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Birth of Sir William Bernard Hickie, British Army General

Sir William Bernard Hickie, British Army general, commander of the 16th (Irish) Division (1915–18) and an Irish nationalist politician, is born on May 21, 1865, at Slevoir, Terryglass, near Borrisokane, County Tipperary.

Hickie is the eldest son of Colonel James Francis Hickie, JP, of Slevoir, former commanding officer of the 7th Royal Fusiliers, and Lucila Calista (de Tejada) Hickie, daughter of Don Pablo Lariosy Herreros de Tejada of Laguna de Cameros, Castile. He is educated at St. Mary’s College, Oscott, before attending the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and is commissioned into the Royal Fusiliers in 1885, serving in Egypt and India.

A major at the outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899, Hickie serves on the staff of Lieutenant-Colonel P. W. J. Le Gallais, commanding officer of the mounted infantry. On November 6, 1900, he is involved in an attempt to capture General Christiaan De Wet at the Battle of Bothaville, when a force led by Le Gallais and Lieutenant-Colonel Wally Ross storm De Wet’s camp. De Wet escapes, while a rearguard of 100 men engage the British force. In a fierce fight Le Gallais is killed and Wally Ross is badly wounded. Hickie decides to charge the Boer position and leads his small force forward just as reinforcements under Major-General C. E. Knox arrive. The Boers immediately surrender and some are found with explosive bullets. He wants to execute them immediately but Knox insists that they be tried. Exasperated with the whole affair, Hickie gives a highly critical interview after the action which is later published in The Times History of the War in South Africa (7 vols, 1900–09), edited by Leo Amery.

Hickie is promoted to brevet lieutenant colonel in 1901 and appointed deputy-assistant adjutant general of the 8th division (1903–06). In 1906, he is given command of the 1st battalion of the Royal Fusiliers. Promoted to colonel in 1912, he serves as assistant quartermaster general of the Irish command (1912–14) and is appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1914. On the outbreak of World War I, he is promoted to brigadier general and serves in Belgium and France in command of the adjutant’s and quartermaster-general’s department of II Corps. In this capacity, he is involved in the retreat following the Battle of Mons and during the First Battle of the Marne (September 1914). In December 1915, he is appointed to command the 16th (Irish) Division, with the rank of major general, replacing General Sir Lawrence W. Parsons. The division is based around a core of Redmondite National Volunteers, and Hickie, a Catholic and a home ruler, is an acceptable commander to John Redmond and other Irish nationalists.

Hickie is professional, politically adept, and popular with his men, and under his leadership the 16th is renowned for its aggressive fighting spirit. He commands the division during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and, while proud of his men’s success in capturing Guillemont and Ginchy (September 1916), is appalled by their losses. When the division is ordered to capture Messines (now Mesen) in June 1917, he gives Major Willie Redmond permission to advance as far as the first objective and, following Redmond’s death, reproaches himself bitterly. After this attack the division is transferred to the fifth army and provides assault troops for future attacks. During the Third Battle of Ypres, and especially during the attack on Langemarck in August 1917, the division suffers horrendous casualties, losing 221 officers and 4,064 men. Among the casualties is Fr. Willie Doyle, who Hickie unsuccessfully recommends for a Victoria Cross. The division’s losses at Langemarck are highlighted by Irish MPs in the House of Commons, and Hickie’s handling of the attack is criticised. By this time, nationalist disillusionment with the war means that few Irish replacements are available, and Hickie is forced to accept increasing numbers of non-Irish conscripts into the division. Worn down by years of command, his health finally breaks and, in February 1918, he is sent home on sick leave, being replaced by Major-General Sir Richard Amyatt Hull.

In 1918, Hickie is created a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) and is also awarded the French Croix de Guerre. During the Irish War of Independence (1919–21), he is critical of the methods used by Crown forces, denouncing in particular the indiscipline of the Black and Tans. In 1921 he retires from the army and becomes a prominent figure in the Royal British Legion in Ireland, tirelessly campaigning on behalf of ex-servicemen. In the 1920s he is involved with the Irish battlefield memorial committee, which erects memorial crosses at Wytschaete, Guillemont, and Salonika, commemorating the 10th and 16th divisions. He later serves as a senator of the Irish Free State (1925–36). Retiring from public life in 1936 to his residence at Terryglass, County Tipperary, he devotes his last years to gardening and reading.

Hickie dies on November 3, 1950, in Dublin, and is buried at Terryglass. He marries a daughter of the novelist Rev. J. O. Hannay, who predeceases him. There is a small collection of his papers in the National Library of Ireland (NLI).

(From: “Hickie, Sir William Bernard” by David Murphy, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Death of Frederick William Hall, Victoria Cross Recipient

Frederick William Hall, VC, Irish Canadian recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces, dies on April 24, 1915, at Poelcappelle, Belgium.

Hall is born in Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, on February 21, 1885. His father is a British Army soldier from London. He emigrates to Canada around 1910, and lives on Pine Street in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is 30 years old, and a company sergeant major (CSM) in the 8th (Winnipeg Rifles) Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force during World War I when he performs a deed for which he is awarded the Victoria Cross.

It is on the night of April 23, 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgium that Hall discovers a number of men are missing. On the ridge above he can hear the moans of the wounded men. Under cover of darkness, he goes to the top of the ridge on two separate occasions and returns each time with a wounded man.

By nine o’clock on the morning of April 24 there are still men missing. In full daylight and under sustained and intense enemy fire, Hall, Cpl. Payne and Pvt. Rogerson crawl out toward the wounded. Payne and Rogerson are both wounded but return to the shelter of the front line. When a wounded man who is lying some 15 yards from the trench calls for help, Company Sergeant-Major Hall endeavors to reach him in the face of very heavy enfilade fire by the enemy. He then makes a second most gallant attempt and is in the act of lifting up the wounded man to bring him in when he falls, mortally wounded in the head. The soldier he is attempting to help is also shot and killed.

Hall’s name can be found on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing war memorial in Ypres, Belgium, honouring 56,000 troops from Britain, Australia, Canada and India whose final resting place in the Ypres salient is unknown.

In 1925, Pine Street in Winnipeg is renamed Valour Road because three of Canada’s Victoria Cross recipients resided on the same 700 block of that street: Frederick Hall, Leo Clarke and Robert Shankland. It is believed to be the only street in the British Commonwealth to have three Victoria Cross recipients to live on it, let alone the same block. A bronze plaque is mounted on a street lamp at the corner of Portage Avenue and Valour Road to tell the tale of these three men.


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RMS Carpathia Arrives in New York City with RMS Titanic Survivors

The RMS Carpathia, a Cunard Line transatlantic passenger steamship, arrives in New York City on April 18, 1912, with 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, which sank in the North Atlantic three days earlier.

As she is making her way from New York to Fiume, Austria-Hungary (now Rijeka, Croatia), RMS Carpathia receives a distress call from the “unsinkable” RMS Titanic. RMS Carpathia’s captain, Arthur Rostron, later testifies that the distance to RMS Titanic was 58 nautical miles (67 miles) and was expected to take three and a half hours to reach the doomed liner as its top speed, which was about 14.5 knots.

However, braving dangerous ice fields of its own, Rostron orders extra stokers to feed coal and cut off heating and hot water elsewhere in order to supply the ship’s engines with as much steam as possible. These decisions help accelerate the ship to more than 17 knots and the RMS Carpathia arrives on the scene approximately one hour and 40 minutes after RMS Titanic went down. For the next four and a half hours, the ship rescues 705 survivors from RMS Titanic‘s lifeboats.

Slowed by storms and fog since early Tuesday, April 16, RMS Carpathia arrives in New York City on the cold and rainy evening of Thursday, April 18, escorted by the scout cruiser USS Chester. RMS Carpathia first bypasses Pier 54, its Cunard Line pier, and sails up the Hudson River to Pier 59, the berth for White Star Line and where RMS Titanic was supposed to have arrived. Having dropped off the empty lifeboats, RMS Carpathia then sails back toward Pier 54.

A tugboat filled with photographers follows the ship to the pier, and the flashlight of cameras lights up the ship in the night sky to reveal that the decks are crammed with passengers.

Tens of thousands of people gather around Pier 54 to meet them and receive the first physical confirmation of the maritime disaster. On the orders of Rostron, RMS Carpathia‘s passengers disembark first, believing the scene will become tumultuous as soon as RMS Titanic survivors first appear. That moment comes when a teary-eyed woman with makeshift clothes descends a gangway and stumbles away from the boat into the arms of an officer.

The RMS Carpathia is initially a transatlantic passenger ship that makes its maiden voyage in 1903. During World War I, she is used to transfer Canadian and American Expeditionary Forces to Europe.

On July 15, 1918, under the command of Captain William Prothero, RMS Carpathia is a part of a large convoy that is making its way from Liverpool to Boston. Two days later, carrying 57 passengers and 166 crew, she is torpedoed on the port side by a German U-boat off the southwest coast of Ireland.

A second strike follows, which penetrates the engine room, killing three firemen and two trimmers. Prothero gives the order to abandon ship and all passengers and the surviving crew members board the lifeboats.

A third torpedo strike hits the gunner’s rooms, resulting in a large explosion that dooms the ship. The U-boat starts approaching the lifeboats when the HMS Snowdrop arrives on the scene and drives away the submarine with gunfire before picking up survivors.

The wreck of the RMS Carpathia is only discovered in 2000 after an 80 year-long search for the missing ship.

(From: “On This Day: Carpathia arrives in New York with Titanic survivors” by Michael Dorgan, IrishCentral, http://www.irishcentral.com, April 15, 2022)


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Death of Sir Charles Algernon Parsons, Anglo-Irish Engineer & Scientist

Sir Charles Algernon Parsons, Anglo-Irish engineer and scientist best known for his invention of the compound steam turbine, dies on February 11, 1931, on board the steamship Duchess of Richmond while on a cruise with his wife.

Parsons is born in London on June 13, 1854, the youngest among eleven children of the famous astronomer William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, of Parsonstown (now Birr), King’s County (now County Offaly) and Mary Parsons (née Field), a Yorkshire heiress. Only four sons survive to adulthood. He is strongly influenced by his father, who encourages him to use the workshops at the Birr Castle observatory, and he is tutored at home by some of the assistant astronomers before entering Trinity College Dublin in 1871. He transfers to St. John’s College, Cambridge, and upon graduation in 1877 as eleventh wrangler in a class of thirty-six studying mathematics, he takes the unusual step for the son of an earl, of becoming a premium apprentice at the Elswick Engine and Ordnance Works of Sir William George Armstrong at Newcastle upon Tyne. In the period following this he develops a unique high-speed steam engine, and a torpedo which is powered by a gas turbine. He joins Clarke Chapman at Gateshead as a partner in 1884. In a matter of months he files patents for the world’s first effective steam turbine. These embody many novelties, but the key feature is an electricity generator rated at 6 kW and designed to run, directly coupled, at the astonishing speed of 18,000 rpm.

Parsons is not satisfied that his partners’ efforts to promote turbine development are sufficiently aggressive, and in 1889 he leaves to establish his own company, C. A. Parsons & Company, at Heaton near Newcastle upon Tyne. The price of this impetuous action is the loss of access to his original patents. He quickly establishes alternative designs and by 1892 he has built a turbo-alternator with an output of 100 kW for the Cambridge Electricity Company. Exhausting to a condenser, it has a steam consumption comparable with the best steam engines. Even his 1884 patents envisage applying turbines to marine propulsion, but it is 1893 before he can embark on the design of a suitable demonstration boat of 40 tons. By using careful tests on models, he perfects the hull shape and predicts the power requirements. At this time he recovers his 1884 patents and even wins the very rare prize of an extension for five years, which is a measure of the perceived national importance of his invention.

A syndicate is formed to raise the capital necessary to build Parsons’s turbine-powered vessel Turbinia. At the Spithead Fleet Review in 1897 she speeds among the ships of the world’s navies at 34.5 knots. In 1905 the Royal Navy decides to adopt turbines for its future warships. This example is followed by navies worldwide, from the United States to Japan. Builders of mercantile vessels follow quickly and the turbines of the Cunard liner RMS Mauretania (1906), each developing 26,000 kW, are the largest in existence at the time. The Mauretania holds the Blue Riband for the speediest Atlantic crossing until 1929, a fact that keeps Parsons’s name before the public.

The firm of C. A. Parsons (1889), which builds turbines for use on land, is privately owned, but the Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company (1897) is a public company. Parsons also earns income from over 300 patents through the Parsons Foreign Patents Co. (1899). He readily licenses others to use his patents but he avoides costly litigation, the ruin of many inventors.

Parsons inherits an interest in optical instruments from his father. In 1890 he develops a cost-effective method for manufacturing searchlight mirrors, using sheets of plate glass and an iron mold heated in a gas furnace. During World War I he supplies most of the national requirements. In 1921 he acquires the optical instrument manufacturers Ross Ltd. and the Derby Crown Glass Company, makers of optical quality glass. In 1925 the firm of Howard Grubb, which makes large optical telescopes, is rescued from insolvency by Parsons. He believes that it is of national importance to maintain the industrial capacity to make optical equipment. Not all of his projects are commercially profitable, as for example his acoustic amplifier, dubbed the “Auxetophone,” or his attempts at synthesising diamonds, which absorbs much time and effort. In the development of his many inventions, he displays great tenacity in the face of reverses and always employs a meticulously scientific approach.

The supply of power on a large scale is revolutionised by the steam turbine. During the twenty years following the building of his first turbogenerator, Parsons remains at the forefront of promoting, building, and selling ever larger and more efficient turbines. He is not only a scientific engineer and inventor, but also a successful manufacturer and businessman. Modest and retiring in manner, his chief weakness lay in a lack of skill in managing interpersonal relationships, though this is compensated to a large extent by his integrity and loyalty. He seeks out the ablest men to run his businesses, among them several Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS). He is elected FRS himself in 1898 and is knighted in 1911. In 1927 he becomes the first engineer to be awarded the Order of Merit for his outstanding contributions to society. He is honoured by many universities and institutions in Europe and the United States.

Parsons marries Katharine Bethell, a Yorkshire woman, in 1883. They have one daughter and a son who dies on active service in 1918. He keeps a residence in London and in Northumbria.

Parsons dies on February 11, 1931, on board the steamship Duchess of Richmond while on a cruise with his wife. The cause of death is given as neuritis. A memorial service is held at Westminster Abbey on March 3, 1931. He is buried in the parish church of St. Bartholomew’s in Kirkwhelpington in Northumberland. His estate is valued at £1,214,355 gross.

A portrait of Parsons, painted by Maurice Codner, hangs in the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, London. There is also a portrait by Sir William Orpen in the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, and a portrait by Walter Stoneman in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

(From: “Parsons, Sir Charles Algernon” by W. Garrett Scaife, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Alfred Denis Godley, Scholar & Poet

Alfred Denis Godley, Anglo-Irish classical scholar and author of humorous poems is born on January 22, 1856, at Ashfield, County Cavan.

Godley is the eldest son of Rev. James Godley, rector of Carrigallen, County Leitrim, and Eliza Frances Godley (née La Touche). After attending Tilney Basset’s preparatory school in Dublin, he goes to Harrow College and Balliol College, Oxford, graduating BA in 1878. At Oxford he becomes known for his classical scholarship and wins several prizes, including the Craven scholarship and the Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse. In 1879 he is appointed assistant classical master at Bradfield College. He returns to Oxford in 1883 as tutor and fellow of Magdalen College (1883–1912). Serving as deputy public orator of Oxford (1904–06), he is elected public orator in 1910, a post he holds until his death.

Godley also enjoys renown as a writer of satiric verse and prose, beginning his literary career as a contributor to The Oxford Magazine in 1883. In 1890 he becomes its editor, and two years later publishes his first book of poems, Verses to Order (1892). Later publications include Lyra Frivola (1899), Second Strings (1902) and The Casual Ward (1912). His work is very popular and two volumes, Reliquiae (1926) and Fifty Poems (1927), are published posthumously. He also publishes numerous works of serious scholarship including Socrates and Athenian Society in His Day (1896) and Oxford in the Eighteenth Century (1908). Noted as a translator of Herodotus, Tacitus, and Horace, he serves as joint-editor of The Classical Review (1910–20). He also edits and publishes volumes of the poetry of Thomas Moore and Winthrop Mackworth Praed.

Active in political life, Godley serves as an alderman on Oxford City Council. During the Second Boer War (1899–1901) he organises volunteer forces, commanding a battalion of the 4th Oxfordshire Light Infantry (1900–05). He serves in this capacity again during World War I and is lieutenant-colonel of the Oxfordshire Volunteer Corps (1916–19). A staunch unionist, during the Home Rule Crisis, he supports the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and writes some political verse, notably The Arrest, which is popular among unionists. A pioneer in the sport of mountaineering, he is a founding member of the Alpine Club and a committee member (1908–11). He is also a member of the governing body of Harrow School. Towards the end of his career he is awarded honorary doctorates from Princeton (1913) and Oxford (1919).

In 1925 Godley goes on a tour of the Levant and contracts a fever which ultimately leads to his death on June 27, 1925, at his Oxford home, 27 Norham Road. He is buried at Wolvercote Cemetery.

In 1894 Godley marries Amy Hope Cay, daughter of Charles Hope Cay, fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. They have no children.

(From: “Godley, Alfred Denis” by David Murphy, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Recruitment Begins for the Black and Tans

Recruitment begins for the Black and Tans (Irish: Dúchrónaigh), Britain’s unofficial auxiliary army, on January 2, 1920. They are constables recruited into the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) as reinforcements during the Irish War of Independence. Recruitment begins in Great Britain and about 10,000 men enlist during the conflict. The vast majority are unemployed former British soldiers who had fought in World War I. Some sources count a small number of Irishmen as Black and Tans.

The British administration in Ireland promotes the idea of bolstering the RIC with British recruits. They are to help the overstretched RIC maintain control and suppress the Irish Republican Army (IRA), although they are less well trained in ordinary policing. The nickname “Black and Tans” arises from the colours of the improvised uniforms they initially wear, a mixture of dark green RIC (which appears black) and khaki British Army. They serve in all parts of Ireland, but most are sent to southern and western regions where fighting is heaviest. By 1921, Black and Tans make up almost half of the RIC in County Tipperary, for example.

The Black and Tans gain a reputation for brutality and become notorious for reprisal attacks on civilians and civilian property, including extrajudicial killings, arson and looting. Their actions further sway Irish public opinion against British rule and draw condemnation in Britain.

The Black and Tans are sometimes confused with the Auxiliary Division, a counterinsurgency unit of the RIC, also recruited during the conflict and made up of former British officers. However, sometimes the term “Black and Tans” covers both groups. The Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) is founded to reinforce the RIC in Northern Ireland.

More than a third leave the service before they are disbanded along with the rest of the RIC in 1922, an extremely high wastage rate, and well over half receive government pensions. Over 500 members of the RIC die in the conflict and more than 600 are wounded. Some sources state that 525 police, including 152 Black and Tans and 44 Auxiliaries, are killed in the conflict.

Many Black and Tans are left unemployed after the RIC is disbanded and about 3,000 are in need of financial assistance after their employment in Ireland is terminated. About 250 Black and Tans and Auxiliaries, among over 1,300 former RIC personnel, join the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Another 700 join the Palestine Police Force which is led by former British Chief of Police in Ireland, Henry Hugh Tudor. Others are resettled in Canada or elsewhere by the RIC Resettlement branch. Those who return to civilian life sometimes have problems re-integrating. At least two former Black and Tans are hanged for murder in Britain, and another wanted for murder commits suicide before the police can arrest him.

Due to the Tans’ behaviour in Ireland, feelings continue to run high regarding their actions. The term can still stir bad reactions because of their remembered brutality. One of the best-known Irish Republican songs is Dominic Behan‘s “Come Out, Ye Black and Tans.” The Irish War of Independence is sometimes referred to as the “Tan War” or “Black-and-Tan War.” This term is preferred by those who fought on the anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War and is still used by Republicans today. The “Cogadh na Saoirse” (“War of Independence”) medal, awarded since 1941 by the Irish government to IRA veterans of the War of Independence, bears a ribbon with two vertical stripes in black and tan.

Some sources say the Black and Tans were officially named the “RIC Special Reserve”, but this is denied by other sources, which say they were not a separate force but “recruits to the regular RIC” and “enlisted as regular constabulary.” Canadian historian D. M. Leeson has not found any historical documents that refer to the Black and Tans as the “Royal Irish Constabulary Special Reserve.”

(Pictured: A group of Black and Tans and Auxiliaries outside the London and North Western Hotel in Dublin following an attack by the IRA, April 1921)


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Birth of Novelist Pamela Hinkson

Pamela Hinkson, novelist, is born on November 19, 1900, in Ealing, London, England, the only daughter among five children of Katharine Tynan Hinkson, novelist and poet, and Henry Albert Hinkson, a novelist, barrister, and classical scholar.

Married in 1893, Hinkson’s parents initially settle in England, where he studies law and is called to the Inner Temple in 1902. After suffering the loss of their first two sons in infancy, they have two more sons in addition to their daughter, Pamela. During this time her mother earns the main family income, and it is likely that she determines their return to Ireland in 1911. The Hinksons initially settle in Dalkey, County Dublin, before moving to a house called Clarebeg in Shankill. When Henry Hinkson is appointed resident magistrate for south Mayo (Castlebar) in October 1914, the family moves to Claremorris, County Mayo.

Hinkson is educated privately in England and on the Continent, and in Ireland attends a local convent day-school. She is exposed to her mother’s literary milieu which includes prominent writers of the Irish revival, including George William Russell, James Stephens, and Padraic Colum. Her mother’s memoir, The Years of the Shadow (1919), recalls Pamela’s developing talent for writing poetry and her predilection for war themes, as evidenced by The Blind Soldier, one of her first published poems. By the time she turns her hand to short stories, her earnings from writing enable her to buy the latest fashions.

Two key events that consumed Hinkson’s life and later spark her creativity are World War I and the Easter Rising. H. G. Wells describes in the foreword to his war novel Mr. Britling Sees It Through (1916) a conversation he had with her when she was 12, recalling how she had boldly set him straight on the “Irish question.” Her parents send her away to boarding school in County Wicklow in the hope that she will be distracted from her gloomy preoccupations, which are accentuated by the absence of her brothers, serving in the British Army. After the war she is deeply concerned by the redundancy experienced by demobilised and often maimed soldiers and contributes to the welfare work of the Irish servicemen’s Shamrock Club in London. These issues inform two early novels, The Victors (1925) and Harvest (1926), both written in the guise of an ex-serviceman under the pseudonym “Peter Deane.” By masking her identity, she avoids the possibility of her works being discredited because of her gender and lack of first-hand experience of war. Subsequently she writes under her own name for thirty years.

In contrast to her close relationship with her mother, Hinkson deeply dislikes her father. With the exception of her beloved brother Giles A. Hinckson, a correspondent for The Times in Buenos Aires and Santiago, she never meets a man who matches her high ideals. Though briefly engaged to be married, she is ultimately disillusioned by all men, dismissing them as she had her father. After his death early in 1919, she and her mother are left in financial difficulties, and have to resort to friends and boarding houses for accommodation. Without the financial means to embark on a university degree, she remains at her mother’s side. Though she continues to write, she leads a somewhat stifled life. From 1922 onwards they spend several years on the Continent.

Hinkson’s first novel, The End of All Dreams (1923), addresses the decline of the “big house” amid the revolutionary upheavals of recent Irish history, a theme to which she returns in later works, such as The Deeply Rooted (1935) and her last book, The Lonely Bride (1951). During the 1920s she writes much girls’ school fiction, while her novel Wind from the West (1930) is informed by a period spent in France, where she works as a governess. Her transcription of the memoirs of Lady Fingall (Elizabeth Burke-Plunkett), published under the title Seventy Years Young (1937), illustrates the decline of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy. Informed by war and the Irish troubles, her novels characteristically are solemn, and reflect her ambivalent relationship with Ireland. Inspired by the Irish landscape, but never an ardent supporter of Irish independence, she maintains an abiding attachment to England.

The death of Hinkson’s mother in 1931 is a devastating blow that triggers her most forceful and first truly successful novel, The Ladies’ Road (1932). Documenting the lives of the Irish and English ascendancies before, during, and after World War I, this novel, without being explicitly autobiographical, contains many motifs that resonate with her own life story. When published in the United States in 1946 it proves a massive success, selling 100,000 copies in the Penguin Books edition, a rare feat for a World War I novel appearing immediately after World War II. Other notable works are The Light on Ireland (1935) and her sketches of Irish life, Irish Gold (1939), written while she lodges with friends near Lough Derg, County Tipperary.

Hinkson’s visit to India in the late 1930s as a guest of the viceroy, which she recounts in Indian Harvest (1941), results in her appointment to the Ministry of Information in London (1939–45). She lectures on India in the United States during World War II, and also lectures to British troops and local audiences in Germany (1946–47), broadcasts on radio, and contributes to The Observer, The Spectator, New Statesman, The Manchester Guardian, and Time and Tide. Her novel Golden Rose (1944), written in London during The Blitz, romanticises the British colonial presence in India. Forthright in the expression of her numerous strongly held opinions, she argues ardently and controversially for women’s rights, animal welfare, and retention of Northern Ireland in the UK. Devout in her Catholicism, she is none the less critical of certain Catholic precepts.

Hinkson returns to Ireland in 1959 where she suffers poor health for twenty years until her death in Dublin on May 26, 1982.

(From: “Hinkson, Pamela” by Jessica March, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie)


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Death of Seumas O’Kelly, Journalist, Writer & Playwright

Seumas O’Kelly, journalist, fiction writer, and playwright, dies in Dublin on November 14, 1918, following a cerebral haemorrhage.

O’Kelly is born James Kelly in Mobhill, Loughrea, County Galway, youngest of seven (or possibly eight) children of Michael Kelly, corn merchant, and his wife, Catherine Fitzgerald. His date of birth is uncertain. Some commentators believe he is the James Kelly whose birth was registered on November 16, 1875, but relatives claim this was a sibling and namesake who died prematurely. His death certificate implies he was born in 1878, and family members maintained he was born in 1880.

Loughrea is at the centre of the bitterly-fought plan of campaign agitation on the Clanricarde estate from the late 1880s. Many tenants in the town and surrounding rural districts are evicted for non-payment of rent, and Lord Clanricarde resists reinstatement until the estate is purchased by special legislation shortly before World War I. According to one source, the O’Kellys are themselves evicted during the Plan of Campaign, though they seem to retain a degree of financial stability. A widespread perception that nationalist politicians had exploited the evicted tenants contributes to the relative strength of Parnellism in the area, and the early appearance of Sinn Féin. This background inspires such works as O’Kelly’s 1917 play, The Parnellite.

While growing up in Loughrea, O’Kelly is profoundly influenced by contact with older relatives and country folk from whom he learns some Irish and the folklore/storytelling tradition that shapes many of his stories. The example of his mother and friendship with the local Carmelite fathers, whom he serves as an altar boy, gives him a strong commitment to Catholicism. This coexists in his work with an Ibsenite-Parnellite insistence on individual defiance of conformity, and a gentle exaltation of the sensitive dreamer isolated from the life around him. The mixture is sometimes uneasy. His observations on domestic violence, the sexual exploitation of servant girls by hypocritically pious employers, and prejudice against children born outside marriage or raised in the workhouse are unobtrusive but biting. His play, The Bribe (1913), gives a devastating depiction of the social and economic pressures which induce a small-town shopkeeper and poor law guardian to accept a bribe to appoint an underqualified dispensary doctor, with disastrous results. The corrupt and snobbish doctor is called Power O’Connor, an unsubtle hit at the nationalist MP, T. P. O’Connor. This element of social observation distinguishes him from the more symbolist city-born Daniel Corkery, to whom he is often compared. Much of his writing is recognisably set in Loughrea.

O’Kelly begins working as a journalist on local papers, including the Midland Tribune, the Tuam News, and the Connacht Leader. He becomes editor of The Southern Star, based in Skibbereen, County Cork, in 1903, and is said to be the youngest newspaper editor in Ireland at the time. He moves to Naas, County Kildare, in 1906, as editor of the Leinster Leader. Here he lives in a house by the canal, which provides the inspiration for his linked series of short stories, The Golden Barque, along with his father, a nephew, and his brother Michael. Already a contributor to The United Irishman published by Arthur Griffith, and later its successor, Sinn Féin, he is active in the Naas Sinn Féin club and makes regular weekend visits to Dublin, where Griffith introduces him to Dublin literary circles. Here his closest friends are James Stephens, whose influence is visible in the more whimsical and fantastic elements of O’Kelly’s work, and Seumas O’Sullivan, who recalls O’Kelly as a man of remarkable gentleness and integrity.

O’Kelly’s journalistic career is accompanied by his development as a writer, publishing stories in a variety of outlets, including the Irish Rosary and the Irish Packet. From 1908 he has several plays produced by the Theatre of Ireland, a nationalist-oriented rival to the Abbey Theatre. Lustre (1913), written jointly with Casimir Markievicz, later becomes the basis for a Soviet film.

Around 1911, O’Kelly suffers a severe attack of rheumatic fever, which leaves him with a chronic heart condition and a strong sense of mortality. He continues to write extensively and with increasing skill. He becomes editor of Dublin’s The Saturday Evening Post in 1912 and moves to Dublin, where he lives in Drumcondra. At this time he is an occasional contributor to The Manchester Guardian, turning down a permanent job on that paper. He leaves the Post in 1915 because of continuing ill-health and is offered the editorship of The Sunday Freeman but has to retire after two weeks. He then returns to Naas. At this time his play Driftwood, commissioned by Annie Horniman, is produced in Manchester and London.

When O’Kelly’s brother is interned after the Easter Rising, he resumes the editorship of the Leinster Leader until his brother’s release at Christmas 1916. He also contributes topical articles to the Sunday Independent. His literary reputation continues to increase with a short story collection, Waysiders (1917), and his best-regarded full-length novel, The Lady of Deerpark (1917), a melancholy story about the last heiress of a declining Catholic gentry family. Another novel, Wet Clay (1922), is published posthumously and is the story of the tense relationship between a “returned Yank” and his small-farmer cousins, which shows deeply unresolved ambivalence about the nature and prospects of Irish rural society after the Land War.

When Griffith and many other Sinn Féin activists are arrested and imprisoned in May 1918, O’Kelly returns to Dublin to edit the Sinn Féin paper Nationality. During the days after the Armistice of November 11, 1918, a crowd of soldiers and women whose husbands are serving in the British Army attack the paper’s premises, which are also the headquarters of Sinn Féin. As a result of these attacks O’Kelly suffers a cerebral haemorrhage which leads to his death on November 14, 1918.

O’Kelly’s funeral turns into a major political demonstration and his status as a nationalist martyr leads to the posthumous publication of many of his works. These include the novella, The Weaver’s Grave (1920), generally regarded as his masterpiece. It has been reprinted regularly and translated into several languages. A 1961 Radio Éireann adaptation by Micheal Ó hAodha wins the Prix Italia. The twenty-fifth and fiftieth anniversaries of his death see various commemorations in his honour and a short-lived Seumas O’Kelly Society is founded in 1968. O’Kelly never marries but is said to have cherished a hopeless passion for the actress and nationalist activist, Máire Níc Shiubhlaigh, for whom he writes the play The Shuiler’s Child (1909).

(From: “O’Kelly, Seumas” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Thomas MacGreevy, Poet & Former Director of the National Gallery of Ireland

Thomas MacGreevy, a pivotal figure in the history of Irish literary modernism, is born on October 26, 1893, in Tarbert, County Kerry. A poet, he is also director of the National Gallery of Ireland from 1950 to 1963 and serves on the first Irish Arts Council (An Chomhairle Ealaíon).

MacGreevy is the son of a policeman and a primary school teacher. At age 16, he joins the British Civil Service as a boy clerk.

At the outbreak of World War I, MacGreevy is promoted to an intelligence post with the Admiralty. He enlists in 1916, and sees active service at the Ypres Salient and the Somme, being wounded twice. After the war, he studies at Trinity College, Dublin, in whose library his papers are now held. He then becomes involved in various library organisations, begins publishing articles in Irish periodicals, and writes his first poems.

In 1924, MacGreevy is first introduced to James Joyce in Paris. The following year he moves to London, where he meets T. S. Eliot and begins writing for The Criterion and other magazines. He also begins publishing his poetry.

In 1927, MacGreevy moves to Paris to teach English at the École normale supérieure. Here he meets Samuel Beckett and resumes his friendship with Joyce. His essay The Catholic Element in Work In Progress is published in 1929 in Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work In Progress, a book intended to help promote Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Along with Beckett, he is one of those who signs the Poetry is Vertical manifesto which appears in issue 21 of transition. In 1931, he produces critical studies of both Eliot and Richard Aldington.

In 1934, Poems is published in London and New York City. The work shows that MacGreevy has absorbed the lessons of Imagism and of The Waste Land, but also demonstrates that he has brought something of his own to these influences. The book is admired by Wallace Stevens and the two poets become regular correspondents.

Unfortunately, although MacGreevy continues to write poetry, this is the only collection published in his lifetime. Since his death there have been two Collected Poems issued, one in 1971 and an edited edition collecting his published and unpublished poetry published twenty years later.

In 1929 MacGreevy begins working at Formes, a journal of the fine arts. He also publishes a translation of Paul Valéry‘s Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci as Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci. In the mid-1930s, he moves back to London and earns his living lecturing at the National Gallery there.

From 1938 to 1940 MacGreevy is the chief art critic for The Studio. He publishes several books on art and artists, including Jack B. Yeats: An Appreciation and an Interpretation and Pictures in the Irish National Gallery (both 1945), and Nicolas Poussin (1960).

MacGreevy is a lifelong Roman Catholic. His faith informs both his poetry and his professional life. On returning to Dublin during World War II, he writes for both the Father Mathew Record and the Capuchin Annual and joins the editorial board of the latter.

MacGreevy is director of the National Gallery of Ireland from 1950–63. Although to many he seems a surprising choice, his latent talents as an administrator are brought to the fore. He is instrumental in bringing to the gallery such ideas as a lecture series and in-house restoration, which are commonplace abroad. It is through his persistent requests to the government that an extension to the gallery is approved. Unfortunately, the demands of the position take its toll. He has two heart attacks in 1956 and 1957 and ill health forces him to retire in 1963.

During his last years MacGreevy begins writing poetry again. He also begins his memoirs, which he never completes. He is admitted to the Portobello Nursing Home in Dublin for what is to be a minor operation in March 1967. He dies from heart failure on Saint Patrick’s Day eve, March 16, 1967.


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Death of John McCormack, Renowned Irish Tenor

Papal Count John Francis McCormack, KSG, KSS, KHS, Irish tenor celebrated for his performances of the operatic and popular song repertoires, and renowned for his diction and breath control, dies in Booterstown, Dublin, on September 16, 1945.

McCormack is born on June 14, 1884, in Athlone, County Westmeath, the second son and fifth of the 11 children of Andrew McCormack and his wife Hannah Watson. His parents are both from Galashiels, Scotland, and work at the Athlone Woolen Mills, where his father is a foreman. He is baptised in St. Mary’s Church, Athlone, on June 23, 1884.

McCormack receives his early education from the Marist Brothers in Athlone and later attends Summerhill College, Sligo. He sings in the choir of the old St. Peter’s Church in Athlone under his choirmaster Michael Kilkelly. When the family moves to Dublin, he sings in the choir of St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral where he is discovered by Vincent O’Brien. In 1903 he wins the coveted gold medal of the Dublin Feis Ceoil. He marries Lily Foley in 1906 and they have two children, Cyril and Gwen.

In March 1904, McCormack becomes associated with James Joyce, who at the time has singing ambitions himself. He persuades Joyce to enter the Feis Ceoil that year, where the not yet famous writer is awarded the Bronze Medal.

Fundraising activities on his behalf enable McCormack to travel to Italy in 1905 to receive voice training by Vincenzo Sabatini, father of the novelist Rafael Sabatini, in Milan. Sabatini finds McCormack’s voice naturally tuned and concentrates on perfecting his breath control, an element that becomes part of the basis of his renown as a vocalist.

In 1906, McCormack makes his operatic début at the Teatro Chiabrera, Savona. The next year, he begins his first important operatic performance at Covent Garden in Pietro Mascagni‘s Cavalleria rusticana, becoming the theatre’s youngest principal tenor. In 1909, he begins his career in the United States.

In February 1911, McCormack plays Lieutenant Paul Merrill in the world premiere of Victor Herbert‘s opera Natoma with Mary Garden in the title role. Later that year, he tours Australia after Dame Nellie Melba engages him, then at the height of his operatic career, aged 27, as a star tenor for the Melba Grand Opera Season. He returns for concert tours in subsequent years.

By 1912, McCormack is beginning to become involved increasingly with concert performances, where his voice quality and charisma ensures that he becomes the most celebrated lyric tenor of his time. He does not, however, retire from the operatic stage until after his performance of 1923 in Monte Carlo, although by then the top notes of his voice have contracted. Famous for his extraordinary breath control, he can sing 64 notes on one breath in Mozart‘s “Il mio tesoro” from Don Giovanni, and his Handelian singing is just as impressive in this regard.

McCormack makes hundreds of recordings, his best-known and most commercially successful series of records being those for the Victor Talking Machine Company during the 1910s and 1920s. He is Victor’s most popular Red Seal recording artist after tenor Enrico Caruso. In the 1920s, he sings regularly on radio and later appears in two sound films, Song o’ My Heart (1930), playing an Irish tenor, and as himself appearing in a party scene in Wings of the Morning (1937), the first British three-strip Technicolor feature.

McCormack is one of the first artists to record the popular ballad “I Hear You Calling Me” written in 1908 by Harold Harford and Charles Marshall. He records it twice for Odeon Records starting in 1908 and a further four times for Victor between 1910 and 1927, becoming his best seller. He is the first artist to record the famous World War I song “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” in 1914. He also records a best-selling version of another popular World War I tune, “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” in 1917. He also sings songs expressive of Irish nationalism and endorses the Irish Nationalist estrangement from the United Kingdom. He is associated particularly with the songs of Thomas Moore, notably “The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls,” “The Minstrel Boy,” “Believe Me If All (Those Endearing Young Charms),” and “The Last Rose of Summer.” Between 1914 and 1922, he records almost two dozen songs with violin accompaniment provided by Fritz Kreisler, with whom he also tours. He records songs of Hugo Wolf for the Hugo Wolf Society in German. In 1918, he records the song “Calling Me Home to You.”

In 1917, McCormack becomes a naturalised citizen of the United States. In June 1918, he donates $11,458 toward the U.S. World War I effort. By then, his career is a huge financial success, earning millions in his lifetime from record sales and appearances.

By 1920, Edwin Schneider has become McCormack’s accompanist and the two are “inseparable.” When Schneider retires, Gerald Moore takes over as accompanist from 1939 to 1943.

In 1927, McCormack moves into Moore Abbey, Monasterevin, County Kildare, and adopts a very opulent lifestyle by Irish standards. He also owns apartments in London and New York. He hopes that one of his racehorses, such as Golden Lullaby, would win The Derby, but this never occurs.

McCormack also purchases Runyon Canyon in Hollywood in 1930 from Carman Runyon. He sees and likes the estate while there filming Song o’ My Heart (1930), an early all-talking, all-singing picture. He uses his salary for this movie to purchase the estate and builds a mansion he calls ‘San Patrizio,’ after Saint Patrick. He and his wife live in the mansion until they return to England in 1938.

McCormack tours often, and in his absence, the mansion is often let to celebrities such as Janet Gaynor and Charles Boyer. The McCormacks make many friends in Hollywood, among them Errol Flynn, Will Rogers, John Barrymore, Basil Rathbone, Ronald Colman, Charles E. Toberman and the Dohenys. After his farewell tour of America in 1937, the McCormacks deed the estate back to Carman Runyon expecting to return to the estate at a later date. World War II intervenes and he does not return.

McCormack originally ends his career at the Royal Albert Hall in London, during 1938. However, one year after that farewell concert, he is back singing for the Red Cross and in support of the war effort. He gives concerts, tours, broadcasts and records in this capacity until 1943 when poor health finally forces him to retire permanently.

Ill with emphysema, McCormack purchases a house near the sea, “Glena,” Booterstown, Dublin. After years of increasingly poor health, and a series of infectious illnesses, including influenza and pneumonia, he dies at his home in Booterstown on September 16, 1945. He is buried in Deans Grange Cemetery, St. Patrick’s section, plot reference E/120.