The Times Great Irish Lives: Obituaries of Ireland’s Finest

SIR JOHN POPE HENNESSY

8 OCTOBER 1891

SIR JOHN POPE HENNESSY, M.P. for North Kilkenny, died early yesterday morning at his residence, Rostellan Castle, from heart failure. Sir John, who was 59 years of age, had been suffering from anaemia, which may be traced to his long residence in tropical climates.

The death of Sir John Pope Hennessy removes a man who might have played a more important part in politics had he been differently or less brilliantly gifted. In his qualities and talents, as in his defects, he was a typical Irishman. He was quick of wit, ready in repartee, a fluent speaker, and an able debater; but the enthusiasm and the emotion which lent force and fire to his speeches led him into the adoption of extreme and impracticable views. He was one of the most independent of private members in the House of Commons. He might fairly be described as eccentric and crotchety; and the Colonial Office had reason to mistrust a subordinate who, as it might be charitably presumed, with the best intentions, was always stirring up troubles abroad and landing his chiefs in hot water. In short, we must believe that Sir John Hennessy, with a super-abundance of brain, had an unfortunate deficiency of ballast. The son of a Kerry landowner, he was born in 1834, educated at Queen’s College in his native city of Cork, and called to the Bar of the Inner Temple in 1861. His pursuit of the legal profession was somewhat perfunctory, for two years previously he had turned his attention to politics and taken his seat in the House of Commons. It must be confessed that he had the courage of his originality, for he had presented himself to the constituency of King’s County and carried the election in the novel character of a Catholic Conservative. We may presume that the clever young man was commissioned by the more worldly-wise members of his Church to prove there were possibilities of coming to an understanding with a party which had hitherto been antipathetical to them. From the first Sir John Hennessy took politics very seriously, and showed the ambition and resolution to get on. His Parliamentary record was an active one, and nowadays it would be difficult for a novice and a private member to achieve half so much. An Irish Catholic and a Conservative, he was at once patriotic and politic; and, moreover, he made sundry valuable contributions to the cause of practical philanthropy. The young member received a flattering compliment when he was formally thanked by the Roman Catholic Committee of England for his successful exertions in the Prison Ministers Act. He was thanked likewise by the Association of British Miners for useful amendments introduced in the Mines’ Regulation Bill, which showed he had carefully studied the subject. He was less practical when he urged upon the Government the propriety of making Irish paupers comfortable at home by reclaiming the swamps and the bottomless bogs. Generally he supported the Government on questions relating to the English Church Establishment; but, on the other hand, he took strong exception to the denominational system of education they had introduced in Ireland under what he declared to be the misnomer of a “national” system. Had he been content to go more quietly, and to be more amenable to party discipline, the Conservatives might have found him a useful ally, and, like the King of Moab with the recalcitrant prophet Balaam, they would willingly have promoted the protégé of the priests to great honour. As it was, they thought it prudent to give him the government of distant Labuan, the future of which seemed to be bound up with the existence of coalfields; and we suspect that it was his poverty rather than his will which reconciled him to that honourable exile. Few men have done more official travelling or seen more varied service in tropical climates. From Labuan he went to West Africa, to be transferred in the following year to the Bahamas; and after a short subsequent sojourn in the Windward Islands he governed cosmopolitan Hongkong and the semi-French island of Mauritius. We must add that Sir John Pope Hennessy’s colonial career says very little for the intelligence or discretion with which the Colonial Office exercises its patronage. He ought never to have been placed in charge of such colonies as Hongkong or the Mauritius, where the pretensions of the natives threatened to make trouble. The sympathizer with the down-trodden Catholics of West Ireland was an enthusiast with regard to the equal rights of men. And at the Mauritius, to make matters worse, that strong-willed martinet, Mr Clifford Lloyd, whose Irish antecedents associated themselves with peremptory suppression, was assigned to Sir John as Secretary and colleague. Of course, they quarrelled, like two jealous dogs, locked together in couples beyond the master’s sight and reach. The experience of Sir Hercules Robinson was called in to arbitrate. Sir John did not come very creditably out of the business, though the final decision was given in his favour. He returned to the colony, to be retired on a full pension when the term of his administration had expired. He had the satisfaction, however, of being formally congratulated by the Secretary of State on his successful administration. He might have been content to rest on his honours, and to interest his leisure with literature. But it was never in his nature to be idle. It is an affair of yesterday, and in everybody’s recollection, how he chanced to be put forward as a candidate for North Kilkenny in the very crisis of Mr Parnell’s career, and on the eve of Mr Parnell’s political collapse. When the choice was between the Protestant dictator and the priests, the choice of the devoted son of the Church could not be doubtful. With the whole influence of the Kilkenny clergy to back him, he carried the election by two to one. At that time he finally broke with the Conservative party by resigning his membership of the Carlton; but since then, owing probably to failing health, he had made no such figure in the House as formerly, and, indeed, had seldom been seen there. It only remains to say that he married a daughter of Sir H. Low, and that it was in 1880 he was created a Knight Commander of St Michael and St George. He showed his good taste by buying as his residence the picturesque and historical mansion in Youghal which had been given to Sir Walter Raleigh by his Gloriana; and, whether it were cause or effect, it was consequently appropriate that Sir John Hennessy should have published some years ago a volume on “Raleigh in Ireland, with his Letters on Irish Affairs and some Contemporary Documents.”

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MRS CECIL ALEXANDER

14 OCTOBER 1895

MRS CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER, so well known as “C.F.A.,” died at the Palace, Londonderry, at 6 o’clock on Saturday evening after a few weeks’ illness. She was born in county Wicklow in 1818, and was the daughter of Major John Humphreys, who served with distinction at the battle of Copenhagen and was afterwards a landed proprietor and extensive land agent in Ireland. In 1847 she married the Rev. William Alexander, who became Bishop of Derry and Raphoe in 1867. In all religious and charitable works in Londonderry and the diocese she took a wise and energetic part. She possessed a simple and straightforward dignity of manner, which gave a peculiar distinction to her in social relations. Among the poor and aged she was loved with pathetic intensity. It is, however, upon her writings that Mrs Alexander’s extended fame is built. She had a natural bent for poetry, and her early intimacy with Keble and Hook stamped her mind with a lasting impression. Her “Hymns for Little Children” and “Moral Songs” have had an immense circulation. Her less widely known “Poems on Old Testament Subjects” reach a loftier practical standard, but it is by certain of her hymns especially that she will be remembered, not only within the Anglican Church, but by all Christian communities. Of several of these Gounod said that they seemed to set themselves to music. Six only need be indicated- “The roseate hues of early dawn,” “When wounded sore the stricken soul,” “His are the thousand sparkling rills,” “Jesus calls us o’er the tumult,” “All things bright and beautiful,” and “There is a green hill far away.” The “Burial of Moses” is her best known poem. Of this Tennyson observed that it was one of the poems by a living writer of which he would have been proud to be the author. The Rev. F. A. Wallis, of the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa, preaching in Londonderry Cathedral yesterday, mentioned that he had heard Mrs Alexander’s hymns sung by half-clad Africans in a language she had never known.

OSCAR WILDE

1 DECEMBER 1900

A REUTER TELEGRAM from Paris states that Oscar Wilde died there yesterday afternoon from meningitis. The melancholy end to a career which once promised so well is stated to have come in an obscure hotel of the Latin Quarter. Here the once brilliant man of letters was living, exiled from his country and from the society of his countrymen. The verdict that a jury passed upon his conduct at the Old Bailey in May, 1895, destroyed for ever his reputation, and condemned him to ignoble obscurity for the remainder of his days. When he had served his sentence of two years’ imprisonment, he was broken in health as well as bankrupt in fame and fortune. Death has soon ended what must have been a life of wretchedness and unavailing regret. Wilde was the son of the late Sir William Wilde, an eminent Irish surgeon. His mother was a graceful writer, both in prose and verse. He had a brilliant career at Oxford, where he took a first-class both in classical moderations and in Lit. Hum., and also won the Newdigate Prize for English verse for a poem on Ravenna. Even before he left the University in 1878 Wilde had become known as one of the most affected of the professors of the aesthetic craze and for several years it was as the typical aesthete that he kept himself before the notice of the public. At the same time he was a man of far greater originality and power of mind than many of the apostles of aestheticism. As his Oxford career showed, he had undoubted talents in many directions, talents which might have been brought to fruition had it not been for his craving after notoriety. He was known as a poet of graceful diction; as an essayist of wit and distinction; later on as a playwright of skill and subtle humour. A novel of his, “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” attracted much attention, and his sayings passed from mouth to mouth as those of one of the professed wits of the age. When he became a dramatist his plays had all the characteristics of his conversation. His first piece, Lady Windermere’s Fan, was produced in 1892. A Woman of no Importance followed in 1893. An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest were both running at the time of their author’s disappearance from English life. All these pieces had the same qualities – a paradoxical humour and a perverted outlook on life being the most prominent. They were packed with witty sayings, and the author’s cleverness gave him at once a position in the dramatic world. The revelations of the criminal trial in 1895 naturally made them impossible for some years. Recently, however, one of them was revived, though not at a West-end theatre. After his release in 1897, Wilde published “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” a poem of considerable but unequal power. He also appeared in print as a critic of our prison system, against the results of which he entered a passionate protest. For the last three years he has lived abroad. It is stated on the authority of the Dublin Evening Mail that he was recently received into the Roman Catholic Church. Mrs Oscar Wilde died not long ago, leaving two children.

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LORD MORRIS OF SPIDDAL

9 SEPTEMBER 1901

WE REGRET TO record the death of Lord Morris and Killanin, which occurred yesterday morning at 4 o’clock, at his residence, Spiddal, county Galway …

Irishmen have in considerable numbers made their mark in the profession of the law, but those with whom, on this side of the Channel, we are familiar have usually been members of the English Bar, like Baron Martin, Lord Cairns, Lord Macnaghten, and the late Lord Chief Justice. But in the last 30 years the two Irish Chancellors who have been peers, Lord O’Hagan and Lord Ashbourne, and the Irish Lords of Appeal, Lord Fitzgerald and the late Lord Morris, have served to bring more closely together lawyers of the two nationalities. Lord Morris and Killanin may be said to have had a singularly fortunate career, and up to the time of his resignation in the summer of 1900 he had filled judicial office for 33 years, a whole generation. Born on November 14, 1827, Michael Morris was a member of an old Irish family descended from one of the ancient 13 tribes of Galway, the city with which he was throughout his life associated. An ancestor, Richard Morris, was Bailiff of Galway in 1486. The family, it would appear, were always Catholics, and the father of the late peer was in 1841 the first of that faith who had been High Sheriff since 1690. He was a landed proprietor in the county. His distinguished son, whose career we have now to record, was always attached to his native place, and spent a great deal of his time at the family residence, Spiddal, about a dozen miles west of Galway, on the northern shore of the bay, a pleasant “oasis of civilization,” as its owner used to call it, amid some of the wildest tracts of Connaught. Educated at Erasmus Smith’s school in Galway, Michael Morris, like many other Catholics of that day, went up to the University of Dublin, despite its “Protestant atmosphere,” and it is right to say that he was always loyal to his Alma Mater. He entered Trinity College while still a mere boy and took his degree before he had completed his 20th year, graduating as Senior Moderator and gold medallist in Logic and Ethics in the summer of 1847 … He was called to the Irish Bar in 1849, and soon won a large practice on circuit and at nisi prius, especially in cases connected with his own province. His force of character and his racy wit, founded always on a strong basis of sterling common sense and an undisguised contempt for sentimentality and phrase-making, were rapidly recognized. He took silk in 1863, when he was a little over 35 years of age. In Galway, where he always enjoyed an extraordinary personal popularity, he attained to a position which enabled him to secure his return for that city, at the general election of 1865, at the top of the poll, obtaining the votes of over 90 per cent of the electors, though he issued no formal address and attached himself to no party. At no time, however, was it doubtful that Morris was a conservative in the broad sense of the word. He distrusted democratic institutions, particularly as applied to an imperfectly developed community like Ireland, and he scorned the sounding platitudes of professional patriots. No Irishman, however, had the best interests of his country more sincerely at heart, or worked more vigorously for them. Morris took up an independent attitude in the House of Commons. But on the change of Ministers in June, 1866, he was offered by Lord Derby and accepted the office of Solicitor-General for Ireland, being the first Roman Catholic who had received such promotion under a Conservative Administration. His acceptance was referred to in complimentary terms by the Prime Minister in the House of Lords. That it was not distasteful to his constituents in Galway was clearly shown when his seat was challenged on his seeking re-election after his appointment. He was returned by a majority of five to one, and when he became Attorney-General a few months later no one ventured to come forward against him.

In April, 1867, when he was little more than 39, he became a puisne Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, … On the retirement of Lord Chief Justice Monahan, in 1876, Mr Justice Morris succeeded him and was the last Chief of the Common Pleas. Eleven years later he was placed at the head of the Irish Common Law Bench as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. Meanwhile he had done much public service of a non-judicial character. He was a leading member of the Royal Commission on Irish Primary Education in 1868–70; was one of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland from 1868 … In 1885 he was created a baronet. In 1889 he attained the culminating point of his professional success, becoming Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and entering the Upper House as a life peer with the title of Lord Morris of Spiddal. At the same time he was sworn of the Privy Council in England, and shortly afterwards became a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn. This was the first occasion – apart from the complimentary admission of Royal and princely personages – in which one who had never been called to the English Bar was placed upon the governing body of one of the Inns of Court.

As a puisne Judge, as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Morris showed high judicial qualities. He was not, and he never professed to be, a lawyer deeply read in the reports and eager to associate his name with subtle developments of case law. But he was a most capable and careful Judge in nisi prius cases and on circuit, where his inborn sagacity, his scorn for shams, his rapidity in mastering facts, his knowledge of the national character, and his genial humour gave him a controlling power over all save the most incorrigible of juries. Yet it would be wrong to say that afterwards, when Lord Morris became a member of the Supreme Appellate Tribunal, he was not capable of dealing ably with judicial principles. Though he was an Irishman, he was not given to verbosity, and he was frequently content to record his concurrence with others of the legal members of the House of Lords. When he pronounced his judgments, however, he spoke always to the purpose, if briefly. Perhaps the public, and even his profession, cannot realize how valuable a check is the presence of incarnate common sense and good-humouredly cynical contempt for the extravagances of hair-splitting and logic-chopping on the part of some eminent lawyers. Of the House of Lords as an abode of liveliness, whether regarded from the political or from the legal point of view, Lord Morris had not a very high opinion. It is even whispered that he used to talk of the august Chamber, irreverently, as “the graveyard.” He sometimes could not resist the temptation to supply the quality that was lacking. The proceedings were occasionally diversified by a sally, delivered in the brogue which he never sought to modify, and which, indeed, he frankly declared had been his fortune. One of these interruptions to grave argument was in the prolonged appeal of “Allen v. Flood,” the trade union case decided in December, 1897, after a two years’ sojourn in the House of Lords. The late Lord Herschell had been frequent in rather petulant interruption of the counsel for the respondent. Lord Morris took the opportunity of saying, in a pretty loud voice and in a way which made laughter irresistible:- “I think we can all understand from the present proceedings what amounts to molesting a man in his business.” … The late Lord’s humour was not of the literary kind which finds its way into judgments, but it does bubble up now and again. In the decision of the Judicial Committee in “Cochrane v. Macnish” the question was of the lawful and unlawful use of the term “club soda,” and Lord Morris, who gave the decision of the tribunal, remarked:- “In the manufacture of soda-water there is no secret, and frequently no soda.” Perhaps his best judgment was the admirable one which he delivered in the Privy Council in “McLeod v. St Aubyn” in 1899. The decision was referred to in these columns in comment on the case in which grossly disrespectful language was used in a Birmingham newspaper of Mr Justice Darling, and the writer was subjected to a fine. Lord Morris, while affirming the existence, deprecated the exercise, of the jurisdiction to commit for contempt of Court on account of scandalous matter published with respect to the Court or Judge … On Lord Morris’s retirement in the summer of 1900 a hereditary peerage, the barony of Killanin, was bestowed upon him. He preferred, however, to be known by his old name.

Perhaps the most signal triumph, from a personal point of view, that Lord Morris had to boast of in his long and successful career was won shortly after his resignation of the Law Lordship in the early part of 1900. While he filled a judicial office, Lord Morris felt that it was not right for him to take an active share in party politics and political controversy. His eldest son contested the borough of Galway unsuccessfully in 1895, and, though he was chosen a member of the first county council of Galway under the Irish Local Government Act in 1899, the only Unionist elected west of the Shannon, it seemed that he had not much prospect of victory when he presented himself again as a candidate for the borough after the dissolution of last year. But, in the meantime, his father had been “unmuzzled.” Lord Morris had never lost touch with the people of Galway. He lived much among them, and enjoyed living among them. He knew them all, and rarely forgot a face. When the Local Government Bill was before the House of Lords, he fought manfully, and for the moment successfully, to preserve for Galway a privileged position as a county borough, and by his individual energy carried an amendment to this effect against the Government, in the Upper House, which was set aside in the House of Commons. Lord Morris, during the interval before the strict “electoral period,” when it was permissible for him as a peer to engage in political conflict, threw himself with characteristic energy and humour into the fray. It was largely due to his personal influence that Mr Martin Morris won his seat – the only one outside Ulster for which a Unionist was returned last autumn – by a satisfactory majority against a singular combination of adverse forces. All the sections of the Nationalists combined to work for the Separatist candidate, Mr Leamy, a popular and able man apart from politics. The Roman Catholic Bishop was Mr Leamy’s proposer, and, with hardly a single exception, the clergy, parish priests and curates alike, were active partisans on the same side. But Lord Morris appealed successfully to the memories and the kindly feeling of his old friends and neighbours, his former constituents. He reminded them that he had never severed his interests from theirs, and that he had always lived among them, dealt with them, knew almost every man by name, and was ardent for their welfare. He repelled in vigorous speeches the attacks upon him and his son as representatives of Toryism and landlordism. He roused the enthusiasm of the fishermen of “the Claddagh” by speaking to them in Irish, though he used to confess that he could no more read a line in that language than the majority of the professional patriots could understand it, whether spoken or written. Mr Martin Morris’s victory was creditable to himself; but it was even in a higher degree a personal triumph for his father and a tribute to the unique place he had won in the hearts of the people of Galway.

Perhaps Lord Morris’s social gifts were even more remarkable than his legal and political successes. What he enjoyed most of all things in the world was talk; and he talked admirably – not least because he chose to express himself in what he used to call “my broadest Doric” – whether he was strolling with a single companion through the rough moorland region behind Spiddal or was the life and soul of the company at a country house party or a London dinner. His humour was of a far higher quality than the fine-drawn subtleties of the professional wit. It was always rooted in a sturdy and fearless common sense. It may perhaps be said that in politics Lord Morris was a pessimist, like so many other brilliant humourists. He had not, at any rate, a very high opinion of either the intelligence or the straightforwardness of politicians. His reply to some one who asked him, somewhat inaptly, to explain “the Irish question” in a few words is well known. “It is the difficulty,” he said, “of a stupid and honest people trying to govern a quickwitted and dishonest one.” Yet he was by no means of opinion that the government of Ireland was impracticable, though he was full of scorn for the incurable optimism which professed to believe that Irish separatism would be weakened rather than strengthened by the extension of the franchise and, at a later date, the introduction of local government of the broadest democratic kind in Ireland. How the loyal minority could hope to win in an electoral fight he could not understand. “If it was to be fought out with fists,” he said, “I could understand it, but at the ballot-box, when the rebel party are ten to one, don’t ask me to believe that we can beat them.” When a distinguished Radical, begged to be informed how long the struggle against the law in Ireland would be maintained, after “resolute government” had been really instituted, Lord Morris’s answer was “one hour!” If the prediction has not been realized, it is because the condition precedent has never been fulfilled.