Thug mé cuairt ar Sheomra na Lámhscríbhinní i Leabharlann Choláiste na Tríonóide don chéad uair i dtús mhí Iúil 2008. Alt a bhí á scríobh agam ag an am ar Mháirtín Ó Cadhain agus bailiú an bhéaloidis a thug ann mé. Sarar chríochnaigh mé an t-alt seo, theastaigh uaim sracfhéachint a thabhairt ar pháipéir neamhfhoilsithe an Chadhnaigh. Ní raibh mé ag gabháil ró-fhada do chomhaid éagsúla sa chnuasach ollmhór seo nuair a thuig mé go mbeadh orm m’alt a athscríobh ó bhonn: is é sin le rá, thuig mé nach foláir féachaint ar scríbhinní neamhfhoilsithe Uí Chadhain (maraon lena scríbhinní foilsithe) chun pictiúir iomlán a fháil ar dhearcadh an Chadhnaigh i leith bhailiú an bhéaloidis agus an bhéaloidis trí chéile (agus i leith go leor, leor nithe eile chomh maith).
TCD MS 10878/M/3/1. Leabhair cleachtaithe a bhí ag MÓC i gCampa an Currach, 1940í.
Margaret Dobbin, nee Cochrane, of Hilden, near Moira (MS 11354)
What better conduit between the quick and the dead can there be than a collection of historical records which purport to let the living hear the voices of those who have gone before?Today’s blog post selects a few items from among the Library’s historical manuscripts which really come into their own at Hallow’een. They include a vengeful seventeenth-century spirit, an old faithful, the classic ghostly ‘coach and pair’ and something genuinely weird from the pen of the great Edith Somerville. This last one will make you shudder.
On 28 September in Paris, all eyes will be on the Petit Palais Musée des Beaux-Arts, as the city opens its first major exhibition on the life and works of the flamboyant Irish writer, Oscar Wilde. Manuscripts, photographs, paintings and personal effects are among almost 200 exhibits coming from public and private collections worldwide for the exhibition, which is co-curated by Wilde’s grandson Merlin Holland. Included in the exhibits are three items borrowed from the Oscar Wilde collection held in Trinity College Library.
Tite Street Sale Catalogue (EPB Quin Case)
Known for his biting wit, extravagant dress and glittering conversation, Oscar Wilde is one of the best known personalities of the 19th century. His love affair with France began as a child, having learned to speak French from a native governess. He considered himself an ardent Francophile and regularly visited Paris, eventually dying there in 1900, when he was hounded out of England after his conviction for homosexuality. His tomb, in Paris’s Père Lachaise cemetery, is now a place of pilgrimage.
The Oscar Wilde collection was acquired by the Library of Trinity College Dublin in 2011 from Julia Rosenthal, a rare book dealer and avid collector of Wildeana, based in London. Rosenthal purchased her first autograph Wilde letter in 1976 and built her collection from there, and it has been of immense value to Wilde scholarship. Richard Ellmann, Thomas Wright, Horst Schroeder and Neil Mc Kenna all made extensive use of it for their biographical works on the author. This truly unique collection of both manuscript and print materials, contains autographed first editions; letters (a small number of which are unpublished); photographs and portraits; theatre programmes and music; and some rare items of memorabilia.
One subject of the Dublin-Paris loan is a letter from Wilde in 1891 to his son Cyril, who was aged five at the time. Writing from Paris, he remarks that he is going ‘to visit a poet, who has given me a wonderful book about a Raven’. The poet was Mallarmé and the book was a translation of Poe’s The Raven. Signed ‘your loving Papa, Oscar Wilde’, it is the only known surviving letter from Wilde to either of his children.
Letter from Oscar Wilde to his son Cyril, 1891 (TCD MS 11437/1/1/1)
Another highlight of the Trinity collection, and also included in the loan, is the ‘Tite Street Sale Catalogue’ of Wilde’s books and household goods. Among the items listed for sale are inscribed editions of Wilde’s parents’ writings and the rabbit hutch and toys belonging to his two young sons, Cyril and Vyvyan. These effects were sold at the demand of Wilde’s creditors at the time of his trial in 1895, and only four copies of the auction catalogue are known to have survived.
The final item loaned to Paris is a moving letter from Wilde to his friend, the writer Eliza Stannard (who used the pseudonym John Strange Winter), written shortly after his release from Reading Gaol in May 1897. Some of Wilde’s most poignant letters were written during these few short years of exile in France, until his death in Paris in 1900. Writing from a hotel in Bernaval-sur-Mer, Normandy, Wilde remarks, ‘of course I have passed through a very terrible punishment and have suffered to the pitch of anguish and despair’ and refers to himself as ‘an unworthy son’. ‘France has been charming to me and about me during all my imprisonment’, he writes, ‘and has now – mother of all artists as she is – give me asile’.
Letter from Oscar Wilde to Eliza Stannard, 1897 (TCD MS 11437/1/1/5)
The exhibition at the Petit Palais runs from 28 September 2016 – 18 January 2017.
These subjects form the plot of the novel Freida the Jongleur (London, 1857), a manuscript draft copy of which is held in the Manuscripts & Archives Research Library.
TCD MS 10870, folio 191
The story takes place in France during the reign of Philippe IV le Bel (1285-1314) and of his sons Louis and Philip. Freida, a pagan jongleur (an itinerant minstrel), travels from Acre in Palestine to France. She witnesses court life and the torments of the end of a glorious era. She is confronted with love, treason, Christianity, and the quest for revenge, following the execution of her son Eldrid. I dare say that, from an historical point of view, the author took some liberty, even if the principal events are well known. Written in a romantic and sentimental style, this historical novel fits well into one trend of nineteenth-century literature.
The author of this novel was an Anglo-Irish woman named Barbara Hemphill (d. 1858). Her father, Patrick Hare, was the rector of Golden, co. Tipperary. In 1807, she married John Hemphill and had five children. One of her sons, the lawyer and politician Charles, became the first Baron Hemphill in 1906. Barbara
TCD MS 10870, folio 262(i)
Hemphill had already been writing for quite a while when she was encouraged to publish her work by a family connection, antiquarian Thomas Crofton Croker. Her first story appeared in the Dublin University Magazine in 1838 with the title of ‘The Royal Confession, A Monastic Legend’. Then came her first novel, Lionel Deerhurst; or, Fashionable Life under the Regency (London, 1846). It was published anonymously, although the Countess of Blessington, another well-known author, was identified as the editor. Success arrived with her second novel, The Priest’s Niece; or, the heirship of Barnulph (London, 1855), which quickly went to a second edition. This success encouraged Hemphill to identify herself as the author of Freida the Jongleur (London, 1857).
TCD MS 10870, folio 477
The Papers of Barbara Hemphill (TCD MS 10869-72) were purchased at auction by M&ARL in 1995. In addition to the manuscript of Freida the Jongleur, the collection also contains a manuscript draft copy of The Priest’s Niece, as well as fair copies of two additional (unpublished) works: Ella of the field of Waterloo and Feud of the Ormond and Desmond. For further information, please contact M&ARL.
‘The Irish funeral cry is at all times a wild and melancholy sound … and as it mingled fitfully with the wind that moaned without, it occasionally assumed an unearthly cadence, that might seem to a fanciful mind, the wail of some wandering spirit’. So wrote Thomas Crofton Croker in his Legends of the Lakes; or, sayings and doings at Killarney (1829). Continue reading “Irish Funeral Traditions”
