The Times Great Irish Lives: Obituaries of Ireland’s Finest

The rejection of the Government of Ireland Act by the Sinn Fein leadership and the ongoing assassinations of policemen led the Government to allow free rein to their security forces, the Black and Tans and the Auxiliary cadets. The Times joined in a crescendo of criticism of their disgraceful behaviour and was also highly critical of the hardline reaction of the Lloyd George government to the 74-day hunger strike to death in November 1920 of Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork. Editorials argued for a settlement along the lines of that eventually agreed in December 1921 granting dominion status to Southern Ireland.

Significantly, when the leading Irish negotiators of that settlement, Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins, died in the early months of independence the obituaries were uncritical. In the case of Collins there was virtually no reference to his part in the campaign of assassination from 1919 to 1921 that had led to his being demonised in Britain before the settlement. The Times had a special reason for being grateful to him as he had applied his ruthless efficiency to securing the safe return of their special correspondent A. B. Kay, who was kidnapped by the IRA in January 1922.

An important influence on the editorial policy of The Times in these years was Captain Herbert Shaw, a Dubliner who had served in the Irish administration and was one of the secretaries to the Irish Convention of 1917–18 where the moderate elements of unionism and nationalism had tried to broker a settlement. It was Shaw who penned The Times editorial entitled ‘Playing the Game’ on the occasion of the opening of the Northern Ireland Parliament in 1921 by King George V that was influential in pushing the Government towards negotiations with the Sinn Fein leaders. He was the author of a number of notable obituaries on Irish figures of that period, some of which, such as that on William T. Cosgrave, did not appear until well after his own death in 1946. Others were written by Michael MacDonagh, the journalist champion and historian of the Irish Party, and the unionist John Healy, editor of the Irish Times, and Dublin correspondent of The Times from 1894 until 1934.

The creation of an independent state covering most of the island of Ireland did not diminish the coverage of Irish affairs in The Times. The Irish were still regarded as part of the broader British family, albeit that their political leaders seemed to want to loosen their ties with it. Even the neutrality in the Second World War did not alter this, perhaps because the Irish of every tradition were such a presence in the British war effort. Churchill spoke for many in Britain when at the end of the war, having criticised Irish neutrality and paid tribute to ‘the thousands of southern Irishmen who hastened to the battle-front to prove their ancient valour’, he expressed the hope that the two peoples would walk together in mutual comprehension and forgiveness.

However, in the quarter of a century after the Second World War Irish political life, both north and south of the border, ceased to command attention in the British media. Even then, a fair coverage of Irish subjects was maintained in The Times obituaries columns. There may have been a bias towards individuals and institutions that retained to some extent a broader British identity or made an impact in Britain and might be presumed to be of more interest to the readership but it did not preclude coverage of significant figures from other strands of Irish life, especially those from the literary and artistic community. The outbreak of violence in Northern Ireland around 1970 brought Ireland centre stage once more and this has been reflected in an even more comprehensive coverage of Irish subjects in the obituaries columns.

Meanwhile, in the course of the twentieth century, there had been significant developments in the paper in the organisation of obituaries loosening the connection of that part of the paper with those who formulated editorial policy. From 1920 there was a separate obituaries department with its own editor. While obituaries had been prepared in advance since the editorship of John Delane (1841–1877), Colin Watson, who was obituaries editor from 1956 to 1981, embarked on a policy of commissioning advance pieces on a wider variety of living subjects than had been the case previously. Very often, those commissioned to write them were not journalists or even professional writers. In general, they were recruited having regard to their knowledge of the subject rather than with an eye to providing a particular viewpoint. In the case of Irish subjects the authors were generally found in Ireland. So it is that more recent Irish obituaries have often not reflected an English viewpoint, let alone that inside The Times – although the authors, if they were doing their job, have been conscious, when writing, that their readership would be largely English.

Despite this general trend, unexpected deaths of notable figures have, on occasion, still thrown the obituaries department back on its own resources. So, when Brian Faulkner died unexpectedly in 1978, Colin Watson ran up a superb obituary that reflected the paper’s sympathy for Faulkner’s brave effort to lead a cross-community executive. Three years earlier in 1975 the death at an advanced age of Eamon de Valera, which cannot have been unexpected, was marked by a much praised obituary involving substantial insider input by the celebrated leader writer Owen Hickey into a piece prepared originally by the former editor of the Irish Times Alec Newman. Hickey, born in Ireland and, incidentally, a grandson of the novelist Canon Hanney (George Bermingham), was an invaluable source of knowledge and understanding about matters Irish for The Times throughout most of the second half of the twentieth century.

The lack of total identification between the editorial policy of the paper and the obituaries that evolved through the twentieth century was never better illustrated than in the case of Sean MacBride, who died in 1988. He had been commander-in-chief of the IRA in post-independence Ireland before becoming a government minister and finally a human rights activist honoured by being awarded both the Nobel and Lenin peace prizes. An obituary prepared by the present writer that was quite laudatory but not uncritical, was followed a couple of days later by an editorial headed ‘His infamous career’ berating him as a man who was to the end of his days a cosmopolitan high priest of the cult of violence directed at British victims.

It is a problem in compiling a volume of Irish obituaries to decide who ranks as sufficiently Irish to be considered for inclusion. One thinks of the remark attributed, probably unfairly, to the Irish-born Duke of Wellington that a horse is not an ass because he is born in an ass’s stable. Obviously, birth outside Ireland, as in the case of Eamon de Valera, would be an inappropriate reason for exclusion. On the other hand, some persons of immense distinction born in Ireland have little meaningful connection with the country. I have been disinclined to include them. In the case of others, of which William Orpen and George Bernard Shaw are examples, omission is referable to the failure of the obituary to do justice to the Irish dimension of the subject’s life.

At the same time I have been concerned not to confine the selection to those who have spent their lives in Ireland or done their significant work there. In particular, it seemed to me important to represent those generally identified as Irish who made an impact not only in Britain but in the Empire and in the United States.

In choosing from a vast store of Irish obituaries over the years, I have sought to strike a balance between the significance of the subject and the quality of the piece. Clearly, any person opening a volume such as this would expect that there would be obituaries of Daniel O’Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell or Eamon de Valera in the political sphere or of William Butler Yeats or James Joyce among the writers. After persons of that calibre, the choices I have made have been affected by the quality of the obituary as well as the significance of the subject. Is it comprehensive or entertaining? Is it the best thing that has been written on a particular person? Is it too long? I have tended to favour those obituaries that give a picture of the person as well as an account of their life’s work. I have also favoured those that paint the subject ‘warts and all’ over less discriminating eulogies. In older pieces I confess to having been attracted by those that betray contemporary attitudes and prejudices. In omitting certain obituaries I have had some regard to their being included in other anthologies of Times obituaries.* (#litres_trial_promo)

I have sought to achieve a better gender balance than, for understandable reasons, was achieved in the actual obituaries in previous generations. I have also tried to represent a variety of spheres of Irish life, including in particular the arts, literature, business, sport, entertainment, science as well as the politicians, churchmen, lawyers, military men, public servants and academics that were preponderant in The Times obituaries of older vintage. In an earlier period other obituaries were often skimpy. In the case of the arts, literature and even science they were sometimes marred by an excessive preoccupation with the subject’s work to the exclusion of their life and personality and not couched in terms readily understood by the general reader.

I have included a number of largely forgotten figures who have never been the subject of a full biography or have not made it even into the Dictionary of National Biography, which is sketchy in its recent Irish coverage. In one or two cases I have felt inspired by the observation of Brendan Bracken in the tribute he contributed anonymously to The Times in 1928 about his mother that ‘one of the best services performed by The Times are the notices it publishes of gentle quiet lives which add much to the common stock but whose quality makes no appeal to the busy art of modern publicity.’

As the book celebrates links between The Times and Ireland, I have included a number of Irish persons who have worked for The Times beginning with William Howard Russell and culminating with William Casey, the editor from 1948 to 1952. In their different ways, their lives are illustrative of the infinite complexity of the British-Irish relationship.

I have felt deeply honoured by Ian Brunskill’s invitation to edit this volume. It is the culmination of a happy association with the obituaries department dating back to 1969, when I was a young law lecturer and barrister in London. I have prepared more than a century of obituaries over the years. From the early days when Colin Watson, Peter Davies and Juliet Lygon were in charge to more recent times when Peter Strafford, Tony Howard and Ian Brunskill were the obituaries editors, I have been the recipient of much encouragement and unfailing courtesy from those working in the obituaries department. For that I am truly grateful. I am also grateful to the librarians and archivists in the paper for sourcing obituaries. I like to think that coverage of deceased Irish persons by The Times contributes to the mutual comprehension between the people of our two islands which is much to be desired.

HENRY GRATTAN (#ulink_e3066371-8d01-5f54-8024-b8897a792790)

6 JUNE 1820

WITH UNFEIGNED CONCERN we announce … the much-to-belamented death of the Right Hon. Henry Grattan. The dissolution of this intrepid patriot would have been a subject of deep regret to the empire at large, had not the decline of his intellectual as well as vital powers been more recently observed. To his own immediate countrymen it is a source of profound and even filial sorrow …

Mr Grattan came into Parliament about the year 1773. Towards the close of the American war he carried against both the English and Irish Government the repeal of those statutes which had given the British Parliament, and in some respects the Privy Council of England, an absolute control over the legislature of his native country. He has been since the year 1790 the strenuous, persevering, and powerful advocate for an entire abolition of the penal laws against the Catholics. This measure, in the separate Parliament of Ireland, he repeatedly declared to be essential to the complete deliverance of that country from the yoke of the British ministers, as, since the Union, he has, in the language of Mr Pitt, described Catholic emancipation to be a necessary step towards giving both countries the full benefit of that important measure. Mr Grattan has long laboured under dropsy of the chest. It is well known that he was conscious of his approaching dissolution; and that, when he devoted “his last breath to his country,” he was sensible that his appearance in Parliament, for the pious purpose of recommending to the House of Commons the cause so near his heart, must tend to accelerate that mournful sacrifice. His enfeebled frame did not second the aspirings of his bold and fervent spirit: he was doomed to bequeath emancipation as a legacy – not to bestow it as a gift.

Mr Grattan’s eloquence was peculiar and original. It resembled that of no speaker that we have ever heard. His voice was naturally feeble, but practice made it audible; and laborious effort, combined with a careful and studied articulation, rendered his high tones so piercing that none of them were lost. Mr Grattan had no wit, or rather, in Parliament, he did not exhibit any. He seldom discussed the details of any question, but fastened on a few of the leading principles, which he developed and illustrated with singular strength of language, and copious felicity of imagination. His sentences were full of antithesis; and, rather than lose that favourite structure of expression, he would build it up occasionally of common-place or even puerile matter. His arguments were frequently a string of epigrams. His retorts and personal invectives were distinguished by a keen and pithy sarcasm, which told upon every nerve of his ill-starred opponent. There was, nevertheless, an earnestness and solemnity, an innate and manifest consciousness of his own rectitude, about the man, which taught his hearers to respect and admire him when he most failed to convert them to the opinions of which he was the advocate. Mr Grattan, in society, was playful and simple as a child: irritable, perhaps, in a public assembly, he was elsewhere the very soul of courtesy, complacency, and cheerfulness.

Mr Grattan’s property consisted for the most part of the sum of 50,000l, which had been tendered to him by his country, and it was honourably earned. He died at his house in Baker-street, Portman-square.

DANIEL O’CONNELL (#ulink_3ec85df9-34f0-5682-b047-7d7d56979427)

24 MAY 1847

WE BELIEVE THERE is no doubt that Mr O’Connell expired on Saturday, the 15th of this month, at Genoa. He yielded up his latest breath at the distance of many hundred miles from the remains of the humble dwelling which became remarkable as his birthplace. In a remote part of the county of Kerry is a village called Cahirciveen, and within one mile of that obscure locality may be found a place bearing the name of Carhen. The latter was for many years the residence of Morgan O’Connell, father of the extraordinary man to an account of whose life and character these columns are assigned. In that most desolate region was Daniel O’Connell born, on the 6th of August, 1775 – a date which he was accustomed to notice with no small complacency, for he took much pleasure in reminding the world that he was born in the year during which our American colonies began to assert their independence, and he sometimes succeeded in persuading his admirers that that incident, taken in connexion with others, shadowed forth his destiny as a champion of freedom. Antecedently to his thirteenth year he received little instruction beyond what pedagogues of the humblest order are capable of imparting; but that class in Kerry are considerably superior to their brethren in other parts of Ireland, and upon the whole it could not be said that even his early education was by any means neglected. About this time his father’s pecuniary circumstances began evidently to improve; his uncle, the owner of Darrynane, though long married, had no issue; he declared Daniel O’Connell to be his favourite nephew, and therefore the friends of “the fortunate youth” thought that no expense should be spared upon the intellectual culture of one whose acknowledged talents and brightening prospects rendered him what is called “the hope of the family.” In those days the Irish members of the Church of Rome were just beginning to exercise a few of the privileges which they now most amply enjoy; and at a place called Redington, in Long Island, one of their priests, a Mr Harrington, had opened a school. Thither young Daniel O’Connell was sent in the year 1788, and there he remained for about 12 months, when he and his brother Maurice took leave of Mr Harrington, with the view of proceeding to one of the Roman Catholic seminaries on the continent. Their first destination was Louvain, but immediately on their reaching that place it was found that Daniel had passed the admissible age; he, however, attended the classes as a volunteer, till fresh instructions could arrive from Kerry. At the end of six weeks the O’Connells proceeded from Louvain to St Omer, and finally to the English College at Douay, where the subject of this memoir pursued his studies with much distinction. Before he quitted St Omer the President of that College, in a letter still preserved, ventured to foretell that his pupil was “destined to make a remarkable figure in society.” On the 21st of December, 1793, Mr O’Connell, being then in the 18th year of his age, quitted Douay, and reached England, without encountering any adventures, save those which sprang from the insults that the revolutionary party were accustomed to inflict upon every one whom they supposed to be an Englishman, or an ecclesiastic, or even a student of divinity. The scenes which he witnessed in France caused Mr O’Connell frequently to declare that in those days he was almost a Tory. He certainly was not then a revolutionist, for the moment he reached the English packet-boat he and his brother tore the tricolour cockades from their hats, and trampled them on the deck. Those sentiments, however, he did not long continue to cherish, for a year had not quite passed away when he exchanged them for doctrines which strongly savoured of Liberalism. It is understood that at a very early age he was intended for the priesthood. Those Irish Roman Catholics who evinced any aptitude for a learned profession found none other open to them in the days of O’Connell’s boyhood. But it is difficult to imagine any one more incapable than he was of maintaining even those outward signs of holiness which are generally observed by the ecclesiastics of his persuasion. An overflow of animal spirits rendered him, not merely a gay, but an obstreperous member of society, and his riotous jocularity acknowledged no limits. All idea, therefore, of his becoming a priest, if ever seriously entertained, must have been abandoned before he reached the age of 19, for he was then devoted to anything rather than the service of the altar. Hare hunting and fishing were amongst his darling pastimes; and these means of relaxation continued to fill his leisure hours, even when his years had approximated to three score and ten. From 17 to 70 the energy of his intellect and the ardour of his passions seemed to suffer no abatement. A large and well used law library, numerous liaisons, a pack of beagles, and a good collection of fishing tackle, attested the variety of his tastes and the vigour of his constitution. Before he had completed his 20th year he became a student of Lincoln’s-inn, into which society he was received on the 30th of January, 1794. Previous to the year 1793 Roman Catholics were not admitted to the bar, and Mr O’Connell was amongst the earliest members of that Church who became candidates for legal advancement. His entrance upon the profession of the law, as a barrister, took place on the 19th of May, 1798, and it must be acknowledged that he spared no pains to qualify himself for that arduous pursuit. Though of a joyous temperament, self-indulgent, and in some respects sensual, he still was not indisposed to hard labour, so that he became almost learned in the law before he ever held a brief. Conformably with the custom of the Irish bar, Mr O’Connell prepared himself for any sort of business that might come within his reach, whether civil or criminal – whether at common law or in equity. There are men in the Temple who would laugh to scorn the best specimens of his special pleading; and conveyancers in Lincoln’s-inn who hold very cheap his skill in their branch of the profession; but in 1798 there was no man of the same standing on the Munster circuit, or at the Irish bar, who knew more of his profession than young Mr O’Connell; and in a short time he became a very efficient lawyer of all-work. The sanguinary rebellion of that period was then at its height, and he probably cherished in his heart as much of the jacobinical principle as was consistent with the character of a thorough Roman Catholic. But he was a lawyer, and being also a shrewd politician, he foresaw that of those United Irishmen who escaped from the field many would be likely to perish on the scaffold; with great prudence, therefore, and most loyal valour, he joined the yeomanry and supported the Government. Again, when it became necessary to reorganize a yeomanry force in 1803, he once more took his place in “the Lawyers’ Corps.” Many anecdotes have been at various times retailed, showing the pains which he took to mitigate the atrocities of that period; and, however indifferent he might be as to the remote tendency of his political proceedings, he certainly manifested throughout his life a strong aversion to actual deeds of blood.

Mr O’Connell had been four years at the bar, and had entered upon the 28th year of his age, before he contracted matrimony. His father and his uncle pointed out more than one young lady of good fortune whose alliance with him in marriage they earnestly desired; but he felt bound in honour not to violate the vows which he had interchanged with his cousin, Mary, the daughter of Dr O’Connell of Tralee. Her father was esteemed in his profession, but her marriage portion was next to nothing; and great therefore was the displeasure which this union occasioned. It took place privately on the 23d of June, 1802, at the lodgings of Mr James Connor, the brother-in-law of the bride, in Dame-street, Dublin. This occurrence for some months remained a secret, but eventually all parties became reconciled. Mrs O’Connell was deservedly esteemed by her family and friends, while she enjoyed a large share of her husband’s affection.

Having now reached that period when Mr O’Connell embarked in a profession and assumed the responsibilities of domestic life, we may arrest for a moment the current of his biography, in order to advert briefly to his family and connexions. Nothing is more frequent in society than a demand for “the real history of these O’Connells.” It is often asked have they been “jobbers, hucksters, pedlars, smugglers, and everything base and beggarly? or are they the lineal descendants of the Sovereign Lords of Iveragh, and have they, through successive generations, preserved the purity of gentle blood and the reputation of honourable men?” Alas! who can tell? If there be one thing in this world less worthy of credence than another it is an Irish pedigree. In England the “visitations” are carefully preserved; the records of the Herald’s College in this country, and the business of that office, are conducted quite in the manner of other public departments. Here all proceedings are so much according to law, that every family which preserves its land can prove its pedigree. But, amidst confiscations, burnings, rebellions, and massacres, the regularity of official records can never be maintained, and the evidences of succession degenerate into oral tradition. The ancient Greek, who happened to distinguish himself, usually traced his origin to a deified ancestor; the modern Irishman who makes a noise in the world, always avers that he is descended from a Sovereign Prince; while the world looks on, and with contemptuous impartiality pronounces both genealogies to be equally fabulous. Dismissing, therefore, all idle speculation respecting the early history of the O’Connells, it may be shortly stated that this family originally established itself in Limerick; that about the beginning of the seventeenth century they transferred their residence to the barony of Iveragh, in the western extremity of Kerry; but, being deeply implicated in the rebellion of 1641, they found it convenient to seek shelter in Clare. To this migration Daniel O’Connell, of Aghgore, formed an exception, and he contrived to keep his little modicum of land by not yielding to that appetite for insurrection. His son, John O’Connell of Aghgore and Darrynane, took the field in 1689 at the head of a company of Foot, which he raised for the service of James II., and having served at the siege of Derry, as well as at the battles of the Boyne and Aughrim, was included in the capitulation of Limerick. His eldest son died without issue, but his second son, Daniel, having married a Miss Donoghue, became the father of 22 children. The second of this gentleman’s sons was Morgan, who married Catherine, the daughter of Mr John O’Mullane, of Whitechurch, in the county of Cork; and the eldest son of this Morgan was the extraordinary individual whose death we have now to record. Although nothing can be more absurd than to claim for him an illustrious descent, yet several of his relatives and connexions were respectable, and some of the number have served with distinction in the French and Austrian armies. But, sooth to say, his father was a most undignified person:- a very painstaking, industrious man, whose thoughts never wandered from the main chance; who held a good farm and kept a large shop, or rather a sort of miscellaneous store, which ministered to the limited wants of Cahirciveen and its rude neighbourhood; who is said to have been most adroit in the arts by which money may be acquired, not only in those of the fair dealer, but in those of the free trader. Almost every one who lived on the western coast of Ireland was, in those days, more or less of a smuggler; therefore Maurice of Darrynane and Morgan of Carhen were not much worse than their neighbours in carrying on the contraband or the wrecking trade; and thus did the elder brother keep his acres free from incumbrance, while the younger scraped together pence and pounds, till he was able to acquire a few additional acres at low rents and under long leases, by which means he ascended into that detested class known by the designation of Irish middlemen. He lived to see his son a prosperous barrister, and the acknowledged heir to Maurice of Darrynane; old Morgan therefore left at his death, which took place in 1809, a very considerable portion, if not the greater part, of all that he possessed to his second son, Mr John O’Connell, of Grena.

In the year 1802 Mr O’Connell found himself under the displeasure of his relatives, and obliged to contend with the difficulties which are inseparable from a growing family and a narrow income. The legislative union had then been only just consummated; his first popular harangue, however, was delivered at a meeting of the citizens of Dublin, assembled on the 13th of January, 1800, to petition against the proposed incorporation of the Irish with the British Parliament. The public have long been familiar with the grounds upon which Mr O’Connell was accustomed to urge the claims of his native country to the possession of an independent legislature. It is believed that he never urged those claims with more effect than in his earlier speeches; the very first of which has been extolled as a model of eloquence. It is a generally received opinion that, from the very starting point of his career, he displayed every quality, good and evil, of a perfect demagogue; and, those pernicious accomplishments being once known to the public of Ireland, his success at the bar ceased to be problematical. The great body of the Roman Catholics were only too happy to patronize an aspiring barrister of their own persuasion; the attorneys on the Munster circuit found that his pleadings were much more worthy of being relied on than those of almost any other junior member of the bar; and soon this description of business poured into his hands so abundantly, that he employed first one, and then a second amanuensis. At nisi prius his manner alone was enough to persuade an Irish jury that his client must be right. His anticipation of victory always seemed so unfeigned that, aided by that and other arts, he seldom failed to create in the minds of every jury a prejudice in favour of whichever party had the good fortune to have hired his services. His astonishing skill in cross-examination; the caution, dexterity, and judgment which he displayed in conducting a cause; the clearness and precision with which he disentangled the most intricate mass of evidence, especially in matters of account, procured for him the entire confidence of all those who had legal patronage to dispense. But his not being a Protestant excluded him from much valuable business. A Roman Catholic in those days was never heard in the courts of justice with that gracious approbation which encourages a youthful advocate; before a common jury, however, no man could be more successful than the subject of the present memoir, for this, among other reasons, that a large fund of the broadest humour usually enabled him to have the laugh on his side. In the Rolls Court also, where Mr Curran at that time presided, Mr O’Connell was in the highest favour.

During the few years which elapsed between 1800 and the death of Mr Pitt, two or three demonstrations were made in Dublin against the legislative union, in all of which Mr O’Connell continued to gain reputation as a popular leader; but he had not yet been recognized as the great agent of what was called “Catholic Emancipation.” For some time after the extinction of the Irish Parliament it was believed that the expectations excited by Mr Pitt respecting a repeal of the penal laws would be realized. But three successive Ministries occupied the Cabinet without possessing ability, or perhaps inclination, to effect that object when at length Mr Perceval was annnounced as the head of the Government amidst all the triumph of a grand No Popery agitation. Antecedently to this period, feeble efforts were occasionally made by the Roman Catholics, in which Mr O’Connell more or less participated, but it was not until the year 1809 that the struggles of that party became consolidated into a system and raised to the importance of a popular movement. The Orange party, of course, became alarmed; the measures of Government began to assume a definite and forcible character, obsolete statutes were called into activity, and fresh powers obtained from the Legislature. Some Roman Catholics of high rank, and others of good station, were prosecuted in the Court of King’s Bench. Numerous ex officio informations were filed; and the Irish Attorney-General made war upon the newspapers of Dublin with unexampled vigour and pertinacity. It happened, however, that during the prosecutions of that period Mr O’Connell appeared more frequently as an advocate than in any other capacity. Amongst the most remarkable of his speeches, and probably the ablest that he ever delivered at the bar, was his defence of Mr Magee, the proprietor and publisher of the Dublin Evening Post, a gentleman whom Mr Saurin, the Attorney-General of that day, conceived it to be his duty to prosecute for a libel on the Government. It need scarcely be stated that in almost all the political trials which took place in Ireland during the early part of the present century, Mr O’Connell was counsel for the accused; and, although proceedings of that nature in Dublin are usually marked by extreme intemperance on both sides, yet this characteristic of Irish litigation was never carried beyond the height which it attained while Mr Saurin was first law officer of the Crown. His mode of conducting prosecutions betrayed feelings of such bitter animosity, that Mr O’Connell could never hope to attain the objects of his ambition if he allowed any opportunity to escape of vituperating the Attorney-General; and the public of the present age will readily believe that his modes of attack were such as would, in England, excite universal disapprobation. Almost every one recollects that these proceedings on the part of the Irish Government proved wholly unsuccessful. Roman Catholic delegates might be dispersed under the Convention Act, a committee of the Roman Catholics might be suppressed under some other statute, a new bill might be introduced to declare a certain mode of associating illegal; but Mr O’Connell made it his boast that “so long as the right of petition existed he should be able to manufacture some device” by means of which the war of agitation could still be successfully waged. Whether his followers were called Pacificators in Conciliation-hall, or Repealers on Mullaghmast; whether they went by the name of delegates or committee-men, associators or liberators; patriots or precursors; no matter what the name or the pretence might be, the purpose never was anything else than to carry on in Dublin a sort of sham Parliament, which in the first place was used to obtain a repeal of the penal laws; in the second, to collect and administer that annual tribute called “the rent;” and in the third, to cajole and amuse the ignorant portion of the Irish people with that pestilent dream – an independent legislature. Of this machinery Mr O’Connell was at all times the moving agent. Whoever could consent to become a puppet and permit the chief showman to pull the wires, might assure himself of occupation for all his leisure time, and flattery enough to satiate the grossest appetite; but woe be unto him that dared to have an opinion of his own; for the colossal agitator in ascending his “bad eminence” seemed to derive especial pleasure from trampling under foot his rash and luckless rivals. The history of the years which elapsed between the development of Roman Catholic agitation in 1809 and its signal victory in 1829 discloses just this much respecting Daniel O’Connell; that he was sometimes the mere mouthpiece, and occasionally the ruler, guide, and champion of the Romish priesthood; that he maintained a “pressure from without,” which caused not only the Irish but the Imperial Government to betray apprehension as well as to breathe vengeance; and that he found or created opportunities, during this period of his life, to display in his own person every attribute of a democratic idol; and few readers require to be reminded that the history of all the men who form this class but too plainly shows in what a high degree the vices of their character predominate over the virtues. To sustain himself in the position which O’Connell held throughout the meridian of his career required great animal energy and unwearied activity of mind. He possessed both. Long before he reached middle life he had become the most industrious man in Ireland. As early as 5 o’clock in the morning his matins were concluded, his toilet finished, his morning meal discussed, and his amanuensis at full work; by 11 he was in court; at three or half-past attending a board or a committee; later in the evening presiding at a dinner, but generally retiring to rest at an early hour, and not only abstaining from the free use of wine, but to some extent denying himself the national beverage of his country.

He was often heard to say, “I am the best abused man in all Ireland, or perhaps in all Europe.” Amongst those who delighted to pour upon him the vials of their wrath, the municipal authorities of Dublin were perhaps the most prominent. The old corporation of that city was so corrupt, so feeble, and so thoroughly Orange in its politics, that Mr O’Connell reckoned confidently upon “winning golden opinions” from his party, while he indulged his own personal vengeance, by making the civic government of Dublin an object of his fiercest hostility. In the year 1815 this feud had attained to its utmost height, and various modes of overwhelming their tremendous adversary were suggested to the corporators; but at length shooting him was deemed the most eligible. This manner of dealing with an enemy is so perfectly Hibernian, that in Dublin it could not fail to meet with entire and cordial acceptance. At that time a Mr D’Esterre, who had been an officer of marines, was one of those members of the Dublin corporation who struggled the hardest for lucrative office. The more knowing members of that body hinted to him that an affair of honour with O’Connell would make his fortune. To such advisers the death of either party would be a boon, for the one was a rival and the other an enemy. O’Connell had publicly designated the municipality of Dublin as a “beggarly corporation,” and upon this a quarrel was founded by their champion, Mr D’Esterre, who walked about armed with a bludgeon, threatening to inflict personal chastisement on his adversary. The habits of thinking which then prevailed in Ireland admitted of no other course than that Mr O’Connell should demand satisfaction. Both parties, attended by their friends, met on the 31st of January, 1815, at a place called Bishop’s Court, in the county of Kildare. It sometimes happens that a man displays unusual gaiety when he is sick at heart; and never did the jocularity of O’Connell appear more exuberant than on the morning of that day when he went forth to destroy the life of his adversary or to sacrifice his own. Sir Edward Stanley attended Mr D’Esterre, and Major Macnamara was the friend of Mr O’Connell. At the first fire D’Esterre fell mortally wounded. A gamester would have betted five to one in his favour. Familiarized with scenes of danger from early youth, his courage was of the highest order; practised in the use of the pistol, it was said that he could “snuff a candle at twelve paces,” while Mr O’Connell’s peaceful profession caused him to seem – as opposed to a military man – a safe antagonist, and this, added to D’Esterre’s supposed skill as a shot, promised assured success to the champion whom the Orange corporation “sent forth to do battle” with the popish Goliah. But the lifeless corpse of the real aggressor bore its silent and impressive testimony to the imperfect nature of all human calculations. Mr O’Connell, though less culpable than his victim, still seemed conscious of having committed a great crime; and, influenced by a keen but imperfect remorse, he expressed the deepest contrition. It is, however, not the fact that he at that time “registered” his celebrated “vow” against the use of duelling pistols. On the contrary, he engaged in another affair of honour before finally abandoning the dernier resort of bullets and gunpowder. Mankind with one voice applauded his peaceful resolution the moment it was announced, but they were equally unanimous in condemning the license with which he scattered insult when he had previously sworn to refuse satisfaction. In a few months after the fatal event just recorded Mr O’Connell received a communication tending towards hostility from Sir Robert (then Mr) Peel, who at that time filled the office of Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Sir Charles Saxton, on the part of Mr Peel, had an interview first with Mr O’Connell, and afterwards with the friend of that gentleman, Mr Lidwell. The business of exchanging protocols went on between the parties for three days, when at length Mr O’Connell was taken into custody and bound over to keep the peace towards all his fellow subjects in Ireland; thereupon Mr Peel and his friend came to this country and eventually proceeded to the continent. Mr O’Connell followed them to London, but the metropolitan police, then called “Bow-street officers,” were active enough to bring him before the Chief-Justice of England, when he entered into recognizances to keep the peace towards all His Majesty’s subjects; and so ended an affair which might have compromised the safety of two men who since that time have filled no small space in the public mind.

The period which this narrative has now reached was still many years antecedent to the introduction of the Roman Catholic Relief Bill. Down to that moment Mr O’Connell prosecuted with unabated vigour his peculiar system of warfare against the supporters of Orange ascendancy, while he pursued his avocations as a lawyer with increasing and eminent success. As early as the year 1816 his professional position quite entitled him to a silk gown, but his creed kept him on the outside of the bar, where he continued to enjoy the largest and most lucrative business that ever rewarded the labours of a junior barrister. Meanwhile that body, called the Catholic Association, with O’Connell at its head, carried on the trade of agitating the Irish populace. The latter years of the Regency were marked by a new and more soothing policy towards Ireland. Upon the accession of George IV. he visited that country; in the early part of his reign the principle of conciliating the O’Connell party was maintained and extended; the Liberalism of the Canning policy began to prevail; “Emancipation” was made an “open question,” and even in 1825 the demand for religious equality seemed nearly established. Mr O’Connell declared himself willing to give up the forty-shilling freeholders – willing to sacrifice the lowest of his countrymen for the sake of the highest – to limit the democratic power in order that the aristocracy of the Roman Catholics should have seats in Parliament and silk gowns at the bar. The Parliamentary career of him – the “member for all Ireland” – now more immediately claims our attention; and it naturally takes its commencement from the first occasion upon which he was returned for Clare. A vacancy having occurred in the representation of that county, a gentleman called O’Gorman Mahon, seized by a sudden freak, posted off to Dublin, entered the Roman Catholic Association, and proposed a resolution calling on O’Connell to become a candidate, which was unanimously carried. Though legal success was impossible the scheme just suited the Irish character. It afforded the prospect of “a row,” and – more acceptable still – a piece of whimsical agitation. The long continued labours of O’Connell, extending even then over a period of more than twenty years, had rendered a maintenance of the penal laws a matter which the Government of that day considered to be, if not unjust, at least exceedingly unsafe; but it is believed that the great Clare election was the first event that awakened them to a full sense of danger. Mr O’Connell had been so often engaged on the wrong side of a legal controversy that he did not, upon this occasion, hesitate to promise his adherents an easy triumph. He averred that he could sit without taking the oaths; and his legal doctrines were supported by Mr Butler – a member of the English bar – while his pretensions as a candidate were sustained by the influence of the priesthood and the agency of the mob. Mr (afterwards Lord) Fitzgerald had represented Clare for many years, he was one of the resident gentry in a land where not to be an absentee is a virtue; his ancestors had long been settled in that county: he had faithfully maintained the interests, and spoken the sentiments of the popular party, and he was the firm friend of Roman Catholic emancipation; though only a tenth-rate man in Parliament, he was a first-rate man on the hustings, but his exertions at the Clare election were wholly and signally unsuccessful. The combined influence of the Government, of his own connexions, of the squirearchy, were scattered and set at nought by the power of the priesthood; and Mr O’Connell was, on the 6th of July, 1828, returned to Parliament by a large majority of the Clare electors. He lost no time in presenting himself at the table of the House of Commons, and expressed his willingness to take the oath of allegiance, but refusing the other oaths he was ordered to withdraw. Discussions in the house and arguments at the bar ensued; the speedy close of the session, however, precluded any practical result. Agitation throughout every part of Ireland now assumed so formidable a character that Ministers said they apprehended a civil war, and early in the next session the Roman Catholic Relief Bill was introduced and carried: Mr O’Connell was, therefore, in the month of April, 1829, enabled to sit for Clare without taking the objectionable oaths; but it was necessary that a new writ should issue, under which he was immediately re-elected.

His return for Clare was amongst the proximate causes of “emancipation,” but the “rent” was another source of still more active influence. Whether the scheme for raising that annual tribute originated in the fertile brain of Daniel O’Connell, or sprang from the perverted ingenuity of some less conspicuous person, certain it is that he was ultimately the great gainer. One of the earliest effects, however, of this financial project was most materially to aggravate that threatening aspect of public affairs which coerced the Duke of Wellington into proposing the Roman Catholic Relief Bill. A due regard to the precise succession of events makes it necessary here to notice an occurrence in itself of no great amount. On the 12th of February 1831, Messrs. O’Connell, Steel, and Barrett, were brought to trial, under an indictment, which charged them with holding political meetings contrary to the proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant; they pleaded guilty, but the act of Parliament under which they had been prosecuted expired pending the general election, and before they were brought up for judgment; they therefore escaped punishment, and the partizans of Mr O’Connell pointed to this negative victory as one of the proudest proofs that could be furnished of his infallibility as a lawyer. The death of George IV. of course led to a new Parliament, when Mr O’Connell withdrew from the representation of Clare and was returned for the county of Waterford. In the House of Commons, elected in 1831, he sat for his native county (Kerry). Dublin, the city in which the greater part of his life was spent, enjoyed his services as its representative from 1832 till 1836, when he was petitioned against and unseated, after a long contest, before a committee of the House of Commons. He then for some time took refuge in the representation of Kilkenny; but, at the general election in 1837, he was once more returned for the city of Dublin, and in 1841 for the county of Cork. Mr O’Connell had a seat in the House of Commons for 18 years, under the rule of three successive Sovereigns, during six distinct Administrations and in seven several Parliaments.

Every reader is aware that he took an active part in all the legislation of the period, as well as in the various struggles for power and place in which the political parties of this country have been engaged during the last 20 years; and right vigorously did he bear himself throughout those changing scenes … His position as mouth piece of the priesthood and populace of Ireland usually made it necessary that the tone of his speeches should harmonize with the feelings of a rude and passionate multitude; but on subjects distinct from the party squabbles of his countrymen scarcely any one addressed the house more effectively than did Mr O’Connell; and it is generally acknowledged that in his speeches upon the great question of Parliamentary Reform he was surpassed by very few members of either house. Although it cannot be denied that the faults of his character were numerous, and the amount of his political offences most grievous in the sight of the public, yet he enjoyed some popularity even in this country, for many elements of greatness entered into the constitution of his mind. Had he not belonged to a prescribed race, been born in a semi-barbarous state of society, been blinded by the fallacies of an educational system which was based upon Popish theology; had not his intellect been subsequently narrowed by the influence of legal practice, and the original coarseness of his feelings been aggravated by the habits of a criminal lawyer and a mob-orator, he might have attained to enviable eminence, legitimate power, and enduring fame. But he “lived and moved and had his being” among wild enthusiasts and factious priests. Who then can marvel that his great faculties were perverted to sordid uses? Apparently indifferent to nobler objects of ambition, he devoted herculean energies to the acquisition of tribute from his starving countrymen, and bestowed upon his descendants the remnants of a mendicant revenue, when he might have bequeathed them an honourable name. His Parliamentary speeches are numerous; but the events of his Parliamentary life have been few in number; for it can scarcely be said that by his personal efforts any series of measures were either carried or defeated; yet several propositions have been brought forward in the House of Commons by Mr O’Connell. Amongst the most remarkable of these was his motion for a repeal of the Irish union, submitted to Parliament on the 22nd of April, 1834. Upon that occasion he addressed the house with his usual ability for upwards of six hours; and Mr Rice (now Lord Monteagle) occupied an equal length of time in delivering a reply which might advantageously have been reduced within half its dimensions. After a protracted debate the house divided, only one English member voting with Mr O’Connell, the numbers being 523 to 38. Those who supported him on that remarkable occasion consisted of persons returned to Parliament by the Irish priests, at his recommendation, and pledged to vote as he directed; they were therefore called “the O’Connell tail,” and no doubt, when political parties were nicely balanced, the 30 or 40 members whom he commanded could easily create a preponderating influence. Thus it was his power which from 1835 to 1841 kept the Melbourne Ministry in office. To reward such important aid, the greater portion of the Irish patronage was placed at his disposal; and, to a great degree, the Irish policy of the Melbourne Government took its tone and character from the known sentiments of the demagogue upon whose fiat their existence depended.

The return of the party called Conservatives to power in 1841 was the signal for renewed agitation in Ireland, and this led to a lengthened interruption of Mr O’Connell’s Parliamentary labours; here, therefore, a fitting opportunity presents itself to state one or two circumstances which were not immediately connected with that portion of his career. In 1834 he received a patent of precedence next after the King’s second Serjeant. When the Dublin corporation was reformed he was elected Alderman, and filled the office of Lord Mayor in 1841–2. Mr O’Connell was appointed a magistrate of Kerry in 1835, but during the violent excitement which prevailed in 1843 the Lord Chancellor thought it necessary to remove him from the commission of the peace. He had controversies with all sorts of people, and was charged with sundry crimes, public and private; with having taken bribes from the millowners of Lancashire to speak against all short time bills; with having, even in his old age, seduced and abandoned more than one frail member of the fair sex; with having neglected and oppressed his tenantry to an extent which justified his being described as one of the most culpable individuals belonging to the vilest class in all Europe – the middlemen of Ireland. The evidence on which the other two accusations rest is rather doubtful; but the clearest possible proofs of his misconduct as a landlord were, in the year 1845, given to the public by The Times Commissioner. His expectations of office, of patronage, of power, and even of titular distinction are understood to have been quite as ardent as those of men who made no pretension to the liberal or the patriotic. It has been said, and generally believed, that he aimed at a baronetcy, and even hoped for a seat on the bench. The present age may well felicitate itself on the fact that O’Connell was not raised to judicial authority; for, instead of displaying any quality approaching to the calm impartiality of a judge, it had always been his practice to place himself in a position of hostility to every class, or at least to the representatives of every class in the community except the lowest. If the reader will only take the trouble to cast a glance over the index of any periodical publication which records the events of these times, he will find in letter 0, under the head “O’Connell,” – “Abuse of the Wesleyan Methodists; abuse of the Freemasons (by whom he was expelled in April, 1838); abuse of the Chartists; abuse of the English Radicals,” nay, even of the English women; “abuse of the King of Hanover, of the late Duke of York, of George III., of George IV., of the English aristocracy, of the Irish aristocracy, of the French Government, and especially of the French King;” to say nothing of his onslaughts upon Perceval, Liverpool, Wellington, Peel, and the head of every Tory Ministry; upon the established church, on the Dublin University, on the judges of the land, – upon every class and institution except the Irish populace and the church of Rome; thus labouring, day and night, to maintain the spirit of agitation just short of the point at which men are accustomed to burst forth into open rebellion. This peculiar system of his reached its culminating point in 1843. It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that, to some extent, the subject of this memoir belonged to a political party, and, though at times he would call his political friends “base, bloody, and brutal Whigs,” yet, usually, when the Liberals occupied the Cabinet, he endeavoured to keep Ireland in a state favourable to Ministerial interests; but on all occasions when the Tories were in the ascendant, the full might of democratic agitation was brought into the field. In the autumn of 1841 Sir R. Peel became First Lord of the Treasury. Early in the spring of the following year a repeal of the union was demanded by every parish, village, and hamlet, from the Giant’s Causeway to Cape Clear, while a fierce activity pervaded the Repeal Association. In the course of the next year (1843) “monster meetings” were held on the royal hill of Tara, on the Curragh of Kildare, on the Rath of Mullaghmast, and in a score of other wild localities; the Irish populace were drilled, and marshalled, and marched under appointed leaders, whose commands they obeyed with military precision, while the master-spirit who evoked and ruled this vast movement announced to all Europe that he was “at the head of 500,000 loyal subjects, but fighting men.” The Irish press enjoined “Young Ireland” to imitate the example of 1798, and open rebellion was hourly apprehended. At length the crisis arrived; the great Clontarf meeting was summoned; a Government proclamation to prohibit that assemblage went forth, the military were called out, and the grand repeal agitation shrank into nothingness at the mere sight of artillery and Dragoons. The intended meeting at Clontarf was fixed for the 8th of October, 1843; on the 14th of that month O’Connell received notice to put in bail; on the 2nd of November proceedings commenced in the Court of Queen’s Bench; the whole of Michaelmas Term was consumed by preliminary proceedings, and the actual trial did not begin until the 16th of January, 1844. Twelve gentlemen of the bar appeared on behalf of the Crown, and sixteen defended the traversers; who then can wonder that this remarkable trial did not close till the 12th of February? At length Mr O’Connell was sentenced to pay a fine of 2,000l. and be imprisoned for a year. He immediately appealed to the House of Lords by writ of error, but pending the proceedings on the question thus raised, he was sent to the Richmond Penitentiary, near Dublin, where for about three months he seemed to spend his days and nights most joyously. On the 4th of September the House of Lords reversed the judgment against O’Connell and his associates, Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham being favourable to affirming the proceedings in the Irish Queen’s Bench, while Lords Denman, Campbell, and Cottenham were of an opposite opinion. Mr O’Connell was therefore immediately liberated, and a vast procession attended him from prison to his residence in Merrion-square. From the moment that proceedings were commenced against him in the preceding year he became considerably crest-fallen. By the result of those proceedings his supposed infallibility as a lawyer ceased to be one of the dogmas of his party; the utter failure of the repeal movement greatly impaired his credit as a politician; the enormous costs of his defence nearly exhausted the funds of the repeal association; and in the altered state of his fortunes it became no easy matter for him to devise new modes of agitation. In 1845 he expressed his determination to repair to London during the ensuing session, to support a repeal of the Corn Laws. When he re-entered the House of Commons in 1846 it became evident to every observer that he had not only suffered in purse and popularity, but very materially also in health; that though his mind was still unclouded, his physical energy had disappeared, and that he could never again hope to be the hero of a “monster meeting.” Still a considerable portion of his ancient influence had not yet passed out of his hands, and when the Whigs once more came into office he was restored to the commission of the peace, and exercised no small authority over the Irish patronage of the Crown, of course giving Lord John Russell, in return, the full benefit of his support, to the great dismay of the “Young Ireland” party, who regarded his adhesion to any British Ministry as a traitorous “surrender of repeal.” Long and loud was the controversy between those belligerents; but the reader may well be spared the trouble of perusing even an abstract of the gross invectives poured on his head by a swarm of indignant followers, or a detail of the concessions wrung from him by a hard necessity. Unfortunately for O’Connell’s posthumous fame, he now betrayed “a broken spirit,” though not “a contrite heart;” and the popular influence, as well as the moral courage, of the old agitator sank under the pressure of his youthful and vigorous assailants; then came the famine, the falling off of “the rent,” thin audiences at Conciliation-hall, and the indefinite postponement of repeal. Successfully to contend with these disasters would have demanded the energy of O’Connell’s early days; but old, infirm, and broken-hearted, he was alike incapable of a manly struggle or a dignified retreat; and when once more he attempted to take his seat in Parliament, he seemed to be only the débris of an extinuished demagogue. To amplify the tale of his decline and fall would be inconsistent with the general tone of a narrative which has treated indulgently the memory of one who in his long life-time seldom spared a fallen adversary. In thus closing his history it may be well to avoid the contagion of his example, and to practise a forbearance of which he was incapable; for though to the crowd of his adherents he always seemed a munificent patron, yet small is the number of those who could sincerely say he had ever been a true friend or a generous enemy.

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MARIA EDGEWORTH (#ulink_8b92a15a-30b3-54c3-9e8a-6f05451b3b9a)

28 MAY 1849

OF MARIA EDGEWORTH it may be said – even more emphatically than of her sister-novelist, Miss Burney – that she lived to become a classic. Her decease in her 83rd or 84th year can hardly be felt as a shock in the world of letters though it bereaves her home-circle of one whose many days were but so many graces – so actively unimpaired did her powers of giving and of receiving pleasure and instruction remain till a very late period of her existence. The story of Miss Edgeworth’s life was some years since told by herself in her memoir of her father. She was born in England – the daughter of Mr Richard Lovell Edgeworth, by the first of that gentleman’s four wives – and had reached the age of 13 ere she became an Irish resident. Fifty years or more have elapsed since her Castle Rackrent – the precursor of a copious series of tales, national, moral, and fashionable (never romantic) – at once established her in the first class of novelists, as a shrewd observer of manners, a warm-hearted gatherer of national humours, and a resolute upholder of good morals in fiction. Before her Irish stories appeared, nothing of their kind – so complete, so relishing, so familiar yet never vulgar, so humorous yet not without pathos – had been tendered to the public. Their effect was great not merely on the world of readers, but on the world of writers and politicians also. Sir Walter Scott assures us that when he began his Scottish novels it was with the thought of emulating Miss Edgeworth; while Mr O’Connell at a later period (if we are to credit Mr O’Neill Daunt) expressed substantial dissatisfaction because one having so much influence had not served her country as he thought poor Ireland could alone be served – by agitation. Prudence will allay, rarely raise, storms; and Prudence was ever at hand when Maria Edgeworth (to use Scott’s phrase) “pulled out the conjuring wand with which she worked so many marvels.” Herein lay her strength and herein also some argument for cavil and reservation on the part of those who love nothing which is not romantic. “Her extraordinary merit,” happily says Sir James Mackintosh, “both as a moralist and as a woman of genius, consists in her having selected a class of virtues far more difficult to treat as the subject of fiction than others, and which had therefore been left by former writers to her.”

To offer a complete list of Miss Edgeworth’s fictions – closed, in 1834, by her charming and carefully wrought Helen – would be superfluous; but we may single out as three masterpieces, evincing the great variety of her powers, Vivian, Tomorrow, and The Absentee. Generally, Miss Edgeworth was happier in the short than in the long story. She managed satire with a delicate and firm hand, as her Modern Griselda attests. She was reserved rather than exuberant in her pathos. She could give her characters play and brilliancy when these were demanded as in “Lady Delacour;” she could work out the rise, progress, and consequences of a foible (as in Almeria) with unflinching consistency. Her dialogue is excellent; her style is in places too solicitously laboured, but it is always characteristic, yielding specimens of that pure and terse language which so many contemporary novelists seem to avoid on the maidservant’s idea that “plain English” is ungenteel. Her tales are singularly rich in allusion and anecdote. In short, they indicate intellectual mastery and cultivation of no common order. Miss Edgeworth has herself confessed the care with which they were wrought. They owed much to her father’s supervision; but this we are assured by her, was confined to the pruning of redundancies. In connexion with Mr Edgeworth the Essay on Irish Bulls was written; also the treatise on Practical Education … This brings us to speak of that large and important section of Maria Edgeworth’s writings – her stories for children. Here as elsewhere, she was “nothing if not prudential;” and yet who has ever suceeeded in captivating the fancy and attention of the young as her Rosamonds and Lucys have done? In her hands the smallest incident rivetted the eye and heart, – the driest truth gained a certain grace and freshness …

If Miss Edgeworth’s long literary life was usefully employed, so also were her claims and services adequately acknowledged during her lifetime. Her friendships were many; her place in the world of English and Irish society was distinguished. Byron (little given to commending the women whom he did not make love to, or who did not make love to him) approved her. Scott, addressed her like an old friend and a sister. There is hardly a tourist of worth or note who has visited Ireland for the last 50 years without bearing testimony to her value and vivacity as one of a large and united home circle. She was small in stature, lively of address, and diffuse as a letter-writer. To sum up it may be said that the changes and developments which have convulsed the world of imagination since Miss Edgeworth’s career of authorship began have not shaken her from her pedestal nor blotted out her name from the honourable place which it must always keep in the records of European fiction.

TOM MOORE (#ulink_35ac3790-a3c3-5859-8df2-3ea2ed23695b)

1 MARCH 1852

THE ELEGY OF TOM MOORE should not contain one mournful or distressing note! Flourishing in an age of poets – of men who have stamped their characters upon the literature of their country and earned undying fame – he takes his ground as fairly as the best of them. Within his sphere he is unapproachable. He has little in common with the stormy passion of Byron; the philosophical grandeur of Coleridge is unknown to him; the muse of Scott and his own are scarcely kindred cousins; his productions have as little of the dreamy and mystical splendour of Shelley as they are allied to the elaborate and fatiguing epics of Southey; but within the circle of his own uncontested dominion he has poured forth strains as exquisite as any fancy ever clothed in sparkling verse to delight the jocund heart of man. The mind of Moore, from the moment that he took pen in hand, may be said to have been always in a state of pleasure. He has written satires as well as songs, and dealt with themes both sacred and profane: he has described the loves of angels and the holy piety of erring mortals; but, whatever the employment, one condition of feeling is always manifest. Most musical, most happy was his genius, and music and joyousness are careering in almost every syllable that he spoke …

Thomas Moore was born in Dublin on the 30th of May, 1780, the son of a small tradesman, who afterwards became a quartermaster in the army. It is not easy to decide when he first attempted verse. Upon looking back he could not discover when he was not a scribbler. In his thirteenth year he was already a contributor to a magazine; in his fourteenth he had addressed a sonnet to his school-master; and some three years before he sent his productions to the Irish periodical he had distinguished himself in another branch of art by undertaking principal characters in amateur theatricals. Moore was privileged to be precocious without paying the penalty of precocity. When he was 12 years old he accompanied his father, a Roman Catholic, to a patriotic dinner held in honour of the French Revolution, then a recent event, and regarded, as he himself tells us, as a signal to the slave, wherever suffering, that “the day of his deliverance was near at hand.” Men’s hearts, it has been written, are cradled into poetry by wrong. The early genius of Moore was, no doubt, nurtured by the sufferings of his race, and maintained in vigour and freshness until the decaying music of his native land came to claim him wholly as her own. The act of Parliament having opened the University to Roman Catholics in 1793, the young poet immediately availed himself of his opportunity. The year following his admission, while still a child, he wrote and published a paraphrase of Anacreon’s fifth ode, and then proceeded to the translation of other odes by the same poet, for which he vainly hoped the university board might deem him “deserving of some honour or reward.” Disappointed in his expectation he nevertheless continued his task, and occupied himself in improving his verses and illustrating them by learned annotations, until he reached his 19th year, when he quitted Ireland for the first time, and set out for London “with the two not very congenial objects of keeping his terms in the Middle Temple and publishing by subscription his translation of Anacreon.” The translation duly appeared in 1800. It was dedicated to George IV., then Prince of Wales, who, we may remark, received no further honour at the poet’s hands.

In 1803 Moore had the misfortune to obtain worldly advancement. He was promoted to an official situation in Bermuda. The duties of the office were performed by a deputy, and the consequence, was great personal anxiety and heavy pecuniary loss to the poetical principal …

Moore’s birth and origin made him a Liberal and something more. He came into the world one of a then oppressed race. He was the contemporary and schoolfellow of an ardent band who believed all things lawful to the struggler for liberty, and his spirit went with them in their most daring aspirations. The hapless victims of their own rash, ill conceived, and unwarrantable projects for national emancipation were his chosen and beloved associates, and when he saw them sacrificed to their wild enthusiasm he cherished the passion that had consumed them and embalmed their memory in matchless melody and verse. In middle life Moore, favoured by the friendship of the great Whig chiefs, soothed by the concessions that had been made to his country and his creed, and warned by sober experience of the vanity of egregious expectation, settled down into a constitutional Whig; but at the starting point of his career he had as little affection for Whigs as for Tories. In the preface to one of a series of solemn satires, he speaks of both “factions” as “having been equally cruel to Ireland, and perhaps equally insincere in their efforts for the liberties of England.”

Moore had no cause to remember with pleasure either the prose or the poetry of these satirical exercises. Serious satire was at no time his forte – his lively and delicate hand could hardly wield the heavy weaponry of Dryden and Pope. Greater success attended his efforts when at a later period of his life he divested himself of his sombre attire, and became as joyous in hate as he had been in love. The Fudge Family, written in 1817, The Twopenny Postbag, and similar productions full of point, wit, and polish, are unrivalled as political lampoons, and preserve to this hour, their first exquisite relish. The generous fancy of the Irish poet could not be happy steeped in bitterness, and to affect sternness was to languish and die. The objects of Moore’s squib warfare were no doubt sufficiently conscious of the sharpness of an airy weapon, never otherwise than most dexterously handled by their foe; but we question whether they suffered half as much pain as they enjoyed pleasure from his lively feats. How could men be seriously angry with an adversary who simply tickled when he pretended to strike?

The apprenticeship of Moore was served when he commenced The Irish Melodies which have rendered his name famous wherever music is cherished. From that hour his genius triumphed, and most deservedly. Moore attributes all his poetical success to his strong and inborn feeling for music. There can be no doubt that his obligations to nature in this respect were very great. Music and poetry were wedded in his heart, and were inseparable. So intimately, indeed, were they united, that the sight of The Irish Melodies crowded together in one volume, unaccompanied by the notes with which they were always associated in his own mind, inflicted upon him positive pain. It was as if he saw the skeletons of his children ranged before him, deprived of the warm flesh and breathing form. To the reader the verses have beauty of their own, and charm irrespective of the strains by which they were suggested. Moore could no more unbind melody and language than he could gaze on female beauty and separate the notions of body and soul.

The publication of The Irish Melodies commenced in 1807, and, continued at intervals, was concluded in 1834. They have been translated into Latin, Italian, French, and Russian, and are familiar as proverbs amongst the fellow-countrymen of the poet, and indeed wherever English is understood and music loved. It is difficult for the critic to refer to them in too high a tone of panegyric. It may be true that force and dignity are wanting to some of those lyrics, that occasionally fancy labours until art becomes too evident in strained and frigid similes, that ornament at times overlays sentiment until nature pants beneath the glittering encumbrance; but it is equally certain that universal literature does not present a lovelier and more affecting tribute to a nation’s minstrelsy than is found in The Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore. The love of country that pervades and inspires his theme, his simple tenderness of feeling, that at once strikes the heart as instantly to melt it, his facility of creation, linked vith the glad appreciation of all that is beautiful in nature – the grace, the elegance, the sensibility, the ingenuity, that are never absent – the astonishing and thoroughly successful adaptation of sense to sound, of sweetest poetry to thrilling music, – are claims to admiration which the most prosaic of his species will find it impossible to resist or gainsay.

The year 1812 found Moore, in his 32nd year, enjoying well-earned fame, but on circumscribed ground. He had not as yet given to the world a long and continuous work, and shown how well he could sustain the brilliancy that seemed too keenly elaborate for a protracted effort. In that year, however, the poet resolved to take the field against his most favoured competitors, and to attempt a poem upon an Oriental subject. In 1817 Lalla Rookh appeared … The poem was hailed with a burst of admiration from sceptics as well as believers.

And no wonder! It was a triple triumph of industry, learning, and genius. The broad canvas exhibited a gorgeous painting; from beginning to end the same lavish ornament, the same overpowering sweetness, the same variegated and delicate tracery, the same revelling of a spirit happy in its intense enjoyment of beauty that characterized the miniatures and gems that heretofore had proceeded from the artist’s pencil. So far from betraying a diminution of power, or an inability to maintain his high-pitched note, the poet pursued his strain until he fairly left his reader languishing with a surfeit of luscious song, and faint from its oppressive odours. We peruse the romance, and marvel at the miraculous facility of a writer who has but to open his lips to drop emeralds and pearls, like the good princess in the fairy tale. Nor does astonishment cease when we learn, that eager and all but involuntary as the verse appears to issue from its source, the apparently effortless composition is actually a labour performed with all the diligence of the mechanic and all the forethought of science. In his life of Sheridan, Moore informs us that many of the impromptu jokes of Richard Brinsley owed much of their point and off-hand brilliancy to the time and pains previously bestowed upon their manufacture. His own seemingly spontaneous and easy cadences were wrought most patiently at the anvil. But the time spent in the composition of Lalla Rookh, though it extended over years, was as nothing compared with the time given to preparation for the subject. For months Moore saturated his mind with Oriental reading, in order to familiarize himself with Oriental illustration, and with the view especially of educating his fancy for its essential and peculiar work. The research and industry of the poet were immense. He tells us himself that “it was amidst the snows of two or three Derbyshire winters, in a lone cottage amongst the fields, that he found himself enabled by that concentration of thought, which retirement alone gives, to call up around him some of the sunniest of his eastern scenes.” He had devoured every book he could get relating to the East, and did not rise from his occupation until he positively knew more of Persia than of his own country, and until his acclimated genius found it as easy to draw inspiration from the influences of a land he had never seen as from the living and silent forms by which, in his own country, he had been from his childhood surrounded. Eastern travellers and Oriental scholars have borne testimony to the singular accuracy of Moore’s descriptive pen … The poem, translated into Persian, has found its way to Ispalian, and is thoroughly appreciated on the shores of the Caspian. In London the poem looks like an exotic; there it is racy of the soil.