as the old Irish saying
has it, 'Fine words butter no parsnips'.
87
Richard Martin
1754-1834
Known to his Georgian contemporaries as
Humanity Dick, Richard Martin was a pioneer in the ethical treatment of
animals. Butt he had other claims to fame
as well.
He
was the eldest son of Robert Martin, one of a family settled in Galway since
the thirteenth century, and his first wife, Bridget Barnewell, a daughter of
Lord Trimelston. He was born in Dublin
in February 1754, but he is associated with the rugged shore of the west of
Ireland.
He
was the first of his family who was brought up a Protestant from childhood, for
many Catholics became at least outwardly Protestant in order to hold on to
their lands in the eighteenth century.
After attending Harrow School, he abandoned his studies at Cambridge to
enter Parliament in 1776. He was called
to the Irish bar in 1778. Although he
joined the Connaught circuit, he was merely attempting to gain the
qualification needed to act as a magistrate.
He acted in one case only, a famous action between two brothers named
Fitzgeralds, which caused a social stir at the time. He was High Sheriff of Galway in 1782, and
continued his public life as colonel in both the Irish Volunteers, and the
local Galway Yeomanry, as befitted his social position.
His
home was at the castle of Ballinahinch on an estate that covered two hundred
thousand acres, all he could see for thirty miles, deep in the wilds of
Connemara. He was called the King of
Connemara, but in the days of rapacious landlords he had a good reputation
among the tenants. This huge estate made
him one of the largest landlords in the west, and it was he who built much of
the present family house standing in a magnificent location overlooking the
Owenmore River. It is featured in
William Thackeray's travel book An Irish Sketch Book and in MARIA EDGEWORTH'S [91] letters. Martin was thought to have been the model for
Godfrey O'Malley, the uncle of the hero in Charles Lever's novel Charles
O'Malley, and the novel The Martin's of Cro Martin, also by Charles
Lever, is based on this family history.
Martin
married twice. By his first wife he had
two sons and a daughter. His second wife
was the mother of three daughters and a son.
He
was a member of the Irish Parliament, representing several seats until it was
abolished by the Act of Union, a measure he supported. In 1801 he was re-elected from Galway, and he
remained a member of Parliament until 1826, when his election by eighty-four
votes was challenged and he was unseated.
He
was a friend of the Prince Regent, but fell out with him for a time when the
prince became George IV, as Martin supported the rejected Queen Caroline. Martin supported Catholic emancipation
(granted in 1829), but, anxious for his seat, he made it known that he would
not vote to suppress the Catholic Association, the power base of DANIEL
O'CONNELL
[20], and the Catholic
church. But it was not his role in Irish
politics that made him famous, rather his love of animals and his readiness as a
duellist. His fights with 'Fighting'
Fitzgerald and Eustace Stowell were relayed in his own words in Sir Jonah
Barrington's Personal Sketches of His Times.
He
worked to abolish the death penalty for forgery, and introduced a bill to allow
those charged with serious offences the benefit of legal counsel. He twice refused a peerage.
In
spite of opposition from the political establishment, he managed to get through
Parliament an act 'to prevent the cruel and improper treatment of cattle'. This was the first act in the world to
prevent cruelty to animals and was the beginning of a long campaign in
Victorian and modern times against cruel practices on the farm, in racing, and
nowadays in scientific research. He was one
of those who founded the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals, in 1824.
After
losing a seat he retired to Boulogne in the north of France, a haunt of British
and Irish debtors, where he died on 6th January 1834, at the age of
seventy-nine.
His
heir, Thomas Martin, died from a fever he contracted while visiting his tenants
in Clifden Workhouse during the famine year of 1847. His daughter, Mary Letitia Martin, was the
author of a novel, Julia Howard, about the west of Ireland, but she was
ruined by the famine, during which she had worked to relieve the suffering and
died ten days after she and her husband reached New York in 1850.
The
huge estate had been mortgaged to an insurance company, which foreclosed on it
and sold it off for very little in the Encumbered Estates Court. In 1926 it was bought by the famous cricketer
Prince Ranjit Sinjhi, the Jam Sahib of Nawanagar, and today it is a country
house hotel of great elegance, where the memory of Richard Martin is honoured.
These
days it is fashionable to deride 'Victorian values', but it is often forgotten
that those values are the source of much of the legislation that exists
regarding the proper treatment of animals, factory workers, the mentally ill,
and so on. In this respect the modern
world has little claim on the same moral authority. Today, Richard Martin's name and his love of
animals and of his Connemara wilderness is honoured all over the world by the
innumerable groups and societies devoted to animal welfare, as well as important
issues of ecology. An enlightened
landlord and a progressive legislator in his own day, Martin remains a moral
example through his campaigns for the kinder treatment of animals.
88
Michael MacLiammoir
(Micheál mac Liammóir)
1899-1978
Though all his life Michael MacLiammoir
claimed to have been born in Cork on 25th October 1899, this was a self-made
legend. The date was true, the place was
not. The actor and writer was in fact
born in east London, and of English parents.
He was the son of Alfred Wilmore and his wife, formerly Mary Elizabeth
Lawler Lee. Called Alfred Wilmore after
his father, he deliberately chose to create for himself an Irish identity in
his twenties as Micheál mac Liammóir.
Mac Liammóir, 'son of great William', unknown as an Irish name, is a
simple transliteration of Wilmore.
During his career, he signed his works with the Irish form of his name,
though all his friends called him Michael.
Since his death the accented Gaelic version has become common amongst
those writing about him, but not in the form he finally preferred, which is
used here.
Though
little Alfred made his stage debut in London in 1911, at the age of eleven,
playing a goldfish, it was to Ireland and its theatre that he dedicated his
life, changing his name in the process and becoming, among other things, an
accomplished writer and dramatist in Gaelic.
That
first appearance was at the Little Theatre in London. Parts in West End plays followed between 1911
and 1915, and he rose to become one of the best known child actors on the English
stage, as famous as the young Noel Coward.
He even worked with the legendary Beerbohm Tree.
For
the years 1915-16 he left the stage to enrol in the Slade School of Art, a
device perhaps to cross that boundary from being a child actor into an adult
one. It was there he met an Irish girl,
Máire O'Keefe, with whom he developed a platonic relationship which was to
prove crucial. After playing Lord
Cornwallis at the Haymarket Theatre in February 1917, he moved to Ireland,
largely to avoid conscription in London during the Great War, where it had not
been introduced for political reasons.
There he worked on designs for the Irish Theatre and the Dublin Drama
League, up to 1921.
This
was the true beginning of Micheál mac Liammóir.
More conscious now of his homosexual nature, he remade himself
completely, casting off the London suburbs and adopting all things Irish, even
the Gaelic language. His sister was now
married to Anew McMaster, whose famous Shakespearian touring company was such a
feature of Irish theatrical life in the years before the war.
For
some years until 1927 he travelled in Europe, mainly painting, though this
period of his life remains obscure. He
then returned to Ireland, then in its first years of independence, and joined
Anew McMaster's company, in which he met his life-long companion, the English
actor Hilton Edwards.
With
Hilton Edwards he opened a Gaelic theatre in Galway in 1928, which still
thrives. (He was also appointed a
director of the Dublin Gaelic language theatre at the Peacock three years
later.) Later that year the pair moved
back to Dublin where they opened the Gate Theatre. The distinction of the Gate was its intention
to bring to Irish audiences the best of modern and Continental theatre, at a
time when the great Abbey Theatre, after the brusque rejection of O'Casey's
play, The Silver Tassie, was retreating into folksy quaintness, living
off its past reputation.
Though
greeted warmly by critics, all was not well at first. By the end of 1930 they were £700 in debt and
had to be bailed out by Lord Longford.
The greatest success of the Gate in these early years was the production
of Denis Johnston's drama The Old Lady Says 'No' which the Abbey Theatre
had also rejected (the 'old lady' in question being Lady Gregory). Mac Liammóir, who played Robert Emmet, took
the play to London in 1935, where the Gate also played Hamlet. During his years at the Gate he was involved
in over 300 productions. The survival of
the theatre, whose home was in the elegant building of the eighteenth century
Dublin Rotunda, was largely due to the financial aid of Lord Longford, whose
wealth underwrote the scheme until the 1960s.
London was not the only foreign tour.
The Gate Company went to Egypt in 1936-38, and toured the Balkan states
in 1939.
It
was in the Gate, as a teenager lying about his age, that the youthful genius of
Orson Welles was discovered. James Mason
was another discovery of man Liammóir's.
After
the war mac Liammóir appeared in his own play Ill Met by Moonlight in London,
and the following year he made his debut on the New York stage, as Larry Doyle
in Shaw's John Bull's Other Island.
He played Iago in Orson Welles' film version of Othello in
1949. Many other distinguished plays
followed, as well as many books including All for Hecuba, which was
about theatre life in Ireland, and Each Actor on his Ass, about the
making of Welles' film of Othello.
Aside
from modern plays and classics, the Gate also mounted lighter works, such as
Christmas entertainments. Adaptations
were also produced: The Heart's a Wonder, a musical based on The
Playboy of the Western World, and The Informer, from Liam
O'Flaherty's novel, in which he played the unfortunate Gypo Nolan.
However,
it was his one-man show created in 1960, The Importance of Being Oscar,
devoted to the career and wit of Oscar Wilde, that made him a famous figure
worldwide. Rarely have an actor and his
material been so well matched, and his evocation of Wilde was magical. Directed by Hilton Edwards, this
entertainment was not only taken to London (twice), and the USA, but also to
South America and the Antipodes. During
the tour of The Importance of Being Oscar, mac Liammóir was almost
blind. As a stage prop he is said to
have had a carpet specially woven on which the strong pattern provided him with
his cues to his stage movements, preventing him from walking off the stage and
into the orchestra pit. Wherever he went
with the production he magic carpet went with him.
This
major success was followed by two other one-man shows, both of great charm but
without the startling impact of the first one, I Must be Talking to My
Friends and Talking About Yeats.
Though
mac Liammóir appeared in many films, cinema was not his métier. He also wrote towards the end of his life a
book about Yeats, on which he was assisted largely by the young poet Eavan
Boland; though full of interesting asides, it demonstrated that biography too
was not his métier. Two memoirs
followed, An Oscar of No Importance and Enter a Goldfish. These being on Wilde and himself proved far
more successful. His art being largely
confined to stage sets has unfortunately dropped out of sight. His book illustrations have a fey, fin de
siècle air about them.
Though
it has been claimed (on not fully convincing evidence) that he had a sexual
relationship with the ultra-catholic Irish fascist General Eoin O'Duffy, leader
of the Blueshirts in the 1930s, his one lasting relationship was with Hilton
Edwards. For many years the pair of
them, 'The Boys' as they were known to their friends, both of whom enjoyed
travel and the ballet, made their home in a Regency house in Harcourt Terrace,
now graced by a plaque.
Micheál
mac Liammóir died on 6th March 1978, by which time both he and his partner and
the theatre they had founded had become national institutions. At a time when Ireland was supposedly
wallowing in the extremist forms of Catholic reaction, he and Hilton lived
opened as a homosexual couple. This was
not the least of the courageous things that they did, though for those with an
experience of his profession, the long haul of maintaining a theatre as a
functioning asset against all odds, was even more courageous.
The
talents of actors, especially when these are largely confined to the stage, are
particularly hard for future generations to grasp. But with all his multifarious talents, so
lavishly used, at a professional and social level Michael MacLiammoir (under
whatever name one wishes) was a man of exceptional influence.
89
F. Scott Fitzgerald
1896-1940
The name of Scott Fitzgerald is forever
associated with the Jazz Age, but this has perhaps done him a disservice. He represents a particular kind of
Irish-American experience, one in total contrast to that of James T. Farrell
and John O'Hara. He reminds us, if we
needed reminding, of the huge variation in the experiences of Irish
Americans. Some of them had not only
lace curtains on the windows, they had polished silver on the sideboard.
After
his death, his daughter Scottie investigated the complicated family background
of her father and the families with whom he was connected. Fitzgerald had cherished the thought that he
had rich Southern relatives, but far more important were his Irish ones. His grandfather, Philip McQuillan, had been
born in Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, though little is known of his paternal
grandfather, Michael Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald, however, married a Cecilia Scott, who had Southern
connections to Francis Scott Key, the author of the American national anthem.
Francis
Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St Paul, Minnesota, on 24th September
1896. He was baptized a Catholic and
reared in a Catholic household - formative experiences (as we know from JAMES
JOYCE [25] and other writers) involving guilt and rebellion, which can
never be forgotten, even when the religious basis of one's childhood is
rejected in later life. His early years
were spent in St Paul, but then the family moved to Buffalo, New York.
The
last two years of his pre-school education were passed in the Newman School in Hackensack,
New Jersey. In the fall of 1913 he
entered Princeton University, but with the advent of the First World War he
left college without a degree, having obtained an army commission as a second
lieutenant. But during the war, which
for Americans only began in 1917, he saw no military action.
In
March 1920 his first novel, This Side of Paradise, was published, and
the following month, on 3rd April, he married Zelda Sayre in the rectory of St
Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. Such
a private ceremony, in the parochial house rather than in the church, was the
usual thing for a Catholic marrying a Protestant, but this seems to have been
his last formal contact with the Catholic church of his youth and ancestors. However, he never really escaped from the
moral atmosphere of his early years and its strict rules. His later life never seemed quite to live up
to the standards he set himself, and it was this tension that forms much of his
writing.
It
was as a short-story writer, especially of a popular literary yet commercial
story, that made Fitzgerald's name. In
the days of the prosperous magazines, a living could be made from writing from
them. His first novel captured something
of the hectic college life he had left behind, but always hankered after. This was followed by The Beautiful and the
Damned in 1922, but it was The Great Gatsby, published in 1925,
which established him as a major literary figure, and it is generally agreed to
be not only his masterpiece, but a novel of special significance to the
American experience.
After
this, Fitzgerald began to suffer literary and personal difficulties. He and his wife moved to Paris, met Ernest
Hemingway, James Joyce and other writers of the period. He and Zelda lived in the south of France and
began a life of travelling. Then in the
spring of 1930, Zelda's mental health collapsed, and she was placed in a
sanatorium. 'I left my capacity for
hoping on the little roads that led to Zelda's sanitarium,' Fitzgerald recorded
in one of his notebooks. Nothing in his
later life assuaged his loss.
His
next book, Tender is the Night, did not appear until 1934, and from then
on his career disintegrated. The critics
were, on the whole, kind to the book, which sold moderately well, but it was no
great seller, and it left the author with unpaid debts and a feeling that there
was some fault in the novel which could still be put right.
His
next novel The Last Tycoon was left unfinished at his death and had to
be arranged for publication by his friend, the critic Edmund Wilson. This book, which had cost him so much
turmoil, was moving in a new direction.
However, Fitzgerald was unable to follow it - his talent was dying.
He
went out to that graveyard of talents, Hollywood, in 1937 to work on moves for
money. Here he met Sheilah Graham, a
young journalist whom he spent a measure of time introducing to the
intellectual history he himself had so enjoyed.
But little else seemed to go right.
His difficulties and debts mounted.
In his notebook he says: 'Then I was drunk for many years, and then I
died.' And so he did, on 21st December
1940. His was a career of promise which
was never quite realized, but his works have influenced our ideas about the
1920s, and America as a whole, in an important way.
90
Mother Mary Aikenhead
1787-1858
No account of the great and influential
Irish would be complete if it did not include an Irish nun somewhere on its
list. There are many misconceptions
about the life of a nun, but as the life of Mary Aikenhead, the founder in 1815
of the now world-wide order of the Irish Sisters of Charity, amply
demonstrates, a religious life did not prevent a woman from having a full
career or exercising immense influence on the world beyond the convent walls.
Mary
Aikenhead was born in Cork on 19th January 1787. She was the daughter of a Church of Ireland
physician, David Aikenhead, and his wife Mary Stackpole, who was a
Catholic. Mary was initially brought up
in the Anglican tradition, but her father became a Catholic shortly before his
death, and she, too, was received into the Catholic Church on 2nd June 1802.
She
had an early ambition to serve the poor, and looked to find some order that was
actively engaged in community charitable work.
When she became a nun, she was selected (somewhat against her will, it
is said) by Dr Daniel Murray, archbishop of Dublin, to form just such a
religious community, which they did with the permission of the Roman authorities.
Mary
Aikenhead and one of her colleagues then spent three years at the Michlegate
Bar Convent in York for the novitiate.
She took the name Sister Mary Augustine, though according to the custom
that prevailed in the British Isles, she was always known as Mrs
Aikenhead. (This custom dated back to
penal times, when communities of nuns claimed merely to be ladies living in
common.)
The
Religious Sisters of Charity, as the order was called, were inspired by the
original French sisters founded by St Vincent de Paul in Paris. Their rule was modelled on that of the
Jesuits. The first vows were taken on
1st September 1815, and Mary Aikenhead was appointed superior general. They began their work when the two nuns
returned to an orphanage on North William Street in Dublin, which was to be
their new home. They took the usual vows
of poverty, chastity, and obedience, to which was added a fourth vow - to serve
the poor.
They
cared for the orphans, established a day school, and went out into the community
to visit families in their homes. Their
numbers rose, and more institutions were added to the original. They taught in the parish school, in free
schools, and opened a Magdalen refuge for girls who were expecting babies
outside marriage.
Sixteen
years of unrelenting work took their toll, and in 1831 Mary Aikenhead's health
gave way, leaving her an invalid for the rest of her life. But her mental energy remained. This is perhaps the real significance of
religious orders for women, that they provided what was in effect a
professional role for them in areas of management and social action which would
otherwise have been closed to them in those days. Moreover, they attained what the women's
movement of today espouses: a sense of community, sisterhood, and shared
purpose far removed from the narrow confines of the domestic scene.
In
1832 Ireland was visited by cholera, during which time Mary Aikenhead directed
her sisters' heroic labours. In 1834 the
congregation received its papal approval.
It was also the year when she opened St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin,
which was the first Catholic hospital in Ireland. Removed to a new site at Elm Park, it still
exists. She pioneered the staffing and
managing of hospitals by religious women, trained in modern nursing. In time, convalescent homes, homes for the
blind, deaf, and crippled, old people's homes, mothers' clinics, hostels and
recreation centres were set up, all in addition to the original schools.
The
Irish nuns spread to England and Scotland.
In 1838 the Irish Sisters of Charity became the first nuns to go to work
in Australia, with which Ireland had many connections. (In Australia they are now called the
Daughters of Mary Aikenhead.) Later
still, they went to the United States, where they are well established in Los
Angeles, and to Zambia and Nigeria.
In
the middle of the nineteenth century, when much was made of the efforts of
Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War, said by many to be the first
modern war, the Irish Sisters of Charity also worked in the Scutari hospitals,
but with far less personalized fanfare than the British 'Lady with the Lamp'.
During
the last twenty-seven years of her life, Mary Aikenhead had to direct these
world-wide operations from her bed, for she had been crippled by an incurable
spinal condition. She died in Dublin on
22nd July 1858. Aside from her great
skills as an organizer, many had been impressed with her deep spiritual
qualities and her sense of mission as a gift from God. In 1921 the cause for her beatification was
issued in Rome. This process, always a
long affair with the Catholic Church, makes progress. Her name may yet be added to the small roster
of modern Irish saints.
In
Ireland, it used to be said that if one wanted the country to be properly run,
it should be given into the charge of a reverend mother and a Christian
Brother. At a time when management
skills in many areas of public life and social action were lacking, Mary
Aikenhead proved the truth behind the old joke.
91
Maria Edgeworth
1767-1849
Though her name may not be familiar to
all, except, perhaps, students in Ireland who have to read her novel Castle
Rackrent as part of their literature courses, Maria Edgeworth has an
important place in the history of not only Irish but European and American
literature. Sir Walter Scott admitted
that it was from her tales of Irish life, so racy of the soil, that he derived
the notion of writing his own series of romantic novels of Scottish history. His novels, in turn, inspired James Fenimore
Cooper, Alessandro Manzoni, Ivan Turgenev, and many others who attempted to
combine scenes of domestic life within a setting of national destiny. Out of the novel so many Irish schoolchildren
groan over arose a whole aspect of the Romantic Movement in literature.
This
was something of an achievement for a lady, and she was a lady, who lived much
of her life in a mansion house on her father's estate isolated in the bogs of
western Ireland. Her father, Richard
Lovell Edgeworth, was an important figure, not only in the life of his daughter
but in intellectual society in general.
He was a much married man, with a passion for invention and
education. Together with his daughter he
wrote Practical Education, a book of great importance in the development
of modern education, for they based their whole system, derived from Rousseau
to some extent, on the reasoning and conversations of children, largely his
own. Like the best of modern education
it was child-centred.
Maria's
life was not lived in the shadow of her father; indeed, if anyone hears of him
it is through his connection with her.
Maria Edgeworth was the second child and eldest daughter of Richard and
his first wife. She was born in her
grandparents' house at Black Bourton, in Oxfordshire, on New Year's Day
1767. They were the kind of family that
travelled much in England and France, but after 1793 much of their time was
spent in Ireland at Edgeworthstown. Her
letters are a rich source, not only for her own life but for the hectic times
they lived through. She had rather grand
families as neighbours, such as the family of Lord Longford and others. She also got to know the ordinary people
around town and on her father's estate.
Though
she wrote a great deal under her father's influence, her novels were her
own. Her first one, Castle Rackrent,
appeared anonymously in 1800, the year of the Act of Union. It tells the story of a tumbled and decayed
great house in rural Ireland and the decline of the family over several
generations through the eyes of Thady, a loyal family retainer, whose praise of
their lifestyle reads as an ironic commentary on the whole state of Ireland
that had just led to the uprising of 1798.
Maria Edgeworth wrote many other tales and stories, often of fashionable
life, of which The Absentee (1812) is among the most important, dealing
again with Irish affairs.
In
1802 the family went to Europe, and she refused an offer of marriage from a
Swedish count. Though she seemed
unperturbed, her stepmother thought she regretted the decision. At home again, her work was done (like Jane
Austen's) in the middle of family life crowding around her in the drawing
room. In 1813 the family was in London,
where they were much sought after, and she met Sir Walter Scott. When she read Waverly, the first of
Walter Scott's novels, which was published anonymously, she knew from the style
that it was by him. She visited his home
at Abbotsford, Scotland, in 1823, and Scott himself was at Edgeworthstown in
1825.
During
the famine years, Maria Edgeworth did all that she could for the stricken
people of her district. She died on 22nd
May 1849, and is buried in the family vault in the parish graveyard.
Her
Castle Rackrent is undoubtedly the first realistic Irish novel. It influenced the works of George Moore, JAMES JOYCE [25], and others. She invented the regional novel, and though
to some metropolitan tastes that may seem a small claim to fame, it is on her
regional novels that the literature of many countries, including western America,
rests.
92
John Barry
1745-1803
The creator of the American navy and its
traditions, John Barry, was born in Ireland at Tacumshane, County Wexford, in
1745, the year of the last Jacobite uprising against the Hanoverians. In the British Isles this was the last
military gesture of the old Catholic order, to which his family belonged. He was brought up with a strong religious
sense, which he retained to the end of his life.
Barry
went to sea as a boy, at fourteen it is said, eventually becoming a shipmaster
in the port of Philadelphia, which had many Irish connections even at that
time. He was engaged in the trade to and
from Latin America and the ports of the West Indies up until 1774.
In
1775 he sailed to British ports on the Black Prince, the largest,
finest, and fastest of the American merchant marine fleet. He was one of those involved in signing the
non-importation act, which was one of the colonies' first moves towards
breaking the link with Britain.
When
the American Revolution broke out, John Barry was one of the very first
captains to be commissioned by the Continental Congress. Seeing the trend of events at home, he
hurriedly left Liverpool on the Black Prince to return to
Philadelphia. He arrived there on 13th
October, the very day that the Continental Congress resolved to outfit two
armed cruisers, one fourteen guns, the other of ten.
Though
he was then in the full flow of his own trading prosperity, he threw in his
hand with the patriotic colonial movement and enlisted in the Continental
navy. From that day to his death, his
name stood at the head of the Navy List in which the seniority of naval
officers is recorded; he had no other commander over him and reported directly
to Congress, the president, or the government committees.
In
command of the brig Lexington (with fourteen guns), names for one of the
first battles of the Revolutionary War, he captured the British sloop Edward
off Chesapeake Bay on 7th April 1776.
This action was historical, as it was the first capture of a foreign
vessel by a commissioned American warship in which the enemy was forced to
lower its flag to the Stars and Bars. In
fact, his vessel was the first to carry the Continental flag to victory at
sea. Later the same year, Barry led a
raid of four ships on a British contingent on the Delaware River below
Philadelphia, seizing important supplies.
At
sea he captured three more ships before returning to Philadelphia to
superintend the construction of warships on the Delaware River. He was given command of a ship, but it had to
be destroyed - despite his protests - to prevent it from falling into the hands
of the enemy.
With
four small boats he rowed down to Philadelphia and with his twenty-seven men
captured a British ship which held 136 officers, men, and marines. It was an extraordinary feat of arms that
unsettled the British, and it is thought that it hastened their withdrawal from
the city. Then he came to the aid of
Gen. George Washington, helping him and his despairing army cross the Delaware
River. For a while he served in the US
army, commanding a volunteer artillery company at the Battle of Trenton on 26th
December 1776.
He
took over the naval command at Philadelphia, and from 1780 to the end of the
war commanded the frigate Alliance, engaging in several sea
battles. He carried the US envoy General
Lafayette to France, and on the return trip captured two English
men-of-war. He was badly wounded in this
engagement.
On
another cruise he captured nine prizes, that is enemy ships which would later
be sold to reward his own men. His
engagement with the British man-of-war Sybil, on 10th March 1783, was
the last sea battle of the American War of Independence. (A log of the Alliance, kept by John
Kessler, gives a vivid impression of the days at sea between 1781 and 1783.)
With
the peacetime reorganization of the navy, Barry was made senior captain,
offered his services to Washington to fight the Barbary pirates. From then until his early death he supervised
the creation and progress of the US navy.
In 1794 he was given the command of the new frigate United States,
and was named a commodore on the Navy List.
During
the sea war with revolutionary France, Barry's command covered all the US ships
in the West Indies. This war arose from
the United States' failure to fulfil the treaty obligations it had entered into
with France during the Revolution. Under
his command, the United States carried the commissioners who negotiated
the end of the war to France. On 22nd
February 1797, the last birthday he spent in government, Washington personally
conveyed to him a naval commission Number One, making him
commander-in-chief of the naval forces of the United States.
Though
a strong man for discipline, Barry was much admired by his sailors and
officers, and never had any trouble in making up a crew. He was affable and humorous, and like many of
his countrymen from Ireland he had a quick temper, but any excess violence he
at once apologized for. On his ships he
saw to it that religious duties were strictly observed (even though he was a
Catholic and his men mostly Protestants).
For
many years he had suffered from asthma, which finally killed him soon after he
retired. When John Barry died, at his
home in Philadelphia on 13th September 1803, his name still headed the serving
list of US Navy officers. He was buried
in St Mary's Catholic churchyard in Philadelphia, where his grave was almost
lost sight of, though his reputation never faded. There is now a statue of him in front of
Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
'Commander
Barry,' Joseph Dennie wrote as early as 1813, 'may justly be considered the
Father of our navy. His eminent services
during our struggle for independence, the fidelity and ability with which he
discharged the duties of the importance which he filled, give him lasting claim
upon the gratitude of this country.'
For
his countrymen he was an example of distinction in an area largely thought to
be dominated by British talents. Another
statue of him now dominates the quays along the harbour in Wexford, one of the
few memorials to sailors in Ireland. For
Irish nationalists, his courage was an example of just what the Irish race
could achieve in war. To Americans, he
left a gallant naval tradition which has lasted to this day.
93
John Ford
1895-1973
Some of John Ford's films are among the
most famous ever made. Through them he
created not only a lasting vision of America, but also an idea of Ireland which
was accepted by many Irish Americans as a reality. In truth, both were deeply personal to the
man himself.
Ford
was born Sean Aloysius Feeney to Irish immigrants at Cape Elizabeth,
Maine. His family connections were with
the west of Ireland, and he was a distant cousin of the celebrated Irish author
Liam O'Flaherty, author of The Informer.
He was educated at Portland High School, but lasted only three weeks or
so at the University of Maine. Instead,
he went to California to join his brother Francis, who was working in Hollywood
for Universal Studios. For four years he
worked as a bit player, stuntman, and special-effects man at Universal,
appearing in D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation. In 1916 he changed his name to Jack Ford, and
the following year he became a director.
He married Mary McBryde Smith in 1920 (they had one son and one
daughter), and the next year he moved on to Fox Films, where he began his
long-time association with the screenwriter Dudley Nichols.
In
later years, Ford claimed he made westerns, but they represented only a small
part of his output. He won an Oscar for
his version of The Informer in 1935, but equally important were Stagecoach,
Young Mr Lincoln, The Grapes of Wrath, My Darling Clementine, She Wore a Yellow
Ribbon, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Ford had a long struggle to get The
Informer made, because the studio bosses were not enthusiastic about a
novel of revolutionary vengeance set in Dublin during the troubles. Ford astutely changed the setting of the film
from the grim days of the Irish civil war of 1923 back a few years to the war
of independence in 1920, making the police British rather than Irish. The informer betrays his old comrade to get
money to go to America, but he is tracked down by the 'organization' and
killed.
Indeed,
it was grim stuff, but it represented a view of Ireland that was realistic and
moving. Ford had already made some
Irish-related films (The Shamrock Handicap, Mother Machree, Riley the Cop),
but his interest as a filmmaker was in creating an idea of America rather than
Irish America.
In
1952 he finished an Irish project that had been in the making since before the
war: The Quiet Man, starring John Wayne as an American boxer who has
vowed never to fight again and Maureen O'Hara as the girl he want to
marry. It enjoyed a huge success, and
was of some importance in the emergence of a national film industry in
Ireland. In later years it also brought
visitors by the hundreds of thousands to the beautiful country around Cong in
Galway where it was filmed. But in its
details it presented an idealized Ireland, free of clashes of culture or
politics (as when the Catholic villagers cheer lustily for the Protestant
bishop to ensure that the local rector can stay).
In
1965, Ford returned to Ireland and the earlier revolutionary years to make Young
Cassidy (1965), based on the rich autobiographies of the playwright Sean
O'Casey, which recounted the years of grim poverty he endured before he
achieved fame and success.
John
Ford claimed to be apolitical, and that he loved only America. He was a long-time member of the US naval
reserve, fought with the marines in the South Pacific (being wounded at
Midway), and was given the rank of rear admiral by President Nixon on retiring.
The
film critic John Baxter places John Ford very exactly: 'He was an immigrant, a
Catholic Republican; he speaks for the generations that created the modern
United States between the Civil and the Great Wars (1865-1917). Like Walt Whitman, Ford chronicled the
society of that half century, expansionist by design, mystical and religious by
conviction, hierarchical by agreement, an association of equals within a
structure of command, practical, patriotic, and devout.' In his films, Ford mythologized the armed
forces and the church as paradigms of structural integrity. 'All may speak in Ford films, but when divine
order in invoked, the faithful fall silent, to fight and die as decreed by a
general, president, or some other member of the God-anointed elite.'
All
of this comes directly from John Ford's Irish background, but these were values
which were not confined to his community, but were shared by a significant
number of other Americans, to make his vision of America, what it had been and
what it was, their vision too. He
carried with him a sense of history, both Irish and American, that informed
that vision.
At
the end of his film The Last Hurrah, based on Boston politics from which
the Kennedys emerged, Mayor Frank Skeffington, an old-time Irish ward boss at
heart, loses an election rather than compromise with the modern world. John Ford had a great respect for tradition,
the traditions of love, family, and community.
His people speak little; their actions speak for them. In true Irish fashion, the dances and fights
and feasts that are such a feature of his films, and reach their apex in The
Quiet Man, reinforce a sense of community.
His people sing, eat, and get drunk as acts of communion.
For
his own generation and later ones, John Ford created an image of America. For many Europeans, his America is the real
America, but in his Irish films, too, he has created an ideal of a land that
still captures the hearts and imaginations of many millions. It is an epic achievement to be proud of.
94
Sir Roger Casement
1864-1916
A figure of controversy in his own
lifetime, Sir Roger Casement is even more controversial today. Before his execution in 1916 the controversy
surrounded both his work as a diplomat and his activities as an Irish
republican. Now the focus is on the
nature of his sexuality, and the authenticity of his notorious Black Diaries. But the continuing influence and future
reputation of Casement will depend on a reappraisal of him as a most unusual
person - a gay Irish patriot. Already
acclaimed as a hero of the Easter Rising, in this role we are only beginning to
understand him.
Though
he was born in Sandycove, outside Dublin (on 1st September 1864), Roger
Casement was an Ulsterman, and was reared in the north, being educated at
Ballymena Academy. Going to sea, he went
to Africa with the merchant marine in 1884.
There he eventually joined the British Colonial Service in 1894.
He
was posted to far parts of Africa in the consular service. In 1904 he made an official report to the
British Parliament on the inhuman treatment of black workers in the remoter
parts of the Congo Free State (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), then
a personal domain of King Leopold of Belgium.
This report caused an international scandal, and led to the Belgian
government taking over the administration of the colony from the king.
Casement
was then posted to South America, where he conducted a similar inquiry into the
treatment of British West Indian workers of the wild rubber workings on the
upper reaches of the Putumayo River, on the border of Ecuador and Peru. Here rubber bosses ran the whole district
with no regard to proper law and order.
Though he was empowered only to look into how the West Indian blacks
were being treated, Casement was equally concerned about the treatment of the
amerindians, who were little more than the brutalized slaves of the rubber
companies. His report causes another
international outcry when it was released in 1912. For these services Casement was knighted by
the king. He retired from the colonial
service in 1912.
By
now his interests were engaged with Ireland and its affairs. He joined the Irish National Volunteers when
they were set up in 1913, and was involved in the importation of guns from
Germany in 1914. Thinking that the war
would be a short one, like the Franco-Prussian war of 1871, he travelled to
Berlin by way of Norway, to plead the case of Irish revolutionaries for
military aid.
He
toured the prisoner of war camps to persuade Irish soldiers captured by the
Germans to join a putative Irish brigade effectively in the service of the German
Empire. (Many of these would have been
poor Dubliners who may have heard of the banner Connolly had strung across the
front of Liberty Hall: 'We serve neither king nor kaiser, but Ireland.') He found few to follow him.
In
April 1916 the German government at last dispatched a cargo boat, the Aud,
to Ireland with a cargo of guns and ammunition.
Casement followed in a submarine.
He landed at night on Banna Strand, outside Tralee, and hid in an ancient
fort, where he was arrested the next morning by the local police. Meanwhile, the Aud failed to make
contact with the local republicans, whom Casement intended to alert. It was sighted by the British navy and had to
be blown up by her crew to avoid capture.
Within
hours of his arrest, Casement was sent to London for interrogation. Police had raided his flat in London and
seized his papers. Left among these,
they alleged, were a series of diaries which revealed that Casement had for
many years been an active homosexual.
Sexual relations between men was then a serious offence, but the charges
laid against him were far more serious.
Under a medieval act he was charged with the treasonable offence of
aiding and giving comfort to the king's enemies.
He
was duly convicted. A campaign for his
reprieve from a death sentence was begun and was backed by many influential
people in England, Ireland, and the United States. His supporters included Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle and GEORGE BERNARD SHAW [49]. To counter this
campaign, the British authorities called in the American ambassador and some
British notables, and showed them either pages removed from the diaries or
typed-up extracts - accounts differ as to the actual appearance of the
documents. No-one seems to have been
shown the actual diaries themselves, and this later aroused the serious
suspicion of fraud.
Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle said that as a doctor he was unsurprised by such things, and
that treason was a more serious matter in any case, but he based his view of
the affair on his opinion that Casement, whom he had known well at the time of
the Congo revelations, was now quite insane.
Others, however, were shocked, and silenced.
Casement
was hanged in Pentonville Gaol on 3rd August 1916; his body was buried within
the jail. In March 1965, the year before
the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising, his remains were brought back to
Ireland and were reinterred with state honours among other Irish patriots in
Glasnevin Cemetery.
For
most Irish people, Casement's fame rested on his role as one of the republican
patriots of 1916, but the scandal of the diaries remained. Many Irish writers, including W.B. YEATS [8] were convinced that the diaries produced in 1916 had been
forged by the British Secret Service to discredit Casement with the
Irish-American community; they simply could not countenance the possibility
that the documents might be genuine.
In
the 1920s a set of the typed copies of the diaries had been passed to a British
journalist, Peter Singleton-Gates, but he was prevented by the invocation of
secrecy laws from publishing them. At
the time, this may have been as much to save the embarrassment of the Irish
Free State government as to hide the guilt of the British authorities. However, he retained the copies. In 1959 he eventually issued them through a
Paris publisher (better known for the first edition of Lolita) under the
rather lurid title of The Black Diaries of Sir Roger Casement. Further controversy followed, which
eventually ended with the disputed documents being placed in the British Public
Record Office. Though they could be
read, they could only be given limited technical examination.
More
recently, new editions of the diaries relating to the investigation of the
Putumayo incident have been published, against causing controversy. There seems little doubt that the diaries are
genuine. What should now concern the
admirers of Casement is the totality of his public life rather than the details
of his sex life. Though he died for Ireland,
his real life had been devoted to the welfare of Africans and Indians, in an
effort to prevent them from being mercilessly exploited. On the basis of the diaries, his love for
them seems to have arisen initially from sexual admiration. There would be nothing wrong with this, but
it is the heroism of his campaign rather than the nature of his private life
that should concern the future.
In
his lifetime, Casement exerted great influence in ameliorating conditions in
wretched parts of the world - one of them the very 'heart of darkness' which
Conrad wrote of. He will remain a hero
to those who work to free the world of slavery and exploitation.
95
Ned Kelly
1854-1880
To his contemporaries, the bushranger
Edward Kelly was a criminal. To modern Australians
Ned Kelly is a national hero. Such are
the strange contrasts in the evolution of Irish feelings about Australia, and
Australian feelings about the Irish.
Ned
Kelly was born in the state of Victoria at Wallan Wallan. His father had been transported from
Tipperary in Ireland as a convict. His
mother, also from Tipperary, was a Cody, a remote cousin of America's own
Buffalo Bill. As boys, Ned and his
brothers were themselves always in trouble with the police because of charges
of horse stealing. Ned served three
years in jail for this.
In
April 1878 the police attempted to arrest his brother Daniel on a
horse-stealing charge. The whole Kelly
clan resisted, and Ned wounded one of the policemen. Mrs Kelly and some of the family were
detained, but Ned and Daniel escaped into the bush. There they were joined by two other Irish
bandits, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart.
For
the next two years, the 'Kelly Gang' haunted the states of Victoria and New
South Wales. Rewards were offered for
their capture, but to no avail. They
held up towns, robbed two banks, and murdered three policemen and a civilian
between October 1878 and June 1880. But
the police eventually caught up with them.
On
29th June 1880, they were tracked to a wooden shanty at Glenrowan, near the
town of Benalla. They were surrounded by
the police, and the little house was riddled with bullets and then set on
fire. Out of the flames and smoke
emerged the almost phantom figure of Ned Kelly, clad in a suit of armour made
from sheet iron. But this did not
protect his lower limbs. He was shot and
wounded in the leg, and was then captured when he fell over and could not
rise. He was taken to Beechworth, where
he was tried and convicted of murdering a policeman. The last of the bushrangers, he was hanged at
Melbourne Old Gaol on 11th November 1880.
And very properly too, said respectable Australia.
But
Ned Kelly, his family, and the members of the Kelly Gang were Irish; they did
not belong among respectable Australia.
When he was hanged, Ned's last words were, 'Such is life', but life for
the poor Irish in Australia was cruel and hard.
The key feature of his life was not his bank robbing or horse
stealing. It was a semi-articulate
message to the world, which has come to be called the Jerilderie Letter, his
testament in which he attempted to explain what he was about, but it was
basically an incoherent plea for social justice. At the time (and later) there were rumours
that he sought to create an outback republic, or a 'United States of Australia',
but what Ned Kelly's political ideas really were is still much discussed. Certainly an Irish hatred of all things
English, imbibed from his parents, played a large part in them.
The
life he spoke of was an almost aboriginal one, nasty, brutish, and short. Though he was branded a criminal, and still
is by some who have adopted the police's view of his activities, to others he
is something else: a bandit, or primitive rebel. He is part of the remembered history of the
people rather than the official history of the state, the history of ballads
rather than the history of police reports.
As
concerns Ned Kelly, the Australians have 'printed the legend'. He has become a part of the mythology of a
young nation, their counterpart to Robin Hood, William Tell, or Davy
Crockett. This is due in part to the
folklore of the early days, and in part to the extraordinary use to which
Kelly's legend has been put by Australia's most important modern painter, Sir
Sidney Nolan, himself of Irish extraction.
In a series of pictures, done at different times of the painter's
career, the image of Ned Kelly in a black suit of armour is posed against the
searing browns, reds, and yellows of the Outback. This is an Australia of the imagination, the
artist's Australia, where Ned Kelly has joined the immortals. He has become an essential part of the
Australian identity, the part belonging to the independent man, his own boss,
the free man.
As
the historian Eric Hobsbawn explained: 'The bandit myth is also comprehensible in
highly urbanized countries which still possess a few empty spaces of
"outback" or "west" to remind them of a sometimes imaginary
heroic past, and to provide concrete locus for nostalgia, a symbol of
ancient and lost virtue, a spiritual Indian territory for which, like
Huckleberry Finn, man can imagine himself "lighting out" when the
constraints of civilization become too much for him.'
He
suggests that there is perhaps more than social documentation, or a longing for
adventure to the literary or popular images of the bandit, to which Ned Kelly
belongs: 'There is what remains when we strip away the local and social
framework of brigandage: a permanent emotion and a permanent role. There is freedom, heroism, and the dream of
justice.'
96
John Boyd Dunlop
1840-1921
It is often remarkable from what small
beginnings giant industries derive. On
the moonlit night of 28th February 1888, in a Belfast street, a small boy named
Johnny Dunlop was to be seen riding his tricycle, under the supervision of his
father. The two rear wheels of the
tricycle were the world's first pneumatic tyres and the boy was testing them
for comfort over the rough cobblestones.
The
test was so successful that the boy's father, J.B. Dunlop, duly applied later
that year for a patent. Petitioned for
on 23rd July 1888, patent no. 10607 was a provisional specification for 'a
hollow tyre or tube made of India-rubber and cloth, or other suitable material,
said tube or type to contain air under pressure or otherwise and to be attached
to the wheel or wheels in such a method as may be found most suitable'. It was dated 20th July 1888, and signed John
Boyd Dunlop. This is still, more or
less, the specification of a tyre, but it initiated a revolution in the fields
of industry and transport.
John
Boyd Dunlop was a veterinary surgeon, then living at 50 Gloucester Street,
Belfast. But he was not Irish, but
Scottish by origins. Though Ireland was
his adopted country, he donated one of those first tyres to the Royal Scottish
Museum, where it is still displayed.
He
was born at Dreghorn in Ayrshire. At
school he was a bright child, teaching maths to smaller children for small sums
from the master. He went on to Irvine
Academy. Qualifying as a vet, Dunlop
went to live in Belfast in 1867, then at the start of its rapid industrial
development. Soon he had created what he
said to be the largest animal medicine practice in the country.
It
was here he made his invention - or rather reinvention, for an earlier patent
had been taken out on the basic principle by a Scottish inventor Robert William
Thomson (1822-73) in 1846, which led to Dunlop's first patent being
refused. He began work on the idea in
October 1887, the first tests being made in February 1888. His 'sausages', as the new tyres were nicknamed,
enabled a rider named Hume to win every race which he entered at the Queen's
College sports in the summer of 1888.
'There is a demon in that machine', a bystander commented. Edlin & Sinclair, a firm in Belfast,
began to make Dunlop's 'safety tyres', the first advertisements for which
appeared in March 1889.
Next,
in partnership with Harvey Du Cros, the Pneumatic Tyre Company was founded in
Dublin in 1889, also taking over Booths Cycle Agency Ltd. It was capitalized at £24,000, and the prospectus
claimed that the new safety tyre was: 'indispensable for ladies and persons
with delicate nerves'.
But
a large part of this capital went on the Booth interest, and Dunlop was unhappy
with the way in which the business was developing. Like many inventors he was more at home in
the workshop than in the boardroom or the back office. He sold out his interest to Harvey du Cros,
the president of the Irish Cyclists Association, in 1889, and it was Du Cros
and his third son Arthur who actually developed the business as managing
directors. Dunlop went to live in Dublin
in March 1892, where he was appointed chairman of Todd Burns, a large drapery
and department store in the city centre.
He
retired from the board of Dunlop in 1895, and his last association with the
business was in 1909 when he was guest of honour at a dinner given by the cycle
and motor trade and related clubs. Later
he and his daughter boasted that they held no shares in the huge industrial concern
that carried his name. He also invented
a carburettor, which had some small vogue, but his name would be forever linked
with his tyre. He had made investments
in Australia and it was the success of these that provided most of his income
when he died, on 23rd October 1921.
The
advent of the pneumatic rubber tyre heralded a social revolution. Rubber had been known since the discovery of
America, but it was only with the introduction of vulcanisation in 1844 that it
became widely usable in industry. What
was used came largely from Brazil, where it was tapped from wild trees in the
jungle. This work was done largely by
Indians and imported workers, who were ruthlessly exploited, which led to a
scandal investigated by ROGER
CASEMENT [94], on the River Putumayo. Casement's revelations accelerated the shift
of the rubber industry from South America to the Far East which had already
begun some time earlier. In June 1876
some 70,000 seeds were brought out from Brazil to Britain where they were
reared at Kew Gardens; some 2,700 germinated, resulting in 1,919 plants being
shipped to Ceylon. In Brazil, rubber had
been harvested from wild trees, in Asia it was to be cultivated in
plantations. By 1899 only four tons of
rubber was produced in the Far East, but by 1922 these plantations were
producing 95 per cent of the world's rubber, by 1932 it was 98 per cent. An economic revolution had taken place, which
advanced the British Empire and reduced Brazil.
This
rapid expansion was largely the result of the introduction of the pneumatic
tyre. It started a rage for cycling in
the 1890s which altered life for the lower-middle and working classes. Enthusiasts included H.G. Wells, who was not
the only writer to pen 'cycling novels'.
With this freedom went a certain amount of sexual liberation; the new girl
was a girl on a bicycle.
The
motorcar fitted with pneumatic tyres was also liberated by the abolition in
1896 of the Red Flag Act, which had restricted them to 4mph behind a man with a
red flag. Motoring, for the upper-middle
classes and the rich, became the rage.
The consequences of the motorcar are something the world is still
adjusting to, with many now hoping for a return to the city trams and buses of
the 1880s!
By
the turn of the century Dunlop tyres were being made in France, Germany,
Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, and a little later in Japan. In 1902 a reorganized company, now the Dunlop
Rubber Company, removed to Coventry, then the heart of the bicycle industry and
the fledgling car industry. At first the
Dunlop company concentrated on making cycle tyres, but soon widened its
ambitions to making car tyres, sports equipment and other rubber goods. The company continued to grow and in 1908
began to make the rims and wheels too.
In 1916 the Dunlop Cotton Mills were set up, so that the firm now
controlled all the basis materials it needed.
In
1910 Dunlops acquired its first rubber plantation in Malaya. By now the rubber plants exported to the Far
East had been developed into an industry, especially in Malaya, where British
imperial interest was expanding from Singapore into controlling the Malay
native states on the mainland.
Here
in specially planted rubber estates the rubber was harvested as a regular
business - rubber (along with tin) remains an essential part of the economy of
modern Malaysia. It was the need for
rubber that brought about the Japanese invasion of Malaya in 1940, and the
rubber plantations were the object of communist terrorists and the foundations
of modern Malaysian wealth. Elsewhere
companies such as Goodyear and Firestone were involved in the political
developments of such American quasi-colonies as Liberia and Guatemala. Rubber for tyres became and still remains an
economic motivator all over the world.
Back
in Britain, meanwhile, in 1916 the great tyre factory at Fort Dunlop was
opened. Here the production of the
company would be based for a long time to come.
In 1917, the company was capitalized at £6 million, in 1919 at £7.5 million,
and in 1920, the year before Dunlop died, at £10 million. By now the motor industry in the Midlands, in
America, and elsewhere had come of age.
Dunlop's tyres were what the twentieth century ran on. Victory over the Americans in Vietnam, for
instance, was achieved by the Viet Cong using bicycles which they would ride
almost unobserved through the jungle. It
was a remarkable achievement for a company that began with the tests on little
Johnny's trike that dark evening in 1888.
97
Oscar Wilde
1854-1900
Oscar Wilde was the remarkable son of
remarkable parents. His father was Sir
William Wilde, surgeon and archaeologist, one of the most celebrated
intellectual figures in nineteenth-century Ireland. Sir William was the author of two books which
are still read about the River Boyne, and Lough Corrib, in Galway. Both of these mingle topography and
archaeology in a most readable way.
However, it was his work on the medical aspects of the Irish census of
1851, which dealt in large part with the affects of the famine on the
population of the country, for which he was knighted. In 1851 he married Jane Elgee, who already
had a reputation of her own as a patriotic poet under the pen name Speranza,
and who had contributed fiery poetry and prose to the Nation when it was
edited by GAVIN DUFFY [82].
Wilde
was a tiny little man with factual tastes, Jane was large, flamboyant and
fanciful - she claimed to be a descendant of Dante. Sir William suffered socially in the
aftermath of a civil action in which it was alleged he had raped one of his patients,
but he re-established himself before he died, in 1876.
Their
son, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, was born on 16th October 1854, at 15
Westland Roe, although a little later the family moved to a larger mansion at 1
Merrion Square. He was raised with an
appreciation of what it meant to be in the public eye. He was educated at Portora Royal School, and
at Trinity College in Dublin, where he first began to emerge as a personality
under the friendship of a celebrated don of the day, John Mahaffy, the
professor of Greek. He then went on to
Oxford, where he became friends with the art critic John Ruskin. The combination of Greek culture and
aesthetics affected his own development.
He won a first-class degree and the Newdigate Prize for his poem
'Ravenna'.
He
moved to London at the age of twenty-five, and was, from then on, basically a
Londoner. There his novel aesthetic
views added to his college reputation, and he was the subject of genial satire
by Gilbert and Sullivan in the character of the poet Bunthorne in their comic
opera Patience.
Following
this reputation, he went on a money-making lecture tour of America, where he
proved to be a big success, even with the hard-bitten gold diggers of
Montana. However, his first play, Vera,
produced in New York, was a failure.
Wilde
married an Irishwoman, Constance Lloyd, by whom he had two sons, born in 1885
and 1886. But as his story 'The Portrait
of Mr W.H.' showed, he was beginning to explore other aspects of his sexuality. About this time he met Robert Ross and was
initiated into homosexuality.
In
1891 he first met his nemesis in the form of Lord Alfred Douglas, the dandyish
son of the notorious marquis of Queensbury, who was responsible for drawing up
the rules of prizefighting. The
Picture of Dorian Gray, with its hints at sinister dark sins, was a further
step in a revolt against the morality of the day. His essays 'The Decay of Lying' and 'The Soul
of Man Under Socialism' followed. But
these paradoxical and political pieces were not a full demonstration of his
evolving genius.
In
1892 the first play of his last period, Lady Windermere's Fan, was
produced in London. He described this
one as 'one of those modern drawing-room plays with pink lampshades'. This was quickly followed by A Woman of No
Importance, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest. He was at the very height of success, with
two plays running in London, when disaster fell upon him.
By
this time he was leading a dangerous life with Lord Alfred, and involved with
male prostitutes and other shadowy figures in the homosexual underworld of
London. Lord Alfred and his father were
feuding, and the marquis took exception to Wilde and began to hound him.
On
18th February 1895, the marquis left a card with the porter of Wilde's club addressed
'Oscar Wilde posing as somdomite.' The
porter put it in an envelope and gave it to Wilde on his next visit. Lord Alfred urged him to sue the marquis for
libel, which he did. At the trial all
the details of his private life were exposed, and he lost the case. Rather than flee the country, as was the
custom with exposed homosexuals in the polite society of Victorian London, he
lingered, and was arrested at the Cadogan Hotel and put on trial for sexual
offences. The jury disagreed at the
first trial, but at a second he was convicted and sentenced to five years with
hard labour in Reading Gaol.
Wilde's
prison experiences provided him with two important works: De Profundis,
an attack on Lord Alfred Douglas, and a little later 'The Ballad of Reading
Gaol', by far his most successful poem, perhaps because it was his most
objective.
Once
released from prison, he went abroad.
His wife Constance, who had separated from him on the advice of her
relatives to protect her two boys, gave him an allowance. But this was stopped when he took up again
with Lord Alfred. Some old friends of a
more decent kind, such as Robert Ross, remained friends, but otherwise he was
shunned as an outlaw, gaped at in cafes and pointed out in public places. He became fat, unhealthy, and finally
ill. He died on 30th November 1900, in
the Hôtel D'Alsace in the Rue des Beaux Arts in Paris. He was received into the Catholic Church
shortly before he died. He is buried in
Père Lachaise cemetery, where his grave, now surmounted by a monumental
sculpture be Jacob Epstein, is a place of literary pilgrimage.
Wilde
had been bankrupt, but Ross eventually recovered his copyrights for the benefit
of his sons. He deposited a copy of the
full version of De Profundis in the British Library, protecting it from
Lord Alfred, who had destroyed what he thought was the only copy. Wilde's son Cyril was killed in the First
World War. Vyvyan lived on and wrote a
memoir about his father, and his son, Merlin, is now the guardian of the Wilde
estate.
When
Wilde was tried, his nationality was not in question. At his trials it did not matter to the jury
if he was Irish or British. More
recently, Irish writers and academics have attempted to recapture him for
Irish, rather than English, literature.
His conversational style of story-telling has been related to the Gaelic
style that so interested his parents.
More importantly, he was, like Sheridan and Goldsmith before him, an
outsider in the society he depicted in his plays. He was alert to the comic possibilities of
the London drawing room in a way that the natives were not. Thus, the social satirist was given full
play. Finally, his gift of language is
thought to have its origins in the verbal skills native to the Irish of all
periods.
Whatever
its background, The Importance of Being Earnest is a classic of the
English-language theatre, but it is not Wilde's literary qualities that
maintain his notoriety. He is widely
seen as a gay martyr in a repressive society, which is enough to keep large numbers
of people interested in him and to keep his work alive. For the scandal-ridden son of scandal-ridden
parents, it is a strange but perhaps appropriate apotheosis.
98
T. K. Whitaker
1916-
When the full history of Ireland in the
second half of the twentieth century is written, the name of T.K. Whitaker will
be given a special place of honour. Yet
his entire life was passed as a public servant in the employment of the
government.
Thomas
Kenneth Whitaker was born in Drogheda on 8th December 1916, the son of Edward
Whitaker and his wife Jane, soon after the Easter Rising. He was educated by the Christian Brothers in
Drogheda. After school, he joined the
Irish Civil Service, then almost the only route to success for the intelligent
in Ireland. While in the civil service
he took a bachelor's of science and a master's of science as an external
student at London University.
Eventually, he rose to become secretary of the Department of Finance, in
1956. Here he was given the lead in
drawing up the plan for the economic development of Ireland, published by the
government in 1958, to which the present prosperity of Ireland can be traced
back.
Though
Ireland was an open democracy, at independence in 1922 it was not a rich
country. Though there were large brewing
and distilling interests, there was very little other industry because the
country lacked capital. Under the
governments of both WILLIAM COSGRAVE [56] and
EAMON DE VALERA [2], much emphasis was placed on agricultural and rural
development. Keeping people on the land
was a major priority, but it became clear that many people were still
emigrating or leaving the country to live in the city. To retain these young people and to provide
new jobs in the cities, especially in Dublin, which was rapidly becoming the
country's major population centre, remedies had to be found, and they could not
be obtained merely from private resources.
So in Ireland a form of benign state intervention arose in which much
capital investment came directly from the state. The blue book on economic development laid
out the criteria through which the Irish economy would be planned. It allowed for the creation of the Industrial
Development Authority, which funded the building of factories in specific
locations and encouraged foreign and Irish manufacturers to make use of
them. These were largely placed for
social reasons, but Ireland had many attractions for foreign investors, which
have become increasingly important since the computer revolution. Today there is a large, socially fluid,
well-educated, English-speaking pool of labour which has proved to be both
diligent and flexible.
In
the 1990s, Ireland came to be seen as the 'Celtic Tiger'. Indeed, its prosperity has carried it to
twenty-first place among the industrial nations, and in many ways its
development eclipses those of some Far East economies, since it is not founded
on a disguised sweatshop economy. These
astonishing triumphs in a country like Ireland, with a long-standing image of
famine, poverty, and disorder, are a political and social triumph of the first
order.
This
success is due in large measure to the foresight, good sense, and perception of
T.K. Whitaker, but it also emphasizes how lucky Ireland was to have civil
servants like him. When Ireland gained its
independence, it inherited a civil service system from the previous British
administration. Some civil servants
retired, but many stayed on; others were recruited. There were stiff exams to enter the service,
and in the decades up to the 1960s the perception was that the best jobs were
not in industry or business but in government service.
The
cream of the country's talents entered the civil service, so much so that the
number of poets, playwrights, and historians in the service was
astounding. Like all civil services, it
has its problems of delay and bungling, but it also has great reserves of
intellectual power. And it was these
that resulted in the Whitaker regime.
This
notion of disinterested public service was of immense value to the country. When other countries in Africa and Asia gained
their independence, it could be seen that without this kind of well-paid and
highly motivated civil service, corruption and tyranny soon took over. Ireland developed as a democracy thanks to
men of integrity like T.K. Whitaker.
Today,
Ireland's capital base has expanded, and investment can be made with less
government intervention. But the state
socialism of the Whitaker era served Ireland well, and the influence of his
ideas pervades the whole of Irish life to this day.
When
Whitaker retired from the civil service it did not mean more time for his
interests of fishing, golf, and music.
He became a governor of the Central Bank of Ireland from 1969 to 1976. He was also a director of the brewers Arthur
Guinness, of an Bord Gaeilge, and the Agency for Service Overseas (Ireland's
Peace Corps). Among the final
distinctions paid him was his election as chancellor of the National University
of Ireland, a post which had once been filled by de Valera.
From
1977 to 1982 Whitaker was a member of the Irish Senate. Other honours include membership in the
Council of State, chairman of the Constitution Review Board, and president of
the Royal Irish Academy. He has also
received many honorary degrees for his service to the community.
99
Rex Ingram
1893-1950
In the heyday of the cinema between the
wars, the world's largest film production company was the conglomerate
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, or MGM. At the heart
of this giant firm was the Irish-born film director Rex Ingram, who was one of
the profoundest influences over the most popular entertainment of the day. To some he was as mysteriously romantic as
the films he created.
He
was born Reginald Ingram Montgomery Hitchcock, on 18th January 1893 at 50
Grosvenor Square in Rathmines. This was
a wealthy, exclusive district of Dublin, inhabited by many wealthy
Protestants. His father, the Rev.
Francis Hitchcock, then a divinity lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, was not
one of them.
Rex
Ingram was educated at St Columba's College in Rathfarnham, but there was no
money to send him to university. On
leaving school at the age of eighteen he immigrated to the United States. He reached New York on 3rd July 1911, and
never saw Ireland again. His original
intention was to go into business, but the friend of the family who had invited
him over provided Ingram with the means to study art at Yale University from
January 1912.
A
little over a year later, in 1913, he went to work in the film industry, which
by then was a decade old. He worked for
Edison, Vitagraph, and for the Fox Company both as an actor and as a script
writer. His tall, dark-haired, handsome
figure was a striking presence in films such as The Artist's Madonna,
with Lillian Walker in 1913, and many others.
Soon he moved out to Hollywood in California, where the sunlight and
cheap land had attracted the bulk of American film makers.
The
film industry was then a young man's business, and at the age of twenty-three
Ingram directed his first film for Universal, The Great Problem. He set up his own production company, and
went on to direct Black Orchids, Reward of the Faithless, The Flower of
Doom, and Under Crimson Skies.
He joined Universal in 1916, where the full scope of his talents were
realized by June Mathis, and more films followed. During the Great War he served briefly with
the Canadian Air Force.
In
1920, then twenty-seven, he joined the Metro Company, which had been set up in
1915. Here he made The Four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse, from the international best-selling novel of 1916 by
Vicente Blasco Ibañez (1867-1928). This
both brought to the screen Rudolph Valentino and made a star of Alice
Terry. The film was a huge international
success, largely through the astonishing screen presence of Valentino, and it
made a fortune for Metro - it also meant lasting fame for Ingram. In 1924 the company became part of MGM, for
whom Ingram developed his later pictures.
Alice
Terry, who also had Irish roots, was a beautiful, charming, and witty redhead -
though always a blonde in her films - with whom Ingram at once fell in
love. They were married in November
1921, though there were to be no children.
Ingram
next made The Conquering Power, which again starred Alice Terry. His next great discovery was another Latino
star, the young Mexican Ramon Novarro, who played the two main roles in The
Prisoner of Zenda. Ingram went on to
make Trifling Women, Scaramouche, and Where the Pavement Ends
from the South Sea tales of John Russell.
He
had ambitiously hoped to direct the original Ben-Hur, which would have
provided great scope for his visual imagination, and deprived of this he spoke
about retiring, but his friends van Stroheim and Dmitri Buchowetzki insisted he
return to work, claiming that he was the world's greatest director. The friendship with the eminent von Stroheim,
a notoriously difficult man, was an important one. When von Stroheim's Greed ran into
difficulties, Ingram saved the project by cutting the initial twenty-four reels
down to eighteen.
Like
so many others, Rex Ingram began to feel constrained by the Hollywood studio
system. Alice Terry retired and they
moved to Europe, establishing (with the help of MGM) the Victorine Studios in
Nice (which still exist: it was there that Truffault filmed La Nuit
Americaine or Day for Night).
Ingram sought out locations in Europe and especially in North Africa, to
which he was especially attracted. At
one time he even thought of becoming a Muslim.
Here he made The Arab in 1924, filming in Tunisia with Ramon
Novarro, Alice Terry and Haydee Chikly, daughter of the Arab film pioneer
Albert Chikly. (In their enthusiasm for
Arab culture the Ingrams adopted a young Tunisian, Abd-el-Hader.)
In
these years he also made Mare Nostrum (1925), again based on an Ibañez
novel of 1918. This was followed by The
Magician (1926), from the novel by Somerset Maugham, and The Garden of
Allah (1927), from the Robert Hichens novel, which later gave its name to a
famous Hollywood restaurant. For The
Garden of Allah Ingram had taken his crew over to Tunisia, where he now
made friends with the local ruler.
The
film business was changed forever with the introduction of sound the following
year. The Three Passions in 1928
was his last silent film. Ingram made
one sound picture in 1931, Baroud (Les Hommes Bleus, issued in the US as
Love in Morocco), again set in North Africa, this time against a
Moroccan background, in which he also played a part.
Ingram
had started out as an artist, and in 1933 he gave up films, to return to his
first loves, painting and sculpture, to which he gave powerful and expressive
forms. He now had time to travel and to
write. He published two novels, The
Legion Advances, about North Africa, and Mars in the House of Death,
about bull-fighting in Spain and Mexico - themes which suggest the continuing
influence of Ibañez. Like many men of
great intelligence, Ingram was easily bored, and the attractions of Europe,
Africa and Islam faded. He and Alice
Terry returned to Hollywood, to live in Los Angeles.
He
was recognized by an honorary degree from his alma mater, Yale University, and
received the Legion d'Honneur from France, and the Order of Nichan Iftkar from
the Bey of Tunis.
Rex
Ingram died unexpectedly in a Hollywood hospital on 22nd July 1950 at the age
of fifty-seven. Alice Terry survived
him, only dying in 1987 at the age of eighty-seven. She was a substantial source for the admiring
and thorough biography by the Irish film historian Liam O'Leary, a man who did
much at the National Film Foundation in London, and in retirement in Dublin, to
restore to public view Ireland's contribution to the cinema. His admiration of Rex Ingram was shared by
such diverse cinematic talents as Kevin Brownlow, David Lean ('in everything he
did the camerawork is impeccable'), and Michael Powell, who had been his
apprentice in Nice ('the greatest stylist of his time'). The film historian David Thomson claims Rex
Ingram remains 'an important director with a rapturous visual style'.
In
all, Ingram made more than twenty-seven films, and was one of the most
distinguished figures in the silent cinema.
Like many of the great film makers of that era, his fame was eclipsed by
the coming of the talkies, and by later remakes of his best films. But by those who love the early cinema, and
recognize talent in all its forms he has not been forgotten. To this day The Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse is still one of the great landmarks in the development of the
modern cinema.
100
Gerry Adams
1948-
In May 1998 the people of Ireland, north
and south, voted their overwhelming support for the Good Friday Agreement. After some thirty years of political turmoil and
over two thousand deaths (the majority at the hands of terrorists), this new
settlement in Ireland opened up the prospect of peace for the rising generation
of young Irish people.
A
key figure in this agreement was Gerry Adams, an unemployed barman from
Belfast, who had been a leading figure in Sinn Féin, the party of minority
nationalist opinion in the north, widely accepted as the political wing of the
IRA.
Gerard
Adams was born in Belfast on the Falls Road on 6th October 1948, the son of
Gerard Adams and his wife Anne, formerly Hannaway. Neither Adams nor Hannaway are Gaelic names,
but rather the names of English families long settled in Ireland. He was educated at St Mary's Christian
Brothers School in Belfast. He was in
his early twenties when the troubles broke out in 1969, and he renewed his
family's involvement with republican politics.
In 1971 he married Colette McArdle, by whom he has one son.
In
that same year he was interned for suspected terrorist activities, and it was
while 'behind the wire' that his political education began as well as his rise
to power among Republican ranks. He was
released and again interned in 1973.
Later he was imprisoned, though released in 1976.
He
was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly as a Sinn Féin deputy in 1982, and
to the United Kingdom parliament as the Sinn Féin representative from West
Belfast, but refused to take his seat.
He lost this seat in 1992 to an SDLP candidate, but regained it in 1997. But, again, he did not take his seat at
Westminister.
Among
the leading Sinn Féin personalities, Gerry Adams has also made his mark as a
writer. He is the author of Falls
Memories (1982), an autobiography of his childhood experiences growing up
in that republican quarter of Belfast.
He has also written Politics of Irish Freedom and Pathway to
Peace (both in 1988). Cage Eleven
(1990) is another chapter of his autobiography.
His short stories were collected in The Street (1992). Yet another chapter of his autobiography
appeared as Before the Dawn in 1996.
Informed
observers believe he has long been close to the Army Council of the
Provisionals. Though he has never
claimed membership of the IRA, an offence in itself, he understands the
outlook, for one of his stories describes in vivid detail the shooting of a
British soldier.
Over
the long years of struggle he has moved, as MICHAEL COLLINS [3], EAMON DE VALERA [2] and others before them, from the
simplicities of physical force to the intricacies of political persuasion. His experiences have led to this changed
outlook. Though many of this political
opponents, north and south, still distrust him, he has exerted a tremendous
influence not only over political events in Ireland, but also, through his
frequent visits to the United States, over how those events are seen by the
Irish-American community and the government of the Untied States.
The
deployment of Irish-American opinion has persuaded a series of American
presidents to interest themselves in Irish affairs (against their will in some
cases). But this involvement has
revealed in some ways how far apart the Irish and the Irish-American
communities have grown. They think about
Ireland in terms of the past, and have little conception of how it has changed.
Ireland
is now a prosperous, indeed, over-prosperous country. Appeals based on historic poverty have now
little attraction to modern Irish people.
When the Good Friday Agreement came into force it left Gerry Adams with
the even greater task of leading his party in a new political situation. But this has been what Irish leaders have had
to do in the past, what de Valera had to do in 1927. He is unlikely to make much headway against
the established parties in the south unless Sinn Féin develops policies for a
new Ireland in a new millennium.
This
is a striking role for any man who values what he can do for his country, and
who thinks, as all leaders do, of the verdict of history on their lives. Gerry Adams is a man of immense influence
whose greatest opportunity may be before him, but only if he can evolve along
with the changing conditions. In the
summer of 1998, after an appalling bomb outrage in Omagh by a republican
splinter group, Adams finally announced that the war was 'over, done with, finished'. The promise of peace would have to be
maintained with all the influence of his moral authority.
His
future, like that of Northern Ireland, remains uncertain. Both will be followed with deep concern by
Irish people everywhere, many of whom will hope that Gerry Adams will be able
to find his way to a broader horizon, as have so many Irish patriots in the
past. The world will watch with interest
as Sinn Féin begins to play a serious part in the government of Northern
Ireland through the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Whether the men with guns have become a thing of the past in Ireland
remains to be seen.
THE IRISH 100 (polychrome version)