An Irishman's Diary on a British spy in Ireland

In September 1920, a British spy was trying to make his way into the upper echelons of the Irish republican movement, but he was detected and sent back to England. His real name was JL Gooding, but he had many aliases including Frank Digby Hardy. Read my Irishman's Diary about him in today's Irish Times here. 

JL Gooding (aka Frank Digby Hardy) (1868-1930). Image source.

Gooding was something of a chancer. He spent several periods in prison for his crimes (mostly fraud and deception, but also bigamy), yet seems to have been able to fool people into going along with his little schemes over and over again. 

I came across one case where he persuaded a pub landlady in a rural part of Ireland to pay him for barrels of Guinness (which were hard to find at the time). He said that he had a connection in the business and that could secure a delivery of the porter, but of course he failed to deliver. He nearly got away with it, but was located and tried to blame it on his "connection", saying the man had disappeared.  

François Mitterrand's 1988 visits to Ireland

After the French President's recent Irish visit, I thought it would be interesting to look at previous visits. François Mitterrand (1916-1996) was the first French head of state to visit to Ireland. On 21 February 1984, Mitterrand met Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald (1926-2011) at Dublin Castle. At the two hour meeting, they discussed EEC (EU) plans on farm policy, milk production and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Mitterrand returned on 3 December 1984 for a European Council meeting and spent two days in the country with other European leaders. Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) visited in June 1969, but was not head of state at the time having resigned weeks previously when he lost a referendum on regionalism and senate reform. Read about de Gaulle's 1969 visit here.

STATE VISIT - FEBRUARY 1988

François Mitterrand at Monasterboice, County Louth (1988). Image source.

François Mitterrand made two trips in 1988 - a state visit with all the usual ceremony that that implies in February and a more informal personal visit in August. On both occasions, Taoiseach, Charles Haughey (1925-2006), invited Mitterrand to visit his personal home - Abbeville in north County Dublin and his island retreat of Inishvickillane off the coast of County Kerry. Haughey felt an affinity with his Gallic counterpart and wanted to bask in his glory as leader on the world stage and patron of the arts. Mitterrand he launched a series of large-scale cultural projects, 'Grand Projets', when he took office in 1981. These include the glass pyramid at the Musée du Louvre, the Opéra at the Place de la Bastille and the Institut du Monde Arabe. Haughey also saw himself as a patron of the arts. He introduced the artists' exemption scheme and championed the refurbishment of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. He also chaired the National Gallery Foundation from its inception in 1995.

The state visit began on 25 February 1988 and included an address to a joint sitting of the Houses of the Oireachtas in the Dáil chamber, a wreath laying ceremony at the Garden of Remembrance in Parnell Square. The state dinner offered in his honour at Royal Hospital Kilmainham cost £15,809. The wines on offer included a number from the so-called 'Wine Geese' - Château de Tracy, Château Kirwan and Château Leoville-Barton. These were Irish exiles who got involved in the wine business in France in the 17th century.

François Mitterrand at Newgrange, County Meath (1988). Image source.

Visits to archaeological sites also formed part of the itinerary. The Neolithic site at Newgrange in County Meath, the Round Tower and High Cross at Monasterboice in County Louth and the Rock of Cashel in County Tipperary all received a presidential visit. View video clips of the state visit on RTE Archives including his address in the Dáil, visit to a Yoplait yogurt factory in Inch, County Wexford and arrival at the state dinner with Haughey and President Patrick Hillery. 

"I have looked forward to this visit with great interest", Mitterrand said when he met Haughey and the Tánaiste Brian Lenihan at Government Buildings, where they discussed trade, tourism and EEC membership. "I would certainly not like to have finished my term of office with visiting Ireland officially", he said. At this stage, Mitterrand was nearing the end of his seven year term of office. Read more about Mitterrand's discussions with Charles Haughey and Tánaiste Brian Lenihan at Government Buildings, which centered on trade, tourism and EEC membership and what they ate and drank at the state dinner here and here.

Menu from state dinner (1988). Image source.

ADDRESS TO JOINT SITTING OF THE HOUSES OF THE OIREACHTAS

Before Mitterrand could address a joint sitting of the houses of the Oireachtas, a motion to convene the gathering had to be put to the Seanad and Dáil. Many senators spoke in favour of the motion, with some highlighting Mitterrand's socialist credentials. One senator said that he was "a man of some culture, a man of some compassion, a man of considerable intelligence and a man who has a capacity to think in global terms about the problems of the world". 

"France is no more perfect than any other country" - an Irish Senator (1988).

Some Senators compared Mitterrand's visit with a previous state visit by another head of state, who they were not too fond of. Senator John A. Murphy welcomed the motion but said that "France is no more perfect than any other country" and that "in terms of its attitude to nuclear power and the use thereof its policies are far from being enlightened". See the full Seanad debate on the Oireachtas website.  

In the Dáil debate on the motion, Haughey spoke of the historic ties between the two countries. The Workers' Party leader, Tomás Mac Giolla, said that he welcomed "the President of the great French republic, with which we have had such long historic connections". However, Mac Giolla said that "we may have some reservations in regard to their foreign policy, particularly in the area of nuclear testing". See the full Dáil debate here. 

In his speech to the deputies and senators, Mitterrand spoke about the solidarity and faithfulness of the Franco-Irish relationship and noted that the two nations had never met each other in armed conflict on the field of battle! Mitterrand's address (en français) to the joint sitting can be read here

François Mitterrand being interviewed by an Irish journalist in Groult's house in Kerry (1988). Image source.

PERSONAL VISIT AUGUST 1988

Mitterrand's second visit in August 1988 was more of a low key affair. He stayed with his friend, the French writer and journalist, Benoîte Groult, in her holiday home in Bunavalla in Derrynane Bay in rural County Kerry. Groult had been coming to Kerry since 1977. 

Groult's husband, Paul Guimard, had worked for Mitterrand in the Élysée during the early years of Mitterrand's first term. When he arrived in Ireland in August 1988, Mitterrand had just been through a tough presidential contest with Jacques Chirac and had been re-elected for another seven year term as President of France. He told Groult that this was his first holiday since Christmas 1987. Mitterrand did not spend a long time in the house, but Groult recorded in her diary (later published as Journal d'Irlande), that one evening, Mitterrand took a copy of Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto off the shelf and read aloud from the book to his host. 

Mitterrand was invited to Haughey's island of Inishvickillane off the coast of Co. Kerry. The photograph below shows the two men surrounded by some of Haughey's family. Groult and her husband, Paul Guimard, are also in the photo.

Photograph of Charles Haughey and François Mitterrand, August 1988. Image source.

For more about Mitterrand and Ireland, there's a great piece here on the RTÉ Brainstorm website by Dr Dónal Hassett of University College Cork (UCC). It looks at the case of three Irish republicans, known as the 'Irlandais de Vincennes', who were wrongfully arrested in Paris in 1982. 

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.