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Tag Archives: The Nation (Irish newspaper)


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Birth of Mary Colum, Literary Critic & Author

mary-colum

Mary Colum (née Maguire), literary critic and author, is born in Collooney, County Sligo on June 14, 1884, the daughter of Charles Maguire and Catherine Gunning. She is the author of several books, including the autobiographical Life and the Dream (1947), and From These Roots: The Ideas that Have Made Modern Literature (1937), a collection of her criticism.

Maguire’s mother dies in 1895, leaving her to be reared by her grandmother, Catherine, in Ballysadare, County Sligo. She attends boarding school in St. Louis’ Convent in Monaghan, County Monaghan.

Educated at Royal University of Ireland Maguire is founder of the Twilight Literary Society which leads her to meet William Butler Yeats. She regularly attends the Abbey Theatre and is a frequent visitor amongst the salons, readings and debates there. After graduation in 1909 she teaches with Louise Gavan Duffy at St. Ita’s, a companion school to Patrick Pearse‘s St. Enda’s School. She is active with Thomas MacDonagh and others in national and cultural causes and co-founds The Irish Review (1911–14) with David Houston, MacDonagh and others. She, along with her husband, Padraic Colum, whom she marries in July 1912, edit the magazine for some months of its four-year run. She is encouraged by Yeats to specialise in French literary criticism and to translate Paul Claudel.

Colum and her husband move to New York City in 1914, living occasionally in London and Paris. In middle age she is encouraged to return to writing and becomes established as a literary generalist in American journals, including Poetry, Scribner’s Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, The Freeman, The New York Times Book Review, The Saturday Review of Literature, and the New-York Tribune.

Colum associates with James Joyce in Paris and discourages him from duping enquirers about the origins of the interior monologue in the example of Édouard Dujardin. She accepts Joyce’s very ill daughter, Lucia, for a week in their Paris flat at the height of her “hebephrenic” attack, while herself preparing for an operation in May 1932. She serves as the literary editor of The Forum magazine from 1933–1941 and commences teaching comparative literature with Padraic at Columbia University in 1941.

She rebuts Oliver St. John Gogarty‘s intemperate remarks about Joyce in The Saturday Review of Literature in 1941.

Colum’s publications become increasingly sparse in the 1950s as her arthritis and neuralgia grow more and more severe. She dies in New York City on October 22, 1957. At the time of her death, she is working on Our Friend James Joyce with her husband, each writing various chapters. It is assembled posthumously by Padraic Colum and is published by Doubleday on August 22, 1958.

Colum’s letters are held in Scribner’s Archive, Princeton University Library, while a collection of her papers is held at the State University of New York.


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Death of Poet & Revolutionary Denny Lane

Denny Lane, author, poet and member of the revolutionary Young Ireland party, dies in Cork, County Cork, on November 29, 1895.

Lane is born in Riverstown, near Glanmire in County Cork, on December 4, 1818. Although a Catholic, Lane graduates from the mainly Protestant Trinity College, Dublin, where he joins the College Historical Society, becomes a friend of Charles Gavan Duffy and Thomas Davis. He is called to the bar from Inner Temple, but soon becomes involved in the political activities surrounding Daniel O’Connell, joining the Repeal Association.

The young men become increasingly impatient with the slow pace of O’Connell’s repeal campaign and soon begin to contemplate armed insurrection. Davis, along with John Dillon and Charles Duffy, found The Nation, the newspaper of the movement in 1842. In its pages the idea of total separation from England is soon openly suggested, and Lane becomes one of the paper’s contributors. He contributes articles and later poems to the paper, his best known poems being Carrig Dhoun and Kate of Araglen which are written under the pen name “Domhnall na Glanna” or “Domhnall Gleannach.”

Finally, in 1846, the issue of physical force split the Young Irelanders from O’Connell’s Repeal Association. Lane supports the split. Davis, Lane, and small group of their friends soon become known by the name which has survived to this day: the Young Ireland Party.

Lane and his college classmate Michael Joseph Barry are the most prominent Young Irelanders in Cork, and are interned in Cork City Gaol after the Young Ireland Rebellion of 1848. Lane spends four months in prison. After his release, he returns to Cork and does not appear to have much political involvement thereafter.

Lane takes over his father’s distillery in Cork and later starts several industrial businesses near the city, with mixed success. He takes an interest in technology and industrial innovation. He is on the boards of the Macroom Railway Company and the Blackrock and Passage Railway Company, and also involved in Cork’s School of Art, School of Music, and Literary & Scientific and Historical & Archaeological societies. He stands for Parliament in the 1876 Cork City by-election, but the Home Rule vote is split with John Daly, so that unionist William Goulding is elected.

(Pictured: An 1889 bust of Denny Lane sculpted by John Lawlor)


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Birth of Thomas Davis, Founder of Young Ireland Movement

Thomas Osborne Davis, Irish writer and the chief organiser and poet laureate of the Young Ireland movement, is born in Mallow, County Cork, on October 14, 1814.

Davis is the son of a Welsh father, a surgeon in the Royal Artillery, and an Irish mother. Through his mother he is descended from the Gaelic noble family of O’Sullivan Beare. His father dies one month after his birth and his mother moves to Warrington Place near Mount Street bridge in Dublin. In 1830, they move to 67 Lower Baggot Street. He attends school in Lower Mount Street before studying at Trinity College, Dublin. He graduates in Law and receives an arts degree in 1836, before being called to the Irish Bar in 1838.

Davis gives a voice to the 19th-century foundational culture of modern Irish nationalism. Formerly it is based on the republicans of the 1790s and on the Catholic emancipation movement of Daniel O’Connell in the 1820s-30s, which has little in common with each other except for independence from Britain. Davis aims to create a common and more inclusive base for the future. He establishes The Nation newspaper with Charles Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon.

He writes some stirring nationalistic ballads, originally contributed to The Nation and afterwards republished as Spirit of the Nation, as well as a memoir of Curran, the Irish lawyer and orator, prefixed to an edition of his speeches, and a history of King James II‘s parliament of 1689. He has formed many literary plans which are unfinished at the time of his early death.

Davis supports O’Connell’s Repeal Association from 1840, hoping to recreate the old Parliament of Ireland. They split during a debate on the proposed new Queen’s University of Ireland, when Davis is reduced to tears by O’Connell’s superior debating skill. Davis is in favour of a university that would inclusively educate all Irish students. O’Connell and the Catholic hierarchy prefer a separate system for Catholic students within Ireland that would remain under church control.

O’Connell generally refers to his inexperienced allies as “Young Ireland,” initially as a dismissive term, that from the 1870s becomes the accepted term for nationalists inspired by Davis. He also prefers a federal arrangement with Britain in the 1840s while Davis seeks a greater degree of autonomy. Both agree that a gradual and non-violent process is the best way forward. Despite their differences, O’Connell is distraught at Davis’s early death.

Davis is a Protestant but preaches unity between Catholics and Protestants. To him, it is not blood that makes a person Irish, but the willingness to be part of the Irish nation. He is to the fore of Irish nationalist thinking and it has been noted by later nationalist notables, such as Patrick Pearse, that while Theobald Wolfe Tone laid out the basic premise that Ireland as a nation must be free, Davis is the one who built this idea up promoting the Irish identity.

He is the author of influential songs such as The West’s Awake, A Nation Once Again and In Bodenstown Churchyard. He also writes The Lament for Owen Roe O’Neill.

Thomas Davis dies from scarlet fever on September 16, 1845, at the age of thirty. He is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin.


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Birth of Revolutionary James Fintan Lalor

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James Fintan Lalor, Irish revolutionary, journalist, and one of the most powerful writers of his day, is born on March 10, 1807, in Tinnakill House, Raheen, County Laois. A leading member of the Irish Confederation (Young Ireland), he plays an active part in both the Rebellion in July 1848 and the attempted Rising in September of that same year.

His father Patrick is an extensive farmer and is the first Catholic MP for Laois from 1832–1835. The household is a very political one where active discussion on national issues is encouraged.

Because of an accident when he is young, James is semi-crippled all his life. He is not a very healthy young man and consequently is educated at home. He spends some time attending college in Carlow but is forced to return home because of his health.

His father is passionately opposed to the payment of tithes and urges Catholics not to pay. James supports this stand but it is the land question and the power of the landlords to evict tenants that exercises James in particular. His father is also a great supporter of Daniel O’Connell and the Repeal movement. However, James does not support the Repeal movement as he considers it to be flawed. As a result, a rift occurs between James and his father on this question. Such is the rift that James leaves home and spends time in Belfast and Dublin. He finally returns home due to ill health and heals his differences with his father.

It is while writing from home that James achieves national prominence. His writings have a profound effect on such figures as Michael Davitt, Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, and Arthur Griffith. He contributes articles to The Nation and The Felon. He advocates rent strikes and active resistance to any wrongdoings. His central theme is the rights of the tenant farmer to his own land. In his opinion, land reform is the biggest issue of the time. He writes articles such as “What must be done,” “The Faith of a felon,” “Resistance,” and “Clearing Decks.” It is he who says it is time for revolution and active resistance. This is especially evident during famine years when tenants are being evicted for nonpayment of rent. As a result, he is arrested and imprisoned. Upon his release he continues to write. He is now a nationally acclaimed writer, revolutionary, and reformer.

Ill health once again curtails his efforts. An attack of bronchitis eventually brings about his early death on December 27, 1849, at the age of 43. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetary in Dublin.


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William Smith O’Brien Pardoned from Deportation

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William Smith O’Brien, leader of the Young Ireland Rebellion of 1848, is pardoned from his deportation to Van Diemen’s Land on February 26, 1854, on the condition of exile from Ireland.

From April 1828 to 1831 O’Brien serves as Conservative MP for Ennis. He becomes MP for Limerick County in 1835, holding his seat in the House of Commons until 1849.

Although a Protestant country-gentleman, O’Brien supports Catholic Emancipation while remaining a supporter of British-Irish union. In 1843, in protest against the imprisonment of Daniel O’Connell, he joins O’Connell’s anti-union Repeal Association.

Three years later, O’Brien withdraws the Young Irelanders from the association. In January 1847, along with Thomas Francis Meagher, he founds the Irish Confederation, although he continues to preach reconciliation until O’Connell’s death in May 1847. He is active in seeking relief from the hardships of the famine. In March 1848, he speaks out in favour of a National Guard and tries to incite a national rebellion. He is tried for sedition on May 15, 1848, but is not convicted.

On July 29, 1848, O’Brien and other Young Irelanders lead landlords and tenants in a rising in three counties, with an almost bloodless battle against police at Ballingarry, County Tipperary. In O’Brien’s subsequent trial, the jury finds him guilty of high treason. He is sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Petitions for clemency are signed by 70,000 people in Ireland and 10,000 people in England.

In Dublin on June 5, 1849, the sentences of O’Brien and other members of the Irish Confederation are commuted to transportation for life to Van Diemen’s Land, which is Tasmania in present-day Australia.

O’Brien attempts to escape from Maria Island off Tasmania but is betrayed by Captain Ellis of the schooner hired for the escape. He is sent to Port Arthur where he meets up with John Mitchel, who had been transported prior to the rebellion. The cottages which O’Brien lives in on Maria Island and Port Arthur have been preserved in their 19th century state as memorials.

Having emigrated to the United States, Ellis is tried by another Young Irelanders leader, Terence MacManus, at a lynch court in San Francisco for the betrayal of O’Brien. He is freed for lack of evidence.

In 1854, after five years in Tasmania, O’Brien is released on the condition he never return to Ireland. He settles in Brussels. In May 1856, he is granted an unconditional pardon and returns to Ireland that July. He contributes to The Nation newspaper but plays no further part in politics.

In 1864 he visits England and Wales, with the view of rallying his failing health, but no improvement takes place, and he dies at Bangor, Wales on June 16, 1864.


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Richard Pigott Exposed as Forger of Phoenix Park Letters

richard-pigott

Richard Pigott, an Irish journalist, is exposed as the forger of The Times Phoenix Park letters on February 10, 1889.

Pigott is born in 1835 in Ratoath, County Meath. As a young man he supports Irish nationalism and works for The Nation and The Tablet before acting as manager of The Irishman, a newspaper founded by Denis Holland. James O’Connor later claims Pigott embezzled funds from the paper and covered his tracks by not keeping written records. Pigott also works for the Irish National Land League, departing in 1883 after accusing its treasurer, Mr. Fagan, of being unable to account for £100,000 of its funds, and for keeping inadequate records. Nothing is done about his accusation, which is publicised in the newspapers, and he turns against the League, which is allied to several Irish nationalist groups including the Irish Parliamentary Party led by Charles Stewart Parnell.

In 1879 Pigott is proprietor of three newspapers, which he soon sells to the Irish Land League, of which Charles Stewart Parnell is president. Hitherto a violent Nationalist, from 1884 Pigott begins to vilify his former associates and to sell information to their political opponents. In an effort to destroy Parnell’s career, Pigott produces fake letters, which purports that Parnell had supported one of the Phoenix Park murders.

The Times purchases Pigott’s forgeries for £1,780 and publishes the most damning letter on April 18, 1887. Parnell immediately denounces it as “a villainous and barefaced forgery.” In February 1889, the Parnell Commission vindicates him by proving that the letters are forgeries. They include misspellings which Pigott has written elsewhere. A libel action instituted by Parnell also vindicates him and his parliamentary career survives the Pigott accusations.

The Commission eventually produces 37 volumes in evidence, covering not just the forgeries but also the surrounding violence that follows from the Plan of Campaign.

After admitting his forgeries to Henry Labouchère, Pigott flees to Spain, and shoots himself in a Madrid hotel room. Parnell then sues The Times for libel, and the newspaper pays him £5,000 in an out-of-court settlement, as well as considerably more in legal fees. When Parnell next enters the House of Commons, he receives a hero’s reception from his fellow Members of Parliament.

(Pictured: Pigott as caricatured by Spy (Leslie Ward) in Vanity Fair, March 1889)


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Death of Jane Francesca Agnes, Lady Wilde

jane-wilde

Jane Francesca Agnes, Lady Wilde, Irish poet who writes under the pen name “Speranza” and supporter of the nationalist movement, dies at her home, 146 Oakley Street, Chelsea, London, of bronchitis on February 3, 1896.

Jane is the last of the four children of Charles Elgee, a Wexford solicitor, and his wife Sarah. Her great-grandfather is an Italian who had come to Wexford in the 18th century. She has a special interest in Irish folktales, which she helps to gather. She marries Sir William Wilde on November 12, 1851, and they have three children, William Charles Kingsbury Wilde (1852–1899), Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900), and Isola Francesca Emily Wilde (1857–1867).

Jane, who is the niece of Charles Maturin, writes for the Young Ireland movement of the 1840s, publishing poems in The Nation under the pseudonym of “Speranza.” Her works include pro-Irish independence and anti-British writing. She is sometimes known as “Speranza of the Nation.” Charles Gavan Duffy is the editor when “Speranza” writes commentary calling for armed revolution in Ireland. The authorities at Dublin Castle shut down the paper and bring the editor to court. Duffy refuses to name who has written the offending article. “Speranza” reputedly stands up in court and claims responsibility for the article. The confession is ignored by the authorities. But in any event the newspaper is permanently shut down by the authorities.

She is an early advocate of women’s rights, and campaigns for better education for women. She invites the suffragist Millicent Fawcett to her home to speak on female liberty. She praises the passing of the Married Women’s Property Act of 1883, preventing women from having to enter marriage “as a bond slave, disenfranchised of all rights over her fortune.”

William Wilde is knighted in January 1864, but the family celebrations are short-lived, for in the same year Sir William and Lady Wilde are at the centre of a sensational Dublin court case regarding a young woman called Mary Travers, the daughter of a colleague of Sir William’s, who claims that he had seduced her and who then brings an action against Lady Wilde for libel. Mary Travers wins the case and costs of £2,000 are awarded against Lady Wilde. Then, in 1867, their daughter Isola dies of fever at the age of nine. In 1871 the two illegitimate daughters of Sir William are burned to death and in 1876 Sir William himself dies. The family discovers that he is virtually bankrupt.

Lady Wilde leaves Dublin for London in 1879, where she joins her two sons, Willie, a journalist, and Oscar, who is making a name for himself in literary circles. She lives with her older son in poverty, supplementing their meagre income by writing for fashionable magazines and producing books based on the researches of her late husband into Irish folklore.

Lady Wilde contracts bronchitis in January 1896 and, dying, asks for permission to see Oscar, who is in prison. Her request is refused. It is claimed that her “fetch” appears in Oscar’s prison cell as she dies at her home, 146 Oakley Street, Chelsea, on February 3, 1896. Willie Wilde, her older son, is penniless, so Oscar pays for her funeral, which is held on February 5, at Kensal Green Cemetery in London. A headstone proved too expensive and she is buried anonymously in common ground. A monument to her, in the form of a Celtic cross, is erected at Kensal Green Cemetery by the Oscar Wilde Society in 1999.


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Birth of George Sigerson, Physician & Writer

george-sigerson

George Sigerson, Irish physician, scientist, writer, politician, and poet, is born at Holy Hill, near Strabane in County Tyrone on January 11, 1836. He is a leading light in the Irish Literary Revival of the late 19th century in Ireland.

Sigerson is the son of William and Nancy (née Neilson) Sigerson and has three brothers, James, John and William, and three sisters, Ellen, Jane, and Mary Ann. He attends Letterkenny Academy but is sent by his father, who developed the spade mill and who played an active role in the development of Artigarvan, to complete his education in France.

He studies medicine at the Queen’s College, Galway, and Queen’s College, Cork, and takes his degree in 1859. He then goes to Paris where he spends some time studying under Jean-Martin Charcot and Duchenne de Boulogne. Sigmund Freud is one of his fellow students.

Sigerson returns to Ireland and opens a practice in Dublin, specializing in neurology. He continues to visit France annually to study under Charcot. His patients included Maud Gonne, Austin Clarke, and Nora Barnacle. He lectures on medicine at the Catholic University of Ireland and is professor of zoology and later botany at the University College Dublin.

His first book, The Poets and Poetry of Munster, appears in 1860. He is actively involved in political journalism for many years, writing for The Nation. Sigerson and his wife Hester are by now among the dominant figures of the Gaelic Revival. They frequently hold Sunday evening salons at their Dublin home to which artists, intellectuals, and rebels alike attend, including John O’Leary, W.B. Yeats, Patrick Pearse, Roger Casement, and 1916 signatory Thomas MacDonagh. Sigerson is a co-founder of the Feis Ceoil and President of the National Literary Society from 1893 until his death. His daughter, Dora, is a poet who is also involved in the Irish literary revival.

Nominated to the first Seanad Éireann of the Irish Free State, Sigerson briefly serves as the first chairman on December 11-12, 1922, before the election of James Campbell, 1st Baron Glenavy. Sigerson dies at his home at 3 Clare Street, Dublin, on February 17, 1925, at the age of 89, after a short illness. On February 18, 1925, the day after his death, the Seanad Éireann pays tribute to him.

The Sigerson Cup, the top division of third level Gaelic football competition in Ireland is named in his honour. Sigerson donates the salary from his post at UCD so that a trophy can be purchased for the competition. In 2009, he is named in the Sunday Tribune‘s list of the “125 Most Influential People In GAA History.” The cup is first presented in 1911, with the inaugural winners being UCD GAA.


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Birth of Charles Gavin Duffy in County Monaghan

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Charles Gavan Duffy, Irish nationalist, journalist, poet, and Australian politician, is born on April 12, 1816, in Dublin Street, Monaghan Town, County Monaghan. Duffy is the 8th Premier of Victoria and one of the most colourful figures in Victorian political history.

Both of his parents die while he is still a child and his uncle, Fr. James Duffy, who is the Catholic Parish Priest of Castleblayney, becomes his guardian for a number of years. He is educated at St. Malachy’s College in Belfast and is admitted to the Irish Bar in 1845. Duffy becomes a leading figure in Irish literary circles.

Duffy, along with Thomas Osborne Davis and John Blake Dillon, founds The Nation and becomes its first editor. Davis and Dillon later become Young Irelanders. All three are members of Daniel O’Connell‘s Repeal Association. This paper, under Duffy, transforms from a literary voice into a “rebellious organisation.”

In August 1850, Duffy forms the Tenant Right League to bring about reforms in the Irish land system and protect tenants’ rights, and in 1852 is elected to the House of Commons for New Ross. By 1855, the cause of Irish tenants seems more hopeless than ever. Broken in health and spirit, Duffy publishes a farewell address to his constituency, declaring that he has resolved to retire from parliament, as it is no longer possible to accomplish the task for which he has solicited their votes.

In 1856, emigrates with his family to Australia, settling in the newly formed Colony of Victoria. A public appeal is held to enable him to buy the freehold property necessary to stand for the colonial Parliament. He is immediately elected to the Legislative Assembly for Villiers and Heytesbury in the Western District in 1856. He later represented Dalhousie and then North Gippsland. With the collapse of the Victorian Government‘s Haines Ministry during 1857, another Irish Catholic, John O’Shanassy, unexpectedly becomes Premier with Duffy his second-in-charge.

In 1871, Duffy leads the opposition to Premier Sir James McCulloch‘s plan to introduce a land tax, on the grounds that it unfairly penalised small farmers. When McCulloch’s government is defeated on this issue, Duffy becomes Premier and Chief Secretary.  The majority of the colony is Protestant, and Duffy is accused of favouring Catholics in government appointments. In June 1872, his government is defeated in the Assembly on a confidence motion allegedly motivated by sectarianism.

When Graham Berry becomes Premier in 1877, he makes Duffy Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, a post he holds without much enthusiasm until 1880, when he quits politics and retires to the south of France. Duffy remains interested in both the politics of his adoptive country and of Ireland. He is knighted in 1873 and is made KCMG in 1877. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy dies in Nice, France, at the age of 86 in 1903.


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Death of Politician & Journalist Timothy Michael Healy

Timothy Michael “Tim” Healy, Irish nationalist politician, journalist, author, barrister, and one of the most controversial Irish Members of Parliament (MPs) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, dies in Chapelizod, County Dublin, on March 26, 1931.

Healy is born in Bantry, County Cork, the second son of Maurice Healy, clerk of the Bantry Poor Law Union, and Eliza Healy (née Sullivan). His father is transferred in 1862 to a similar position in Lismore, County Waterford. Timothy is educated at the Christian Brothers school in Fermoy, and is otherwise largely self-educated, in 1869, at the age of fourteen, he goes to live with his uncle Timothy Daniel Sullivan in Dublin.

Healy then moves to England in 1871, working first as a railway clerk and then from 1878 in London as parliamentary correspondent of The Nation, writing numerous articles in support of Charles Stewart Parnell, the newly emergent and more militant home rule leader, and his policy of parliamentary obstructionism. Healy takes part in Irish politics and becomes associated with Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party. After being arrested for intimidation in connection with the Irish National Land League, he is promptly elected as member of Parliament for Wexford Borough in 1880.

In Parliament, Healy becomes an authority on the Irish land question. The “Healy Clause” of the Land Act of 1881, which protects tenant farmers’ agrarian improvements from rent increases imposed by landlords, not only makes him popular throughout nationalist Ireland but also wins his cause seats in Protestant Ulster. He breaks with Parnell in 1886 and generally remains at odds with subsequent leaders of the Irish Parliamentary Party, though he is a strong supporter of proposals for Irish Home Rule. Meanwhile, he is called to the Irish bar in 1884 and becomes a queen’s counsel in 1899.

Dissatisfied with both the Liberals and the Irish Nationalists after the Easter Rising in 1916, Healy supports Sinn Féin after 1917. He returns to considerable prominence in 1922 when, on the urging of the soon-to-be Irish Free State’s Provisional Government of W.T. Cosgrave, the British government recommends to King George V that Healy be appointed the first “Governor-General of the Irish Free State,” a new office of representative of the Crown created in the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty and introduced by a combination of the Irish Free State Constitution and Letters Patent from the King.

Healy believes that he has been awarded the Governor-Generalship for life. However, the Executive Council of the Irish Free State decides in 1927 that the term of office of Governors-General will be five years. As a result, he retires from the office and public life in January 1928 and publishes his extensive two volume memoirs later in that year. Throughout his life he is formidable because he is ferociously quick-witted, because he is unworried by social or political convention, and because he knows no party discipline. Towards the end of his life, he becomes more mellowed and otherwise more diplomatic.

Healy dies on March 26, 1931, at the age of 75, in Chapelizod, County Dublin. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.