Dickens, Ireland and the Irish

Dickensian

Volumn 99, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 139-143

  Litvack, Leon ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950019336     PISSN: 00122440     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (79)

1. [George Walter Thornbury], 'Her Majesty's Irish Mail', All the Year Round 1 (16 July 1859), p. 285 (hereafter 'AYR')
2. 'Mr Charles Dickens on the Irish Mail System', Freeman's Journal, 23 July 1859
3. [G. W. Thornbury], '"Her Majesty's Irish Mail": To the Editor of the Freeman', Freeman's Journal, 29 July 1859; the letter, written from London, is dated 25 July
4. For further details about Thornbury see Lohrli, pp. 447-8
5. Dickens's relationship with the sycophantic Fitzgerald is somewhat troubling: it is unclear why the novelist accepted the Irishman's laudations without any sense that Fitzgerald was cultivating him
6. Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 101; dated 2 August 1859
7. See also Fitzgerald's description of the attack in Memoirs of an Author (London: R. Bentley & Son, 1894) 1, p. 113
8. and in Memories of Charles Dickens, pp. 10, 304-5. Fitzgerald identifies Thornbury as the author of 'Her Majesty's Irish Mail'
9. [G. W. Thornbury], 'Driver Mike', AYR 1 (13 August 1859), pp. 374-8
10. Thombury's authorship is confirmed by Ella Ann Oppenlander, in Dickens's All the Year Round: Descriptive Index and Contributor List (Troy, NY: Whitson Publishing, 1984), p. 69
11. Given the motif of the English traveller engaged in conversation with a jaunting-car driver, it is possible that Thornbury might also have written 'A Car-Full of Fairies' (AYR 1 [25 June 1859], pp. 210-16)
12. Fitzgerald, Memories of Charles Dickens, p. 304
13. See Oppenlander, p. 112
14. For an analysis of Boucicault's sources see Leon Litvack, Literatures of the Nineteenth Century: Romanticism to Victorianism (Dublin: National Distance Education Centre, 1996), Unit 21, pp. 8-11
15. It is interesting to compare this article with 'The Irish in America' (AYR ns 1 [1 May 1869], pp. 510-14)
16. On the Dublin Exhibition of 1865 see John Turpin, 'Exhibitions of Art and Industries in Victorian Ireland', Dublin Historical Record 35 (1981-82), pp. 2-13, 42-51
17. r. V. Comerford, The Fenians in Context: Irish Politics and Society, 1848-82 (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1985), p. 109
18. See also Patrick Quinlivan and Paul Rose, The Fenians in England 1865-1872: a Sense of Insecurity (London: Calder, 1982)
19. and Oliver P. Rafferty, The Church, the State and the Fenian Threat, 1861-75 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999)
20. A critical response to Comerford is provided by John Newsinger, in Fenianism in Mid-Victorian Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1994). The Irish wing of the organisation was sometimes called the Irish Republican Brotherhood - a name that continued to be used after Fenianism proper had died out in the early 1870s. Arthur Griffith (a member of the Brotherhood) founded the Irish nationalist party Sinn Féin ('We Ourselves') in 1905
21. Portions of this article are reprinted by Cooke (pp. 184-6)
22. Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 128; dated 29 December 1865. Lover, who was born in Dublin, wrote songs in the style of Thomas Moore
23. Pilgrim Letters 11, pp. 115, 116; dated 30 November 1865. In the same letter Dickens mentions 'what with Canada' - possibly referring to the abortive raid by American Fenians across the border into Canada in 1866 (similar attempts to enter Canada were made in 1870 and 1871)
24. Comerford, The Fenians in Context, p. 127
25. According to Comerford, up to 150,000 Irish -Americans may have served in the Union armies, and up to 40,000 in the Confederate forces (p. 120)
26. G. W. Thornbury, Old Stories Re-Told (London, 1870)
27. For Dickens's reaction see Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 247 (to Thornbury, dated 15 September 1866)
28. for Thornbury's being 'rather given to horrors' see Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 371 (dated 23 May 1867, to Sir James Emerson Tennent)
29. [G. W. Thornbury], 'Old Stories Re-Told: The Burning of Wildgoose Lodge (County Louth)', AYR 17 (27 April 1867), pp. 417-23
30. The Ribbonmen, who drew support from both Ireland and America, were active between 1814 and 1834; for the roots of this agrarian movement see T. Desmond Williams, ed., Secret Societies in Ireland (Dublin: Gill &Macmillan, 1973)
31. AYR 17 (1 June 1867), p. 539
32. Comerford has, however, shown that Fenianism appealed predominantly to 'respectable' wage earners and some of the urban lower-middle class (R. V. Comerford, 'Patriotism as pastime: the appeal of Fenianism in the mid-1860s', Irish Historical Studies 22 [1980-1], pp. 239-50)
33. 'The Fifth of March in Dublin', AYR 17 (6 April 1867), p. 342-5; this article is reprinted in an abbreviated form by Cooke (pp. 187-90)
34. For a detailed account of the events of 5 March see Shin-Ichi Takagami, 'The Fenian Rising in Dublin, March 1867', Irish Historical Studies 29 (1995), pp. 340-62; the rebellion failed largely because of poor organisation. On 7 March 1867 the Freeman's Journal, in a report headlined "THE FENIAN RISING', emphasised the absence of a threat: 'Those who assembled [at Tallaght] have been utterly dispersed, in fact driven about by a few policemen, who acted... entirely without the air of the military'
35. 'Fenian James Fitzpatrick', AYR 17 (18 May 1867), pp. 488-92. Two other pieces published in 1867 which relate to the Fenians discuss the constitution of the Irish Constabulary (AYR 17 [13 April 1867], pp. 375-7)
36. and rumours of Fenian membership among the soldiers stationed at the Curragh (AYR 17 [25 May 1867], pp. 520-4). Both of these articles mention the Tallaght Hill rising in passing
37. Throughout March the Freeman's Journal carried daily reports headed 'THE FENIAN RISING'
38. Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 332; to Wilkie Collins, dated 13 March 1867
39. Dickens's earliest recorded reference to the Fenians came in 1865, when he expressed 'strong apprehensions' in a letter to W. W. F. de Cerjat (Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 115; dated 30 November 1865)
40. Something of Dickens's sentiments concerning Fenians might also be gleaned from his comments about his aggressive dog Sultan, a gift from Percy Fitzgerald; Forster writes that 'Dickens always protested that Sultan was a Fenian, for that no dog, not a secretly sworn member of that body, would ever have made such a point, muzzled as he was, of rushing at and bearing down with fury anything in scarlet with the remotest resemblance to a British uniform' (Life of Charles Dickens, p. 657); after Sultan attacked a small girl, he had to be put down
41. See also Fitzgerald, Memories of Charles Dickens, pp. 13-15, and Pilgrim Letters 11, pp. 95-6, 118-9, 264 (dated 23 and 30 September 1865, and 6 November 1866)
42. Pilgrim Letters 11, pp. 333-4
43. George Dolby, Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America (1866-1870) (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1885), p. 74
44. See reports in the Freeman's Journal and Irish Times, 16, 19, and 23 March 1867, and in the Belfast News-Letter and Northern Whig, 21 March 1867. Dickens's Dublin venue, the Rotundo, was (ironically) an important location for political gatherings
45. See Pilgrim Letters 11, pp. 334-7; letters to Mamie Dickens and Georgina Hogarth, dated 16 and 17 March 1867
46. In a letter to his daughter Dickens confirms that he had 'a good deal of talk' with this unidentified colonel (Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 339; dated 21 March 1867)
47. Dolby, pp. 75-6. At the close of his tour, as he sailed towards North Wales on 23 March, the Nation reported that 'Mr. Dickens, who took passage on Saturday morning to Holyhead, in the mail steamer Munster, evinced great interest in twelve Fenian convicts going in the same boat, under escort of a body of Royal Marines, en route to English prisons'
48. See 'Mr Dickens and the Fenians', The Nation, 30 March 1867, p. 501
49. A note in Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 331, erroneously relates this event to Dickens's arrival in Dublin, and incorrectly identifies this publication as a Belfast paper
50. Pilgrim Letters 11, pp. 340, 338; to Forster, dated 22 March 1867, and to Mrs Elliot, dated 20 March 1867. There are, however, some signs that Dickens did feel the matter of the Fenians acutely, as indicated in a letter to Catherine (Mrs Ralph Bernal) Osborne: 'When, when, when, will you be at peace in Ireland and sit under your vines and fig-trees without hanging revolvers and Enfield rifles on the branches? I feel as if I were in a more than usually incomprehensible dream when I am shown a hosiery establishment in Sackville Street here, from which some scores of young men decamped in the last wretched "risings" to starve in wildernesses or pine in jails. So the notion of your being guarded in your house, and of our getting involved with America (as we shall at last) on this mad head, has a grim absurdity in it of such nightmare breed that I half believe I shall wake presently and wonder how I ever came to invent in my sleep the word "Fenian"' (Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 336; dated 16 March 1867)
51. Catherine Osborne (wife of the liberal MP Ralph Bemal Osborne) was the heiress of Sir Thomas Osborne, Bart, of Thicknesse, Co. Waterford and Newtown Anner, Co. Tipperary
52. Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 475; memo dated early November 1867. Dickens left for the United States on 9 November
53. Pilgrim Letters 11, pp. 537, 512; dated 24 September and 15 December 1867
54. When Dickens wrote the second of these letters he had just learned of the Clerkenwell explosion -news of which had been conveyed to the United States by telegraph. On 13 December an attempt was made to rescue Richard O'SulIivan Burke and Joseph Theobald Casey by blowing a large hole in the outer wall of Clerkenwell prison. The attempt failed, but the explosion devastated the surrounding area, and several people were killed. The news prompted Dickens to comment to James T. Fields two weeks later, 'I hear from London that the general question in society is, what will be blown up next by the Fenians' (Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 525; dated 29 December 1867)
55. For further details of the Clerkenwell explosion see Quinlivan and Rose, pp. 76-94. Dickens would also have known of the rescue of Thomas Kelly and Timothy Deasy from a police van in Manchester on 18 September, and the subsequent execution of Michael O'Brien, Michael Larkin, and William Philip Allen (who became known as the 'Manchester Martyrs') on 23 November; the New York Times (generally hostile to Fenianism) called the death sentences a 'grievous blunder' (26 November 1867); for a full account see Quinlivan and Rose, pp. 43-75
56. Pilgrim Letters 12, p. 267; to W. W. F. de Cerjat, dated 4 January 1869
57. The Irish Church Act (passed on 26 July 1869) took effect on 1 January 1871
58. The suspension of habeas corpus allowed the police to arrest and detain known Fenians - especially those held on fragile evidence. The eleven hundred Fenians arrested in the years 1866-8 became known as 'H.C.S.A. prisoners' (the initials referring, of course, to the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act). For Dickens's reaction to Gladstone's plan for granting amnesty to Fenian prisoners see Pilgrim Letters 12, p. 430
59. Mr Dickens's Farewell Reading', Freeman's Journal, 14 January 1869. This adulation follows the comments of the previous day, when the paper labelled Dickens 'the greatest writer of this age'
60. Sikes and Nancy was first performed to an audience of the general public on 5 January 1869 in St James's Hall, London
61. See Philip Collins (ed.), Charles Dickens: The Public Readings (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), pp. 465-71
62. reprinted in Pilgrim Letters 12, pp. 274-5. Fitzgerald might have given an incorrect date for Dickens's letter, given that the pair were together in Belfast on 15 January
63. Charles Dickens as 1 Knew Him, pp. 364-6
64. Memories of Charles Dickens, pp. 82, 59
65. Charles Dickens as I Knew Him, p. 366. Dickens declined the invitation to the banquet
66. Memories of Charles Dickens, p. 305. It should, however, be noted that Fitzgerald's narrative suffers from loose organisation, and lacks a tight chronological structure; the negative comments about the Irish appear in close proximity to the writer's assessment of Irish reaction to 'Her Majesty's Irish Mail', considered above. He might have intended to comment specifically on reaction to Thornbury's essay, though from their tenor the remarks seem to apply to Dickens's general opinion of Ireland and the Irish
67. John Turpin maintains that Maclise met Dickens through Forster ('Daniel Maclise and Charles Dickens: A Study of their Friendship', Studies 73 [1984], p. 47), whereas Johnson provides evidence for the artist's introduction through William Harrison Ainsworth (p. 220). Maclise and Forster remained friends until the artist's death; towards the end of his life Maclise intimated to Forster that 'You are my oldest friend and companion. I love you my dearest Forster better than anyone' (in volume of autograph letters from Daniel Maclise to John Forster, in the Forster Collection, National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, MS no. 48.E.19, item no. 264)
68. "These works include the full-length 'Nickleby' portrait of Dickens at his writing desk, completed in 1839; the watercolour of the four Dickens children, painted for Catherine to take on the 1842 American tour; the painting Waterfall at St. Nighton 's Keive, near Tintagel (1842), for which Georgina Hogarth posed; and the triple portrait of Dickens, Catherine, and Georgina, executed in 1843, and the portrait of Catherine (1846)
69. Most of these images are reproduced by Jane R. Cohen in her Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators (Columbus, OH: Ohio State UP, 1980)
70. Nancy Weston offers a misinformed, problematic assessment of the artist's Irish sentiments and identity in her Daniel Maclise: Irish Artist in Victorian London, (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001)
71. See Leon Litvack's review in The Dickensian 97.3 (2001), pp. 249-51
72. Some doubt is cast on the 'Irishness' of Maclise's work by Fintan Cullen, in Visual Politics: The Representation of Ireland, 1750-1950 (Cork: Cork UP, 1997)
73. Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 6006, note 2
74. In 1842, when Dickens was composing chapter 6 of American Notes (considered above), he appealed to Maclise for assistance with a particular word: 'I want to know... what an old Irishwoman would call an old burying ground at home. Would she call that place in which the bones of her kindred lie - a Burying Ground - a Chapel Yard - or what' (Pilgrim Letters 3, p. 308; dated 14 August 1842). The word which Dickens chose was 'graveyard' - though there is no evidence to confirm that this word was recommended by Maclise
75. 'The Spirit of Chivalry in Westminster Hall', Dickens' Journalism, Volume 2, p. 79; the review appeared in Douglas Jerrold's Shilling Magazine for August 1845. Maclise executed the drawing in response to an invitation by the Royal Commission of Fine Arts (chaired by Prince Albert), for cartoons for frescoes which would occupy the six arched compartments in the new House of Lords, and would be illustrative of the chamber's function and its relation to the Sovereign. Dickens's remarks about Maclise as an English artist were cancelled at proof stage, as was his assertion that "The object of this competition was encouragement and exaltation of English art; and in this work, albeit done on paper which soon rots, the Art of England will survive, assert itself, and triumph'
76. Richard Ormond, Daniel Maclise 1806-1870 (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1972), p. 79
77. W. J. McCormack, introduction to 'Language, Class and Genre', The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, ed. Seamus Deane (Derry: Field Day Publications, 1991), 1, p. 1079
78. see Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 79; dated 2 June 1840. Dickens knew of Maclise's commission to illustrate a new edition of the Irish Melodies, published in 1845; but he is not known to have commented on the published volume
79. Kate Perugini, 'Charles Dickens as a Lover of Art and Artists', The Magazine of Arts, ns 1 (1903), p. 127