Category Archives: History

Letter describes ‘extraordinarily beautiful’ Achill Island in summer 1923

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(This post marks our 12th blogiversary. Thanks for your support. I’m away until September. MH)

Chester A. Arthur III, grandson of the late 19th century U.S. president, and his wife, Charlotte, lived in Ireland for several years beginning in 1922.[1]The couple married in June 1922 in England, then honeymooned and settled in Ireland. The also traveled to other parts of Europe and back to the United States. Chester was bisexual, including affairs … Continue reading Chester supported anti-treaty republicans in the Irish Civil War. He wrote letters to the editor and longer pieces about Ireland for U.S. newspapers.

The American couple befriended Irish nationalists Darryl and Millie Figgis. The Irish couple in 1913 had bought a small house and some land at Pullagh, Achill Island, in County Mayo, a place to escape the noise and grime of Dublin. That became more true during the ensuing decade of revolutionary violence. The Arthurs arrived as the Figgis’ guests in July 1923. Chester, then 22, described their “cozy little cottage by the broad Atlantic” in a letter to his mother.[2]From the large collection of Arthur family papers at the Library of Congress.

Lightly edited selections of his descriptions begin below the photo:

Achillbeg, Achill Island                                                                                                                                         Fáilte Ireland

“Although there is not a tree within miles, the huge cliffs, the golden beach, the heather purple hills and the turquoise green sea make this place one of the most extraordinarily beautiful I have ever seen. And here of course is the real Gaeltacht, the real Ireland unanglicized and pagan. Each family builds and repairs their own stone whitewashed walls and their own barley thatch. They are self-supporting, their clothes are hand-made from the sheep’s back to their own; they cure their own hams, grind their own oatmeal, brew their own poteen, and catch and dry their own fish.

“Irish of course is the language spoken and sung in plaintive harmony. The men wear short white jackets and big black hats; sometimes the sweater underneath is blue and sometimes burned orange (both dyes are taken from the sea). Their trousers are of the thick homespun which in England is only worn by gentlemen. The women sit behind them sidewise on the horse’s rump when they go to Mass. Their skirts are usually brilliant red, their bodices either green, blue or purple; the shawls over their heads are always black. They have very wide high cheekbones, rather delicately chiseled straight noses, and straight black or red hair. Their long eyes are almost always very beautiful, every color that the sea takes on incites moods. If they do not know you they are very shy, but after the ice is broken, they prove very witty and amusing.

“A cèilidh[3]A social gathering with singing, dancing, and storytelling. was gotten up in our honor. The Figgis’ are very popular here. Almost the whole village crowds into a small cabin and after a few songs the four most enterprising young men get out in the middle and beckon the four belles for the square dance. They clog and whirl themselves a space in the crowd, which packs up against the walls. The room gets very hot, the clean healthy sweat from the dancers fill the air with a primitive very stimulating aroma. Eyes begin to gleam; queer little stifled cries burst from the boys as they stomp and whirl around and around their partners, who turn and turn and command respect with their eyes, yet invite and call with every essence of their bodies. And all the time the fiddle is scraping away music thousands of years old, rhythm inconceivably quick and throbbing, yet in minor key, and with a queer bagpipe drone making almost a syncopation of discord; the very heart of the stranger beats in time to the little lame boy’s fiddling.

“Now as I write, I gaze out of the little deep set window across the boggy headland, where the old women are gathering peat, across the sea, which like a great cruel gray cat lies between the violet mountains, and purrs as its sleep. The wind is keening the drowned fishermen whom the grey cat has struck with his claws. And every now and then the wind dies down, in a flash of sunshine, the cat opens his long green eyes and looks at me; but always dozes off to sleep again.

“The wind is never still here. Sometimes it only moans and cries a drone to the seagulls’ piping; but then at other times it rises with the force of a hundred djinns (In Arabian and Muslim mythology, an intelligent spirit of lower rank than the angels) and carries away the roof of the houses however securely they are tied it to the imp-headed beams sticking out from the walls near the top. And then the people pray, some to God the Father, and some to Manannán,[4]Celtic sea god. and some to both—it is all the same, for they will have in any case to rob the cow of her barley straw, and weave a new thatch, and try some new device to keep it on. But sometimes the winds work under the slates of the new British built houses, and slates go flying over the bog and over the grey cliffs into the sea; then what glee among the natives that the newfangled roofs are really no better than the roof their fathers taught them to make, only when they do fly off  they cost twice as much and take twice as long to repair. …

“A fisherman was drowned the other day. The sea was dragged with grappling hooks, prayers were offered up for the recovery of the body for burial in holy ground. All Christian means having failed, the dead man’s coat was sent for. After it had been blessed by the priest, an incantation was whispered over it preserved from Druid days, and then it was taken out and thrown into the sea. The swift current bore it along until suddenly it seemed to resist the force of the current and rested still. The sea was dragged and just under the coat the man’s body was found, and great thanks were given up to God.

“… The lad[5]Presumably, D. Figgis. and I go on expeditions up the mountains and fishing on the sea. We swim twice a day, so we don’t care that there are no bathtubs. Charlotte and Mrs. Figgis accompany us whenever they can and keep each other company except at mealtime when they marvel at the quantity we eat. No life could be healthier than this, certainly. We are so tired at ten o’clock that we go to bed and right to sleep though it is still very light.

“I am certainly going to have a cottage on this wild west coast of Ireland to which I can go in retreat from the roiling of the great world. Everything here is primitive and oh so restful and refreshing after New York and Dublin. Real communism exists as a matter of course here, for the people love each other. Love and hard work and a close touch with nature, what more ennobling can be found in life?”

Not long after their visit to Achill Island, Chester and Charlotte Arthur witnessed the August 1923 arrest of Éamon de Valera at a campaign event at Ennis, County Clare. Within the next two years Millie and Darryl Figgis each committed suicide. The Arthurs divorced in 1932.

Keem Beach, Achill Island.                                                                                                                                  Fáilte Ireland

References

References
↑1 The couple married in June 1922 in England, then honeymooned and settled in Ireland. The also traveled to other parts of Europe and back to the United States. Chester was bisexual, including affairs with Irish republicans. See Maurice J. Casey’s, “A Queer Migrant in the Irish Civil War.”
↑2 From the large collection of Arthur family papers at the Library of Congress.
↑3 A social gathering with singing, dancing, and storytelling.
↑4 Celtic sea god.
↑5 Presumably, D. Figgis.

On reading opposing newspapers in Ireland, 1922 & 1888

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During his spring 1922 reporting trip to Ireland, American journalist Frederick Palmer made a stop in the recently partitioned Northern Ireland. While traveling from Dublin to Belfast, he made this observation about Irish newspaper readers:

When you find that one fellow passenger in a compartment on a railway train is reading the London Morning Post with grim satisfaction and another is reading the Republic of Ireland with shinning eyes, it is folly to start a debate between them in the hope that it will result in an amicable agreement. The Morning Post is the organ of the “die hard” British Tories … As for the masses of southern Ireland, the Morning Post believes that they belong to a slave race that should be eternally ruled by their landlords for their own good.

It refers to the republican Dail Eireann as a ‘menagerie’ and predicts that Mr. Collins and Mr. De Valera will end their differences in an orgy of fratricidal ruin and disorder. And it is doing that best that it can to promote this outcome.

Compared to the violence and abusive performance of the Morning Post, which smacks of the gutter, the Republic of Ireland preserves relatively an aristocratic calm and the manners of gentlefolk. The Republic of Ireland is the organ of the De Valera movement. I have been caught in a railway compartment with both irreconcilable sheets in my possession and the stares at sight of this awful inconsistency moderated as my fellow passengers comprehended that I was one of those mad Americans from whom ignorance of local customs and any eccentricity might be expected.

Readers of both papers believe all that they read in their organs with a faith which none of us at home has in the editorials laid before us on our breakfast and dinner tables.[1]“So Erin Drifts Into War”, Kansas City Star, March 26, 1922, and other papers in April 1922.

The passage reads like a faint homage to the American journalist William Henry Hurlbert, who visited Ireland 34 years earlier. In his book, Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American, Hurlbert wrote of his Jan. 30, 1888, arrival at Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire since 1920). There, a dockside news vendor named Davey was described as “a warm nationalist, but he has a keen eye to business, and alertly suits his cries to his customers.” Recognizing the conservative Member of Parliament from North Tyrone traveling with Hurlbert, Davey “promptly recommended us to buy the Irish Times and the Express as ‘the best two papers in all Ireland.’ But he smiled approval when I asked for the Freeman’s Journal also.”[2]William Henry Hurlbert, Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American. [New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1888.] 38. The first two papers were unionist; the third moderately nationalist.

The Republic of Ireland, which debuted a few weeks before Palmer’s 1922 arrival, folded the following year, at the end of the Irish Civil War. The Freeman’s Journal, founded in 1763, closed in 1924. In London, the Morning Post was sold to the Daily Telegraph in 1937 and the former title disappeared from newsstands. 

See my Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited series, which explored Hurlbert’s book. For more about the Republic of Ireland, see January 1922: U.S. press on Irish newspaper news.

References

References
↑1 “So Erin Drifts Into War”, Kansas City Star, March 26, 1922, and other papers in April 1922.
↑2 William Henry Hurlbert, Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American. [New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1888.] 38.

U.S. press on the rise and fall of the Paisley dynasty

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UPDATE:

Mervyn Gibson, grand secretary of the Orange Order, has said the poor performance of Northern Ireland’s unionist parties in the July 4 general election “could have been a lot worse for unionists, it wasn’t too bad. But there is a lot of work to do to promote the union.” As Twelfth parades stepped off across the province, he told the Belfast Telegraph there is “massive growth in Orange activity across the country.” This claim is suspect, according to nationalist Irish News columnist Brian Feeney. He writes the Orangeism’s “ageing membership is a fraction of what it was fifty years ago. Many marchers can’t manage the distance of their parades. Instead of a manifestation of the power of unionism ‘the Twalf’ is Exhibit A of what has happened to unionism.” … Northern Ireland’s Secretary of State Hilary Benn attended a Twelfth parade in County Fermanagh one day after meeting Irish Tánaiste (deputy PM) Micheal Martin in County Down. “I see my job as being a friend to all, beholden to none, but an honest broker in Northern Ireland,” said Benn of the newly empowered U.K. Labour party.

ORIGINAL POST:

Ian Paisley Jr.’s defeat in the United Kingdom elections marks the first time in 54 years that the family will not represent Northern Ireland’s North Antrim constituency at Westminster. The Rev. Paisley Sr. entered Parliament in June 1970, then 15 months later founded the militant Democratic Unionist Party. Now, the DUP’s loss of two other seats in the July 4 election means it is no longer the largest or dominant party among 18 representatives from Northern Ireland.

Paisley’s defeat has been called “a political earthquake,” one that reveals division among those who seek to maintain Northern Ireland’s union with Great Britain. It comes as Northern Irish Protestants begin their annual July 12 Battle of the Boyne commemorations. It will worth watching to see if unionism’s troubles manifest at this year’s marches and bonfires. (See update above.)

The election result sent me to U.S. newspaper databases[1]Newspapers.com and ProQuest. to review coverage of Paisley Senior’s rise to political power early in the Troubles.

Paisley Sr. in 1970.

The firebrand preacher was named in the U.S. press as early as 1951, when Religion News Service reported on the St. Patrick’s Day formation of the Free Presbyterian Church.[2]“Presbyterian Church Inaugurated In Ulster”, RNS via Public Opinion, Chambersburg, Pa., March 31, 1951. More widespread coverage of Paisley began in 1962, when the Associated Press reported that Italian police had detained him and two other Protestant preachers from Northern Ireland for distributing pamphlets in St. Peter’s Square to protest a meeting of the Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council.

Paisley did not surface in the New York Times until 1966, when he was mentioned in 14 stories, mostly about his incarceration for unlawful assembly and related rioting in Belfast. In covering that year’s Twelfth marches, the Times American-born correspondent Dana Adams Schmidt reported that Orangemen were “divided over a form of religious and political extremism known as Paisleyism. … (He) has gained an avid following with emotional tirades against the Catholic Church, against the ecumenical movement and against the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Capt. Terence O’Neill.”[3]”A Divided Northern Ireland Celebrates The Battle Of The Boyne”, New York Times, July 13, 1966. “Dana Adams Schmidt, Reporter Based In Europe and Mideast, 78”, New York Times, … Continue reading

Paisley had already developed a relationship with the namesake founder of the Christian fundamentalist Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The university bestowed Paisley with an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree, and Jones visited the Free Presbyterian Church in Belfast in October 1966. The American preacher told the Irish congregation that the United States and the United Kingdom had in common “the same biased press.”[4]“Jones Charges British, U.S. Press Biased”, Associated Press via The State, Columbia, S.C., Oct. 28, 1966. Paisley’s namesake first son was born in December 1966.

Dynasty begins

By the time he was elected to Parliament four years later, Paisley Père was a fixture in U.S. press coverage of Northern Ireland. He was described as “Northern Ireland’s answer to Alabama’s George Wallace. … Both men possess formidable oratorical talent, and both speak—with varying degrees of subtlety and fervor—to the deep-seated fears of many people.”[5]“Paisley Alters 20th Century”, Marvin Kupfer of Newsweek Features via Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, N.Y., June 30, 1970.

Paisley joined the House of Commons months after Catholic civil rights crusader Bernadette Devlin won a Mid Ulster by-election to become the youngest woman elected to Westminster. The 21-year-old claimed the seat in London, unlike traditional Irish republican abstentionists.

“These are the two symbols of Northern Ireland today … the Socialist martyr, hope of despairing Catholics … (and the) ordained apostle of right-wing reaction, arch-sectarian, defender of Protestants who feel their world and its values crumbling away,” wrote one correspondent.[6]”The Rebel In Armagh Jail, The Hater In The Pulpit”, Anthony Carthew of the Daily Mail, London, via the New York Times, Aug. 9, 1970. Another said she was “a rabblerouser, Castro in a miniskirt” while he was “a rank demagogue and an embryo Fascist.”[7]”Bernadette Devlin, Rev. Ian Paisley Symbols of N. Ireland Polarization”, Edwin McDowell in the Arizona Republic, Sept. 14, 1970. McDowell later worked for the Wall Street Journal and the … Continue reading Noted U.S. conservative columnist William F. Buckley Jr. worried that “Paisleyism is more important than Paisley, and would most likely survive him. … If Paisleyism triumphs, Northern Ireland will disintegrate.”[8]Buckley’s July 1970 column was widely published in U.S. papers.

Paisley Jr. in 2020.

Northern Ireland did disintegrate into bloodshed, which lasted until the late 1990s. As it turned out, Paisley had a longer and more successful political career than Devlin. But he eventually moderated his position enough to lead the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly with Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness. (Alabama’s Wallace also moderated his politics later in his career.)

Dynasty ends

Paisley Sr. retired from politics in 2011, and he died three years later. Paisley Jr. replaced his father at Westminster in 2010, and was re-elected three times. He was defeated by 450 votes this month by Jim Allister, leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice, which split from the DUP in 2007 as a more hardline party. Since his loss, Paisley refused to join the DUP’s call for unionist unity, and he has dodged the press.

The end of the Paisley dynasty rated only two paragraphs in the New York Times‘ online roundup of the U.K. election. It was the paper’s first mention of the family since the father’s death a decade ago. Most U.S. media outlets have ignored the fall of the house of Paisley.

References

References
↑1 Newspapers.com and ProQuest.
↑2 “Presbyterian Church Inaugurated In Ulster”, RNS via Public Opinion, Chambersburg, Pa., March 31, 1951.
↑3 ”A Divided Northern Ireland Celebrates The Battle Of The Boyne”, New York Times, July 13, 1966. “Dana Adams Schmidt, Reporter Based In Europe and Mideast, 78”, New York Times, Aug. 26, 1994.
↑4 “Jones Charges British, U.S. Press Biased”, Associated Press via The State, Columbia, S.C., Oct. 28, 1966.
↑5 “Paisley Alters 20th Century”, Marvin Kupfer of Newsweek Features via Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, N.Y., June 30, 1970.
↑6 ”The Rebel In Armagh Jail, The Hater In The Pulpit”, Anthony Carthew of the Daily Mail, London, via the New York Times, Aug. 9, 1970.
↑7 ”Bernadette Devlin, Rev. Ian Paisley Symbols of N. Ireland Polarization”, Edwin McDowell in the Arizona Republic, Sept. 14, 1970. McDowell later worked for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
↑8 Buckley’s July 1970 column was widely published in U.S. papers.

American Commission’s 1920 Irish independence reading list

The American Commission on Irish Independence emerged from the February 1919 Irish Race Convention in Philadelphia. Frank P. Walsh, a former Wilson administration labor lawyer, chaired the activist group’s three-member delegation to the Paris peace conference later that spring to lobby for Ireland. Then, the trio made an outspoken and controversial stop in Ireland. By January 1920, Walsh was at work promoting the Irish bond drive in America.

Frank P. Walsh

On Jan. 29, 1920, Walsh wrote to Monsignor John Hagan, rector of the Pontifical Irish College in Rome and a supporter of the Irish republican cause, as detailed in an earlier post. The short letter itemized a list of pro-Irish reading material (propaganda, some would say) that Walsh had mailed separately from New York City to Rome. He asked Hagan to acknowledge once he received the material.

Below, the original language of the list on American Commission stationary (441 Fifth Avenue, a block from the New York Public Library) is reproduced in bold. It is linked where possible to the named publications. I’ve also added further background and context.

                    ***

  • 1 copy of George Creel’s Ireland’s Fight for Freedom. Creel (1876-1953) gave up his career as an investigative journalist and editor to head the Committee on Public Information, the Wilson administration propaganda agency during the First World War. Wilson sent Creel to Ireland in February 1919 after Sinn Féin candidates elected to the British Parliament in December 1918 instead convened as Dáil Éireann in Dublin. Walsh wrote a promotional blub for the book, which was published in July 1919. “No clearer, finer presentation of the Irish cause was every framed,” he wrote. [1]“What George Creel Found In Ireland”, advert, New York Tribune, Aug. 9, 1919. As Wilson balked at helping Ireland, Creel became “one of the more unlikely Irish apologist,” historian Francis M. Carroll has written.[2]Francis M. Carroll, American opinion and the Irish question, 1910-23 : a study in opinion and policy, Dublin : New York, Gill and Macmillan ; St. Martin’s Press, 1978, p. 144.
  • 1 copy of O’Brien’s The Hidden Phase In American History. Michael J. O’Brien (1870-1960) was the chief historian at the American Irish Historical Society in New York City. This book, like most of his work, details Irish contributions to the American revolution.
  • 2 copies of Maloney’s Irish Issue. William J. M. A. Maloney (1882-1952) was born in Scotland to Irish parents. He became a medical doctor and served as a captain in the British Army during the First World War. Afterward, he was a New York-based activist for the Irish cause. This publication is a bound collection of five articles Maloney wrote for the Jesuit-published America magazine in October and November 1918.
  • 1 colored map of Ireland. It would be interesting to know whether Walsh or others added any notations beyond the standard geographic representations. In particular, were there any suggestions of the coming partition of Ireland? The 1920 C. S. Hammond & Company map below is for illustrative purposes only, not necessarily what was sent to Hagan.
  • 10 copies of Foundation Of The Irish Republic Eamon de Valera (1882-1975) wrote this booklet to memorialize Sinn Féin’s success in the December 1918 U.K. general election. It was published in 1919 as de Valera began his 18-month tour of the United States.   
  • 10 handbooks. It is unclear whether these handbooks were all the same title, or a variety. They might have come from the Benjamin Franklin Bureau in Chicago, which produced Irish Issue and other pro-Irish pamphlets.

***

Though not included on this list, Walsh also wrote a promotional blurb for Chicago journalist Ruth Russell’s 1920 book, What’s the Matter with Ireland?, which he described as “a most valuable contribution to the literature of Ireland.”[3]Advertisement in The (Brooklyn, NY) Tablet, Aug. 28, 1920, 5, The Nation, March 23, 1921, 441. Walsh and Russell had met when she covered the American Commission’s spring 1919 arrival in Dublin.

Walsh concluded his letter to Hagan: “We trust you will be able to use these to good advantage.”

1920 C. S. Hammond & Company map of pre-partition Ireland.

References

References
↑1 “What George Creel Found In Ireland”, advert, New York Tribune, Aug. 9, 1919.
↑2 Francis M. Carroll, American opinion and the Irish question, 1910-23 : a study in opinion and policy, Dublin : New York, Gill and Macmillan ; St. Martin’s Press, 1978, p. 144.
↑3 Advertisement in The (Brooklyn, NY) Tablet, Aug. 28, 1920, 5, The Nation, March 23, 1921, 441.

On recognition & partition: Ireland, Israel, & Palestine

Ireland’s decision to recognize Palestinian statehood has gravely disrupted diplomatic relations between Ireland and Israel. The latter condemned the gesture as “a reward for terrorism” perpetrated by Hamas in October and withdrew its ambassador from Dublin.

On May 22, Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris said:

“On the 21st of January 1919 Ireland asked the world to recognize our right to be an independent State. Our ‘Message to the Free Nations of the World’ was a plea for international recognition of our independence, emphasizing our distinct national identity, our historical struggle, and our right to self-determination and justice. Today we use the same language to support the recognition of Palestine as a State.” Read his full statement, which also condemns the Hamas attack and supports the Israeli state.

The recognition has generated a new round of media stories about why the Irish identify so strongly with the Palestinians. Such reports began long before the civilian death toll in Gaza from Israeli military strikes surpassed the number of victims from the Hamas incursion into Israel.

Palestinian flag

Fourteen months before that attack, Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab wrote a piece headlined “Comparing the Palestinian and Irish-Catholic Struggles.” In each case, he wrote, “a powerful force oppressed local indigenous populations in a clearly racist and paternalistic fashion.” He also details their differences with today’s Northern Ireland.

Kuttab noted that U.S. President Joe Biden, during a July 2022 speech in East Jerusalem, compared the Irish-Catholic struggle against Great Britain to the Palestinians against Israel. But the journalist questioned whether Biden, a strong supporter of Israel, is capable of “real and actionable policies related to Israel and the Palestinians.” The Biden administration has criticized Ireland’s recognition of Palestine, which was joined by Spain and Norway. But Ireland enjoys far more attention and goodwill from the U.S. government than the other two European nations.

In late May, a headline in the Jesuit magazine, America, declared, “Ireland recognizes Palestinian statehood: Why many Irish people resonate with the conflict in Palestine.”

Notice for Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign protest against U.S. weapons to Israel being shipped through Ireland. The bill has been delayed.

The piece quotes an Irish documentary filmmaker who says the Irish have a deep cultural memory of British rule and know what being colonized by a stronger neighbor is like more than most nations. The filmmaker has documented the efforts of peace activists to prevent the U.S. military from using Shannon airport in the west of Ireland as a refueling stopover for its Middle East adventurism, including arms shipments to Israel.

Catherine Connolly, an independent member of the Irish parliament, raised the Shannon issue in a May 23 interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Connolly rejected the suggestion that Ireland’s recognition of Palestine is a prize for terrorism. “This is a step for peace,” she said.

Partition plans

The sectarian and territorial conflicts between the Palestinians and the Israelis parallel those between nationalists and unionists, Catholics and Protestants, in the north of Ireland, as detailed by M.C. Rast at History Today.

“Ireland and Palestine: United by Partition?” recounts how British officials in late 1930s planned to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in much the same way they had divided Ireland along sectarian lines nearly two decades earlier. A British report suggested “the gulf between Arabs and Jews in Palestine is wider than that which separates Northern Ireland from the Irish Free State.”

Rast also quotes Dublin’s Irish Independent newspaper as saying: “Partition is the Englishman’s favorite way out of a difficulty. But it is in itself a confession of failure.”

Economic impact

The economic impact of Ireland’s recognition of Palestine is beginning to take shape. Israel’s national airlines announced it will not renew direct flights to Dublin, which were only launched last year. Irish officials have said its €15 billion sovereign investment fund would divest from six Israeli companies, the Irish Times reported.

Israeli flag

Israel’s trade deficit with Ireland was €4 billion in 2022. Israeli imports totaled €5 billion, seventh largest among trading partners, but less than a quarter of the U.K.-leading €29 billion and U.S. second-place €22 billion.

Just under 600 Israelis lived in Ireland in 2022, according to the Central Statistics Office. The same census return does not indicate the number of Palestinians, while 2016 data showed fewer than 200 Palestinians. There were fewer than 3,000 Jews living in Ireland in 2016 compared to more than 63,000 Muslims. These figures do not include Northern Ireland.

For more on how activists in Ireland are responding to the recognition, visit the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Ireland Israel Alliance.

Dev’s last visit ‘home’ to USA; Ireland’s ‘cruel partition’

Irish President Éamon de Valera made a state visit to the United States in May 1964 that bookended U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s trip to Ireland 11 months earlier. Kennedy was 46 when he set foot on Irish soil for the fifth time, the first time as U.S. leader. He was assassinated five months later in Dallas. De Valera was 81 when he made his sixth journey to America, his second U.S. trip in six months. He died in 1975, aged 92.

“This is the country of your birth, Mr. President. This will always be your home,” U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson reminded de Valera during a welcome ceremony on the South Portico of the White House. “You belong to us, Mr. President, just as in a very special way John F. Kennedy belonged to you.”

De Valera was born in New York City in October 1882. Two years later, following his father’s death, an uncle escorted him to Ireland, where he was raised by his mother’s family in County Limerick. His return trips to America included:

  • June 1919-December 1920, as Ireland’s revolutionary “president.”
  • December 1927-February 1928, as opposition leader to raise money for his newspaper.
  • December 1929-May 1930, again to raise money for The Irish Press.
  • March 1948, part of his anti-partition tour.
  • November 1963, for Kennedy’s funeral.
  • May 1964, official state visit.

See three related lists at bottom of post.

Johnson gifted de Valera with a copy of journalist William V. Shannon’s new book, The American Irish. In what must rank among the most ill-timed releases in publishing history, the book’s concluding chapter about Kennedy had been published and distributed just before the assassination.[1]“Always Welcome To U.S.: Johnson’s Warm Greeting To De Valera”, The Cork Examiner, May 28, 1964. Also mentioned in The Irish Press and The Irish Independent.

Shannon, a Washington correspondent for the New York Post, wrote that Kennedy’s “winning of the presidency culminated and consolidated more than a century of Irish political activity.” It wiped away the bitterness and disappointment of Al Smith’s 1928 defeat as the first Irish American Catholic presidential nominee and “removed any lingering sense of social inferiority and insecurity” from Famine immigrants and their offspring, too long caricatured as ditch-diggers and domestics.

If de Valera read the book, or just checked the index, he would have seen that he was not included in this story of the Irish in America. Ireland’s early twentieth century revolutionary period is barely mentioned. Shannon later became U.S. ambassador to Ireland during the Carter administration, two years after de Valera’s death.

There were plenty of press compliments for de Valera. Syndicated columnist Max Freedman declared him “one of the supreme figures of our age. … invulnerable to criticism, implacable in defeat, imperturbable in victory, and immortal in the perspectives of history.”[2]”De Valera Holds High Place In History’, The Salt Lake (Utah) Tribune, May 25, 1964. Freedman was a Canadian journalist.

‘First’ ladies man: Éamon de Valera greeted Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of the slain president, during his May 1964 visit, above. They had written to each other since the assassination. Dev also escorted Lady Bird Johnson to a state dinner, below. President Johnson is to his left.

In 1964, De Valera delivered a 20-minute address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress. An Irish radio broadcaster observed that members of the U.S. House and Senate, hardly known for their youth, seemed incredulous to hear the octogenarian recall his 1919 visit. De Valera spoke without written remarks or a teleprompter.

“I would like to confess freely that this is an outstanding day of my own life,” he told the assembly. “To see recognized as I have the rights of the Irish people and the independence of the Irish people in a way that was not at all possible 45 years ago. I have longed to come back and say this too you.”

But de Valera lamented the “cruel partition” of the island, in place since 1920. He mused that a future Irish leader would “joyfully announce that our severed county has been reunited” and that all enmity between the British and Irish people has been removed. Listen to the full speech.

Anglo-Irish relations are not as bad today as during the Troubles, which began soon after de Valera’s speech to Congress. But 60 years later the border remains in place. Now, the partition debate is further complicated by Brexit and immigration disputes.

JFK’s visits to Ireland:[3]This chart has been revised since the original post. There is conflicting information about JFK’s stops in Ireland, with one source suggesting he made six visits.

  • 1939, a brief stopover at Foynes.
  • 1945, after his service in World War II, and interviewed de Valera for the New York Journal-American.
  • 1947, visited his sister Kathleen, who was staying at Lismore Castle.
  • 1955, as U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, and met with Irish T.D. Liam Cosgrave.
  • June 1963, as president on an official state visit.

Irish leaders who addressed the U.S. Congress:

  • Feb. 2, 1880, Charles Stewart Parnell, Member of Parliament, (U.S. House)
  • Jan. 25, 1928, William T. Cosgrave, President of Executive Council, (U.S. House)
  • March 15, 1956, John A. Costello, Prime Minister, (U.S. Senate)
  • March 18, 1959, John T. O’Kelly, President, (Joint session)
  • May 28, 1964, Éamon de Valera, President, (Joint session)
  • Jan. 28, 1976, Liam Cosgrave, Prime Minister, (Joint session)
  • March 15, 1984, Dr. Garrett FitzGerald, Prime Minister, (Joint session)
  • Sept. 11, 1996, John Bruton, Prime Minister, (Joint session)
  • April 30, 2008, Bertie Ahearn, Prime Minister, (Joint session)

U.S. leaders who addressed the Irish Oireachtas:

  • May 9, 1919, Frank Walsh, Edward Dunne, and Michael Ryan as the American Commission on Irish Independence, (1st Dáil). The commission was the creation of Irish activists in America, not a body of the U.S. government. The three commissioners were not elected.
  • June 28, 1963, John F. Kennedy, President, (Joint session)
  • June 4, 1984, Ronald Reagan, President, (Joint session)
  • Dec. 1, 1995, Bill Clinton, President, (Joint session)
  • April 13, 2023, Joe Biden, President, (Joint session)

Of course, other Irish leaders have visited America, notably at St. Patrick’s Day, and other American presidents have visited Ireland, without addressing the welcoming country’s national legislature.

References

References
↑1 “Always Welcome To U.S.: Johnson’s Warm Greeting To De Valera”, The Cork Examiner, May 28, 1964. Also mentioned in The Irish Press and The Irish Independent.
↑2 ”De Valera Holds High Place In History’, The Salt Lake (Utah) Tribune, May 25, 1964. Freedman was a Canadian journalist.
↑3 This chart has been revised since the original post. There is conflicting information about JFK’s stops in Ireland, with one source suggesting he made six visits.

U.S. opinion on Ireland, 1919: the view from Rome

Msgr. John Hagan

Monsignor John Hagan became rector of the Pontifical Irish College in Rome during the Irish War of Independence. The County Wicklow native, who had been vice-rector of the Catholic seminary since 1904, succeeded Michael O’Riordan in late 1919. Both priests were staunch Irish nationalists. Hagan was in close contact with Irish separatists and used the May 1920 beatification of Oliver Plunkett (1625-1681) as a propaganda coup that became known as “Sinn Féin Week in Rome.”

In summer 1919, shortly before O’Riordan’s death, Hagan drafted an article for Vatican officials that sketched his views on Irish affairs abroad since the end of the First World War. Below are excerpts on how public support for Ireland in the United States was unleashed after the November 1918 armistice. It is unclear whether any of Hagan’s material was ever published. Reader beware: the monsignor wrote sprawling sentences.

Till the signing of the armistice, and indeed for some months after, it could with truth be asserted that outside Ireland there was no such thing as an Irish question, or if there was anything in the shape of feeling on the matter it was one of hostility or indifference or coolness. … Even in the United States where the program of Irish independence had always reckoned millions of supporters, sympathy had been dimmed considerably after the (spring 1917) intervention of that country in the European arena; and naturally enough English propaganda had left no stone unturned to foster feelings of hostility or indifference, partly by the old methods of defamation, partly by periodic discoveries or inventions of alleged German plots, and partly by making it appear that as far as England was concerned there was no difficulty in the way of a solution of the Irish question and that if any difficulty existed it was due to the failure of the Irish themselves to formulate anything in the shape of a substantial claim supported by practical unanimity. …

(In the United States) public expression of opinion could be cooled by the ardor of war, and could be retarded or perverted by English control of the ocean cables, and could be rendered impossible by an iron discipline imposed on the country by President (Woodrow) Wilson and an army of English propagandists, but only as long as hostilities lasted. The moment hostilities ceased the previous attitude of indifference or aloofness gave way as if by magic to an outburst of enthusiasm and to a loud-voiced demand that to Ireland first of all should be applied the principles in defense of which the President had led his country into war. As early as December (1918) the country was ablaze; and a series of meetings, culminating in a huge gathering of the Friends of Irish Freedom at Philadelphia, brought the United States into line and led to an active program which has admittedly brought Ireland out of the purlieus of a simple question of English domestic policy into the forefront of international considerations affecting the immediate outlook and the future good understanding that has to be arrived at if England is to face the financial and commercial burthens arising out of the five years’ struggle that is just drawing to a close.

In the 10-page typescript, Hagan also described the activities of the American Commission on Irish Independence; Bishop Michael Gallagher of Detroit’s outspoken view on the Irish question (quoted extensively); and Eamon de Valera’s then month-old tour of the United States, including his July 13, 1919, address in Chicago (also quoted extensively). Hagan’s papers have been digitized by Georgetown University. I’ll have more about this valuable source in a future post.

In 1926 Hagan moved the Irish College at the Church of St Agata dei Goti to its present site on the Via dei S.S. Quattro. Photo from my April 2024 visit. (I got inside the gate.)

A guide to celebrated, touristy Killarney in 1865

One of my sisters, an inveterate antique store browser, occasionally sends me 19th and early 20th century books that she discovers during her explorations. Her most recent gift is a copy of Black’s Guide to Killarney and the South of Ireland, from 1865.

The 1865 edition.

Nineteenth century travel guide books developed with a simultaneous expansion of the tourist industry. Victorian era travelers were looking for sublime encounters with nature and ancient history. Comprehensive guides replaced the earlier travel narratives of individuals or groups who described only their specific journeys. The new books had “a more streamlined look, with well-indexed sections that made it easy to flip to a certain area of interest and a more compact shape.”[1]See “Guidebooks and the Tourist Industry” in Villanova University’s “Rambles, Sketches, Tours, Travellers & Tourism in Ireland.“

Black’s Guides were published by the Adam and Charles Black firm of Edinburgh, Scotland  (later London) from 1839 to 1919. They competed in the British Isles with similar series from Baedeker’s, Ward Lock, and Francis Guy’s. These guides are a great resource for historians.

The gifted 1865 edition of Black’s Guide to Killarney circulated 15 years after the devastation of the Great Famine. Work was just beginning to lay the first transatlantic telegraph cable from Valentia Island, Kerry, about 45 miles west of Killarney. The U.S. Civil War ended after claiming the lives of many Irish immigrant soldiers. Suppression of the Irish People newspaper began a nationalist agitation that two years later resulted in the failed Fenian Rising.

The guide opens with a 21-page summary of “interesting objects” to view from either side of three Great Southern and Western Railroad routes through the region. Key mile markers are provided on the lines from Dublin to Cork, through Kildare, Queen’s County (renamed Laois in 1922), Tipperary, County Limerick, and County Cork; from Kildare to Waterford, through Carlow and Kilkenny; and from Limerick Junction to Tipperary, Clonmel, Carrick-On-Suir, and Waterford. The next 86 pages contain more detailed descriptions of these natural and built landmarks. The last 32 pages is a “Catalogue of Books,” which sells additional guides, maps, and atlases, as well as the 21-volume Encyclopedia Britannica and a collection of Sir Walter Scott’s works. The Killarney book also features a foldout “Chart of the Lakes of Killarney and Surrounding Country” (below), two-page “Plan of Cork” city, and an illustration of the Killarney lakes (below).

Lakes of Killarney illustration in 1865 Black’s Guide of the region.

Similar view from my March 2023 visit.

Regional map from the 1865 guide. (The right edge has been cropped out due to tears.)

Of Killarney’s natural landmarks, Black’s stated:

From the over-strained laudation, and the multitude of paintings and engravings that have been produced of these justly celebrated lakes, the tourist is apt to form too high an estimate of their beauty. There can be do doubt, however, that the rocks that bound the shores of Muckross and the Lower Lake, with their harmonious tints and luxuriant decoration of foliage, stand unrivaled, both in form and coloring; and the character of the mountains is as grand and varied as the lakes in which they reflect their rugged summits.

A framed photo of my wife standing on the same rocky shores of Muckross graces a corner of my writing desk, herself looking even more lovely than the surrounding scenery. But Black’s was less charitable about Killarney’s built environment and denizens, which it described as “certainly not the cleanest town in the world, and it has the misfortune to be filled with beggars, touters, guides and other annoyances.” German journalist Richard Arnold Bermann made similar observations during his 1913 visit.[2]See my post, “Welcoming American tourists to Ireland, 1913-2021.” As if dirt and mendicants were absent in London and other destinations.

In 1865, Black’s also offered a comprehensive, island-wide guide to Ireland, and three other regional titles:

  • Belfast and Giant’s Causeway
  • Dublin
  • Galway, Connemara, and the Shannon

Several editions of these books from the 1870s to 1912 have been digitized by HathiTrust. Antique book sellers offer Black’s guides in very good condition at prices approaching $100; while print-on-demand copies are available for much less. Other guide series are also available.

Years ago one of my Irish relations spoke a memorable line that my wife and I still quote in our travel-related discussions: “Why would you want to be anywhere in the world but Killarney in May?”

References

References
↑1 See “Guidebooks and the Tourist Industry” in Villanova University’s “Rambles, Sketches, Tours, Travellers & Tourism in Ireland.“
↑2 See my post, “Welcoming American tourists to Ireland, 1913-2021.”

Visit to Old St. Patrick’s in New York City

Over the years I’ve visited more than two dozen St. Patrick’s churches in four countries, as detailed in this special section. But one historic church eluded me until earlier this month, when I finally stepped inside the Basilica of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Lower Manhattan.

As the first church in the United States dedicated to Ireland’s patron saint, it was the original cathedral of the Diocese of New York. The cornerstone was laid in 1809, and the completed church was consecrated in 1815. St. Pat’s became a target of the Know Nothings and other anti-Catholic and nativist movements. Damage from an 1866 fire was repaired two years later. By then, however, construction had begun on the larger and now more familiar St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Read more history of the first St. Patrick’s.

My wife and I attended the midday Mass at Old St. Pat’s during our recent visit. Here are a few photos:

The orange and yellow umbraculum at left signals the church’s 2010 designation as a basilica.

View from about three quarters back.

Front entrance is on Mott Street between Houston and Prince.

Mural on nearby building shows view down Mott Street with the church on the left, behind the trees. Empire State Building seen in the background at right edge of the green canopy.

Subscription appeals for Irish newspapers, part 2

The Joseph P. Tumulty papers at the Library of Congress contain a folder labeled “Support for Ireland.” Among other items it contains subscription solicitations for two newspapers: The Irish Statesman and The Irish Press. Details about the Statesman found in part 1 of this post .

Discussion of the 1930 solicitation letter for the Irish Press, below, must note this newspaper was the Dublin daily published from September 1931 until May 1995; not the same-name weekly published in Philadelphia from March 1918 until May 1922. Irish republican leader Éamon de Valera was the driving force behind the Irish paper, which he tried to finance with funds from the 1920 Irish bond drive in America. The bond was promoted by the earlier Irish Press, which had direct ties to Sinn Féin separatists fighting to establish the Irish Republic. The Philly weekly sided with de Valera, then touring the United States, in the bitter split among Irish republicans in America.

Once the 1921 treaty with the United Kingdom was accepted, the new Irish Free State filed a lawsuit to collect $6 million in bond funds still held in America. De Valera and other Irish republicans counter sued for the money. The matter dragged through U.S. courts until 1927. Finally, the New York Supreme Court ruled the money should be returned to the original bond subscribers. That’s when de Valera began his effort to encourage the bond holders to sign over their returns to help him launch the new Irish Press.

The main appeal of the enterprise, as seen in the letter above, was to free Ireland from the “mental bondage” of British newspapers. But the paper also would become a powerful tool for de Valera’s political ambitions. U.S. journalist, author, and social activist Charles Edward Russell chaired the American committee assisting De Valera’s effort. Another committee member, Chicago lawyer John F. Finerty, had litigated the bond case on behalf of the Irish leader and active in the de Valera-created American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic.

Another ally, Joseph McGarrity, who published the first Irish Press, suggested that De Valera try to interest newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst in establishing a new paper in Ireland, according to David McCullagh. “A Hearst newspaper would be sympathetic to de Valera’s politics–but it would be out of his control. No more was heard of the idea.”[1]David McCullagh, De Valera, Vol. 1, Rise 1882-1932.[Dublin: Gill Books, 2017.] 397.

The Pittsburgh Press, Feb. 22, 1930.

The newspaper effort brought De Valera back to America several times between 1927 and 1930. He visited numerous big city papers to inspect press equipment and develop a roster of potential editors. But his main mission, McCullagh says, was to learn how to keep both financial and editorial control of the newspaper that finally debuted in 1931.

The story of the Irish Press American Corporation, incorporated in Delaware, and the parent company in Dublin, is long and convoluted. The effort was hampered by the crash of the U.S. economy, the Great Depression. Details of how many shares were turned over, and how much money was raised, are disputed. “However, it is safe to conclude that the fundraising operation in the United States fell short of the total set for it,” David Robbins wrote in his 2006 thesis.[2]David Robbins, “The Irish Press, 1919-1948, Origins and Issues.” MA in Communications theses, Dublin City University, June 2006.

It is unclear in Tumulty’s papers at the Library of Congress whether he ever subscribed to the Irish Statesman or the Irish Press. The subscription return forms are blank, but could be a additional copy of forms that he completed and returned.

References

References
↑1 David McCullagh, De Valera, Vol. 1, Rise 1882-1932.[Dublin: Gill Books, 2017.] 397.
↑2 David Robbins, “The Irish Press, 1919-1948, Origins and Issues.” MA in Communications theses, Dublin City University, June 2006.