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Waterloo – battle site as tourist attraction

As the Irish people have embraced the fact – and the associated implications – of their significant involvement in the First World War, it is being borne in upon us the extent of the role of the Irish in many of the so-called great battles instigated by our neighbours. The Battle of Waterloo is no exception; there may have been as many as 12,000 Irishmen there – a third of the British contingent – and the name of Arthur Wellesley from Trim, as the Duke of Wellington, is the best known of them all.

A small exhibition has been curated in the Long Room to acknowledge, firstly, the Irish presence at Waterloo and, secondly, to prompt thought about the manner in which scenes of murderous human self-destruction swiftly become tourist attractions.

Flowers taken as souvenirs from the site of the Battle of Waterloo (TCD MS 11054)
Flowers taken as souvenirs from the site of the Battle of Waterloo (TCD MS 11054)

General Sir John Ormsby Vandeleur (1763-1849),  son of Richard and Elinor Vandeleur, of Co. Laois, achieved prominence during the Hundred Days campaign of 1815 during which he commanded the fourth cavalry brigade. On 18 June 1815, Lord Uxbridge, the commanding officer at Waterloo, had his leg shattered by a cannon ball and, as the next senior officer, Vandeleur then commanded the whole of the British cavalry during the battle. He was mentioned in Wellington’s Waterloo despatch, and he was awarded the silver Waterloo medal.

On display in the Long Room are letters from the general to his wife, written before and after the battle. These letters are interesting for two principal reasons. They contradict a number of published biographies which claim that Vandeleur was married in 1829; these letters prove that by 1815 he was already married and the father of at least two children. Secondly they show the level of detail about his activities on the day which Vandeleur felt it was appropriate to give his wife. That is to say, very little.

Tourism began the day after the battle when, on 19 June 1815, ‘a carriage drove on the ground from Brussels, the inmates of which, alighting, proceeded to examine the field’ upon which many thousands had recently died. These first visitors were met with the sight of ‘the multitude of carcasses, the heaps of wounded men with mangled limbs unable to move, and perishing from not having their wounds dressed or from hunger’ as one early visitor put it.

It was not until the First World War that the remains of dead soldiers were treated with the kind of respect that has since become the norm. In the exhibition are two accounts of later visits to the battlefield. One was undertaken in 1816 by Irishman Sir Edward O’Brien who recorded:

‘The bones of forty thousand gallant soldiers lie interred in this famous field & afford in many instances something of worth to the occupiers of this soil – as in many places the crops appear to be enriched from the bodies both of men & horses – which have been buried – & as the entire field of battle is under cultivation each succeeding year the plough will turn up the bones of these illustrious men who fell on that well-fought day’.

Ivy taken by Emma Howard as a souvenir from the site of the battle (from TCD MS 11054)
Ivy taken by Emma Howard as a souvenir from the site of the battle (from TCD MS 11054)

Also on display is a journal of a trip by Englishwoman Emma Howard in 1883. Of her visit to the Château d’Hougoumont, the principal focus of the fighting in June 1815, Mrs. Howard records: ‘A young man … gave me a bunch of violets plucked from the ruins of the Château some of which I have pressed. I also gathered some chestnuts and pulled some ivy from a tree on the battlefield, designated “rubbish” by my good husband!’

The anniversary of Waterloo has been marked by ceremonies in Trim and elsewhere. In Dublin the Military History Society and others are marking it with a service in St. Patrick’s Cathedral commemorating ‘the fallen of all nations who died at Waterloo’. There will be a conference on the subject in University College Dublin in November.

Jane Maxwell

Graveyard shift

MS10878-L-3_0004Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s  magnificent novel, Cré na cille, was published in 1949 and is consistently ranked as the most important prose work in modern Irish; until recently no translation for English-language readers has been available. Alan Titley’s vigorous new translation, Dirty Dust (Yale University Press), full of the guts of Ó Cadhain’s original, at last brings the pleasures of this great satiric novel to wider audience it deserves.

The fact that all the novel’s characters lie dead in their graves does not impair their appetite for news from the recently deceased, about their neighbours above ground. Told entirely in dialogue, Ó Cadhain’s daring novel listens in on the gossip, rumours, backbiting, complaining, and obsessing of the local community. The ‘after’ life, it seems,  is very like the ‘before’ life – mostly talk, much of it petty, often vindictive.  In this merciless yet comical portrayal of a closely-bound community, Ó Cadhain remains keenly attuned to the absurdity of human behaviour and delivers a stridently unromantic view of rural Ireland.

Máirtín Ó Cadhain (1906-1970) worked as a primary school-teacher in his native Galway; he was dismissed from his post, and interned, for his republican activities. He was not the first writer to find his period of incarceration key to his creative work. While in the Curragh camp Ó Cadhain learned Russian and French and read widely in world literature.  His republicanism was informed by his awareness of the need to improve the lot of the rural poor, and of the parlous condition of the Irish language. In 1969 he was appointed to the chair of Irish in TCD, and was elected to fellowship of TCD in 1970. As a lecturer he exercised a profound influence on many of his students.  He married, in 1945, Máirín Ní Rodaigh who was a teacher in an all-Irish school, and they lived in Dublin. An extensive literary archive was presented by the Ó Cadhain family to Trinity College Library. (Dictionary of Irish Biography).

While no doubt nothing can replace the experience of reading Cré na cille in its original Irish, there is another way for the interested party to experience this excoriating work. Robert Quinn’s film version, which was made to mark the centenary of the author’s birth, was screened on TG4 on 26 December 2006. It is well worth seeking out.

Still Soldiering On

1914-1918It is only right and proper that the centenary of the cataclysm that was the First World War should be acknowledged again and again for the next four years. Trinity College Library has been, and will continue to be, involved with College-wide projects to honour the memory of the people and the times. The WWI Roadshow, which was hosted by the College on 12 July last was one such event. RTE was one of the driving forces behind this and the result, a week-long Nationwide special on the War in general, culminates tonight with a programme shot in large part on campus during the Roadshow. One segment was filmed in the Long Room Hub featuring an exhibition of reproductions of the war-time recruitment posters, from Early Printed Books and Special Collections. There were over 200 of these originally produced, specifically tailored to the Irish audience, and the Library’s collection is the most complete one to have survived. It was presented to the Library by Rupert Magill shortly after the end of the war.

The College Communications Office produced a film on the day also which can be viewed here; this gives a lot of attention to the exhibition in the Long Room of M&ARL material relating to the war.

The Library is also represented on the Decade of Commemoration committee and is the contact point for its website wherein WWI-related activities, and other commemoration projects, which are being planned across the College, may be advertised.

Jane Maxwell

JFK and TCD

Kennedy letter MS5958_001_LO (3)

Half a century ago, in the June of 1963, Ireland welcomed President John F Kennedy back to his ancestral home. Everywhere he went Kennedy was greeted by adoring crowds, and the feeling appears to have been mutual.

On the evening of the 28 June 1963 the President was escorted to St Patrick’s Hall in Dublin Castle to be awarded honorary doctorates in law from both Trinity College Dublin (Dublin University), and the National University of Ireland. In his speech to the dignitaries gathered at the civic reception he praised the quality of Irish universities as well as quipping ‘I now feel equally part of both, and if they ever have a game of Gaelic football or hurling, I shall cheer for Trinity and pray for National.’

Kennedy wrote many thank you notes in the weeks following his return to the US, each one warm and effusive about his trip. In this letter, written to the Chancellor of Dublin University, he conveys how the ‘impressive’ degree conferral ceremony ‘meant a great deal to me and proved to be one of the highlights of my visit to Ireland’.

The letter was written on 5 August 1963, a busy day for the President, for it was the same day that the US, the UK and the Soviet Union signed the limited nuclear test ban treaty after 8 years of difficult negotiations.

The letter is one of a small collection of M&ARL items connected to Kennedy’s honorary degree, along with Trinity College’s copy of the degree certificate and a photograph of the occasion.

Kennedy photo MS4881_002_LO (3)

Kennedy degree cert MS4881_001_LO (3)

The John F Kennedy Presidential Library holds a similar photograph taken from a different angle as well as an audio recording of the President’s speech.

Estelle Gittins

Asgard in Pictures

Asgard, the yacht owned by Robert Erskine Childers and used in the Howth gun-running of 1914, has recently been restored and is the focus of a new display in the National Museum of Ireland.

M&ARL holds the papers of Robert Erskine Childers (1870-1922), Irish nationalist, writer and father of the president of the same name. Within this collection is a wonderful group of photographs (TCD MS 7890/8) recording the history of Asgard. A selection of these are displayed as part of the NMI exhibition.

Commissioned as a wedding gift for Erskine and Molly Childers in 1905, Asgard is most famous for the part she played in transporting a shipment of arms for the Irish Volunteers in May 1914. Childers, his wife and a small crew agreed to collect part of the haul in the 51ft yacht, transporting 900 rifles and 29,000 rounds of ammunition from Germany to Howth. The ammunition was to be used in the 1916 Easter rising.

Somehow they also found time to take photographs to record the mission. TCD MS 7890/8 includes pictures of Mary Spring Rice and Molly Childers with guns aboard the Asgard and a number of the Irish volunteers at Howth assembled to receive the shipment.

Asgard was put into long-term dry dock in Northern Wales after the Easter rising. She was procured by the Irish government in 1961 and was used as the first national sail-training vessel until 1974.

 The restoration project has taken 5 years and the permanent exhibition Asgard: The Howth Gun-Running Vessel Conserved, opened on 9 Aug at the National Museum Collins Barracks.

Estelle Gittins