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Birth of Whitley Stokes, Irish Lawyer & Celtic Scholar

Whitley Stokes, CSI, CIE, FBA, Irish lawyer and Celtic scholar, is born at 5 Merrion Square, Dublin, on February 28, 1830.

Stokes is a son of William Stokes (1804–78), and a grandson of Whitley Stokes, a physician and anti-Malthusian (1763–1845), each of whom is Regius Professor of Physic at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). His sister, Margaret Stokes, is a writer and archaeologist.

Stokes is educated at St. Columba’s College where he is taught the Irish language by Denis Coffey, author of Primer of the Irish Language. Through his father he comes to know the Irish antiquaries Samuel Ferguson, Eugene O’Curry, John O’Donovan and George Petrie. He enters Trinity College Dublin in 1846 and graduates with a BA in 1851. His friend and contemporary Rudolf Thomas Siegfried (1830–63) becomes assistant librarian at TCD in 1855, and the college’s first professor of Sanskrit in 1858. Stokes likely learns both Sanskrit and comparative philology from Siegfried, thus acquiring a skill-set rare among Celtic scholars in Ireland at the time.

Stokes qualifies for the bar at Inner Temple. His instructors in the law are Arthur Cayley, Hugh McCalmont Cairns, and Thomas Chitty. He becomes an English barrister on November 17, 1855, practicing in London before going to India in 1862, where he fills several official positions. In 1865 he marries Mary Bazely by whom he has four sons and two daughters. One of his daughters, Maïve, compiles a book of Indian Fairy Tales in 1879 when she is 12 years old, based on stories told to her by her Indian ayahs and a man-servant. It also includes some notes by Mrs. Mary Stokes. Mary dies while the family is still living in India. In 1877, Stokes is appointed legal member of the viceroy’s council, and he drafts the codes of civil and criminal procedure and does much other valuable work of the same nature. In 1879 he becomes president of the commission on Indian law. Nine books he writes on Celtic studies are published in India. He returns to settle permanently in London in 1881 and marries Elizabeth Temple in 1884. In 1887 he is made a Companion of the Order of the Star of India (CSI), and two years later an Order of the Indian Empire (CIE). He is an original fellow of the British Academy, an honorary fellow of Jesus College, Oxford and foreign associate of the Institut de France.

Stokes is perhaps most famous as a Celtic scholar, and in this field he works both in India and in England. He studies Irish, Breton and Cornish texts. His chief interest in Irish is as a source of material for comparative philology. Despite his learning in Old Irish and Middle Irish, he never acquires Irish pronunciation and never masters Modern Irish. In the hundred years since his death he continues to be a central figure in Celtic scholarship. Many of his editions have not been superseded during this time and his total output in Celtic studies comes to over 15,000 pages. He is a correspondent and close friend of Kuno Meyer from 1881 onwards. With Meyer he establishes the journal Archiv für celtische Lexicographie and is the co-editor, with Ernst Windisch, of the Irische Texteseries. In 1876 his translation of Vita tripartita Sancti Patricii, along with a written introduction, is published.

In 1862 Stokes is awarded the Cunningham Medal by the Royal Irish Academy.

Stokes dies at his London home, 15 Grenville Place, Kensington, on April 13, 1909, and is buried in Paddington Old Cemetery, Willesden Lane, where his grave is marked by a Celtic cross. Another Celtic cross is erected as a memorial to him at St. Fintan’s Cemetery, Sutton, Dublin. The Gaelic League newspaper An Claidheamh Soluis calls him “the greatest of the Celtologists” and expresses pride that an Irishman has excelled in a field which is at that time dominated by continental scholars. In 1929 the Canadian scholar James F. Kenney describes him as “the greatest scholar in philology that Ireland has produced, and the only one that may be ranked with the most famous of continental savants.”

A conference entitled “Ireland, India, London: The Tripartite Life of Whitley Stokes” takes place at the University of Cambridge on September 18-19, 2009. The event is organised to mark the centenary of Stokes’s death. A volume of essays based on the papers delivered at this conference, The Tripartite Life of Whitley Stokes (1830–1909), is published by Four Courts Press in autumn 2011.

In 2010 Dáibhí Ó Cróinín publishes Whitley Stokes (1830–1909): The Lost Celtic Notebooks Rediscovered, a volume based on the scholarship in Stokes’s 150 notebooks which had been resting unnoticed at the Leipzig University Library, Leipzig since 1919.


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Birth of John Todhunter, Poet & Playwright

John Todhunter, Irish poet and playwright who wrote seven volumes of poetry and several plays, is born in Dublin on December 30, 1839.

Todhunter is the eldest son of Thomas Harvey Todhunter, a Quaker merchant of English origin. He is educated at Quaker schools, including Bootham School in York and in Mountmellick, County Laois. He starts work at his father’s offices in Dublin and London before continuing on to attend Trinity College, Dublin, where he studies medicine. While at Trinity, he wins the Vice-Chancellor’s prize for English Verse 1864, 1865 and 1866, and the Gold Medal of the Philosophical Society 1866 for an essay. He also clerks for William Stokes while studying. He receives his Bachelor of Medicine in 1867 and his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1871.

In 1870, one year prior to receiving his Doctor of Medicine, Todhunter becomes a Professor of English Literature at Alexandra College, Dublin. Four years later, he resigns from that position and travels to Egypt and several places in Europe. He marries Dora L. Digby in 1879. In 1881, he finally settles in London, where his home in Bedford Park, Chiswick is located in a small community of writers and artists, including William Butler Yeats. Informal “symposia” are held at his house about once a fortnight, when friends gather at his fireside to discuss poetry and philosophy. He is involved in the founding of the Irish Literary Society there.

Todhunter’s first volume is a collection of narrative and lyrical poems entitled Laurella (1876). Grace, tenderness, and melody mark these poems. In later years he does much stronger work under the influence of ancient Celtic literature, to the study of which he is led by the memorable rendering of the Cú Chulainn legend published in 1878 by Standish O’Grady. The Banshee and Other Poems (1888) and The Irish Bardic Tales (1896) contain the best of his work in poetry.

Three of Todhunter’s plays have been acted with success. One of them, The Black Cat (1893), produced by the Independent Theatre Society, a private club formed to forestall censorship by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, is a factor in the revival of the literary drama. However, it only receives one performance, on December 8, 1893, at the Opera Comique. His translation of Heinrich Heine‘s Buch der Lieder is perhaps the best complete English version of a work than which none more irresistibly attracts or more cruelly eludes the art of the translator. He is also author of a few brief prose works, including “The Life of Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan” and “A Study of Shelley.”

Todhunter dies on October 25, 1916, at his residence in Bedford Park.


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Birth of Biblical Scholar James Henthorn Todd

james-henthorn-todd

James Henthorn Todd, biblical scholar, educator, and Irish historian, is born in Rathfarnham, a Southside suburb of Dublin, on April 23, 1805. He is noted for his efforts to place religious disagreements on a rational historical footing, for his advocacy of a liberal form of Protestantism, and for his endeavours as an educator, librarian, and scholar in Irish history.

Todd is the son of Charles Hawkes Todd, a professor of surgery, and Eliza Bentley, and is the oldest of fifteen children. Noted physician Robert Bentley Todd is among his younger brothers. His father dies a year after he receives a B.A. from Trinity College, Dublin in 1825, diminishing his prospects for success. However, he is able to remain at the college by tutoring and editing a church periodical.

Todd obtains a premium in 1829, and two years later is elected Fellow, taking deacon’s orders in the same year. From that time until 1850, when he becomes a Senior Fellow, he is among the most popular tutors in Trinity College.

Todd takes priest’s orders in 1832. He begins publishing in earnest, including papers on John Wycliffe, church history, and the religious questions of his day. He is Donnellan Lecturer in 1838 and 1839, publishing works related to the Antichrist in which he opposes the views of the more extreme of his co-religionists who apply this term to the Roman Catholicism and the Pope. In 1840 he graduates Doctor of Divinity.

In 1837 Todd is installed Treasurer at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin and becomes Precentor in 1864. His style of preaching is described as simple and lucid, and his sermons interesting. He co-founds Saint Columba’s College in 1843, a school which promotes the Irish language for those who intend to take orders, as well as promoting the principles of the Church of Ireland.

In 1849 Todd is made Regius Professor of Hebrew at Trinity, and a Senior Fellow the following year. In 1852 he is appointed Librarian, and working alongside John O’Donovan and Eugene O’Curry, he classifies and arranges the collection of manuscripts. When his office receives money, he spends it on the acquisition of manuscripts and rare books, and he deserves much credit for the library’s high ranking as one of the chief libraries of Europe.

Todd’s secular achievements are no less remarkable. In 1840 he co-founds the Irish Archaeological Society and acts as its honorary secretary. He is elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy and strives actively to acquire transcripts and accurate accounts of Irish manuscripts from foreign libraries. He is honorary secretary from 1847 to 1855, and president from 1856 to 1861. In 1860 he is given an ad eundem degree at the University of Oxford.

Todd is a notable person among notable people. His work is widely respected and cited. Among his friends and acquaintances are lawyer and poet Sir Samuel Ferguson, Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) and Roman Catholic convert Edwin Wyndham-Quin, fellow historian William Reeves, artist Sir George Petrie, and the Stokes family (physician father William, future lawyer and Celticist son Whitley, and future antiquarian daughter Margaret).

James Henthorn Todd dies at his house in Rathfarnham on June 28, 1869, and is buried in the churchyard of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.