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Death of Esther Johnson, Close Friend of Jonathan Swift

Esther Johnson, an Englishwoman known as “Stella” and known to be a close friend of Jonathan Swift, dies on January 28, 1728. Whether or not she and Swift are secretly married, and if so, why the marriage is never made public, is a subject of debate.

Johnson is born in Richmond, Surrey, England, on March 13, 1681, and spends her early years at Moor Park, Farnham, home of Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet. Here, when she is about eight, she meets Swift, who is Temple’s secretary. He takes a friendly interest in her from the beginning and apparently supervises her education.

Johnson’s parentage has been the subject of much speculation. The weight of evidence is that her mother acts as companion to Temple’s widowed sister, Martha, Lady Giffard, and that Johnson, her mother and her sister Anne are regarded as part of the family. Her father is said to have been a merchant who died young. Gossip that she is Temple’s illegitimate daughter seems to rest on nothing more solid than the friendly interest he shows in her. There are similar rumours about his supposed relationship with Swift.

When Swift sees Johnson again in 1696, he considers that she has grown into the “most beautiful, graceful and agreeable young woman in London.” Temple, at his death in 1699, leaves her some property in Ireland, and it is at Swift’s suggestion that she move to Ireland in 1702 to protect her interests, but her long residence there is probably due to a desire to be close to Swift. She generally lives in Swift’s house, though always with female companions like Rebecca Dingley, a cousin of Temple whom she has known since childhood. She becomes extremely popular in Dublin and an intellectual circle grows up around her, although it was said that she finds the company of other women tedious and only enjoys the conversation of men.

In 1704, their mutual friend, the Reverend William Tisdall, tells Swift that he wishes to marry Johnson, much to Swift’s private disgust, although his letter to Tisdall, which outlines his objections to the marriage, is courteous enough, making the practical point that Tisdall is not in a position to support a wife financially. Little is known about this episode, other than Swift’s letter to Tisdall. It is unclear if Tisdall actually proposes to her. If he does, he seems to have been met with a firm rejection, and he marries Eleanor Morgan two years later. He and Swift, after a long estrangement, become friends once more after Johnson’s death.

Johnson’s friendship with Swift becomes fraught after 1707 when he meets Esther Vanhomrigh, daughter of the Dutch-born Lord Mayor of Dublin, Bartholomew Van Homrigh. Swift becomes deeply attached to her and invents for her the name “Vanessa.” She in turn becomes infatuated with him and after his return to Ireland follows him there. The uneasy relationship between the three of them continues until 1723 when Vanessa, who is by now seriously ill from tuberculosis, apparently asks Swift not to see Johnson again. This leads to a violent quarrel between them, and Vanessa, before her death in June 1723, destroys the will she had made in Swift’s favour, leaving her property to two men, George Berkeley and Robert Marshall, who though eminent in their respective callings are almost strangers to her.

Whether Swift and Johnson are married has always been a subject of intense debate. The marriage ceremony is allegedly performed in 1716 by St. George Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, with no witnesses present, and it is said that the parties agree to keep it secret and live apart. Johnson always describes herself as a “spinster” and Swift always refers to himself as unmarried. Rebecca Dingley, who lives with Johnson throughout her years in Ireland, says that Johnson and Swift were never alone together. Those who know the couple best are divided on whether a marriage ever took place. Some, like Mrs. Dingley and Swift’s housekeeper Mrs. Brent laugh at the idea as “absurd.” On the other hand, Thomas Sheridan, one of Swift’s oldest friends, believes that the story of the marriage is true. He reportedly gives Johnson herself as his source. Historians have been unable to reach a definite conclusion on the truth of the matter. Bishop Ashe dies before the story first becomes public, and there are no other witnesses to the supposed marriage.

A collection of Johnson’s witticisms is published by Swift under the titles of “Bon Mots de Stella” as an appendix to some editions of Gulliver’s Travels. A Journal to Stella, a collection of 65 letters from Swift to Johnson, is published posthumously.

In 1722, Martha, Lady Giffard, dies and leaves money to Johnson and Swift’s sister, Mrs. Fenton, who had been her companion in 1711.

Johnson’s health begins to fail in her mid-forties. In 1726, she is thought to be dying and Swift rushes back from London to be with her but finds her better. The following year it becomes clear that she is gravely ill. After sinking slowly for months, she dies on January 28, 1728, and is buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. Swift is inconsolable at her death and writes The Death of Mrs. Johnson in tribute to her. When Swift dies in October 1745, he is buried beside her at his own request. A ward in St. Patrick’s University Hospital is named “Stella” in her memory.

In the 1994 film Words Upon the Window Pane, based on the play by William Butler Yeats, Johnson is played by Bríd Brennan. The plot turns on a séance in Dublin in the 1920s, where the ghosts of Swift, Johnson and Vanessa appear to resume their ancient quarrel.

In the 1982 Soviet film The House That Swift Built, Johnson is played by Aleksandra Zakharova.


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Birth of Mervyn Archdale, High Sheriff & Member of Parliament

Mervyn Edward Archdale DL, Irish soldier, High Sheriff and Member of Parliament (MP) known as Mervyn Edward Archdall until 1875, is born in Dublin on January 27, 1812.

Archdale is the eldest son of Edward Archdall of Riversdale, County Fermanagh, who serves as Sheriff of Fermanagh in 1813, and his wife Matilda, daughter of William Humphrys of Ballyhaise, County Cavan. He is educated at private schools in England at the expense of his uncle, General Mervyn Archdall, MP for Fermanagh (1801–34), and Brasenose College, Oxford, where he matriculates in 1830 but does not graduate.

Archdale joins the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons, becoming a cornet in 1832, a lieutenant in 1835 and a captain in 1841. He retires on half pay in 1847.

In June 1834, Archdale is elected the Member of Parliament for Fermanagh following the retirement of his uncle Mervyn Archdall. He is returned unopposed in the succeeding nine elections. From 1836, he is a noted member of the Orange Order and becomes treasurer of the Grand Lodge of Ireland. He votes in 1856 to disendow Maynooth College. When in 1868 he is asked to support a plea for the reprieve of Michael Barrett, a local Fenian under sentence of death in London, he refuses. He does not stand at the election of January 1874.

On the death of another uncle, Lt. Col. William Archdall, on January 1, 1857, Archdale inherits the family estates of Castle Archdale and Trillick in County Tyrone. He is appointed High Sheriff of Fermanagh in 1879.

Archdale has an interest in and also keeps racehorses. Other pursuits in which he is prominent are coursing and boating. He is a Freemason and member of five clubs.

Archdale marries Emma Inez, the daughter of Jacob Goulding of Kew, Surrey, with whom he has two sons, Mervyn Henry and Hugh James, and three daughters.

Archdale dies on December 22, 1895, at Cannes in the south of France. His estates pass to his brother, William Humphrys Archdale, who also takes over the representation of Fermanagh in Parliament.


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Birth of Thomas Charles Wright, Founder of the Ecuadorian Navy

Thomas Charles Wright, founding father of the Ecuadorian Navy and a general in Simón Bolívar‘s army, is born in Queensborough, Drogheda, County Louth, on January 26, 1799. He is regarded as a leading militarist in Ecuador‘s and other South American countries’ struggle for independence.

Wright is born to Joseph Wright and Mary Montgomery. At the age of eleven, he is sent to the Royal Naval College at Portsmouth, regarded at the time as the finest in the world, where he is educated to become an officer.

At the age of fourteen, following his junior officer training, Wright embarks on a sea voyage on board HMS Newcastle under the captaincy of Lord George Stuart. On this vessel he sails to the east coast of the United States where he is engaged in blockading activities in the squadron of Admiral John Borlase Warren. In 1817 he returns to England, having attained the junior officer’s rank of midshipman.

Although Wright passes the lieutenant‘s examination, promotional opportunities are diminishing in the Royal Navy, and he is not given a commission like many young junior officers in Britain. Collectively, he and others decide to enlist in Simón Bolívar’s revolutionary army and sail for South America in support of the uprisings against Spanish colonial rule. In November 1817, he enlists as an officer in the British Legions of Simón Bolívar, under the patronage of Luis Lopez Mendez, Bolivar’s agent in London. Originally setting off from the River Thames in November 1817, several snags delay the departure until January 2, 1818. They depart from Fowey harbor and sail on a brigantine named Dowson, under naval commander Captain Dormer, with 200 other volunteers armed with valuable weapons and ammunition. They land in the Saint Thomas Island after several weeks. Admiral Luis Brión arrives with his squadron on the Island of St Thomas and Pigott and the Rifle Corps are shipped on Patriot vessels to Margarita Island off the coast of Venezuela, arriving on April 21, 1818.

They are sent to Guayana and then to Angostura, beginning the campaign in the Apure. At Angostura (present-day Ciudad Bolívar), Wright first meets Simón Bolívar, for whom he develops a deep admiration. Bolívar opens the liberating campaign in Apure. During 1818–1819, one of the earliest battles with Wright partaking as an officer is at Trapiche de Gamarra on March 27, 1819. These encounters inspire Bolívar to begin his New Granada campaign and the march 1,500 miles over the Andes Mountains. Wright accompanies Bolívar on the legendary crossing on which 25% of the British/Irish troops die.

Wright takes part in the entire land campaign to liberate the northern countries of South America, and fights in numerous land battles with Bolívar’s army. He plays leading roles in the Battle of Vargas Swamp, and later in the victory at the Battle of Boyacá in August 1819, after which he is promoted to captain. In 1820, he returns with his Rifles regiment to the coastal plains to campaign in the jungles east of the Magdalena against the Spanish based on Santa Marta. The Rifles Corp are then transported by sea to Maracaibo, and on June 21, 1821, take part in Simon Bolívar’s decisive victory in the Battle of Carabobo. Cartagena is also seized, and the Rifles are brought in boats up the Magdalena River en route to Popayán. They form part of the forces led by Bolívar in the second of his famed Andean campaigns. After the successful battle at Bomboná on 7 April 7, 1822, Wright is twice mentioned in Bolívar’s order of the day for his exceptional skill and courage. Again, he is promoted and from February 1822 he is an acting lieutenant colonel.

In early 1824, Bolívar realizes that, despite the Patriot Army success on land, unless the South American revolutionary armies can control the seas off their coasts, they will forever be under sea blockade from imperial Spain. He appoints Wright to the newly fledged United Pacific Naval Squadron.

After Guayaquil seizes independence, John Illingworth Hunt is appointed as Commanding General of the Maritime Department. Immediately he takes care of organizing everything concerning the Navy. Thus, in 1823, the first Ecuadorian naval force is formed.

Wright, who in February 1824 is promoted to captain, becomes Commodore of the South Squadron, and embarks on the brig Chimborazo, and conducts patrols along the Peruvian coast with seven transports properly equipped and ready to assist in the transfer of troops, when Bolívar’s army would require it. Following Bolivar’s defeat of the royalist forces at the Battle of Junín on August 6, 1824, Wright is instructed to proceed to Callao with a squadron of five ships and is placed under the orders of Admiral Martin Guisse, head of the United Squadron. The Gran Colombian units, forming this squadron, participate in some naval actions against the royalists and also in the blockade of Callao, the last Spanish stronghold in South America.

Bolívar installs Wright as a Commodore of the Pacific Southern Squadron. He is appointed to command a small fleet of ships in support of Admiral Martin Guisse and joins the Patriotic naval force blockading off Callao. Along with Admiral Guisse and a handful of other former Royal Navy officers, they spearhead the blockade of Callao that successfully fights the Spanish naval squadron sent to lift the blockade of the besieged city. The blockade holds and Callao capitulates in early 1826, ending Spanish rule in South America.

The revolutionary independence struggles end with the unfolding liberation of South America countries, and Wright settles in Ecuador where he helps establish the Ecuadorian Navy and helps create the Ecuadorian naval school that is named in his honor.

The downfall and expulsion of the Spanish colonial power leads to land disputes and new wars among the South American home nations that once were united against Spain. In 1827, Peruvian President José de la Mar invades Bolivia and then invades Ecuador. Wright takes up the cause of defending his new adopted homeland. His navy fights two battles with the Peruvians in the Gulf of Guayaquil.

In 1829, Wright returns to the army as a Colonel and is appointed General Antonio José de Sucre‘s aide-de-camp at the Battle of Tarqui.

Ecuador declares itself a republic in 1830, though the region is completely unsettled with Peru and Colombia both claiming parts of Ecuador as part of their territory. At this time Wright goes back in the Navy with his own flag officer’s pendant. He is also appointed to the army with the rank of General of Brigade in 1830. Two unconstitutional presidents, Vincente Rocafuerte and Valdivieso, declare themselves in office. Wright and Flores lead Rocafuerte’s army into a decisive battle that takes place at Minarica in 1835. This action is decisive, and they defeat General Barriga, who is Valdivieso’s appointed General. The victory guarantees the stability and future of Ecuador, with Rocafuerte becoming Ecuador’s president.

In 1835, Wright is Comandante del Apostadero, later changed to Comandancia General de la Marina (Commander-in-Chief of the Navy) for many years. He does not found the Ecuadorian Naval School, as often incorrectly cited. The college is named in his honor. He is the commanding officer of the Ecuadorian Naval Squadron before Ecuador becomes a Republic, as such he is considered a founding father of the Ecuadorian Navy. In this year he is also promoted to Army General of Division.

In 1843, Wright becomes the Governor of Guayaquil. This is the premier military position in the city.

In 1845, a military coup plot overthrows the liberal government supported by Wright and he goes into exile for fifteen years in Chile and Peru. In Chorrillos, Peru, he befriends the Ecuadorian exile Eloy Alfaro and exerts a massive influence on him as a mentor. Alfaro later becomes President of Ecuador from 1897 to 1913. Wright returns from exile in 1860 and opposes Gabriel García Moreno until his death in 1868.


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Birth of Joseph O’Sullivan, Irish Republican Army Volunteer

Joseph O’Sullivan, Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer, is born in London on January 25, 1897. Along with fellow IRA (London Battalion) volunteer Reginald Dunne, shoot dead Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson outside Wilson’s home at 36 Eaton Place, Belgravia, London on June 22, 1922. Convicted by a jury, he is sentenced to death by Justice Montague Shearman. Despite a petition of 45,000 signatures, and a plea for clemency from many prominent figures at the time, including playwright George Bernard Shaw, O’Sullivan and Dunne are hanged for the murder on August 10, 1922, at Wandsworth Prison. The event provides the inspiration for the 1947 film Odd Man Out.

O’Sullivan’s father, John, is originally from Bantry, County Cork, and moves to London as a young man where he eventually becomes a successful tailor. His mother, Mary Ann O’Sullivan (née Murphy), is born in Inniscarra, County Cork. He is the youngest of thirteen children, all born in London, although only eleven survive to adulthood. As a boy he attends St. Edmund’s College, Ware. On January 25, 1915, his eighteenth birthday, he enlists into the Royal Munster Fusiliers, and later transfers to the London Regiment and serves with the rank of lance corporal during World War I, losing a leg at Ypres in 1917.

Upon being discharged from the army in 1918, O’Sullivan is employed by the Ministry of Munitions and, when the war ends, is transferred to the Ministry of Labour where he works as a messenger. The Ministry of Labour is located in Montagu House, adjacent to Scotland Yard, and later demolished and replaced by the present-day Ministry of Defence.

O’Sullivan becomes a member of the IRA detachment in London and is named by Rex Taylor as being responsible for the execution of Vincent Fovargue as a British spy at the Ashford Golf Links, Middlesex, on April 2, 1921. Fovargue is left with a label pinned to his body stating, “Let spies and traitors beware, IRA.” Fovargue had been an officer in the Dublin brigade of the IRA.

O’Sullivan’s brother, Patrick, is the first Vice-Commandant of the London IRA during its early days in 1919 but is seconded to the Cork No. 1 Brigade during the Irish War of Independence. Patrick also serves in the London Regiment during World War I, along with another brother, Aloysius, who is discharged from the army in 1916 suffering from shell shock. Patrick is also wounded in a gas attack during World War I. He fights with the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War and is wounded ten days after his brother is executed. Shortly before that, he crosses over to England to participate in an abortive attempt to rescue Dunne and his brother.

In 1923, John O’Sullivan tries to have the remains of his son and Dunne released for a funeral Mass. But it is not until after the abolition of capital punishment in the United Kingdom that Patrick O’Sullivan, with the assistance of the Irish Republican National Graves Association, is able to arrange for the bodies of O’Sullivan and Dunne to be sent to Ireland for burial. In mid-August 1929, Irish Republicans in London unveil a plaque commemorating Dunne and O’Sullivan. In 1967, after some political and diplomatic debate by the British and Irish governments, the British Government allows the bodies of Dunne and O’Sullivan to be exhumed. They are subsequently reburied in Dean’s Grange Cemetery, County Dublin.

(Pictured: Photograph of IRA member Joseph O’Sullivan taken before his 1922 execution)


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Death of St. John Greer Ervine, Playwright & Author

St. John Greer Ervine, unionist playwright, author, critic, and manager of the Abbey Theatre from 1915 to 1916, dies in a nursing home at Fitzhall, Ipling, Sussex, England, on January 24, 1971.

Ervine is born in Ballymacarrett, Belfast on December 28, 1883. He is considered to be the founding father of modern Northern Irish drama.

Although accepted to study at Trinity College, Dublin, circumstances force Ervine to leave school at the age of 15 to begin working in an insurance office.

Two years later, Ervine immigrates to London, where he discovers a love for the theatre. He begins his writing career with Mixed Marriage (1911), an Ulster tragedy, and produces three plays between 1911 and 1915. In 1915, after a meeting with William Butler Yeats in London, he becomes the director of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. It is, however, not a happy appointment as his personality and politics clash with the management of the theatre.

Ervine then joins the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and fights in Flanders, losing a leg in the conflict. Returning home, he feels increasingly alienated by nationalism and more attracted to the unionism of his family background. He becomes a vehement detractor of the south, describing Ireland in a letter to George Bernard Shaw as brimming with “bleating Celtic Twilighters, sex-starved Daughters of the Gael, gangsters and gombeen men.”

Ervine is a distinctively Ulster orientated writer, focusing on a naturalistic portrayal of rural and urban life. His most famous and popular work amongst his Northern Irish audience is Boyd’s Shop (1936), which becomes one of the Ulster Group Theatre’s stalwart productions. The play is a classic of the homely yet sincere Ulster genre and centres around the struggles of the folk that Ervine grew up with in his grandmother’s shop on the Albertbridge Road. Ervine creates in Boyd’s Shop a template for Ulster theatre that is to dominate until the advent of Samuel Thompson‘s Over the Bridge.

Ervine’s reactionary unionism and anti-southern hatred becomes more pronounced as he ages and eclipses his more subtle characteristics and abilities as a writer. Although many of his novels and plays are at times clouded by his prejudices, they are also very often capable of tremendous feeling and humanity showing he is a writer of note.

St. John Greer Ervine dies at the age of 87 at Fitzhall, Ipling, Sussex on January 24, 1971.


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Sinn Féin MPs Enter the House of Commons

On January 21, 2002, Sinn Féin‘s four MPs take the historic step of signing up to use the facilities of the House of Commons, whose authority over Northern Ireland republicans have been fighting for almost a century. Party policy is also changed to allow MPs to sit in the Irish Parliament, the Dáil.

Amid concern among some republicans that the move comes close to recognising British rule, Sinn Féin president and Belfast West MP, Gerry Adams, insists that his party will never take its seats at Westminster. “There will never ever be Sinn Féin MPs sitting in the British houses of parliament,” he tells a Westminster press conference.

David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) Northern Ireland First Minister, predicts this controversial move is a first step towards the same situation in Westminster.

However, flanked by his three fellow Sinn Féin MPs, Martin McGuinness (Mid Ulster), Pat Doherty (West Tyrone) and Michelle Gildernew (Fermanagh and South Tyrone), Adams says taking up seats in the Dáil is a very different proposition from doing so the Commons. No Sinn Féin member would take the loyalty oath to the Queen, needed to take up a seat in Parliament, but that was a mere side issue to the key question of sovereignty, he says. Even if the oath were amended, the party would still refuse to take its seats because republicans do not recognise parliament’s jurisdiction over Northern Ireland.

“There are lots of things which there can be no certainty of and there are some things of which we can be certain,” Adams says. “There will never, ever be Sinn Féin MPs sitting in the British Houses of Parliament. The transfer of power by London and Dublin to the Assembly in the north … is all proof of where we see the political centre of gravity on the island of Ireland and that is in the island of Ireland.”

Adams insists his party’s presence in the Commons is a “temporary” measure until they can join the parliament of a united Ireland.

A ban on MPs using Commons facilities without taking the loyalty oath was lifted in December 2001 to Conservative fury. Tories end three decades of cross-party cooperation over the move, which also entitles Sinn Féin’s four MPs to allowances of £107,000 a year each.

Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Quentin Davies claims Adams plans to use the cash for party political campaigning – something forbidden by Westminster rules. He accuses British Prime Minister Tony Blair of “deliberately contributing to a great propaganda coup in which … the British Government are licking their boots.” The Prime Minister’s spokesman says Blair acknowledges “many victims do feel very strongly about what has happened, but the Prime Minister’s view is that this peace process has saved many lives.”

Sitting alongside a giant Irish tricolour inside his new office, Adams likens his presence there to that of MPs who had served in the British Army and intelligence services – suggesting some of them still do. He also dismisses concerns about the misuse of the money, accusing those “complaining loudest” of being from parties “indicted for corruption and sleaze.”

Sinn Féin’s move into their new offices coincides with a “routine” meeting with the Prime Minister in Downing Street to discuss the peace process. The Sinn Féin president uses publicity surrounding the controversial move to issue a new challenge to Blair to tackle the loyalist “killing campaign.” Adams is joined in Downing Street by his three fellow Sinn Féin MPs.

“There have been 300 bombs over the last nine or ten months,” Adams says. “The British Prime Minister has to face up to the reality that the threat to the peace process within Northern Ireland comes from within loyalism.”

Adams blames Betty Boothroyd‘s decision to bar Sinn Féin MPs from using Commons facilities for the current controversy. “We are here, elected, with our mandate renewed and increased,” he adds.

Adams is asked how he would react if he met former Cabinet minister Lord Tebbit and his wife, who was badly injured by the 1984 Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb attack at the Tories conference at the Grand Brighton Hotel in Brighton, at the Commons. “I don’t ignore anyone. As someone who has been wounded and shot and someone whose house has been bombed, I understand precisely how others who have suffered more than me feel about all of this,” Adams replies. “I would like to think that as part of building a peace process that all of us agree there must be dialogue.”

(Pictured: from left, Sinn Fein MPs Michelle Gildernew, Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams and Pat Doherty)


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Birth of Richard Irvine Best, Philologist & Bibliographer

Richard Irvine Best, Irish scholar, specifically a philologist and bibliographer, who specialises in Celtic Studies, is born at 3 Bishop Street in Derry, County Londonderry, on January 17, 1872. He is often known as R. I. Best, or simply Best to his close friends and family.

Best’s parents are Henry Best and Margaret Jane Best (née Irvine). His father is an excise officer working in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, at the time of his birth.

Best’s education takes place locally at Foyle College, a grammar school in County Londonderry which dates back to 1617, schooling children ages eleven to eighteen. Following his time at Foyle College, he does not attend university, however he is a member of the Irish Literary Society in London. Instead of attending university he works as a banking assistant for a time before an inheritance allows him to travel to Paris, France.

It is in Paris that Best meets, and becomes friends with, John Millington Synge, who recommends the lectures of Marie Henri d’Arbois de Jubainville at the Collège de France. He later goes on to translate and annotate Henri d’Arbois de Jubainville’s work, Le cycle mythologique irlandais et la mythologie celtique into The Irish Mythological Cycle and Celtic Mythology.

Upon returning to Dublin from Paris, Best becomes Honorary Secretary of the School of Irish Learning from its inception in 1903. It is incorporated into the Royal Irish Academy in 1926. He acts as joint editor of the school’s journal Ériu, and continues after the transfer of the journal to the Academy. In 1904, he joins the staff of the National Library of Ireland as an assistant director. He succeeds as Chief Librarian in 1924, and subsequently Library Director, a post he holds until 1940. Throughout his career, he becomes a prolific expert on Celtic studies, and is widely attributed to the survival and success of the subject as it is known today.

Best’s work earns him several accolades. He receives the Leibniz Medal of the Royal Prussian Academy in 1914, an honorary D.Litt. by the National University of Ireland in 1920, and an Honorary D.Litt. by Trinity College Dublin in 1923. In 1936, he is awarded the Medal of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences by Pope Pius XI for his facsimile edition of the Milan codex. He is elected as President of the Royal Irish Academy in 1942. His works, Bibliography of Irish Philology and of Irish Printed Literature (1913) and Bibliography of Irish Philology and Manuscript Literature, 1913-41 (1942), are considered to be some of his most important scholarly outputs.

Best is also known for his appearances in famous works of Irish literature. He appears in James Joyce‘s Ulysses. He is drawn by John Butler Yeats, father of William Butler Yeats, and his portrait now hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland.

Upon his retirement from the National Library, Best becomes a Senior Professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS). He retires from the DIAS in 1947 at the age of seventy-five. From 1948 to 1956, he becomes chairman of the Irish Manuscripts Commission, a position previously held by Eoin MacNeill. While in this role, he supervises several facsimiles, including RIA MS 23 N 10, later renamed the Book of Ballycummin in 2019.

Following his retirement from the Irish Manuscripts Commission, Best spends much of the final three years of his life “sorting out his large correspondence,” much of which is currently held in the National Library. He also continues to publish new work throughout his later life. He works on a translation of the Book of Leinster alongside Osborn Bergin and Professor M. A. O’Brien, who takes over after Bergin’s death in 1950. The first fasciculus is published in 1954, the second in 1956 and the third in 1959. His work also appears in multiple academic journals, including Éiriu, and the Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, Revue Celtique, Études Celtiques, Hermathena, The Dublin Magazine, and The Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. He also continues with his work in palaeography, including the last paper he completes on the Book of Armagh in 1958, which appeared in Éiriu vol. xviii. His aid in the writing of others is particularly visible in his surviving correspondence with George Moore.

Best marries his wife, Edith Best (née Oldham), in 1906, he being seven years her junior. She is the older sister of Charles Hubert Oldham, who goes on to become Professor of Economics at University College Dublin. She herself is a musician, a pianist, who had studied at the Royal College of Music in London. The couple has no children, and also claims to have no affiliation with any religion. Edith passes away at their home on March 9, 1950.

Best dies on September 25, 1959, at his home on 57 Upper Leeson Street in Dublin. The Richard I. Best Papers are currently held at the National Archives of Ireland and have been instrumental in the foundation of The Richard Irvine Best Memorial lecture. This discussion and celebration of Best’s work, organised by Richard Irvine Best Memorial Lecture Trust, has taken place since 1969.


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Death of Irish Poet Ewart Milne

Ewart Milne, Irish poet, dies in Bedford, Bedfordshire, England, of a heart attack on January 14, 1987. He describes himself on various book jackets as “a sailor before the mast, ambulance driver and courier during the Spanish Civil War, a land worker and estate manager in England during and after World War II” and also “an enthusiast for lost causes – national, political, social and merely human.”

Milne is born in Dublin on May 25, 1903, to English and Welsh Irish parents and is educated at Christchurch Cathedral Grammar School. In 1920 he signs on as a seaman and works on boats, off and on, until 1935. During the 1930s he begins writing and has his first poems published in 1935.

The background to the Spanish Civil War contributes to Milne’s political awakening and he comes to England to work as a voluntary administrator for the Spanish Medical Aid Committee in London, for whom he often acts as a medical courier. He also was once unwillingly involved in an arms deal while visiting Spain on their behalf.

After Spanish Medical Aid Committee is wound up, Milne returns to Ireland but remains politically active in support of the campaign for the release of Frank Ryan, the leader of the Connolly Column of Irish volunteers on the Republican side, who had been captured and imprisoned in Spain. At one point he takes part in a delegation to Westminster seeking Labour Party support for this. In August 1938 he is reported in The Worker’s Republic as being one of the twelve-member committee of the James Connolly Irish club in London.

During his time in England and Spain, Milne gets to know the left-leaning poets who support the Republican cause, including W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. In 1938 his first collection of poems, Forty North Fifty West, is published in Dublin, followed by two others in 1940 and 1941. Having taken a pro-British line in neutral Ireland, he is informed by Karl Petersen, the German press attaché in Dublin, that he is on the Nazi death list. This convinces him to help in the British war effort and he returns to England with the help of John Betjeman, then working at the British embassy in Ireland.

Between 1942–1962 Milne is resident in England and an active presence on the English literary scene. In particular he becomes associated with the poets grouped around the magazine Nine, edited by Peter Russell and Ian Fletcher. He and his wife Thelma also back the young Irish poet Patrick Galvin when he launches his own magazine, Chanticleer. This generous encouragement of younger writers is later extended to several others, including John F. Deane, Gerald Dawe and Maurice Scully.

Milne regards his return to Dublin in 1962 as a disaster, as his four-year stay is overshadowed by quarrels with the establishment, the discovery of betrayal by a friend and the death of his wife from lung cancer. The misery of those events is recorded in Time Stopped (1967). The artistic frustration of the time also results in the poems included in Cantata Under Orion (1976). Returning to England in 1966, he settles in Bedford. Politically he remains involved and speaks alongside Auberon Waugh at the rally on behalf of Biafra in 1968, but his views move further to the right in later years. He writes to The Irish Times on April 13, 1976, saying that he has been “taken in by Stalin and that Leninism is Satanism.” He also sides with the Loyalist position in the Ulster conflict. He dies in Bedford of a heart attack on January 14, 1987.

Milne is twice married, first to Kathleen Ida Bradner in 1927, by whom he has two sons; then in 1948 to Thelma Dobson, by whom he has two more sons.

(Pictured: A portrait of Ewart Milne by Cecil F. Salkkeld, as it appears in Milne’s book Forty North Fifty West)


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Death of Arthur Armstrong, Northern Irish Painter

Arthur Armstrong, painter who often works in a Cubist style and produces landscape and still life works, dies in Dublin on January 13, 1996.

Armstrong is born on January 12, 1924, at Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, one of three sons among six children of James Charlton Armstrong, housepainter and decorator, and his wife Margaret (née Howard). Soon after his birth the family moves to Belfast. He attends Strandtown Primary School. He attends Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) in the early 1940s, where he initially studies political science and later architecture. Having an interest in art, which had been fostered by his father, he takes classes for a short time in the early 1940s at the Belfast School of Art. It is there he meets Gerard Dillon, who introduces him to George Campbell and Daniel O’Neill. He is largely self-taught as an artist. It is his close association with Dillon and Campbell, both some years his senior, that proves to be the most important factor in his development. In Belfast in the early 1940s they associate with the Russian artist Daniel Nietzche, who emphasises to them the importance of personal expression.

After leaving university Armstrong works at the Belfast Gas Office. At this point he is the main support for his widowed mother. Having saved some money, he leaves his job in 1946 to attempt to fulfil his ambition to paint full-time, producing a set of etchings with George Campbell, which are published by Walsh Studios. The following year he takes work as a designer for Ulster Laces in Portadown, County Armagh. In 1957, he leaves for London in the hopes of finding greater opportunities as an artist. His friends Campbell and Dillon are already living there, and he takes lodgings with Dillon’s sister at Abbey Road, north London. Though he continues to paint, he is unable to earn a living and so again has to take other work, this time in a Labour Exchange office. However, he is beginning to gain recognition. In 1957, he is awarded a traveling scholarship by the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), which enables him to travel to Spain. He continues to visit Spain throughout the 1960s, often to see Campbell, who spends much time there.

In 1961 he has his first solo exhibition at the CEMA gallery in Belfast. He comes to live in Dublin in 1962, his work having already been exhibited there at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1957 and 1958. He continues to exhibit there annually from 1961 to 1965. During the 1960s and early 1970s his work is regularly included in the Oireachtas exhibition, at which he is awarded the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal in 1968. He also shows his work with the Ritchie Hendriks Gallery and the Tom Caldwell Gallery in Dublin. Ultimately, he is to have over seventy solo exhibitions throughout his career. By 1969, when he is elected an associate member of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), he has established himself as one of the leading landscape painters in Ireland. In 1972 he becomes a full member of the RHA. He exhibits there regularly until 1977.

It is during this period that some of Armstrong’s best work is produced. While landscape is his predominant theme, he never sees himself as a painter of particular views, rather he responds to the abstract qualities of a scene. He sees elements such as the sea, rocks or sky as a series of interlocking textures to be rendered expressively in oil paint. The western coastline of Ireland is a vital source of inspiration for him. Roundstone, County Galway, is a favoured base for painting trips in the company of Dillon and Campbell, who by this time are also living in Dublin.

In 1981, a retrospective exhibition of Armstrong’s work is organised by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. He is represented in many major public and corporate collections in Ireland. From 1971 he lives at 28 Chelmsford Avenue, Ranelagh, Dublin, in a house he shares with Gerard Dillon.

Armstrong dies unmarried on January 13, 1996, in Dublin. The contents of his studio are sold on February 3, 1998.

(From: “Armstrong, Arthur” by Rebecca Minch, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009, revised November 2013 | Pictured: “Near Ballyhubbock,” oil on board by Arthur Armstrong RHA)


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Birth of Captain Otway Cuffe

Captain Otway Cuffe, benefactor, Gaelic revivalist, twice mayor of Kilkenny and a founder of businesses and organisations to profit the local people, is born in London on January 11, 1853.

Cuffe is born the Honourable Otway Frederick Seymour Cuffe to John Cuffe, 3rd Earl of Desart, and Lady Elizabeth Lucy Campbell. He has an older sister and two older brothers. After the death of his eldest brother William Ulick, 4th Earl of Desart, his seecond eldest brother, Hamilton, becomes the 5th Earl of Desart. As the 5th Earl has no male heirs himself, Cuffe is nominally his heir. However, as he also dies without heirs, the line becomes extinct upon the death of the 5th Earl.

Cuffe marries Elizabeth St. Aubyn on July 22, 1891. She is the daughter of John St. Aubyn, 1st Baron St. Levan of St. Michael’s Mount, Cornwall, England, and Lady Elizabeth Clementina Townshend. When he becomes the heir to the Kilkenny-based title he moves to Ireland and lives nearby the main house, in Sheestown Lodge, Kilkenny, County Kilkenny. He has been in the British Army, serving as aide-de-camp to Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, in 1880–81. He is Groom of the Privy Chamber to Queen Victoria from 1893 until her death in 1901 and Gentleman Usher to both King Edward VII from 1901 until his death in 1910 and King George V until 1911. His rank in the army is Captain in the Rifle Brigade.

Dedicated to ensuring a strong Irish identity in the area, Cuffe works with his sister-in-law, Ellen Cuffe, Countess of Desart. He joins Conradh na Gaeilge soon after his arrival in Kilkenny. He is elected president of its Kilkenny branch in 1904 and remains so until his death. He is replaced by Lady Desart. Together they open the theatre in Kilkenny in 1902 and he is the first President of the Kilkenny Drama Club. He also performs on stage.

Cuffe is first elected Mayor of Kilkenny in 1907 and again in 1908. With Lady Desart, he builds the Kilkenny Woollen Mills, Desart Hall, the Talbot’s Inch model village and the Kilkenny Woodworkers factory. He lays the foundation stone for Kilkenny’s Carnegie library. He is also President of the Irish Industrial Association.

Cuffe is a friend of William Morris whom he had met on a trip to Iceland. He believes in the Arts and Crafts movement and tries to implement it in the projects which he drives. He is also a friend and supporter of Standish James O’Grady and helps him found the weekly radical conservative paper The All-Ireland Review and runs it between 1900 and 1906.

In 1911, Cuffe becomes ill and is forced to move to warmer climates until he recovers. He decides to go to the south of Europe but then a visit to Australia seems appropriate. However, on the journey there he contracts pneumonia and dies at Fremantle in Western Australia on January 3, 1912. He is buried at Perth, carried to his grave by Kilkenny hurlers. The Kilkenny Moderator calls his death “a thunderbolt to the people of Kilkenny.” He is remembered as a visionary who made a permanent impact on the physical landscape of Kilkenny.