Tag Archives: Thomas Moore

The Irish harp in Woodrow Wilson’s drawing room

An Irish harp sits in the drawing room of the Washington, D.C. house once occupied by former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. The three-story, red brick, neo-Georgian structure at 2340 S St. NW in the city’s fashionable Kalorama neighborhood is two miles northwest of the White House, where Wilson held office from 1913 to 1921. He died at the private residence on Feb. 3, 1924, aged 67, nearly five years after he suffered a stroke.

At 3-feet tall, the Irish harp is smaller than models of the instrument typically played in orchestras. It is more decorated, too, with green and gold Celtic knots, zoomorphic motifs, medallions, and clovers, as seen in two images in this post. The crown bears the name of the manufacturer, “Clark Irish Harp, ” and 1914 and 1915 patent dates.

The harp belonged to Margaret Wilson, the president’s eldest daughter, an accomplished singer and pianist. It was either given by, or purchased from, Melville Clark of Syracuse, New York, the instrument’s creator. Clark performed at the White House during Wilson’s first term of office, when Margaret served as a “social hostess” after the death of Ellen Axson Wilson, her mother and the president’s first wife.[1]Meghan Drueding, “How Margaret Wilson’s Harp Reaches People On A ‘Visceral’ Level” in National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Preservation Magazine, Spring 2017; and Aug. 28, 2023, … Continue reading

Clark (1883-1953) designed the portable Celtic-style harp that bears his surname after a 1905 trip to Europe, including a stop in Ireland, where for centuries the instrument has been considered a heraldic and nationalist symbol. Clark said he “learned much of the romantic part the instrument has played in that country’s history. It was while doing so that the idea of developing a small harp was something I wanted to do.”[2]Linda Pembroke Kaiser, Pulling Strings: The Legacy of Melville A. Clark. (Syracuse, N.Y., Syracuse University Press, 2010), p. 31, citing Clark, “Music: My Hobby, My Profession, and Business,” … Continue reading

Clark met Cardinal Michael Logue (1840-1924), primate of Ireland, on the steamer from the United States, and he visited the prelate’s residence in Queenstown, now called Cobh. Clark recalled they had several “animated conversations” about harps, including Logue’s own instrument, which the cardinal “cherished exceedingly.” Clark purchased several Irish-made harps to bring back to Syracuse, including one that had been owned by Irish poet and composer Thomas Moore (1779-1852). It influenced Clark’s design in the characteristics of size, shape, and construction.[3]Kaiser, Pulling Strings, p. 31, citing Clark, “How I Came To Invent the Clark Irish Harp”, 1942.

The Clark Irish Harp “became his most important contribution to the world of music,” biographer Linda Pembroke Kaiser has written.[4]Kaiser, Pulling Strings, p. 5. While regular concert harps were too big, too expensive, or too difficult for most amateur musicians, Clark’s instrument was affordable and could be learned by nearly any adult or child. The first handcrafted models began to appear in 1908 and used rock maple instead of the bog oak of traditional Irish harps. Mass production began in 1911, three years before Clark performed for the president and his daughter.

White House performances

Clark played at the White House on March 27, 1914. The invitation developed through his association with John McCormack (1884-1945), the Athlone, County Westmeath-born tenor. They became acquainted when the singer performed concerts in Syracuse and purchased one of Clark’s harps for one of his children. Clark returned to the White House on May 27, 1914, specifically to accompany Margaret Wilson.[5]Kaiser, Pulling Strings, pp. 104-110.

After one of these performances, Clark recalled decades later, the president invited him to bring his harp to a rear portico. The musician wrote that Wilson:

… suggested one song after another—Scottish and Irish songs and those of Stephen Foster. He sang easily and with faultless diction. It was nearly midnight when he stood up to go, amazingly buoyant, relaxed and unworried.”[6]Melville Clark, “I Played the Harp for Wilson”, Christian Science Monitor, May 19, 1945.

Wilson had a complicated relationship with Ireland and the Irish. His two paternal grandparents hailed from Strabane, County Tyrone, in today’s Northern Ireland. In 1912 he touted this heritage to appeal to the Irish-American voters who gravitated to the Democratic Party, which nominated him for the presidency. But Wilson grew agitated with pro-independence Irish activists during the First World War and subsequent Paris peace conference. “Your attitude on the matter is fraught with a great deal of danger both to the Democratic Party and to the cause you represent,” warned one of the president’s closest aides.[7]Joseph Tumulty to Wilson, cited in John Morton Blum, Joe Tumulty and the Wilson Era (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Comp., 1951), p. 176. Irish Americans in turn lobbied Congress to reject Wilson’s post-war plans and helped tip the 1918 midterm and 1920 presidential elections to the Republicans.

Clark met Wilson again in 1917 to present his idea of dropping messages from balloons to counter German propaganda. The president was enthusiastic about the idea, and the plan was eventually adopted by the Allies. The first balloon offensive launched over German airspace occurred in March 1918.[8]Kaiser, Pulling Strings, pp. 99-103. About the same time, Clark and Margaret Wilson began to perform together for troops at U.S. military camps in New Jersey.

Afterward

Wilson made the first remote radio broadcast from the S Street house on Nov. 10, 1923, the eve of the fifth anniversary of the armistice ending World War I. A few weeks earlier, former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, the war-time leader and a key negotiator of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, paid a visit to Wilson at the house. The two men discussed “the world conditions of today rather than memories of yesterday,” according to a news report.[9]”Lloyd George Lays Wreath On Unknown Soldier’s Tomb In Arlington Today”, Associated Press report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 26, 1923. One can only imagine if the conversation included the newly created Irish Free State and partitioned Northern Ireland.

Clark returned to the White House to perform for presidents Warren G. Harding, Wilson’s successor, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. He also acquired for his collection a harp that once belonged to the Irish patriot Robert Emmet (1778-1803).[10]Kaiser, Pulling Strings, p. 132. By coincidence, President Wilson attended the 1917 unveiling of the Emmet statue in Washington, D.C. by Kerry-born sculpture Jerome Connor. The statue was relocated 50 years later to a small park a block from the Wilson house, where it stands today.

Margaret Wilson died in 1944, aged 57. Clark died in 1953, aged 70. His papers at Syracuse University’s Special Collections Research Center contain correspondence from Woodrow Wilson and Margaret Wilson dated between 1914 and 1922. I’ve reached out to the archive for more information about this material and will update this post as appropriate.

Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, the president’s second wife, bequeathed the S Street house and its furnishings, including the harp, to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. She died in 1961, aged 89. The mansion has been open to the public since 1963.

References

References
1 Meghan Drueding, “How Margaret Wilson’s Harp Reaches People On A ‘Visceral’ Level” in National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Preservation Magazine, Spring 2017; and Aug. 28, 2023, email reply from President Woodrow Wilson House staff to my questions.
2 Linda Pembroke Kaiser, Pulling Strings: The Legacy of Melville A. Clark. (Syracuse, N.Y., Syracuse University Press, 2010), p. 31, citing Clark, “Music: My Hobby, My Profession, and Business,” notes for public lectures, 1948.
3 Kaiser, Pulling Strings, p. 31, citing Clark, “How I Came To Invent the Clark Irish Harp”, 1942.
4 Kaiser, Pulling Strings, p. 5.
5 Kaiser, Pulling Strings, pp. 104-110.
6 Melville Clark, “I Played the Harp for Wilson”, Christian Science Monitor, May 19, 1945.
7 Joseph Tumulty to Wilson, cited in John Morton Blum, Joe Tumulty and the Wilson Era (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Comp., 1951), p. 176.
8 Kaiser, Pulling Strings, pp. 99-103.
9 ”Lloyd George Lays Wreath On Unknown Soldier’s Tomb In Arlington Today”, Associated Press report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 26, 1923.
10 Kaiser, Pulling Strings, p. 132.

Interview: Colin Farrell of ‘Stories of 1916,’ Part 2

This is the second part of my interview with Colin Farrell, creative director at Tile Media. The Dublin-based multimedia company produced ‘A Terrible Beauty (Áille an Uafáis),’ a 90-minute docudrama focused on the events of Easter week 1916, and the affiliated website Stories From 1916. If you missed it, here is Part 1. MH

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Q: The Internet has created many new options for researching and telling historical stories. As more archives become digitized and accessible worldwide, more people are bringing fresh perspectives to the material. Digital video and audio production makes it easier to produce and distribute such stories. Do you agree? What are your further thoughts about telling history in 2016?

CF: I completely agree with that point. The reality is that without the digitization of so much material it would be very difficult to research the stories that we cover as quickly as we need to. Similarly, without modern digital and audio production, we would not be able to produce the amount of material that we have done. Also, both the research and production would be a lot more expensive to undertake, meaning that we could not produce a project like ‘Stories from 1916’ in the manner that we have done. That’s why it was important for us to make the project so interactive and bring the idea of how oral history is presented up to date. It’s really exciting to think about what we might do next after going through this process. Technology has opened so many doors for ourselves, and everyone else, to produce really high-quality stuff for a fraction of the cost of what it would have been even a few years ago. It has also opened many new doors for how a story can be told. The possibilities for presenting your work are so broad now, which is really exciting for us.

A Terrible Beauty (Áille an Uafáis) - Irish Volunteer (Noel Whelan) on North King St.

A Terrible Beauty (Áille an Uafáis) – Irish Volunteer (Noel Whelan) on North King St.

Q: “Stories from 1916” says it focuses on “accounts of ‘ordinary’ men and women, involved in the Rising, that have never had their voices heard or their stories told,” and that you’ve been able to tap family archival material. How have any of these stories or material changed the overall narrative to 1916? Has this approach resulted in a particular new insight(s) about Easter 1916?

CF: I don’t think that this approach has necessarily changed the narrative of 1916. Instead, I feel like it has added to it and shown people that what happened during Easter Week went far beyond the seven signatories and the GPO. I think by presenting the ‘ordinary’ men and women’s stories, that it demystifies what happened during the Rising and shows people the power of believing in something and being willing to fight for it. I think that because of the executions of the leaders, the story, for a long time, became all about their blood sacrifice and was mythologized, which definitely served a purpose for a time but now, 100 years later, I think it’s important to look at the story from a new perspective. For us, it’s always important to look at it from an apolitical point of view and to present the true history without “taking sides.”

Q: Reactions from academia and the traditional historian community?  

CF: The reaction to the project from everyone has been overwhelmingly positive, including the academic world. I think the fact that we are not trying to pretend to be academics or historians helps. We’re coming from a filmmaking background, and that has allowed us to look at the history in a slightly different way I think. Much the same as when we are making a film, it is important for us to make the project interesting and entertaining for the audience, so that’s why we have tried to make it interactive and use different multimedia elements such as mini-docs, podcasts and using touch-screen technology as part of the traveling exhibition.

In this short documentary, the family of Irish Volunteer Patrick Rankin discusses his involvement in the 1916 Easter Rising.

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Q: What’s next? Plans to bring this approach to War of Independence/Civil War centennials? Other Irish (or non-Irish) projects you can talk about?

CF: “Stories from 1916” was never meant to be purely about the Rising and lots of the stories already go beyond Easter Week, 1916. We’re interested in looking at someone’s whole life, not just one week of it. We’ll be continuing to work on the project right up to the end of the year and beyond. We’re lucky that we have a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor in the States, the Chicago Irish Brotherhood, so we will be continuing to tell the story of Irish-America’s involvement in the whole revolutionary period. Ultimately, we would like to produce a feature length documentary looking at the story from ‘the other side of the Atlantic’. We’re also working with Fingal County Council in trying to find funding to make a short 20-25 minute documentary on the North County Dublin involvement in 1916, which culminates in the Battle of Ashbourne, the only really successful engagement during the Rising. Again, another really great tale that is less well known.

We also have another project set during the War of Independence, ‘Jubilee Nurse’, which we are currently developing. The whole revolutionary period in Irish history is a goldmine of great stories, so we are definitely looking at telling more of them. Outside of that period, we are working on developing a history/music program with the Irish singer-songwriter Eleanor McEvoy, about the life and work of Irish poet Thomas Moore, who was the ‘rock star’ of his day! In this industry, you have to constantly be on the lookout for new material and be developing ideas so hopefully there will be a lot more to come from Tile Media in the coming years.