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Death of Annie Horniman, Theatre Patron & Manager

Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman CH, English theatre patron and manager, dies on August 6, 1937, while visiting friends in Shere, Surrey, England. She establishes the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and founds the first regional repertory theatre company in Britain at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester. She encourages the work of new writers and playwrights, including W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and members of what become known as the Manchester School of dramatists.

Horniman is born at Surrey Mount, Forest Hill, London, on October 3, 1860, the elder child of Frederick John Horniman and his first wife Rebekah (née Emslie). Her father is a tea merchant and the founder of the Horniman Museum. Her grandfather is John Horniman who founds the family tea business of Horniman and Company. She and her younger brother Emslie are educated privately at their home. Her father is opposed to the theatre, which he considers sinful, but their German governess takes her and Emslie secretly to a performance of The Merchant of Venice at The Crystal Palace when she is fourteen years old.

Horniman’s father allows her to enter the Slade School of Fine Art in 1882. Here she discovers that her talent in art is limited but she develops other interests, particularly in the theatre and opera. She takes great pleasure in Richard Wagner‘s Der Ring des Nibelungen and in Henrik Ibsen‘s plays. She cycles in London and twice over the Alps, smokes in public and explores alternative religions. The “lonely rich girl” has become “an independent-minded woman.” In 1890 she joins the occult society, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where she remains a member until disagreements with its leaders lead to her resignation in 1903. During this time she meets and becomes a friend of W. B. Yeats, acting as his amanuensis for some years. Their friendship endures. Frank O’Connor recalls that on the day Yeats hears of her death, he spends the entire evening speaking of his memories of her.

Horniman’s first venture into the theatre is in 1894 and is made possible by a legacy from her grandfather. She anonymously supports her friend Florence Farr in a season of new plays at the Royal Avenue Theatre, London. This includes a new play by Yeats, The Land of Heart’s Desire, and the première of George Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man. In 1903 Yeats persuades her to go to Dublin to back productions by the Irish National Theatre Society. Here she discovers her skill as a theatre administrator. She purchases a property and develops it into the Abbey Theatre, which opens in December 1904. Although she moves back to live in England, she continues to support the theatre financially until 1910. Meanwhile, in Manchester she purchases and renovates the Gaiety Theatre in 1908 and develops it into the first regional repertory theatre in Britain.

At the Gaiety, Horniman appoints Ben Iden Payne as the director and employs actors on 40-week contracts, alternating their work between large and small parts. The plays produced include classics such as Euripides and Shakespeare, and she introduces works by contemporary playwrights such as Ibsen and Shaw. She also encourages local writers who form what becomes known as the Manchester School of dramatists, the leading members of which are Harold Brighouse, Stanley Houghton and Allan Monkhouse. The Gaiety company undertakes tours of the United States and Canada in 1912 and 1913. Horniman becomes a well-known public figure in Manchester, lecturing on subjects which include women’s suffrage and her views about the theatre. In 1910 she is awarded the honorary degree of MA by the University of Manchester. During World War I the Gaiety continues to stage plays but financial difficulties lead to the disbandment of the permanent company in 1917, following which productions in the theatre are by visiting companies. In 1921 she sells the theatre to a cinema company.

As a result of her tea connection, Horniman is known as “Hornibags.” She holds court at the Midland Hotel, wearing exotic clothing and openly smoking cigarettes, which is considered scandalous at the time. She introduces Manchester to what is called at the time “the play of ideas.” The theatre critic James Agate notes that her high-minded theatrical ventures have “an air of gloomy strenuousness” about them.

Horniman moves to London where she keeps a flat in Portman Square. In 1933 she is made a Companion of Honour. She and Algernon Blackwood might be the only past or present members of an occult society to receive a United Kingdom honour.

Horniman dies, unmarried, on August 6, 1937, while visiting friends in Shere, Surrey. Her estate amounts to a little over £50,000. The Annie Horniman Papers are held in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library at the University of Manchester. Her portrait, painted by John Butler Yeats in 1904, hangs in the public area of the Abbey Theatre.


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The Battle of Castiglione

arthur-dillonArthur Dillon‘s regiment of the Irish Brigade of France fights at the Battle of Castiglione on September 8, 1706. The battle takes place near Castiglione delle Stiviere in Lombardy, Italy during the War of the Spanish Succession. The French army of 12,000 attacks a Hessian corps of 10,000 that is besieging the town, forcing them to retreat with heavy losses.

By the end of 1705, France and its allies control most of Northern Italy, as well as the Savoyard territories of Villefranche and the County of Savoy, now in modern-day France. The main French objective for 1706 is to capture the Savoyard capital of Turin. To prevent Imperial forces in Lombardy intervening, Louis Joseph, Duke of Vendôme, attacks at Calcinato on April 19 and drives them into the Trentino valley. On May 12, Marshall La Feuillade and an army of 48,000 men reach Turin, completing their blockade of the city on 19 June 19. The Imperial commander Prince Eugene of Savoy returns from Vienna and takes the remaining troops into the Province of Verona to await the German contingents. By early July, there are 30,000 Imperial soldiers around Verona facing 40,000 French spread between the Mincio and Adige rivers.

The French position looks very strong but defeat at Ramillies in May means Vendôme and any available troops are sent to Northern France. The siege of Turin continues and although the Hessians have not yet arrived, by mid-July Prince Eugene can no longer delay marching to its relief. Count of Médavy and 23,000 men are left to guard the Alpine passes.

The Hessians finally cross the Alps in July, under the command of Frederick of Hesse-Kassel. As they arrive too late to join Prince Eugene’s march to Turin, the Hessians are tasked with preventing Médavy disrupting his supply routes. On August 19, Frederick sends 2,000 men under Major-General Wetzel to Goito, a small town with a bridge across the Mincio and the French garrison evacuates the town. Castiglione is strongly defended and they have to wait for the heavy artillery to arrive from Arco. Frederick leaves 1,500 men outside the town with the rest positioned near Medole, allowing him to monitor Médavy’s main force at Cremona and the crossing at Goito.

The withdrawal from Goito is part of a plan by Médavy to assemble a field army without alerting Frederick by removing garrisons from key strongpoints like Cremona. He puts together a force of 8,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry, crosses the Oglio river at Marcaria and attacks on September 8. Dividing his corps leaves Frederick outnumbered. The first assaults are repulsed but a cavalry charge led by the Irish exile Arthur Dillon catches the Hessian left wing as they are changing position and the line collapses. Médavy then turns his attention to those outside Castiglione, many of whom surrender. French casualties are estimated as 1,000 killed or wounded, the Hessians losing around 1,500 killed or wounded plus 2,500 captured.

The remainder fall back on Valeggio sul Mincio. In a letter of September 11 to John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, Frederick claims his forces were reduced by sickness but although they initially drove the French back, lack of artillery forced him to retreat.

Médavy’s victory leaves the strategic position unaltered. The Battle of Turin on September 7 had broken the siege and after Ramillies France can no longer spare the resources to continue fighting in Italy. Castiglione slightly improves their bargaining position but French garrisons in Lombardy are isolated and cannot be reinforced, their surrender being only a matter of time.

To the fury of the English and Dutch, in March 1707 Emperor Joseph signs the Convention of Milan withdrawing all French troops from Northern Italy in return for free passage back to France.

(Pictured: Arthur Dillon, Colonel of Dillon’s Regiment in the Irish Brigade of France)


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Birth of Joss Lynam, Civil Engineer & Mountaineer

Joss Lynam, Irish civil engineer who is well known as a mountaineer, hillwalker, orienteer, writer and sports administrator, is born James Perry O’Flaherty Lynam in London on June 29, 1924. He is one of Ireland’s most influential figures in outdoor activities.

Lynam is born to Irish parents Edward and Martha (née Perry), both Galway natives. He and his older sister, Biddy, are both raised in London where his father works as curator of maps in the British Museum. This is where he is first introduced to orienteering and cartography. The family frequently returns to the west coast of Ireland to holiday. Here he finds his love for mountaineering and climbs his first mountain, Knocknarea in County Sligo, with his aunt.

At 18, Lynam joins the British Army and trains as an officer. He is deployed to India in 1944 under the Corps of Royal Engineers where he spends the remainder of World War II. While there, he participates in his first of many Himalayan expeditions, climbing Kolahoi Peak. When he returns in 1947, he immediately moves to Dublin and enrolls in Trinity College Dublin, after encouragement from his parents, where he begins to study engineering. He graduates and receives his degree with Upper Second Class (2.1) Honours.

Lynam is a civil engineer by profession but devotes most of his life developing the sport of mountaineering in Ireland. He climbs extensively in Ireland, Great Britain, the Alps and in India. He is leader, or deputy leader, of expeditions to Greenland, the Andes, Kashmir, Tian Shan, Garhwal, Tibet and India, including the 1987 expedition to Changtse, that is the forerunner to the successful first Irish ascent of Mount Everest in 1993.

With his involvement in developing adventure sport in Ireland Lynam is active in promoting access and developing waymarked trails. He is involved in the creation and administration of the Federation of Mountaineering Clubs in Ireland (now Mountaineering Ireland), the Association for Adventure Sports, Bord Oiliúint Sléibhte (Irish Mountain Training Board), Tiglin (National Outdoor Training Centre), Outdoor Education Ireland, and Cospóir (now Sport Ireland) and the National Waymarked Ways Advisory Committee (part of Sport Ireland).

Lynam is a founder member of the Irish Mountaineering Club (IMC) serving as president from 1982-1984. He is also a founder member of both the Irish Orienteers and Three Rock Orienteering club. He is president of the Union Internationale des Associations d’Alpinisme‘s expeditions commission in the 1990s.

Lynam writes and edits many guide books on walking and climbing in Ireland and helps create and is editor of The Mountain Log (the journal of Mountaineering Ireland).

In 2001, Lynam is awarded an honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin in acknowledgment of his volunteer work and remarkable achievements. He celebrates his 80th birthday by climbing the Paradise Lost Route and then goes on to abseil down Winder’s Slab for his 82nd birthday, both routes in Dalkey Quarry. Both climbs are to raise funds for cancer research, as he had been undergoing chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s Disease.

As a result of a short illness, which is being treated at St. Vincent’s University Hospital Dublin, Lynam dies on the January 9, 2011, aged 86. His funeral is held in the Church of St. Therésè, Mount Merrion, Dublin and then continues to Mount Jerome Cemetery and Crematorium.

After Lynam’s death, his two daughters, Clodagh and Ruth, donate his papers to his alma mater, Trinity College Dublin. These papers cover a vast range of topics such as his life and career, family, childhood, experience of war, his involvement with different mountaineering clubs, and his many writings. The collection also contains photos and slides that he captures himself of landscapes and mountaineering, and consists of maps that are collected by him and his father. There is so much material in the collection that it takes a year for the collection to be catalogued by an archivist.

Lynam’s ashes are scattered by his daughters over the Knocknarea Mountain on the February 12, 2011, being the first mountain he climbed. The Lynam Lecture is introduced in 2011 by Mountaineering Ireland in his memory and his achievements in climbing, hillwalking and mountaineering in Ireland and around the world. Every December the Lynam Lecture is held by leading national and international mountaineers and discusses the development and future of mountaineering in Ireland. Past speakers include Ines Papert, Frank Nugent and Paddy O’Leary.


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Birth of Sophie Bryant, Mathematician, Educator & Feminist

sophie-bryant

Sophie Willock Bryant, Anglo-Irish mathematician, educator, feminist and activist, is born Sophie Willock in Dublin on February 15, 1850.

Bryant’s father is Rev. Dr. William Willock DD, Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Dublin. She is educated at home, largely by her father. As a teenager she moves to London when her father is appointed Professor of Geometry at the University of London in 1863, and she attends Bedford College. At the age of nineteen she marries Dr. William Hicks Bryant, a surgeon ten years her senior, who dies of cirrhosis within a year.

In 1875 Bryant becomes a teacher and is invited by Frances Mary Buss to join the staff of North London Collegiate School. In 1895 she succeeds Buss as headmistress of North London Collegiate, serving until 1918.

When the University of London opens its degree courses to women in 1878, Bryant becomes one of the first women to obtain First Class Honours, in Mental and Moral Sciences, together with a degree in mathematics in 1881, and three years later is awarded the degree of Doctor of Science. In 1882 she is the third woman to be elected to the London Mathematical Society and is the first active female member, publishing her first paper with the Society in 1884. Together with Charles Smith, Bryant edits three volumes of Euclid‘s Elements, for the use of schools (Euclid’s Elements of Geometry, books I and II (1897); Euclid’s Elements of Geometry, books III and IV (1899); Euclid’s Elements of Geometry, books VI and IX (1901)).

Bryant is a pioneer in education for women. She is the first woman to receive a Doctor of Science in England, one of the first three women to be appointed to a Royal Commission, the Bryce commission on Secondary Education in 1894–1895, and one of the first three women to be appointed to the Senate of the University of London. When Trinity College Dublin opens its degrees to women, she is one of the first to be awarded an honorary doctorate. She is also instrumental in setting up the Cambridge Training College for Women, now Hughes Hall, Cambridge. She is also said to be one of the first women to own a bicycle.

Bryant is interested in Irish politics, writes books on Irish history and ancient Irish law (Celtic Ireland (1889), The Genius of the Gael (1913)), and is an ardent Protestant Irish nationalist. She is president of the Irish National Literary Society in 1914. She supports women’s suffrage but advocates postponement until women were better educated.

Bryant loves physical activity and the outdoors. She rows, cycles, swims, and twice climbs the Matterhorn. She dies at the age of 72 in a hiking accident in the Alps near Chamonix, France on August 14, 1922.


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Death of Saint Columbanus

saint-columbanusColumbanus, Irish missionary notable for founding a number of monasteries on the European continent from around 590 in the Frankish and Lombard kingdoms, dies on November 21, 615. He is one of the earliest identifiable Hiberno-Latin writers.

Columbanus is born in 543 in the Kingdom of Meath, now part of Leinster. Well-born, handsome and educated, he is torn between a desire for God and easy access to the pleasures of the world. Acting on advice of a holy anchoress, he decides to withdraw from the world. His family opposes the choice, his mother going so far as to block the door. He leaves home and studies Scripture extensively under Sinell, Abbot of Cluaninis in Lough Erne. He then moves to Bangor Abbey on the coast of Down, where Saint Comgall is serving as the abbot. He stays at Bangor until his fortieth year, when he receives Comgall’s permission to travel to the continent.

In middle age, Columbanus feels a call to missionary life. With twelve companions (Saint Attala, Columbanus the Younger, Cummain, Deicolus, Eogain, Eunan, Saint Gall, Gurgano, Libran, Lua, Sigisbert and Waldoleno) he travels to Scotland, England, and then to France in 585. The area, though nominally Christian, has fallen far from the faith, but are ready for missionaries, and they have some success. They are warmly greeted at the court of King Gontram of Burgundy, and the king invites the band to stay. They choose the half-ruined Roman fortress of Annegray in the Vosges Mountains for their new home with Columbanus as their abbot.

The simple lives and obvious holiness of the group draws disciples to join them and the sick to be healed by their prayers. Columbanus, to find solitude for prayer, often lives for long periods in a cave seven miles from the monastery, using a messenger to stay in touch with his brothers. When the number of new monks over-crowds the old fortress, King Gontram gives them the Gallo-Roman castle called Luxovium in present-day Luxeuil-les-Bains, some eight miles from Annegray, in 590. Soon after, a third house called Ad-fontanas is founded at present-day Fontaine-lès-Luxeuil. Columbanus serves as master of them all, and writes a Rule for them. It incorporates many Celtic practices, is approved by the Council of Mâcon in 627, but is superseded by the Benedictine.

Problems arise early in the 7th century. Many Frankish bishops object to a foreign missionary with so much influence, to the Celtic practices he brought, especially those related to Easter, and his independence from them. In 602 he is summoned to appear before them for judgment. Instead of appearing, he sends a letter advising them to hold more synods and to concern themselves with more important things than which rite he uses to celebrate Easter. The dispute over Easter continues for years, with Columbanus appealing to multiple popes for help. It is only settled when Columbanus abandons the Celtic calender when he moves to Italy.

In addition to his problems with the bishops, Columbanus speaks out against vice and corruption in the royal household and court, which is in the midst of a series of complex power grabs. Brunhilda of Austrasia stirs up the bishops and nobilty against the abbot. Theuderic II orders him to conform to the local ways and shut up. Columbanus refuses and is briefly imprisoned at Besançon, but he escapes and returns to Luxeuil. Theuderic II and Brunhilda send an armed force to force him and his foreign monks back to Ireland. As soon as his ship sets sail, a storm drives them back to shore. The captain takes it as a sign and sets the monks free.

They make their way to King Chlothar II at Soissons, Neustria and then the court of King Theudebert II of Austrasia in 611. Columbanus travels to Metz, France, then Mainz, Germany, where he sails up the Rhine to the lands of the Suebi and Alamanni, and finally Lake Zurich. Their evangelization work there is unsuccessful and the group passes on to Arbon, then Bregenz on Lake Constance. Saint Gall, who knows the local language best, takes the lead in this region. Many are converted to the faith and the group founds a new monastery as their home and base. However, a year later political upheaval causes Columbanus to cross the Alps into Italy, arriving in Milan in 612. The Christian royal family treats him well, and he preaches and writes against Arianism and Nestorianism. In gratitude, King Agilulf, the king of the Lombards, gives him a tract of land called Bobbio between Milan and Genoa in Italy. There he rebuilds a half-ruined church of Saint Peter, and around it he founds an abbey that is to be the source for evangelization throughout northern Italy for centuries to come.

Columbanus always enjoys being in the forests and caves, and as he walks through the woods, birds and squirrels ride on his shoulders. Toward the end of his life comes word that his old enemies are dead and his brothers want him to come back north, but he declines. Knowing that his time is almost done, he retires to his cave on the mountainside overlooking the Trebbia River. Columbanus dies of natural causes at Bobbio, Italy on November 21, 615.

Columbanus’ influence continues for centuries as those he converted hand on the faith, the brothers he taught evangelize untold numbers more, and his brother monks found over one hundred monasteries to protect learning and spread the faith.

(Pictured: Saint Columbanus stained glass window, Bobbio Abbey crypt)


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Birth of James Henry, Scholar & Poet

james-henryJames Henry, Irish classical scholar and poet, is born in Dublin on December 13, 1798.

Henry is the son of a woolen draper, Robert Henry, and his wife Kathleen Elder. He is educated by Unitarian schoolmasters and then at Trinity College, Dublin. At age 11 he falls in love with the poetry of Virgil and gets into the habit of always carrying a copy of the Aeneid in his left breast-pocket.

Henry graduates from Trinity with the gold medal for Classics. He then turns to medicine and practises as a physician in Dublin until 1845. In spite of his unconventionality and unorthodox views on religion and his own profession, he is very successful. He marries Anne Jane Patton, from Donegal, and has three daughters, only one of whom, Katherine, born in 1830, survives infancy.

His accession to a large fortune in 1845 enables him to devote himself entirely to the absorbing occupation of his life – the study of Virgil. Accompanied by his wife and daughter, he visits all those parts of Europe where he is likely to find rare editions or manuscripts of the poet. When his wife dies in Tyrol he continues his work with his daughter, who becomes quite a Virgil expert in her own right, and crosses the Alps seventeen times. After the death of his daughter in 1872 he returns to Dublin and continues his research at Trinity College, Dublin.

As a commentator on Virgil, Henry will always deserve to be remembered, notwithstanding the occasional eccentricity of his notes and remarks. The first fruits of his researches are published at Dresden in 1853 under the quaint title Notes of a Twelve Years Voyage of Discovery in the first six Books of the Eneis. These are embodied, with alterations and additions, in the Aeneidea, or Critical, Exegetical and Aesthetical Remarks on the Aeneis (1873-1892), of which only the notes on the first book are published during Henry’s lifetime. As a textual critic Henry is exceedingly conservative. His notes, written in a racy and interesting style, are especially valuable for their wealth of illustration and references to the less-known classical authors.

Henry is also the author of five collections of verse plus two long narrative poems describing his travels, and various pamphlets of a satirical nature. At its best his poetry has something of the flavour of Robert Browning and Arthur Hugh Clough while at its worst it resembles the doggerel of William McGonagall. His five volumes of verse are all published at his own expense and receive no critical attention either during or after his lifetime.

James Henry dies at Dalkey, County Dublin, on July 14, 1876.