Ireland 100 years ago as seen through the French press

Ireland was a very tense place 100 years ago. Though the Truce in the War of Independence was holding, there were ongoing sectarian clashes in Belfast. There were also messages going back and forth between Eamon de Valera in Dublin and David Lloyd George in London about agreeing on negotiations that would decide Ireland's future status. See this short introduction from the Department of Foreign Affairs for more info on the talks in London.

'Anglo-Irish Peace Conference Delegation October 1921'. Image source.

As happened at certain points during the War of Independence, news from Ireland was appearing in newspapers around the world. I have just started tweeting what the French papers were saying about Ireland 100 years ago. I will try to tweet an article every day, or as often as I can, from a range of newspapers with different political outlooks. You can follow the thread here. 

As you can see, the French papers contained regular updates on how the two sides were dealing with each other. You can also see that even though the south of Ireland was relatively peaceful and calm at the time, Belfast was experiencing regular episodes of sectarian conflict. Hundreds were killed in the Belfast pogroms of 1920-22. Find out more here. 

Le Petit Parisien, 25 September 1921. Image source.

L'Echo de Paris, 26 September 1921. Image source.

La Croix, 27 September 1921. Image source.

Excelsior, 29 September 1921. Image source.

An Irishman's Diary on Lola Ridge

The Dublin-born poet, Lola Ridge (1873-1941), is remembered for her powerful poetry that spoke up for the marginalised of the industrial age and covered issues of race and gender. She led a very interesting life that brought her from Ireland at age four to live in New Zealand and Australia before moving to America. I have just written an Irishman's Diary about her in the Irish Times newspaper. Read it here.

Headshot of Lola Ridge. Image source.

Lauded by the New York Times as "one of America's most important poets" on her death in 1941, Dublin-born Ridge lived a very full life, moving from Ireland at a very young age with her mother to live in New Zealand and then Australia before setting up home in the United States. Soon after arriving in America, she left her eight year old son, Keith, in an orphanage in Los Angeles under an assumed name. 

It is unclear what her rationale was in leaving the child in the orphanage, but it has been speculated that she thought that she would struggle to provide for the two of them in New York and that he would have a better life in the orphanage. She was subsequently reunited with him, but the relationship seems to have been a strained one. 

Her biographer, Daniel Tobin, said that Ridge was "perhaps the most impassioned and certainly the most authentic of the proletarian poets of the New York modernist avant-garde". 

Tobin also said that Ridge "chose no party but espoused the cause of the downtrodden everywhere in the world. Her struggle became an intensely spiritual one... She absorbed interest in the vast and tragic upheaval of the times, was prophetically intense..." 

Ridge held weekly literary salons at her one-room apartment on East 14th Street. Regular attendees include William Carlos Williams, Alfred Kreymborg and the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. These poetry readings and gatherings were a place for the literary world to meet and discuss new work and champion up and coming writers. Ridge mentored several new young writers at these events. The atmosphere is captured below 👇

'No money, but piles of sandwiches' - From the 'William Carlos Williams Newsletter': 

"Lola Ridge, a wonderful person, lived in New York and had a kind of salon for writers. She was what we might call a communist today, very extreme in her views. She had no money herself but she had piles of sandwiches for the "starving poets" - she would tell people she was at home on Monday or Tuesday night. I went once - Bill used to go in every two or three weeks and loved it. Marianne Moore, John Reed - all kinds of people went, a lot of them for the sandwiches".  

If you want to find out more about Lola Ridge and her poetry, check out this entry on the RTE Herstory website and this entry on the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre website.

Emily de Burgh Daly - Ireland's Own article

Emily de Burgh Daly (née French) (1859-1935) led a very interesting life. I have just written a short article about her for the Ireland's Own magazine. 

Piece of my article in Ireland's Own.

She is probably not as well remembered by the general public today as her older brother, the entertainer, painter and songwriter, William (Percy) French (1854-1920), but maybe we can change that. 

Emily was born at the family home in Clooneyquinn, Co. Roscommon and educated mainly at home. After some training at a hospital in London, she went to work in a hospital in China in 1888. She spent almost 25 years in China and returned to Ireland on several occasions, before returning to live permanently in Ireland in 1912. 

In 1915, Emily published a book about her experience of living in China for nearly a quarter of a century. Part memoir, part travelogue, it is available to view and download as a PDF from the Internet Archive. Here is the link to An Irishwoman in China.

Some images from the book on the Internet Archive.

For more information, you can read Emily's entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography here.

Free to view newspapers (archives)

Get access to 1 million pages of historical newspapers for FREE.

For over a decade, The British Newspaper Archive (BNA) has been working with the British Library (BL) to digitise newspapers. So far, 44 million pages of newspapers from Ireland, Britain, Jamaica, New Zealand and India have been made available to view online. You can register and pay a subscription to search and save copies of historical newspapers. 

It was recently announced that 1 million pages are now available to view for FREE online. Check out the BNA's blog and the BL's Newsroom blog for information on how to access the free content. Happy searching!

Truce in Irish War of Independence (Jul. 1921) - what the Irish in Paris said.

On this day 100 years ago, 8 July 1921, negotiations to agree a truce in the Irish War of Independence concluded at Dublin's Mansion House. The terms had been agreed upon by delegates including Eamon de Valera and General Nevil Macready and it was announced that the truce would take effect from 11 July 1921. The war had been raging since January 1919, find out more about the background of the war here.

Below is an article by Marcel Pays from the French newspaper, Excelsior of 11 July 1921. It records the reactions of some of the Irish community in Paris to the news of the truce (well two priests actually). It includes two small portrait photographs of de Valera and Macready. Check out a digitized copy of the article here on Gallica. 

Excelsior, 11 July 1921.   

This Excelsior article is fairly unusual because it is rare to find first-hand accounts of what the Irish expat community in France thought about what was happening in Ireland at this time. The first to be interviewed was Fr Logan from the English language church on Avenue Hoche, who said that he was pleased to hear about the Truce, but that 'peace would only come if the talks in London lead to practical and just solutions to the Irish problem'. 

'It is difficult to predict what would or would not come from the talks, but I would like to see a solution that guarantees Irish independence and autonomy, without bringing into question Britain's legitimate security fears', Logan said. 

The second interviewee was Fr Flynn, a French priest of Irish extraction, who said that 'French public opinion was wrong to see Sinn Feiners as rebels'. 'Ireland has a President, a government, a parliament and an army, who want to be Irish', he said. 'We forget in France that Ireland's population has halved in the last seventy years, having gone from 8 to 4 million. Ireland's youth have emigrated to the Unites States, where she is rising today in a plea for Irish freedom', he said.   

Fr Flynn is an interesting person. I came across him when I learned about his visit to Ireland in 1916 as part of a French Catholic church mission to try to get Irishmen to volunteer for the British army to fight in the war. I wrote a short article about him in the Irish Times and also wrote about the French bishop's 1916 mission to Ireland in History Ireland.

Arthur Griffith arriving at the Mansion House in Dublin, 8 July 1921. Image source.

Le Petit Journal and the phantom submarine!

As you know I have been tweeting front pages from Le Petit Journal Illustré every Monday for the last few years. Stories related to Ireland have cropped up on a couple of occasions, usually surrounding events from the War of Independence. 

Entitled 'Le Sous-Marin Fantôme' [The Phantom Submarine], this image from the front page of 3 July 1921 is a little unusual to say the least. The caption says that Sinn Feiners (the foreign press usually referred to armed republicans as 'Sinn Feiners' as opposed to IRA or Irish Volunteers at this time) take great risks in the rocky bays of the Irish coast as they try to land on a submarine that will take them to America where they can complete their mission. Yes, I said it was a bit bizzare...

Front page of Le Petit Journal Illustré 3 July 1921. Image source

Page 2.

The second page of the newspaper carries a short article about the image. It says that submarines cross the Atlantic transporting people and merchandise. These submarines also allow officials of the Republic to travel to America to gather support. It adds that the image shows Sinn Feiners receiving arms and munition from the submarine. 

Book review - 'Art O'Brien and Irish Nationalism in London 1900-25'

My review of Mary MacDiarmada's book, Art O'Brien and Irish Nationalism in London 1900-25, is now live and available on the website of the journal Irish Studies Review. It will be published in the journal in August 2021. Get a free eprint of my review here.

Front cover of book.

Art O'Brien (1872-1949) played an important role in mobilising the Irish diaspora in England during the first twenty-five years of the twentieth century. He was an electrical engineer by training and was fluent in French and Spanish. He put these skills to good use when he became the first Dáil's envoy in London in 1919. His job was to rally the Irish diaspora in England to push for Irish independence. He also acted as a point of contact for the foreign press corps stationed in London. 

The book shines a light on his life and activities for an independent Ireland. Particularly interesting was his interest in the Irish language and Irish dancing. He was born in London to a Cork-born father and an English mother. Art's father died when he was just five years old, so his link to Ireland was broken very early in his life, but he nurtured this aspect of his heritage and it could be said that he became more connected to Ireland's traditional culture and history than many people living in Ireland at the time.

O'Brien was a member of many Irish cultural and nationalist organisations (both legal and illegal) including the Gaelic League in London, Sinn Féin, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). He led a fascinating life and with all the subterfuge, twists and turns that we read about in MacDiarmada's book, it would make for a good film. Read the book and make up your own mind.