Tag Archives: William Henry Hurlbert

Reprising three stories for St. Valentine’s Day

It’s time for a break from the Irish elections. The first of the three previously publish stories below is focused on Ireland’s direct connection to St. Valentine. The Feb. 14 date in the other two stories is a coincidental element, but I hope you enjoy reading them all the same. MH

Statue and crypt of St. Valentine at Whitefriar Street Church, Dublin.

St. Valentine rests at Carmelite church in Dublin: The third century saint’s mortal remains are a popular attraction. Watch a 2-minute video, and link to more history from the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Whitefriar Street.

***

Reporter’s 19th century visit to Ireland’s National Gallery: On Valentine’s Day 1888, American journalist William Henry Hurlbert toured the Dublin collection with Gallery Director Henry Edward Doyle. From my Ireland Under Coercion: Revisited series.

***

An Irish-American’s most perilous summer, 1918: Kerryman John Ware immigrated to Pittsburgh in 1910; shipped to France as a U.S. soldier in 1917; and was finally released from the military on Valentine’s Day, 1919. From my Pittsburgh Irish series.

Irish Bibliography of Press History now updated

The Irish Bibliography of Press History (IBPH) has been updated for the first time in over a year. This searchable, open access resource of secondary literature on the history of print media in Ireland is an initiative of the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland (NPHFI). (Disclosure: I am a member.)

“The number of new entries in this update indicates the encouragingly healthy state of research being carried out in the history of Irish print media and the IBPH now contains nearly 1,200 individual entries,” IBPH Editor James T. O’Donnell wrote. The latest entries are indicative of the database:

  • Christopher Doughan, The voice of the provinces: the regional press in revolutionary Ireland, 1914-1921 (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2019)
  • Davide Mazzi, Views of Place, Views of Irishness: Representing the Gaeltacht in the Irish Press, 1895-1905 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2019)
  • Louise Ryan, Winning the Vote for Women: The Irish Citizen newspaper and the suffrage movement in Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2018). (See my coverage of her presentation at last year’s NPHFI conference.)
  • Joe Breen and Mark O’Brien (eds.), The Sunday Papers: a history of Ireland’s weekly press (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2018)
  • Ian Kenneally and James T. O’Donnell (eds.), The Irish regional press, 1892-2018: revival, revolution and republic (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2018)

As relates to the study of the Irish in America and the Irish-American press, the IBPH includes, among many other entries:

  • Christoper Dowd, “The weird tales, spicy detectives, and startling stories of Irish-America: Irish characters in American pulp magazines” , Irish Studies Review, Special Issue: Texts and Textures of Irish America, Vol. 23, No. 2 (2015), pp. 176-183
  • James M. Farrell, “Reporting the Irish Famine in America: Images of ‘Suffering Ireland’ in the American press, 1845-1848” , in Ciaran Reilly (ed.) The famine Irish: emigration and the great hunger, (Dublin: History Press Ireland, 2016)
  • Alan O’Day, “Media and power: Charles Stewart Parnell’s 1880 mission to North America”, in Hiram Morgan (ed.) Information Media and Power Throughout the Ages, (Dublin: UCD Press, 2001)
  • Bernadette Whelan, “American propaganda and Ireland during world war one: the work of the Committee on Public Information” , in American propaganda and Ireland during world war one: the work of the Committee on Public Information.

“Though the IBPH continues to grow, and hopefully be useful, I am sure there is still much out there that is missing and more coming down the line, so, as always, if you aware of any forthcoming or previously published works that should be included in the IBPH and aren’t I would be most grateful for your suggestions,” O’Donnell wrote. The website linked in the first paragraph above contains a “suggestion sheet” and contact details.

For example, the IBPH does not including the 1888 book Ireland Under Coercion: Diary of an American, by New York editor William Henry Hurlbert. I have recommended it for inclusion in the next update of the database. Here is my 2018 blog serial about Hurlbert’s reporting: Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited and related piece for The Irish Story website, “1888: An American Journalist In Ireland Meets Michael Davitt & Arthur Balfour”.

Map of Ireland showing Hurlbert’s 1888 travels.

 

Revisiting Ireland Under Coercion, Revisted

I am working to complete a paper for the American Journalism Historians Association, due June 1. The project doesn’t leave much time to write fresh content for the blog. Please visit (or revisit) my 2018 Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited series, which follows the 1888 travels in Ireland of American journalist William Henry Hurlbert. Thanks for your support. MH

Map of Ireland showing Hurlbert’s 1888 travels.

Brexit feck it; no confidence next?

UPDATE: 

“A day after overwhelmingly rejecting her Brexit deal, rebel Tories and Democratic Unionist party MPs swung behind the prime minister to defeat Labour’s motion of no confidence by 325 votes to 306 – a majority of 19,” The Irish Times reports.

BBC Q & A on Brexit and the Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland border,  and cool multimedia feature, The hardest border, from 2017.

ORIGINAL POST:

The U.K. Parliament has overwhelmingly rejected Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit proposal. Now she faces a no confidence vote. There’s plenty of online coverage of May’s 432-202 humiliation, but what most caught my eye was this historical note in The Washington Post:

Historians had to go as far back as the Victorian age to find a comparable party split and parliamentary defeat — to Prime Minister William Gladstone’s support for Irish home rule in 1886, which cut the Liberal Party in two.

Gladstone lost by a smaller margin than May, but he was removed from office soon after. He returned as PM in 1892, for the fourth time; and he tried and failed for the second time to pass home rule for Ireland.

Gladstone, standing, proposed home rule for Ireland in 1886.

Arlene Foster, leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, which props up May’s current government, has said her members will continue their support and not vote no confidence. I’ll update this post with the outcome of that vote and other Brexit developments.

For now, I close by paraphrasing 19th century American journalist William Henry Hurlbert, who wrote about the 1886 home rule vote during his 1888 travels in Ireland. Hurlbert opposed the efforts of Irish nationalists to secure home rule. Here, I’m substituting Brexit for home rule, Britain for Ireland:

Brexit for Britain is not now a plan–nor so much as a proposition. It is merely a polemical phrase, of little importance to persons really interested in the condition of Britain, however invaluable it may be to the makers of party platforms … or to Parliamentary candidates.

Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited: Killone photos

ENNIS ~ My “Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited” series explored aspects of the book Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American, by journalist William Henry Hurlbert.

The Charleston, S.C.-born, Harvard-educated, New York City newspaper editor traveled around Ireland during the first six months of 1888, a period of resurgent agrarian violence and nationalist political agitation. His book, published later that year, focused on these topics. Like most visitors to Ireland, however, Hurlbert also explored the country’s landscapes and landmarks, including the ruins of Killone Abbey in County Clare.

The American journalist leveraged his visit to the abbey ruins to criticize the violence in the land reform movement, as discussed in my original post about this section of Hurlbert’s diary. A year later, an Irish priest mocked the characterization in his Hurlbert unmasked rebuttal pamphlet.

See black and white images of the abbey, circa 1865, or more than 20 years before Hurlbert’s visit, at this link to the Robert French photography collection at the National Library of Ireland. Below, photos from my 11 November 2018 visit to the site, 130 years after Hurlbert.

Approach to Killone Abbey, November 2018.

The abbey opened in 1190 and abandoned in the 17th century.

Looking back toward the photo vantage above.

During his 1888 visit, American journalist William Henry Hurlbert commented about the “picturesque lake” and the “confusion, squalor and neglect” of the abbey graveyard.

I’m always drawn to the view from the surviving window frames of ancient ruins.

Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited: Froude-Burke

This is an extra installment of my “Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited” blog series, which explored aspects of American journalist William Henry Hurlbert’s 1888 travels in Ireland. The full series, including background material and a related article published outside this blog, are available on the project landing page. #IUCRevisited

***

“…of one episode of that mission, no man living perhaps knows so much as I, and I make no excuse for this allusion to it here …”
–William Henry Hurlbert

In his 1888 book, Hurlbert claimed a behind-the-scenes role in the notorious 1872 American lecture series that pitted English literary historian James Anthony Froude against Irish Dominican priest Father Thomas Nicholas Burke. Sources suggest that Hurlbert wasn’t overstating his closeness to both men, or to the event, which 16 years later influenced his views about Irish nationalist activities on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1872, Hurlbert was the highly-regarded editor of the New York World. America was still recovering from the civil war. Ireland was a generation past the Great Famine and slowly building toward the agrarian uprising and nationalist agitation that erupted in the 1880s.

Father Burke

Hurlbert’s “esteem” for Froude’s “rare abilities” dated to the Englishman’s novel, The Nemesis of Faith, published in 1849, the year Hurbert obtained a divinity degree from Harvard. His friendship with the Galway-born Father Burke began when both were in Rome during the 1867 Feast of St. Peter, the eighteenth centenary commemoration of the saint’s martyrdom. Hurlbert fondly noted his time with Burke during an 1878 visit to Ireland. Their friendship “ended only with his life,” in 1883, at Tallaght, near Dublin.

Froude’ autumn 1872 lecture tour was arranged to promote his book, The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century. His book and lectures emphasized why the Irish required English supervision and were transparently anti-Catholic. Writing 16 years later, Hurlbert said he worried the lecture tour “would do a world of mischief, by stirring up ancient issues of strife between the Protestant and the Catholic populations of the United States [that would] be answered angrily, indiscreetly, and in a fashion to aggravate prejudice.”

Only Father Burke, who happened to be in America on other matters in 1872, could respond “temperately, loftily, and wisely,” Hurlbert reasoned.

“…his appearance in the arena as the champion of Ireland, would lift the inevitable controversy high above the atmosphere of unworthy passion, and put it beyond the reach of political mischief-makers. How nobly he did his work … is now [a] matter of history.”

Hurlbert “begged” Burke “to find or make time” to produce a series of lectures replying to Froude’s speeches. Burke agreed, Hurlbert reported, only after “consulting with the highest authorities of his Church, and with two or three of the coolest and most judicious Irish citizens of New York.” And while the Irish priest’s brogue was “a memory as of music in the ears of all who heard it,” his criticism of intemperate Irish nationalism sounded even sweeter to Hurlbert, especially on American soil.

To illustrate his point, Hurlbert reported that while Froude was giving lectures in Boston, “all the Irish servants of the friend with whom he was to stay had suddenly left the house, refusing to their employer the right to invite under his roof a guest not agreeable to them.” Hurlbert revealed that he learned of this in “a letter from Boston,” which he shared with Burke, who “read it with a kind of humorous wrath.”

At his next lecture, Burke prefaced his remarks “with a few strong and stirring words, in which he castigated with equal sense and severity the misconduct of his country-people,” Hurlbert wrote in 1888, a claim confirmed by the newspaper coverage of 16 years earlier. On 26 November 1872, at the Academy of Music in New York, Father Burke told his audience that earlier that day he had been “handed a paragraph,” or clipping, from the New York Tribune about the Boston incident. He said:

“The reading of it causes me very great pain and anguish of mind, for it recorded an act of discourtesy offered to my learned antagonist, Mr. Foude, and supposed to be offered by Irishmen in Boston. In the name of the Irishmen in America, I tender the learned gentleman my best apologies. I beg to assure him for my Irish fellow-countrymen in this land that we are only too happy to offer him the courtesy and the hospitality that Irishmen never refused even to their enemies.”

I couldn’t find any reporting of the servants’ walkout in that day’s Tribune, but it was described in The New York Times, which added that Froude also had been “bustled by some rude persons” in New Haven, Connecticut. “We do not know what truth there may be in these stories; but we much fear that Mr. Froude is not in an earthly Paradise,” the Times reported.

In his 1906 biography The Life of Froude, Herbert W. Paul wrote that Froude was the Boston guest of George Peabody, “equally well known in England and the United States as a philanthropist.” During the visit:

“…politicians had to think of the Irish vote, and the proprietors of newspapers could not ignore their Catholic subscribers.The priests worked against him [Froude] with such effect that Mr. Peabody’s servants in Boston, who were Irish Catholics, threatened to leave their places if Froude remained as a guest in their master’s house. Father Burke, who had begun politely enough, became obstreperous and abusive. Froude’s life was in danger, and he was put under the special protection of the police.” (My emphasis.)

Froude

There is one problem here. Boston financier George Peabody died in 1869, three years before Froude’s trip to Boston. W.H. Dunn, in his 1960s biography of Froude, corrected Paul in a footnote that speculated Froude had stayed with George H. Peabody, shown in the city directory at 76-78 Milk Street. I found an 1872 Boston newspaper account that mentions “Dr. Peabody of Harvard” among “several prominent gentlemen” who occupied the stage of the “half filled” Tremont Temple for one of Froude’s lectures.

Paul and Dunn each noted that Froude witnessed the historic 9 November 1872 fire, which killed 13 to 20 people and destroyed hundreds of buildings over 65 acres in Boston’s city center. The fire was stopped near Milk Street. Both biographers quote from one of Froude’s letters that described the tragedy. Paul wrote that Froude donated $700 to the relief effort, which included help for many Irish immigrant families displaced by the fire.

There is other evidence that Irish domestic servants protested Froude’s visit to America. In William J. Fitzpatrick’s 1886 biography, The Life of the Very Rev. Thomas N. Burke, the author states:

“It was at this time that a memorable incident occurred–the strike of the Noras and Biddys. The female servants of different hotels agreed among themselves that Mr. Froude’s bell must not be answered; and in one case they threatened to leave in body unless the ‘Masthur’ got rid of the enemy of their country.”

Fitzpatrick’s biography also cites letters from two people who confirmed Hurlbert’s role in the lecture drama. One is Major Patrick M. Haverty, a Dublin-born friend of Father Burke who came to America in the late 1840s. Haverty assisted General Thomas F. Meagher in organizing the Irish Brigade during the U.S. Civil War, and was an established publisher and bookseller in New York at the time of the priest’s 1872 visit.

Father Burke and Hurlbert: “…were great friends; visited the art galleries together; and enjoyed their mutual criticisms,” Haverty wrote. “When Father Burke came to New York one of the first to call on him was Mr. Hurlburt (sic).”

Patrick James Smyth, an Irish Home Rule M.P for Westmeath at the time of Froude/Burke lectures, was the second source. He wrote that Hurlbert had tried to arrange a dinner to introduce the visiting Englishman and Irishman before the lectures got underway. Father Burke was about to accept, Smyth wrote, but: “I advised him to wait until his lectures were over, because I knew that he was so impressible that if he were once brought into friendly contact with his opponent he would not have the heart to deliver such stunning and keen thrusts when he appeared against him in the forum.”

Father Burke’s lectures easily carried popular opinion in America, which still harbored deep anti-Anglo feelings a century after its own revolution against England, and were more recently inflamed during the Civil War. Americans bristled at Froude’s anti-democratic and anti-Catholic rhetoric. Besides, they liked an underdog, in this case, Ireland. 

A few years after his return from America, Father Burke said that any Irishman living abroad would experience “a yearning and a craving and a love for Ireland … that he never felt before.” But he never became a strong voice for Irish independence that some hoped. “Advanced nationalists often made it a source of complaint and resentment against Burke that after his return to Ireland he confined himself to priestly functions,” Fitzpatrick wrote. Hurlbert observed that the 1882 murder of two English government officials by militant nationalists in Dublin’s Phoenix Park “went near to breaking the heart and hope of poor Father Burke” a year before his death.

Hurlbert insisted “the strike of the servant girls at Boston” was a “precursory symptom” of the “social plague of boycotting” that he found so prevalent in Ireland during his 1888 visit. His friend’s 1872 rebuke to the Irish workers, Hurlbert concluded, anticipated the papal decree against such activity issued during his travels.

Hurlbert added that he didn’t expect any immigrant “to divest himself of his native sympathies or antipathies,” but once in America he was required to divest “of the notion that he retains any right actively to interfere in the domestic affairs of the country of his birth. For public and political purposes, the Irishman who becomes an American ceases to be an Irishman.”

NOTES: 

Burke and Froude from pages 4-6 of Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American. Additional information on Burke from pages 41, 54, and 222.

“The reading of it …”  The New York Tribune, Nov. 27, 1872, page 1

“We do not know what truth…”  The New York Times, Nov. 27, 1872, page 4

Herbert Paul, The Life of Froude, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, London, 1905, pages 223-228.

Waldo Hilary Dunn, James Anthony Froude, A Biography, Vol. 2, 1857-1894. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1961-63: footnote, page 611; fire, page 384.

“Dr. Peabody of Harvard…” The Boston Globe, Nov. 15, 1872, page 8

William J. Fitzpatrick, The Life of the Very Rev. Thomas N. Burke, Vol. 2, New York, 1886: “Nora and Biddys…”, pages 77-78; “he was so impressible…”, page 77; “visited the art galleries together…”, page 62; and “An Irishman abroad” and “advanced nationalists…”, page 78-79.

“carried popular opinion…” Wayne C. Minnick, 1951, “The Froude-Burke Controversy” in Speech Monographs, 18, pp. 31–36.

The Irish servants walkout in Boston resurfaced in Andrew Urban’s 2017 book, Brokering Servitude: Migration and the Politics of Domestic Labor During the Long Nineteenth Century. Urban cited Hurlbert as his source, in addition to earlier English newspaper reports about Irish worker protests in America.

GAA’s “American Invasion” began 130 years ago

On 25 September, 1888, a delegation of Irish athletes arrived in New York City for an “American Invasion Tour” intended to raise money and promote awareness for the sports of the four-year-old Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA).

The New York Times reported that “50 stalwart young lads with remarkably well developed limbs sprang down the gangplank of the steamer Wisconsin … (carrying) blackthorn sticks and ‘hurling’ clubs in their hands … Their sticks commanded universal respect, and a big policeman eyed them with special interest …”

The 1888 hurling team. Image from Haverford College.

The visiting athletes were greeted by “many friends … and representatives from several Irish societies,” the Times reported. “Almost all trades and professions are represented among the young men.”

Their arrival coincided with a period of increased Irish immigration to America due to ongoing domestic agrarian unrest and political turmoil. These issues were now receiving extra scrutiny from a special commission that opened in London a few weeks earlier. American journalist William Henry Hurlbert also published a book about the “Irish problem” based on his travels in the country earlier that year. (See my “Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited” blog serial.)

“One of the main ideas considered by the founders of the GAA was the revival of the ancient Tailteann Games, An Aonach Tailteann,” the organization says in its online history. “However, terrible weather and infighting between the two athletic organisations in America resulted in low attendances and gate receipts.”

The GAA tour was to have included exhibitions in New York; Boston; Philadelphia; Trenton, Newark, and Patterson, New Jersey; Providence, Rhode Island; and Lowell, Massachusetts. But dates were cancelled and the tour ended in just five weeks. The GAA had to borrow money from agrarian activist Michael Davitt help the athletes return to Ireland. About half the young men decided to stay in America.

Two years ago, the diary kept team member Pat Davin, brother of GAA co-founder Maurice Davin, emerged in public and was put under auction, as reported by The Irish Times. In one passage the diarist complained about “very plain-looking” American women at a New York dance; in another, about the lack of strong drink at a Massachusetts banquet.

1888 Invasion medal.

Davin’s dairy went unsold at the 2016 auction and remains in the hands of the private owner, said County Kilkenny-based Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers. A commemorative medal from the 1888 tour sold in May for about $2,200, slightly less than was paid for a similar medal eight years ago.

 

“Although the tour was deemed a failure in some regards, its overall cultural impact was noticeable and lasting,” according to Haverford College“The tour was well received by Irish American communities in general and eventually resulted in the formation of several GAA branches.”

During his travels in Ireland, Hurlbert obtained a copy of the newly published Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland, which included “Marching Song of the Gaelic Athletes.” The poem by Irish nationalist Douglas Hyde later became the GAA anthem. It begins:

We, the numerous men of Eire,
Born beneath her pleasant skies,
To our gatherings on our mountains.
In our thousands we arise.
See the weapons on our shoulders,
Neither gun nor pike we bear,
But should Ireland call upon us
Ireland soon should find them there.

(Poem continues)

Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited: Hurlbert researched

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

***

“…as we are dealing not with the history of Ireland in the past, but with the condition of Ireland at present … ”
–William Henry Hurlbert

In the 130 years since Hurlbert published his Irish political journal and travelogue, contemporary historians have occasionally, but sparingly, cited his reporting in their works about the Land War period.

Hurlbert

Among the earliest references was The fall of feudalism in Ireland; or, The story of the land league revolution, the 1904 book by Michael Davitt. Hurlbert briefly interviewed the agrarian activist. (See series posts Meeting Davitt and More Davitt.) In his book, the Irishman made a few brief mentions of the American, by then dead for nine years:

Ireland Under Coercion … was intended to show that Mr. Parnell and the National League, not Mr. Balfour and Dublin Castle, were the true coercionists in Ireland. What the purpose or motive of the book was has remained a mystery.

Here are three more recent examples:

  • Coercion and Conciliation in Ireland, 1880-1892, by Lewis Perry Curtis Jr., 1963. Citing an August 1888 letter from Arthur Balfour, Perry reported that Hurlbert “ingratiated himself” to the Irish chief secretary and other unionists “by professing his willingness to educate the American public about the ‘true’ nature of Irish nationalism.” (Curtis also referenced Hurlbert in his 2011 book, The Depictions of Eviction in Ireland, 1845-1910.)
  • Irish Terrorism in the Atlantic Community, 1865-1922, by Jonathan Gantt, 2010. In a one paragraph summary of IUC in his section about the Land War, Gantt noted that “…according to Hurlbert, the presence of ferocious agrarianism represented a failure for all concerned and marked a breakdown in civilization.”
  • Mr. Parnell’s Rottweiler: Censorship and the United Ireland Newspaper, 1881-1891, by Myles Dungan, 2014. Dungan wrote of Hurlbert:

He rejected the nationalist narrative of extreme agrarian distress and cited the significant rise in savings bank deposits in areas where the Plan [of Campaign] was in operation as proof of the capacity, and unwillingness, of tenant farmers to pay even arbitrated rents. He was also highly skeptical of the nationalist narrative of press suppression, suggesting there were greater abuses of press freedom by the Lincoln administration during the American Civil War.

Ireland Under Coercion is probably referenced in a few more history books, but not too many. Hurlbert’s work was absent from dozens of books and websites that I consulted in researching this blog series. I suspect he has been overlooked either because he was an American, or because of his pro-landlord, pro-unionist views.

“There is another and more important factor,” Irish historian Felix M. Larkin, co-founder and former chairman of the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland, wrote in an email: “Historians are loath to use contemporary press reports and journalists’ memoirs as sources.”

Larkin just wrote a piece for The Irish Catholic newspaper that criticizes the new, four-volume Cambridge History of Ireland for ignoring the print media. Hurlbert isn’t cited in its index, either, he wrote.

Nevertheless, the online availability of Hurlbert’s book may prompt some fresh looks at his travels in Ireland. As noted earlier in this series, Hurlbert’s quote about Sion Mills is included in a 2014 BBC online profile of the village; and extended passages of his visit to Miltown Malbay are posted on the County Clare Library website.

Ireland Under Coercion also figures into two books about the mystery of “The Diary of a Public Man.” The anonymously-authored North American Review article about the eve of the U.S. Civil War was published in 1879. The mystery of “a public man,” a historical detective storya 1948 book by Frank Maloy Anderson, and  A secession crisis enigma : William Henry Hurlbert and “The diary of a public mana 2010 exploration by Daniel W. Crofts, each reference Hurlbert’s 1888 Ireland book. Crofts concluded that Hurlbert wrote the magazine piece nine years earlier.

As mentioned in an earlier post, Hurlbert’s trip to Ireland is detailed in Travellers’ Accounts as Source-Material for Irish Historians, a reference by Christopher J. Woods, and The Tourist’s Gaze, Travellers to Ireland, 1800 to 2000, edited by Glen Hooper, which features a passage from IUC.

Hurlbert and his Ireland work are long gone, but not completely forgotten.

Title page from digitized edition of Ireland Under Coercion.

NOTES: Top quote from page 291 of Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an AmericanDavitt, page 559; Curtis, page 263; Gantt, page 125; and Dungan, pages 291-93. Crofts, especially pages 180-187.

NEXT: Final thoughts

Copyright 2018 by Mark Holan

Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited: Hurlbert reviewed

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hurlbert

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

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

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

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

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

“Hurlbert unmasked’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NEXT: Hurlbert researched

Copyright 2018 by Mark Holan

Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited: Hurlbert who?

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

***

“ … [A]ll my observations and comments have been made from an American, not from a British or an Irish point of view.  How or by whom Ireland shall be governed concerns me only in so far as … [it] may tend to affect the future of my country.”
–William Henry Hurlbert

William Henry Hurlbert

My posts about Hurlbert’s reporting in Ireland have now covered the contents of Volume 1 of his book, roughly the one-month period from his late January 1888 arrival in Dublin through the third week of February, 1888. Before starting Volume 2, I want to take a break from the text to focus some attention on the author. This will serve as a foundation for later posts on his views about Ireland and the Irish in America.

The best source of information about Hurlbert is Daniel W. Crofts’ 2010 book,  A secession crisis enigma : William Henry Hurlbert and “The diary of a public man”Crofts writes in his Preview:

His name will not be familiar—hardly anyone today ever has heard of this eccentric nineteenth-century genius. Sic transit gloria mundi. (Thus passes the glory of the world.) Acclaimed at his height as “the most brilliant talent of the New York press” and “the only artist among American journalists,” Hurlbert once commanded attention.

The quotes cited by Crofts are from 1869, nearly 20 years before Ireland Under Coercion and a decade before “The diary of a public man,” his most consequential work, was published in The North American Review. The Diary, as Crofts wrote in this 2011 piece for The New York Times:

…offered verbatim accounts of behind-the-scenes discussions at the very highest levels during the winter of 1860 and ’61. Its pithy quotations attributed to the key principals — Stephen A. Douglas, William H. Seward and especially Abraham Lincoln — have been endlessly recycled by historians. But the author of the diary remained cloaked in anonymity … [and] the purported diary was not an actual diary … [it] was a fictional construct … rooted in reality.

Crofts surveyed the “enormous printed output” of Hurlbert’s journalism career, before and after the Diary was published, to establish as well as possible more than 100 years later that he was the mysterious author. Crofts also worked with statistician David Holmes to subject the Diary to an analysis of literary style known as “stylometry,” which quantifies frequently used words and patterns of words.

Ireland Under Coercion had “important implications” for their analysis, Crofts wrote. Hurlbert’s vocabulary and alliterations in the 1888 book were “strikingly reminiscent” of the Diary published nine years earlier.

Other highlights of Hurlbert’s life from Crofts’ book:

  • Born in 1827 in Charleston, South Carolina. His family moved to Philadelphia in 1831 and remained there through 1843, then went back to South Carolina after Hurlbert’s father died.
  • Hurlbert attended Harvard College from 1845 through 1849, obtaining undergraduate and divinity degrees. “He appears to have been … a young man of enormous talent, plainly destined for great success.”
  • After college, Hurlbert traveled in Europe, served a brief stint as a Unitarian minister in Massachusetts, and finally began working as a journalist, joining The New York Times in 1856.
  • Between 1857 and 1869, Hurlbert was portrayed as a fictional character in three novels by people who knew him. These portrayals offered “a baffling mix of qualities,” from “warmly ingratiating and intellectually brilliant” to “secretive, self-centered and ultimately self-destructive,” according to Crofts.
  • A Douglas supporter, Hurlbert’s personal peacekeeping mission in 1861 resulted in his 13-month imprisonment by the Confederates in Richmond, Virginia. He escaped, returned to the North, and soon joined the New York World, which he subsequently edited.
  • As he was writing the Diary in 1879, Hurlbert also led the successful campaign to move a 3,500-year-old obelisk, “Cleopatra’s Needle,” from Egypt to New York City’s Central Park, where it remains today.
  • After being ousted from the World in 1883 by new ownership, Hurlbert married and moved to Europe. He quickly followed Ireland Under Coercion with another book about France. But Hurlbert soon got caught up an extramarital affair and highly-publicized court case that scandalized his waning reputation. He died in Italy in 1895, “an exile [and] a fugitive from the law.”

As suggested above, future posts will deal with Hurlbert’s views of the Irish in America and how his experiences with the American Civil War influenced his views on the agrarian agitation and Home Rule movement in Ireland. I’ll also look at the U.S. and European reviews of Ireland Under Coercion.

New York City in the 1880s. After Hurlbert”s U.S. newspaper career peaked in 1883, he moved to Europe. He traveled in Ireland during the first half of 1888.

NOTES:  Opening quote from page 8 of Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American. Other material from A secession crisis enigma : William Henry Hurlbert and “The diary of a public man by Daniel W. Crofts.

NEXT: An eviction

Copyright 2018 by Mark Holan