Tag Archives: Charles Stewart Parnell

‘Special relationship’ or the fading of the green?

This month marks the 100th anniversary of official diplomatic relations between the United States and Ireland. In presenting his credentials to US President Calvin Coolidge, Irish professor Timothy A. Smiddy became not only the first minister plenipotentiary appointed by the Irish Free State, but also the first representative from any member of the British Commonwealth.

Smiddy was first appointed as the Free State’s minister in the US in March 1922, but he had to combat both official disinterest and untrustworthiness among his own staff. US officials noted the Free State had the same dominion status as Canada and therefore believed that Irish matters should be addressed through the British embassy until told otherwise, RTÉ explains.

Irish ambassador Timothy Smiddy (left) with US Assistant Secretary of State J.B. Wright at the State Department on October 7, 1924. Library of Congress

To mark the centenary of bilateral relations, Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris last week arrived in Washington to meet with US President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., a proud Irish American Catholic. The two leaders met at the White House, though a planned Rose Garden ceremony was postponed due to Hurricane Milton in Florida. In an official statement of fewer than 100 words, Biden “reflected on the deep cultural, people-to-people and economic ties between the two countries, and expressed confidence that the next 100 years will see even deeper cooperation.”

Deeper? I doubt it.

“As Biden’s presidency ends, it also represents the close of an era for a particular type of Irish-American political narrative and attitude given demographic, cultural and generational changes,” historian Diarmaid Ferriter wrote in the Irish Times. “…the days of an American president touching the pulses of Irish ancestral memory are over. For reasons of tradition, Irish visits to the White House may continue in some form, but they are unlikely to carry the same emotional heft or diplomatic significance of yesteryear.”

A Times‘ editorial made a similar point:

The last big wave of emigration from Ireland to the US was over 30 years ago. Moreover, the US is becoming much more diverse and Irish America is becoming much less coherent and influential. … The symbolic handing over of the shamrock may continue each March, but there is work to be done in maintaining Ireland’s real influence. The traditional calling card may not have the same power in future.

These sentiments reprise what was written during Biden’s April 2023 visit to the Republic and Northern Ireland, where he marked the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. Since then Biden dropped his re-election bid, ending Ireland’s chance to keep a close friend in the White House for another four years. Neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris will have the same personal and political interests in Ireland. Trump could be hostile to Ireland because of its stance on Palestine, though moderated by the self-interest of his golf property in Clare.

Harris (Simon, not Kamala) said the 1998 peace process is the “single most important achievement” of Ireland’s relationship with the US. “Bipartisan support has come from all levels of government and from communities in each and every one of the 50 states, and today I say thank you for that to our friends across the US,” he said at Georgetown University.

The Embassy of Ireland, USA, in Washington, D.C. Irish and EU flags at right, Ukrainian flag on balcony.

The New York Times noted the centenary of US-Irish bilateral relations as a secondary point in a story focused on how the George J. Mitchell scholarship program in Ireland and Northern Ireland might have to be discontinued after 25 years due inadequate funding.  Mitchell was the US envoy who guided the Good Friday accords. Congress pulled funding for the scholarship program in 2014 during a round of budget cuts, and Northern Ireland did the same in 2015. The Irish government remains committed to matching funds raised by the U.S.-Ireland Alliance from philanthropic sources, according to the Times.

See Irish Envoy Received By The President on the front page of the October 18, 1924, issue of the The Gaelic American.

The Washington Post, like most US media outlets, ignored the diplomatic centenary except to mention the Rose Garden ceremony was being cancelled because of the hurricane. U.S. Reps. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and Richard E. Neal (D-Mass) issued a joint statement as co-chairs of the Congressional Friends of Ireland Caucus. Their resolution to recognize the centenary and the “mutually beneficial economic relationship” has languished without passage since July, more a reflection on the dysfunction of the US Congress than the state of US-Irish relations.

Economic factors are likely to be the main driver of the US-Irish relationship going forward. Ireland’s well-educated, English-speaking workforce and strategic location as the geographic fulcrum between the US East Coast and European continent are strong advantages. Economics will influence the politics that determine any US involvement in a potential future referendum on whether to reunify the island of Ireland.

The term “special relationship” is typically applied to the US and the UK. But it seems just as appropriate for the US and Ireland over the long century measured from Charles Stewart Parnell’s 1880 tour. The two countries are likely to remain friendly, but the special, sentimental US-Irish relationship appears to be fading.

James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ at 100

UPDATE:

ORIGINAL POST:

James Joyce’s Ulysses was published in Paris on Feb. 2, 1922. A new book by Dan Mulhall, Ireland’s ambassador to the United States , is among numerous international commemorations of the centenary. The 324-page Ulysses: A Reader’s Odyssey is “a turning of the sod rather than a full excavation” of Joyce’s masterpiece, the ambassador said during a Jan. 31 Irish Network-D.C. virtual event. “You could dig forever and ever and never get to the bottom of it. …

… if there is a bottom,” he later qualified.

James Joyce

Ulysses famously chronicles one day–June 16, 1904–in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom. Mulhall described the date as “the cusp of Irish history,” roughly halfway between the 1891 downfall and death of Irish parliamentary leader Charles Stewart Parnell, and the revolutionary period of the 1916 Easter Rising. A year after Ulysses was published, W. B Yeats called this period the “long gestation” of a “disillusioned and embittered Ireland.”[1]Irish poet William Butler Yeats. “The Nobel Prize in Literature 1923“.

Parts of Ulysses were serialized from 1918 to 1920 in The Little Review, an American literary journal. This resulted in a 1921 obscenity trial, which effectively banned the book in the United States for another decade. Joyce continued to revise the manuscript to within two days of publication, which happened to be his 40th birthday.

The publisher was Sylvia Beach, an American who had just opened Shakespeare and Company, an English-language bookshop in Paris. The print run of 1,000 included 750 numbered editions, some copies of which today sell for more than $70,000.

Press coverage and reviews of the Paris edition of Ulysses appeared in America by spring 1922. Dr. Joseph Collins, a prominent New York neurologist and author, reviewed the book for The New York Times under the headline “James Joyce’s Amazing Chronicle.” His opening sentence:

A few intuitive, sensitive visionaries may understand and comprehend ‘Ulysses,’ James Joyce’s new and mammoth volume, without going through a course of training or instruction, but the average intelligent reader will glean little or nothing from it — even from careful perusal, one might properly say study, of it — save bewilderment and a sense of disgust.

This was not an indictment, the Times reported 94 years later. Dr. Collins was simply acknowledging that the book was tough going. He was unequivocal when he got to his opinion of the work: “‘Ulysses’ is the most important contribution that has been made to fictional literature in the twentieth century.”

I began reading the book years ago but was unable to finish. I felt chastened by Mulhall’s comment: “You have to be willing to put in the effort. It’s like learning a difficult language, the more you put in the more get out.” My high school French teacher would surely agree.

As noted by his publisher, Mulhall has written and lectured around the world about Irish literature in general and Joyce in particular. He “has worked tirelessly throughout his career to further the impact and reach of Irish writing.”

The Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland and Centre Culturel Irlandais are also presenting a celebration across Ireland and Europe through June. Ulysses Journey 2022 includes the simultaneous world premieres of six newly commissioned music and film works. And come June 16,  “Bloomsday” events worldwide will again celebrate the book and Irish culture.

References

References
↑1 Irish poet William Butler Yeats. “The Nobel Prize in Literature 1923“.

Guest post: Kennedy and Parnell, lost leaders

I am pleased to welcome back Dublin-based historian Felix M. Larkin, who has contributed an essay – entitled “Judging Kennedy” – to a new volume From whence I came: The Kennedy Legacy, Ireland and America, edited by Brian Murphy and Donnacha Ó Beacháin (Irish Academic Press). The 15 essays in the collection had their origin in papers given at the Kennedy Summer School, held annually in New Ross, Co. Wexford, since 2012 (though not in 2020, because of the pandemic). New Ross is the small port from whence John F. Kennedy’s great-grandfather left Ireland. The title of the volume is taken from Kennedy’s speech in nearby Wexford town during his June 1963 visit to Ireland. An adaptation of part of Larkin’s chapter follows below.

***

Charles Stewart Parnell

In reading, thinking and writing about Kennedy over many years, I have often been struck by the parallel between his death and that of the great nineteenth-century Irish constitutional nationalist leader, Charles Stewart Parnell. Though Parnell was not the victim of an assassin, he was hounded to his death by his enemies and the shadow that his death cast – memorably captured in the writings of James Joyce and W.B. Yeats – had an effect similar to that of Kennedy’s, albeit on a narrower canvas. Parnell and Kennedy have thus become part of the mythologies, as well as part of the history, of their respective countries. Parnell’s idealization by Joyce and Yeats is the Irish equivalent of the characterization of the Kennedy presidency as “Camelot on the Potomac”.

There are many other correspondences in the lives of these two remarkable men: 

  • both were young leaders – Parnell was 45 when he died, Kennedy was 46; 
  • whereas Kennedy had Irish ancestors, Parnell had an American mother;
  • Kennedy was a Catholic leader in a predominantly Protestant country, while Parnell was a Protestant leader in a predominantly Catholic country;
  • Parnell made a triumphant visit to the US in 1880, and Kennedy came to Ireland in June 1963; and
  • the sense of possibility in Kennedy’s vision of the “New Frontier” chimes with Parnell’s assertion that “no man has the right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation”.[1]
       

John F. Kennedy

Parnell and Kennedy are good examples of the “lost leader” syndrome, great men cut down in their prime whose reputations are more enduring than those of their contemporaries who lived on to make a more substantial contribution to their country’s fortunes. As Stephen Collins, the Irish Times journalist, has suggested, lost leaders are remembered with such fascination and admiration precisely because they “have not had to govern for long, if at all, and so don’t get sucked into the messy compromises that are the inevitable fate of long-serving politicians entrusted with the thankless task of government”.[2]

Surprisingly, there is some evidence that Parnell may have influenced Kennedy’s style and mode of operation as a political leader. Robert Dallek records that Kennedy “was conversant with Irish leader Charles [Stewart] Parnell’s counsel: Get the advice of everybody whose advice is worth having – they are very few – and then do what you think best yourself”.[3] Moreover, Kennedy referred to Parnell in his speech to the Irish parliament during his visit to Ireland in 1963. He first mentioned the fact that he had in his office – the Oval Office – the sword of Commodore John Barry, the founder of the American navy, who was born in County Wexford. He then went on to note: 

Yesterday [27 June 1963] was the 117th anniversary of the birth of Charles Stewart Parnell, whose grandfather fought under Barry and whose mother was born in America, and who, at the age of 34, was invited to address the American Congress on the cause of Irish freedom. “I have seen since I have been in this country”, he said, “so many tokens of the good wishes of the American people towards Ireland”. And today, 83 years later, I can say to you that I have seen in this country so many tokens of good wishes of the Irish people towards America.[4] 

Kennedy’s grave, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va.

Parnell’s grandfather and namesake was Admiral Charles Stewart, commander of the USS Constitution during the War of 1812, and Kennedy had on his desk in the Oval Office two bookends with brass replicas of cannons on the USS Constitution and on the walls flanking the fireplace in the office were pictures of the famous naval engagement between the Constitution and the British frigate Guerriere. A model of the Constitution was displayed on the mantelpiece above the fireplace, and when Kennedy met Krushchev in Vienna in June 1961, he presented the Soviet leader with another model of the ship – perhaps as a gentle reminder of the power of the U.S. Navy. 

Parnell’s grave, Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

The USS Constitution (nicknamed ‘Old Ironsides’) is now a tourist attraction in Boston Harbor, in the city that was Kennedy’s political base from 1946 when he was first elected to the US House of Representatives. Admiral Charles Stewart’s magnificent desk is among the exhibits in Avondale House, the ancestral home of the Parnells in county Wicklow.

See Larkin’s “The Slow Death of the Freeman’s Journal”, October 2019, and other essays from our guest contributors. Consider offering a proposal through the provided form, or message me at @markaholan. 

[1]For Parnell’s speech in which these lines occur, see Pauric Travers, ‘The march of the nation: Parnell’s ne plus ultra speech’ in Pauric Travers and Donal McCartney (eds), Parnell reconsidered (Dublin: UCD Press, 2013), pp. 179-96.

[2]Stephen Collins, ‘Romantic Ireland lives on in our fascination with the leaders who left us too young’, Irish Times, 3 August 2013.

[3]Robert Dallek, Camelot’s court: inside the Kennedy White House (New York: HarperCollins, 2013), p. 35. Parnell’s words here are as recorded in William O’Brien, An olive branch in Ireland and its history (London: Macmillan, 1910), p. 47. They were quoted by Conor Cruise O’Brien in his Parnell and his party (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 145, n. 1.

[4] Speech to the joint session of Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann, 28 June 1963.

When K. O’Shea’s death recalled C.S. Parnell’s life

(This is the first of two consecutive posts about Charles Stewart Parnell. Next, a guest post from a new Irish Academic Press collection. MH)

The deaths of former newsmakers, often years after they’ve faded from public attention, usually prompt reflections of their time in the spotlight and sometimes help contextualize contemporary issues. That’s what happened with the Feb. 5, 1921, passing of the former Katherine Wood, who first became Mrs. William O’Shea, then Mrs. Charles Stewart Parnell. She died a week after reaching age 76, having outlived her famous second husband by 30 years, her first by 16 years.

Mrs. O’Shea/Parnell

The adultery between Mrs. O’Shea and Parnell was exposed by the first husband’s 1889 divorce filing. The scandal isolated Parnell as leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party and stopped momentum toward Irish domestic autonomy, called home rule, which he had been building for years. The Irish party split over whether or not to support Parnell. Other home rule allies, including liberal British politicians and the Catholic Church hierarchy, quickly distanced themselves from the effort.

Mrs. Parnell’s death evoked “deplorably sad” memories for contemporaries of the “Parnell movement”, but little more than “passing attention from the younger generation of Irishmen,” the Freeman’s Journal wrote in February 1921.[1]“Death of Mrs. Parnell”, Freeman’s Journal, Feb. 7, 1921. The paper continued:

No more tragic episode is contained in the annals of human history than the dramatic fall of Ireland’s chief. He–as the uncrowned king–was leading his people triumphantly in demolishing the trenches of feudalism and ascendancy and heading straight for the goal of national freedom, when the lamentable intrigue with the lady whose death is just announced dashed the hopes of the Irish nation to the ground.

The Irish Independent cattily noted that “Mrs. Parnell was not Irish … she was of purely English descent, and her supposed Irish qualities had no more foundation than might be derived from her first marriage”[2]“Death of Mrs. Parnell, Widow of Irish Leader”, Irish Independent, Feb. 7, 1921., in 1867, to O’Shea, a Dublin-born captain in the British Army. Parnell was born in County Wicklow to an Anglo-Irish father and American mother. Both men were parliamentary colleagues during most of the 1880s.

Great split

Mr. Parnell

The divorce episode “led to the ruin of the Irish leader and to a great split in the Irish movement which completely demoralized it and dislocated Irish politics for many years,” wrote John Devoy, editor of The Gaelic American and a veteran of the Irish struggle from before the Parnell period. In a February 1921 analysis,[3]”The Tragic End of Charles Stewart Parnell“, The Gaelic American, Feb. 19, 1921. Devoy insisted there were “lessons for the present generation.”

He continued:

The really essential factor in the Irish Question is a United Irish Race. That was true in Parnell’s day and it is true now. A United Irish Race is treated with contempt and the English are encouraged to start secret intrigues and public propaganda to widen the breach. That was what occurred in the Parnell Split, and the same thing is going on today. And [Prime Minister] Lloyd George is doing it very skillfully. Knowing the Irish are divided, he is maneuvering to placate groups and sections, so as to detach them from the “extremists,” who really represented the whole Race a few months ago and represent its real spirit today. Had the unity of six months ago remained, he would be faced by the strength, resources and combined ability of the Race throughout the world and his pettifogging tactics would now be useless. Now the most important part of his propaganda–that aimed at the destruction of the Irish leaders in America–is carried on by Irishmen and the cost is defrayed by money collected for the Irish Republic.

The last phrase appears aimed at supporters of Sinn Féin leader Éamon de Valera, who returned to Ireland in December 1920 after an 18-month tour of America seeking U.S. political recognition and money for Irish independence. The establishment, Devoy-allied Friends of Irish Freedom (FOIF) and de Valera argued over the best way to win backing for Ireland from U.S. political parties at the summer 1920 presidential nominating conventions. Their feuding backfired, with no pledge from either the Republicans or Democrats. Before he sailed home, de Valera and his loyalists also split from FOIF and created the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic (AARIR) to control money and the Irish narrative in America. 

Devoy went on:

When Irishmen want a split–and the fit takes them periodically–any old reason is good enough for a pretext. In Parnell’s time the pretext was zeal for morality, but the real reason was that the English wanted to get rid of the only Irishman who was capable of beating them … so they would have an easier job in dealing with lesser men … Today the pretext is zeal for the Irish Republic, and the method is to get rid of the real Republicans in America and put the movement in the hands of men who don’t care a thraneen for the Irish Republic–or the American Republic.

‘Moral delinquencies’

Devoy rehashed 30-year-old speculation of whether Mrs. O’Shea seduced Parnell of her own volition, or was “set on him” by the English. Either way, the Irish movement was ruined. The couple married in June 1891, but Parnell died that October, age 45. 

The widow became notorious as Kitty O’Shea, the forename variation also a slang term for a prostitute. She published a tell-all memoir in 1914 “in which she exposed to the vulgar world all the secrets, weaknesses and idiosyncrasies of the great statesman she attracted, excluded those elements of sympathy that naturally go forth to a woman who, herself, was the victim of her own passion and thereby suffered heavily for her moral delinquencies,” the Freeman’s Journal noted.

The New York Herald reported the book “caused a brief sensation until the outbreak of the war eclipsed it in public attention.”[4]“Widow of Parnell Dies in England”, New York Herald, Feb. 6, 1921. A century later, Parnell remains familiar in Ireland, if obscure elsewhere; while the “purely English” Kitty O’Shea survives as the name of countless Irish pubs around the world.

See my American Reporting of Irish Independence series. 

References

References
↑1 “Death of Mrs. Parnell”, Freeman’s Journal, Feb. 7, 1921.
↑2 “Death of Mrs. Parnell, Widow of Irish Leader”, Irish Independent, Feb. 7, 1921.
↑3 ”The Tragic End of Charles Stewart Parnell“, The Gaelic American, Feb. 19, 1921.
↑4 “Widow of Parnell Dies in England”, New York Herald, Feb. 6, 1921.

August 1920 appeals for James Larkin in U.S. prison

From New York Daily News, May 4, 1920.

Numerous Irish politicians, writers, and other public figures espoused the rights of their homeland during late 19th century and early 20th century visits the United States. They included Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Davitt in the 1880s; William Butler Yeats in 1903/4, 1911, 1914, and 1920; and Éamon de Valera’s 18-month tour from June 1919 to December 1920.

Leftist labor activist James Larkin is also among this cohort, but his American experience was more troubled than the others. He arrived shortly after the 1913/14 Dublin strikes and became involved with the Socialist Party of America, Industrial Workers of the World, and eventually the Communist Party of America. His association with the latter group in the aftermath of World War I, “with America gripped by major strikes and a ‘red scare’ ” resulted in his November 1919 arrest for “criminal anarchy.”1

Larkin was convicted in April 1920 and sentenced to five to 10 years in prison. He was sent to New York State’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a notorious maximum security prison opened nearly 100 years earlier. Advocacy for Larkin’s release and return to Ireland gathered pace by August 1920:

  • The Irish Labor Party and Trade Union Congress meeting in Cork city passed a resolution calling Larkin’s imprisonment a “gross outrage of every principal of justice, a violation of individual liberty, and the right of freedom of opinion and freedom of speech, a brutal and criminal act of class hatred, inspired by ruthless and unscrupulous capitalism, an attack upon the rights of the working class as much in Ireland as in America.”2
  • The Associated Press reported that several of the town and county councils elected in June “have taken up the matter and are busy passing resolutions about it.”3
  • In America, the James Larkin Defense Fund raised money and circulated an appeal on his behalf that was published in friendly U.S. newspapers.4 It said in part:

We feel that he is the victim of as foul a conspiracy as was ever hatched against a member of our race by the hidden hand of the British government. It is your fight as well as ours. Today it is Larkin who lies in jail on a trumped up charge of ‘criminal anarchy.’ Tomorrow it may be de Valera. Irishmen and Irishwomen and lovers of human freedom, your attitude toward Larkin in this critical hour will be the acid test of your professed devotion to the Gael. Larkin today is in a felon’s cell, but remember in the Irish history it was no disgrace to be a felon. Larkin is in jail because he was fighting your battle.

Actor Charles Chaplin and Irish activist Constance Georgine (Countess) Markievicz, who had participated in the 1913 lockout, visited Larkin in prison. It took three years, however, until he was pardoned and deported by newly-elected New York Gov. Al Smith, who later became the first Irish Catholic presidential nominee of a major U.S. political party. Larkin returned to Ireland in April 1923 and renewed his trade union activities.

Larkin also was elected three times to Dáil Éireann. When he died in 1947, Irish newspapers dismissed his U.S. imprisonment as simply “because of his pacifist and labor activities.”5. His burial at Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery drew much attention, and he has been immortalized in songs, poems, and a 1979 statue on O’Connell Street.

No disgrace for the former felon.

Larkin statue. Image from Stair na hÉireann.

Ruth Russell in Revolutionary Ireland: Beginnings

Chicago journalist Ruth Russell reported from revolutionary Ireland in 1919, followed by a year of activism for its independence. This five-part monograph is part of my American Reporting of Irish Independence series. © 2022. This post was updated in October 2022 to add the “Easter Rising” section about Russell’s efforts to travel to Ireland in 1916, and other minor edits.  

***

On Jan. 27, 1919, a Chicago Daily News editor urged the federal government to expedite a passport for one of his reporters, Ruth Russell. “Because of the news conditions in Ireland at the present time, it is hoped that she may leave as soon as possible,” News Editor Henry J. Smith wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing.[1]Henry J. Smith to Robert Lansing, Jan. 27, 1919, in Ruth Russell’s passport application. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; Roll #: 699; Volume #: Roll 0699 – … Continue reading

Six days earlier, the separatist Sinn Féin party declared independence from Britain and established a breakaway government in Dublin, a move based on its near sweep of Irish parliamentary seats in the United Kingdom’s first election after the Great War. In County Tipperary, 125 miles southwest of the Irish capital, two policemen were killed in an ambush, the first shots of Ireland’s latest uprising against centuries of British rule. 

Russell’s 1919 passport photo.

Washington officials approved Russell’s passport and Chicago editors assigned her to answer this question: “What’s the matter with Ireland?” Russell recalled later, “This was the last injunction a fellow journalist, propagandized into testy impatience with Ireland, gave me before I sailed for that bit of Europe which lies closest to America.”[2]Ruth Russell, What’s the matter with Ireland? (New York: Devin-Adain, 1920), 13. Russell does not name the “fellow journalist.”

Nearly a year to the day after Smith’s State Department outreach, another letter was written on Russell’s behalf. This time the author was Éamon de Valera, president of the provisional Irish republic. Russell interviewed him in March 1919, shortly after her arrival in Dublin. 

“I congratulate you on the rapidity with which you succeeded in understanding Irish conditions and grasped the Irish viewpoint,” de Valera wrote in the Jan. 29, 1920, letter published as front matter in Russell’s new book, What’s the matter with Ireland?, based on her 1919 reporting. “I hope we shall have more impartial investigators, such as you, who will take the trouble to see things for themselves first hand, and who will not be imposed upon by half-truths.”[3]Ibid., 9–10.

Russell’s reporting from Ireland at times was insightful and compassionate, especially her sketches of women, children, and workers living in the shadows of the revolution. It is debatable whether she remained an impartial investigator. Her experiences in Ireland transformed her into a pro-Irish activist. She left the Daily News; joined at least one Washington, D.C., protest against British rule in Ireland; and testified before an American commission exploring conditions in Ireland. Russell’s 1919 reporting was soon dated by rapidly evolving events in Ireland, and her activism was fleeting. By 1921, she withdrew from journalism and public attention. 

BEGINNINGS 

Ruth Marie Russell was born March 24, 1889, in Chicago, the eighth child of Martin J. Russell, a 43-year-old Chicago Times editorial writer, and 39-year-old Cecilia [nee Walsh]. Both parents were the offspring of pre-Great Famine Irish immigrants. The couple lived in Hyde Park, just a few blocks from St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church, where their newborn was baptized April 21, 1889.[4]Hyde Park, Illinois, City Directory, 1889, accessed via Ancestry.com, U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995; 1900 U.S. Federal Census: Chicago Ward 32, Cook, Illinois, 12; Enumeration District: 1035; … Continue reading A live-in cook and a household “servant” tended the family, which also included Russell’s paternal grandmother, 76-year-old Jane Lewis [nee Mulligan].[5]1900 U.S. Federal Census, and Note 6.

“Among my earliest recollections are long twilight hour discussions with my grandmother about early Chicago–she came here in 1835,” Russell recalled in a 1931 newspaper interview to promote her novel, Lake Front.[6]“Chicago’s First One Hundred Years Penned and Illustrated by Ruth Russell and Ruth Kellogg,” Hyde Park Herald , Sept. 18, 1931.

In the book, about Chicago’s first 100 years, the 42-year-old Russell described her hometown in the 1890s of her youth: “It was an ugly city. Its lines were hard and sharp. Its color, smoke. Its air, gritty. Its noises, strident. Its smell, salt with the blood of slaughterhouses. Its people, pale and hurried.”[7]Ruth Russell, Lake Front (Thomas S. Rockwell: Chicago, 1931), 280.

Postcard image of the Irish Village.

Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, developed near Russell’s Hyde Park neighborhood, included an Irish Village with a recreation of the Blarney Castle and white-washed, thatched-roof cottages. An organizer of the exhibit wrote that it would be a great mistake “if any who boast of Irish blood in their veins do not resort thither with their children in order to call to mind the stories told by parents of the scenes of their childhood, or muse over bygone days which they themselves can recall in the dear old home.”[8]Ishbel Maria Hamilton-Gordon (“Lady Aberdeen”), “Ireland at the World’s Fair,” North American Review, July 1893, 20.

During this period, Chicago’s 16 percent Irish-born population[9]Michael F. Funchion, Chicago Irish Nationalists (Arno Press: New York, 1976) 9, citing 1890 U.S. Census. read newspaper stories about the murder of Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin, a member of the city’s Irish nationalist underground, and the divorce case downfall of Charles Stewart Parnell, Ireland’s “uncrowned king.” Irish immigrant Margaret F. Sullivan, who worked with Russell’s father at the Chicago Herald, wrote a popular book about the agrarian agitation in her native country.[10]Sullivan and Russell’s father from “Irish in Chicago” Illinois Catholic Historical Review, July 1920. 152. Margaret Sullivan, Ireland of to-day: the causes and aims of Irish agitation (J.C. … Continue reading

In June 1900, when Russell was 11, her popular father died of kidney disease at age 54. “All the newspaper reading public recognized Mr. Russell as an editorial writer of learning, caliber, force, and judgement,” the Chicago Tribune quoted one of his friends.[11]“Martin J. Russell Dead,” Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1900. At St. Thomas the Apostle Church, the Rev. Daniel Riordan described the deceased as “a conspicuous example of scrupulous integrity.”[12]Ibid. “Burial of Martin J. Russell”, June 28, 1900.

Russell attended nearby St. Xavier Academy, a Catholic girls school. Upon graduation in 1906, she enrolled at Chicago Normal College and for the next two years prepared for a teaching career.[13]Ruth Russell’s Chicago Public Schools (CPS) employment record obtained via author’s Freedom of Information Act request, received March 20, 2019. CPS redacted large portions of the record. … Continue reading In September 1909, Russell matriculated into the University of Chicago, where she was joined by her younger sister, Cecilia, in the activities of the Esoteric, a woman’s social club, and the Brownson Club, a campus Catholic group.[14]Cap & Gown, University of Chicago yearbook, Vol. XVII, 1912, p. 79 and 132. Ruth graduated in 1912 with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree.[15]Ruth Russell’s University of Chicago transcript obtained from Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. Received April 10, 2019.

Her activities over the next four years are less clear. In June 1914 Russell sailed to France to study in Grenoble, but hurried home with the outbreak of the Great War.[16]“Certificate of Registration of American Citizen” letter dated Sept. 1, 1914, shows Russell left Chicago on June 28, 1914, and arrived at Grenoble, France, on July 16, 1914. “Ellis Island and … Continue reading On her return, Russell might have helped manage the St. Mary’s Campfire Girls program on Chicago’s south side.[17]Deborah Ann Skok, “Catholic Ladies Bountiful: Chicago’s Catholic Settlement Houses and Day Nurseries, 1892–1930, Vol. 1,” University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, August 2001, 441. In … Continue reading She would soon become fascinated by events in Ireland

EASTER RISING

In April 1916 Irish separatists seized government buildings in Dublin in a bold strike for independence. The British military quickly crushed the insurrection, which became known as the Easter Rising, and executed the rebel leaders. These events moved the Irish in America, where Catholic churches and other groups organized efforts to provide relief to the people of Dublin. Russell gravitated to the effort.

In November, the U.S. State Department notified the British government of Russell’s desire to visit Ireland to help distribute relief. The American government said it did so “without expressing any opinion as to her qualification for such a mission.”[18]Foreign Office cable, Nov. 1, 1916. Irish Government. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926 (CO 904, Boxes 30-35, 37-39, 45-47 And 180-189). Public Records Office, … Continue reading The British Foreign Office observed internally that such individuals, “even when recommended by trustworthy organizations, have been unable to avoid reference to political controversaries on their return to the United States of a nature inflame public opinion.”[19]Ibid.

Within a week Britain’s Consul General in Chicago telegrammed the Foreign Office to report that Russell’s real intention was to act as a correspondent for The New World, weekly organ of the Archdiocese of Chicago. The consul described the newspaper as featuring “anti-English articles about Ireland.” My review of the New World‘s archives from April 1916 through 1917 did not find Russell’s byline or any mention or her work for Irish relief.

More provocatively, however, the Consul General’s correspondence said that Russell’s request to visit Ireland was “indefinitely postponed as she is suffering a nervous breakdown.”[20]Nov. 6, 1916, telegram. Irish Government. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926. This psychological evaluation seems dubious; more likely the sexist and patronizing language of male authorities, in the U.S. and Great Britain, during the period. A Dec. 26, 1916, follow-up correspondence from British Ambassador to the United States Cecil Spring Rice to Arthur Balfour, then beginning his tenure as foreign secretary, says that Russell was informed by Joseph P. Tumulty, private secretary to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, “that entrance to Ireland would not be possible at the present time and that she cannot therefore have a passport.”[21]Cecil Spring Rice at British Embassy, Washington, D.C., to Arthur Balfour, Dec. 26, 1916. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926.

It is extraordinary that Russell, then 27, drew attention from such high-ranking U.S. and British officials. But the episode, documented in Dublin Castle records, remains murky. I have not located any correspondence with Russell in the Tumulty or Lansing papers at the Library of Congress.[22]Multiple searches in 2023 and 2024. It is unclear whether the U.S. State Department knew of Russell’s 1916 denial when it approved her passport in 1919.

REPORTER

By October 1917, Russell “decided to enter the family field” and followed her late father and an older brother, James Russell, into the newspaper business.[23]”Staff Changes” , The Fourth Estate, Oct. 6, 1917, 29. She began working as a reporter at the Daily News. 

Chicago Daily News Building, 15 North Wells St., circa 1903. Chicago History Museum.

At the time of Russell’s newspaper debut, fast-growing Chicago was the second-largest city in America and “home to some of the most influential and dynamic journalists, editors, and newspaper owners in the United States.”[24]Gillian O’Brien, “Patriotism, professionalism and the press: the Chicago press and Irish journalists, 1875–1900,” Irish Journalism Before Independence: More a Disease Than A Profession, ed. … Continue reading Investigative efforts and literary styles flourished in the city’s newsrooms. Carl Sandburg joined the Daily News staff the same year as Russell and would bolster his reputation through coverage of Chicago’s 1919 race riots and profiles of the city’s African-American population.[25]Field Enterprise Records, 1858–2007; Chicago Daily News, 1882–2007; Administrations and Operations, 1891–1978, Box 6, Folder 76: Herman Kogan, “Literary Tradition,” Centennial Insight … Continue reading Russell was hired as a “special writer”[26]”Purely Personal” Fourth Estate, Nov. 23, 1918, 13.,typically an ad hoc or freelance arrangement that was one of the best ways for women to enter the newsroom.[27]Carolyn M. Edy, The Woman War Correspondent, The U.S. Military, and The Press 1846-1947 (Lexington Books: New York, 2017), 17-18, citing Edwin Llewellyn Shuman, Steps Into Journalism: Helps and Hints … Continue reading

For two weeks in 1918, the 5-foot, 9-inch reporter[28]Height: From Jan. 27, 1919, U.S. passport application. See Note 1. Assignment: “Purely Personal” Fourth Estate, Nov. 23, 1918, 13. hauled heavy steel tools to shell turners inside a Chicago munitions factory for an undercover series about women in war work. She profiled the manual laborers, including “a big woman whose straggly blond hair was stuck to the side of her wide, flat face with perspiration” as she pushed a 200-pound load. The reporter strained and “blushed at my little loads.” Russell estimated that she “walked about four miles, trucked approximately 900 pounds of steel, shouldered less heavy tools and earned $2 in an eight-hour night.” At the end of the shift, “I threw myself on a restroom cot.”[29]“Women’s Task Too Heavy. Experience in Chicago Munitions Factory Recorded.”, Morning Oregonian, Jan. 2, 1919.

In addition to such domestic coverage, the Daily News aggressively pursued foreign news. Publisher Victor F. Lawson established bureaus in London, Paris, and Berlin “on the best sites in town, with big signs, to lure in Chicago tourists,” foreign correspondent Paul Scott Mowrer recalled.[30]Field Enterprise Records, Box 34, Folder 424, Lou Pryor correspondence with Paul Scott Mowrer, 1964. But Lawson was interested in more than good publicity. In the paper’s handbook for foreign correspondents, he wrote: 

The key words of the service are significance and interpretation. Generally speaking, we aim to chronicle only what is significant, and we aim to show the significance of everything we chronicle … how and why it happened, and what it means. We have therefore to be clearer, more analytical, more thorough, less superficial, more cautious and generally more accurate, and perhaps more conscientious than our competitors.[31]Ibid., Folder 424, Lou Pryor foreign service research.

Lawson advised his correspondents to stay close to the native people, report on their styles and customs, fads and fancies, including business, education, science, religion, art, sports, and social problems. As the United States entered the Great War, his reporters fanned across Europe, including poetess Eunice Tietjens, sent to cover the conflict “from a woman’s perspective.”[32]Ibid., Folder 74, Foreign correspondents.

More than three dozen female journalists filed dispatches from the war in Europe for U.S. newspapers and magazines; more than doubling the number of women foreign correspondents since the Mexican-American War of the mid-19th century.[33]Edy, The Woman War Correspondent, Appendix 1, “American Women War Correspondents through World War I” lists 73 journalists; 44 during WWI, including Tietjens. Russell is not listed. Russell joined this still-small and under-appreciated sorority soon after the armistice.

The revolution erupting in Ireland was a story of particular interest to Chicago readers. 

NEXT: Russell’s reporting from Ireland

 

References

References
↑1 Henry J. Smith to Robert Lansing, Jan. 27, 1919, in Ruth Russell’s passport application. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; Roll #: 699; Volume #: Roll 0699 – Certificates: 63000–63249, Accessed via Ancestry.com. U.S. Passport Applications, 1795–1925.
↑2 Ruth Russell, What’s the matter with Ireland? (New York: Devin-Adain, 1920), 13. Russell does not name the “fellow journalist.”
↑3 Ibid., 9–10.
↑4 Hyde Park, Illinois, City Directory, 1889, accessed via Ancestry.com, U.S. City Directories, 1822–1995; 1900 U.S. Federal Census: Chicago Ward 32, Cook, Illinois, 12; Enumeration District: 1035; FHL microfilm: 1240287; accessed via Ancestry.com; Baptismal record with address and mother’s maiden name accessed accessed via FindMyPast.com; and “New map of Chicago showing location of schools, streetcar lines in colors and street numbers in even hundreds,” Rufus Blanchard, 1897, accessed via The University of Chicago Map Collection.
↑5 1900 U.S. Federal Census, and Note 6.
↑6 “Chicago’s First One Hundred Years Penned and Illustrated by Ruth Russell and Ruth Kellogg,” Hyde Park Herald , Sept. 18, 1931.
↑7 Ruth Russell, Lake Front (Thomas S. Rockwell: Chicago, 1931), 280.
↑8 Ishbel Maria Hamilton-Gordon (“Lady Aberdeen”), “Ireland at the World’s Fair,” North American Review, July 1893, 20.
↑9 Michael F. Funchion, Chicago Irish Nationalists (Arno Press: New York, 1976) 9, citing 1890 U.S. Census.
↑10 Sullivan and Russell’s father from “Irish in Chicago” Illinois Catholic Historical Review, July 1920. 152. Margaret Sullivan, Ireland of to-day: the causes and aims of Irish agitation (J.C. McCurdy & Co.: Chicago, 1881).
↑11 “Martin J. Russell Dead,” Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1900.
↑12 Ibid. “Burial of Martin J. Russell”, June 28, 1900.
↑13 Ruth Russell’s Chicago Public Schools (CPS) employment record obtained via author’s Freedom of Information Act request, received March 20, 2019. CPS redacted large portions of the record. Author appealed to the Public Access Counselor, Illinois Office of Attorney General, for review and prevailed in having the full record released.
↑14 Cap & Gown, University of Chicago yearbook, Vol. XVII, 1912, p. 79 and 132.
↑15 Ruth Russell’s University of Chicago transcript obtained from Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. Received April 10, 2019.
↑16 “Certificate of Registration of American Citizen” letter dated Sept. 1, 1914, shows Russell left Chicago on June 28, 1914, and arrived at Grenoble, France, on July 16, 1914. “Ellis Island and Other New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957” shows Russell left France Aug. 22, 1914, and arrived in New York on Aug. 30, 1914. Both via MyHerage.com.
↑17 Deborah Ann Skok, “Catholic Ladies Bountiful: Chicago’s Catholic Settlement Houses and Day Nurseries, 1892–1930, Vol. 1,” University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, August 2001, 441. In this paper, “Ruth Russell” is described as a downtown office clerk, but there is no further identification to confirm she is the subject of this paper.
↑18 Foreign Office cable, Nov. 1, 1916. Irish Government. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926 (CO 904, Boxes 30-35, 37-39, 45-47 And 180-189). Public Records Office, London, England. 1917 CO 904/184; Miscellaneous: Copies Of Correspondence Between The Foreign Office And The British Embassy In Washington: 3. Matters Relating To Foreign Affairs.
↑19 Ibid.
↑20 Nov. 6, 1916, telegram. Irish Government. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926.
↑21 Cecil Spring Rice at British Embassy, Washington, D.C., to Arthur Balfour, Dec. 26, 1916. Judicial Proceedings, Enquiries And Miscellaneous Records, 1872-1926.
↑22 Multiple searches in 2023 and 2024.
↑23 ”Staff Changes” , The Fourth Estate, Oct. 6, 1917, 29.
↑24 Gillian O’Brien, “Patriotism, professionalism and the press: the Chicago press and Irish journalists, 1875–1900,” Irish Journalism Before Independence: More a Disease Than A Profession, ed. Kevin Rafter (Manchester University Press: New York, 2011), 123.
↑25 Field Enterprise Records, 1858–2007; Chicago Daily News, 1882–2007; Administrations and Operations, 1891–1978, Box 6, Folder 76: Herman Kogan, “Literary Tradition,” Centennial Insight (Newberry Library: Chicago, 1976).
↑26 ”Purely Personal” Fourth Estate, Nov. 23, 1918, 13.
↑27 Carolyn M. Edy, The Woman War Correspondent, The U.S. Military, and The Press 1846-1947 (Lexington Books: New York, 2017), 17-18, citing Edwin Llewellyn Shuman, Steps Into Journalism: Helps and Hints for Young Writers (Evanston Press Co.: Evanston, Ill., 1894.) 149.
↑28 Height: From Jan. 27, 1919, U.S. passport application. See Note 1. Assignment: “Purely Personal” Fourth Estate, Nov. 23, 1918, 13.
↑29 “Women’s Task Too Heavy. Experience in Chicago Munitions Factory Recorded.”, Morning Oregonian, Jan. 2, 1919.
↑30 Field Enterprise Records, Box 34, Folder 424, Lou Pryor correspondence with Paul Scott Mowrer, 1964.
↑31 Ibid., Folder 424, Lou Pryor foreign service research.
↑32 Ibid., Folder 74, Foreign correspondents.
↑33 Edy, The Woman War Correspondent, Appendix 1, “American Women War Correspondents through World War I” lists 73 journalists; 44 during WWI, including Tietjens. Russell is not listed.

Guest post: The slow death of the Freeman’s Journal

Historian Felix M. Larkin specializes in the study of Irish newspapers, especially the Freeman’s Journal, the prominent Dublin daily published from 1763 to 1924. (See his website and our 2017 Q&A.) In October 1919, Irish writer Seumas MacManus noted the Freeman’s troubles in a U.S. newspaper column, excerpted in my Oct. 13 post. I asked Felix to write this guest post after he rightly corrected one of my notes at this centenary of a key moment in the Freeman’s history. MH

***

On Oct. 27, 1919, Dublin’s Freeman’s Journal newspaper was sold to a prominent local businessman, Martin Fitzgerald, and a former English journalist now living in Ireland, Robert Hamilton Edwards. The Freeman had been associated with the Irish home rule movement for the previous four decades– back to Charles Stewart Parnell’s time – and its sale represented the final step in the fall of that movement, which began with the 1916 Rising and culminated in the victory of Sinn Féin in the 1918 general election.6

Founded in 1763, the Freeman had become an important newspaper under the ownership of the Gray family from 1841 to 1892. Though more moderately nationalist in editorial policy than Parnell, it had eventually accepted his leadership and had remained loyal to him at the outset of the Parnell ‘split’ in 1890.7 However, when the anti-Parnellites launched their own daily newspaper, the National Press, in March 1891 and the Freeman began to lose circulation and revenue as a result, it switched sides. The Freeman and the National Press later merged in March 1892. There followed a long and bitter struggle for control of the paper between rival anti-Parnell factions led by Tim Healy and John Dillon, both MPs; this struggle was ultimately resolved in the latter’s favor in 1896.

Thomas Sexton, another prominent anti-Parnell MP, became chairman of the Freeman company in 1893. He remained chairman until 1912. The period of Sexton’s chairmanship was one of relentless decline in the Freeman’s fortunes. The National Press had inflicted grave damage on it, and it continued to face strong competition from the Irish Daily Independent – established as a pro-Parnell organ when the Freeman changed sides in the ‘split’, but purchased by William Martin Murphy in 1900 after the ‘split’ was healed. The Freeman thus lacked funds for investment and was unable to respond to the greatly increased demand for newspapers nationally at this time.

In contrast, Murphy transformed the Independent into a modern, mass-circulation organ. It soaked up the increased demand for newspapers and became the market leader. The Freeman began as a result to incur trading losses, and no dividends were paid by the company after 1908. The home rule leaders eventually acted to save it and forced Sexton’s resignation in 1912. It was subsequently run by a group of party stalwarts and subsidized from party sources, and its parlous condition was exacerbated by the destruction of its premises during the 1916 Rising. After the Rising, money was raised from home rule supporters in Britain and in the United States, as well as in Ireland, in a desperate effort to keep it afloat.8

Following the 1918 general election, the company – without the financial support of the now defunct home rule party –collapsed and went into liquidation.9 It was then purchased by Fitzgerald and Edwards as a commercial venture. Fitzgerald – a wholesale wine and spirit merchant – had been a home ruler and the Freeman’s new management soon committed itself to a policy of advocating dominion status for Ireland.

Martin FItzgerald

It was an inauspicious time to attempt to revive an ailing Irish newspaper of moderate nationalist sympathies. The difficulties that the new owners encountered were extraordinary. The Freeman was suppressed by the British military authorities for seven weeks from December 1919 to January 1920; Fitzgerald, Edwards and the editor, Patrick Hooper, were imprisoned in Mountjoy Jail for a month at Christmas 1920 following publication by the Freeman of a story about army brutality; and after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which was strongly supported by the Freeman, its printing presses were smashed in March 1922 by a raiding party of 200 anti-Treatyites.

Fitzgerald played a role in the process leading up to the 1921 Treaty. Once the Government decided to explore settlement possibilities, he was able to use his standing as a newspaper proprietor to act as an intermediary between Sinn Féin and Dublin Castle.10 He was in regular contact both with Michael Collins and with Alfred Cope, Assistant Under-Secretary at the Castle. Cope, adopting the nom de guerre ‘Mr. Clements’, frequently visited Fitzgerald’s home. Their relationship took on a further dimension when, during the Treaty negotiations, Cope sought to influence the shapers of public opinion in Ireland to support the emerging settlement. Through Fitzgerald, Cope gained a measure of control over the contents of the Freeman’s Journal at that time.

The Freeman’s campaign in favor of the Treaty was generally regarded, even by many on the pro-Treaty side, as unduly partisan. However, the new administration in Dublin came increasingly to rely upon it for propaganda. In recognition of this, Fitzgerald was nominated to the first Senate of the Irish Free State in 1922. He served in that forum until his death in 1927. By then, the Freeman had succumbed to its many tribulations. The main factor in its eventual demise was that the partnership of Fitzgerald and Edwards had ended in grief when the latter tried unsuccessfully to corner the market in newsprint and then absconded, leaving debts which the enfeebled Freeman could not meet. The last issue appeared on Dec. 19, 1924.11 The Freeman’s assets, including the title, were later bought by the Independent. It was a sad end for a distinguished newspaper.

***

For more on the Freeman’s Journal, see Larkin’s Aug. 21, 2012 guest blog for the National Library of Ireland, and May/June 2006 piece in History Ireland.

Charles Stewart Parnell returns to Parliament … sort of

UPDATE:

Historians Conor Mulvagh and Diarmaid Ferriter discuss Parnell, plus a report on the opening of  the Charles Stewart Parnell museum at Avondale House in 1986, all from RTÉ Radio.

ORIGINAL POST:

Long-dead Irish Parliamentary Party leader Charles Stewart Parnell, MP from 1871 to 1891, this week haunted the Brexit debate in the House of Commons.

Charles Stewart Parnell

Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Tory leader who supports the split from Europe, said the successful cross-party efforts to block a no-deal Brexit were “the most unconstitutional use of this House since the days of Charles Stewart Parnell, when he tried to bung up Parliament.”

As The Irish Times explained, Parnell disrupted the chamber’s sedate procedures in pursuit of Irish Home Rule more than 130 years ago.

Under Parnell’s leadership, the Irish Party adopted obstructionist tactics that brought the work of the Commons to a standstill for days on end. The most famous filibuster lasted for 41 hours in 1881 but the Irish MPs made a nuisance of themselves day in and day out in pursuit of their political goal.

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, a Member of the European Parliament he wants to divorce, also revealed that he has “long been a great admirer” of Parnell. In fact, he keeps a picture of the 19th century constitutional nationalist in his Brussels office.

Parnell was “the Great Disruptor of the U.K. parliament” Farage said, according to several media reports. “I have tried, in the same way, to cause some disruption in the European Parliament … If you believe in the cause of national freedom and self-determination, you cannot consent to Brussels rule or being a member of the European Union.”

Many Irish seemed displeased about Parnell being exhumed by the Brexiteers.

“It is a compliment to Parnell – back-handed or otherwise – to suggest that his impact continues to resonate today. But beyond that, the politics espoused by Rees-Mogg and Farage shows no sympathy with Ireland,” the Times editorialized.

“No doubt [Rees-Mogg] was trying to imply that the Irish are always troublesome and that insistence on the backstop is in a tradition of Irish obstruction of British politics,” historian Felix Larkin wrote in a letter to The Guardian. “But he should remember that if it were not for Daniel O’Connell he would be ineligible to take his seat in the House of Commons by virtue of his [Catholic] religion.”

Parnell was even trending on Twitter. Some select posts:

  • Nice to see Parnell causing a bit of bother in the House of Commons again.
  • [Rees-Mogg] doesn’t deserve to even mention [Parnell’s] name.
  • Fairly certain that Parnell would have kicked the shit out of Rees-Mogg.

Rest in Peace: Parnell’s grave at Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, July 2016.

‘Irish American’ publisher’s Irish-American story

Kentucky Irish American Publisher William M. Higgins served on the official committee that Oct. 10, 1919, welcomed Irish President Eamon de Valera to Louisville.12 The city’s enthusiastic reception for the rebel leader demonstrated the “feelings of the American people who know and appreciate the blessings of freedom with the people of Ireland who are striving to obtain the same boon,” his newspaper editorialized a week later.13

Higgins and de Valera shared more than their desire for an independent Ireland. By coincidence, the 67-year-old host and the 37-year-old guest were both natives of New York State, some 700 miles away. In later years, de Valera’s American birth to an Irish mother and Spanish father prompted hostile challenges about his Irishness. Higgins, the son of Great Famine immigrants, easily balanced both sides of his hyphenated heritage.

Obituary image in The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Ky.), June 10, 1925.

He was a devout Catholic, active in the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and “an ardent advocate of freedom for Ireland,”14 He also was president of printers’ union local and “one of the sponsors and chief boosters of the Amateur Baseball Federation.”15

Higgins was a husband and the father of eight children. He attended the weddings of two of his three daughters; and the funerals of two of his five sons; one who died by drowning; the other by self-inflicted gunshot, whether intentional or accidental is unclear.16

Saint Louis Cemetery, Louisville, Ky.

Higgins dropped dead in his newsroom, age 72, in 1925. It was shortly after creation of the Irish Free State, partition of the island, and end of Ireland’s civil war. The Irish American had turned more of its coverage to local issues.

“Louisville lost a real citizen, a man who always stood up for what he thought was right,” one rival newspaper said of Higgins. “While he was not a native, he practically grew up with the town,” another local columnist said. 14

Immigrant parents

Hugh Higgins, William’s father, emigrated to America from Rivertown, County Sligo in 1848.17 His mother, Mary, departed from Drumlace, County Leitrim, in 1849, “the year when the tide of immigration from Ireland brought thousands of her good, Christian kind to build up this country,” the Syracuse Catholic Sun said in an obituary re-published on the front page of her son’s then year-old newspaper.18

From 1848 to 1855, over 5,000 Irish immigrants settled in Upstate New York’s Onondaga County; about 40 percent in Syracuse.19 William’s parents married in Auburn, New York, about 25 miles east of Syracuse, where they settled.18 He grew up hearing first-hand accounts of the Famine, and the stories of earlier Irish immigrants who dug the nearby Erie Canal, opened in 1825 and enlarged during his boyhood.

Nine of 50 people listed on the 1870 census page showing the Higgins family were born in Ireland, and many of those born in America had immigrant parents.20 The census form indicates only whether each person’s mother and father was foreign born, but not the country, as recorded in later editions of the decennial count.

Louisville move

By 1880, 28-year-old Higgins lived at 289 Seventh St. in Louisville. He was married to Mary; with then 2-year-old, and 2-month old, sons, the children he later buried.21 It is unclear why he moved south; perhaps he or his New York-born wife had family in Louisville.

Higgins also might have relocated to further his career as a printer, which began in Syracuse. In Louisville, he worked in the composing room of The Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times. He also became president of the Typographical Union No. 10.14

Louisville experienced a “second wave” of Irish immigration during the 1880s.22 As a newspaperman, Higgins would have been aware of Charles Stewart Parnell’s Feb. 19, 1880, visit to Louisville. The Irish MP lectured at Liederkranz Hall “for the benefit of the Irish relief fund.”23 Perhaps Higgins joined the local branch of the American Land League.24

Parnell

Parnell arrived the day after visiting the capitol at Frankfort, where it was said “Kentucky is the Ireland of America”; not for being oppressed, but because of the “genial, hearty good nature, the hospitality, the love of fair-play, the pluck and courage” of its people. He was welcomed to Louisville as “a city that always greets with open arms, without regards to politics or opinions, every honest man who loves and serves as country.” 25

Thirty-eight years later, the example probably influenced the welcome that Higgins and other Irish Americans in Louisville extended to Eamon de Valera. By then, he was the established publisher of the Kentucky Irish American for 20 years.

***

More on Louisville’s Irish community and the Kentucky Irish American’s coverage of the Irish War of Independence in a future post. Project home page.

Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited: Hurlbert reviewed

This blog serial explored aspects of the 1888 book Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American, by journalist William Henry Hurlbert. Previous posts and other background material are available at the project landing page. #IUCRevisited

***

“Although barely a month has elapsed since the publication of these volumes, events of more or less general notoriety have so far confirmed the views taken in them of the actual state and outlook of affairs in Ireland, that I gladly comply with the request of my publisher for a Preface to this Second Edition.”
–William Henry Hurlbert

The first edition of Ireland Under Coercion was published in August 1888. The Preface of the second edition, quoted above, was dated 21 September 1888. Mixed reviews of the book appeared that autumn in Irish, English and American newspapers and literary journals.

The Times of London devoted nearly a full page to the book, with “no apology for placing before our readers copious extracts.” It described IUC as “entertaining as well as instructive.” More importantly, the organ of Britain’s ruling Tory party “attached still greater value to the book as a collection of evidence on the present phase of the Irish difficulty, the genuineness of which it would be idle to impeach.”

This was ironic. The review appeared weeks before a special judicial commission began investigating alleged crimes by Charles Stewart Parnell and other Irish nationalists, driven primarily by an 1887 Times series. Once the commission exposed those reports as false, included the newspaper’s use of forged letters, the Times had to pay damages to Parnell. 

The pro-Parnell United Ireland, which Hurlbert described in IUC as “that dumb organ of a downtrodden people,” weighed in a week after the Times‘ review. It labeled Hurlbert “a clever politico-journalist hack, his ambitions, throughout a somewhat extended career, have ever outrun the appreciation of his countrymen … a slighted genius.” It condemned IUC as a “libelous book on Ireland … fit to take its place amongst other grotesque foreign commentaries.”

The same day, The Kerry Evening Post wrote that Hurlbert’ “ruthlessly dethrones many of the ‘pure-souled patriots’, who have been held up to the admiring gaze of the Irish peasants.” The Tralee paper circulated in the region of the Lixnaw murder and Glenbeigh eviction reported by Hurlbert. It generally represented “Protestant interests and conservative politics.” The Post concluded: “The opinions of an intelligent and instructed foreigner may well be commended to Mr. [William] Gladstone’s study, as an answer to his boast that the ‘civilized world’ is on his side in the great controversy of the day.” [The former and future PM supported Home Rule for Ireland.]

Hurlbert

The Saturday Review, a London newsweekly, described Hurlbert as “an American gentleman to whom the condition of Ireland is gravely interesting, because to a certain extent his own country is responsible for it. … He is evidently possessed of a keen sense of humor, and he writes like a well-educated Englishman, while he views men, morals and manners with all the disinterestedness to be expected from a foreigner.”

The Review also criticized Hurlbert for not attempting “any process of solution, short and summary, or tedious and expensive, by which the Irish difficulty might be solved … he has no pet plan to suggest.”

In America, cloth-bound, gilt top editions of Hurlbert’s book were sold for $1.25 by S.A. Maxwell & Co. The Brooklyn (New York) Daily Eagle described the book as “… a sort of high class piece of newspaper reporting … [with] a map claiming to show the most disorderly and the most distressed districts, and that the latter are not the former.”

The Literary World, an American journal, explained to its readers: “The rule of the Land League is, in Mr. Hurlbert’s opinion, the only coercion to which Ireland is subjected; and the title of his volume has reference to this view.” The monthly praised IUC as a “keen and fair-minded report .. [that] may be commended as a practical and thoughtful treatise upon the Irish question.”

The Literary World also suggested that Hurlbert’s book could be read together with Philippe Daryl’s Ireland’s Disease, the English in Ireland, and George Pellew‘s In Castle and Cabin: or Talks in Ireland in 1887. “The three supplement each other well.”

“Hurlbert unmasked’

Hurlbert moved on to another political travel journal, this time about France. But his Ireland book got fresh attention in 1891 when Father Patrick White published a rebuttal pamphlet, Hurlbert unmasked : an exposure of the thumping English lies of William Henry Hurlbert in his ‘Ireland Under Coercion.’  

In his book, Hurlbert had accused the parish priest of organizing boycott activities  at Miltown Malbay, based on his February 1888 visit to County Clare. In Hurlbert unmasked, Father White disputed the charge, and criticized the American reporter on numerous other fronts.

The New York Sun noted that Father White ridiculed the former editor of the rival New York World “as a snob who made his tour of Ireland under the conduct and patronage of lords and others of social and Tory distinction, and who is scrupulous and persistent in advertising the fact.” Following the priest’s lead, the Sun also criticized Hurlbert’s use of unnamed sources.

In a review of Hurlbert’s book about France, The New York Times recalled the 1888 Ireland work as “superficial and tedious,” written “for no higher object and with no less ignoble a spirit than to please certain English nobles in the world of fashion.” At least, the Times suggested, Hurlbert did so “with very respectable success.”

Hurlbert’s book contained a map of his travels “claiming to show the most disorderly and the most distressed districts, and that the latter are not the former.”

NOTES: Top quote from Preface of Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American.  Reviews from Times of London, Aug. 18, 1888, page 12; United Ireland, Aug. 25, 1888, page ??; The Kerry Evening Post , Aug. 25, 1888, page 2; The Saturday Review, Sept. 29, 1888, pages 386-387; IUC advertised in The Chicago Tribune, Dec. 1, 1888, page 13; The Brooklyn (New York) Daily Eagle, Nov. 25, 1888, page 7; The Literary World; a Monthly Review of Current Literature, Jan. 19, 1889; page 22; The New York Sun, Jan. 31, 1891, page 7; The New York Times, April 27, 1890, page 19.

“Protestant interests and conservative politics,” from page 196-97 of Newspapers and Nationalism: The Irish Provincial Press, 1850-1892, by Marie-Louise Legg, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1999.

NEXT: Hurlbert researched

Copyright 2018 by Mark Holan