Theobald Wolfe Tone was a man of many talents, clearly. But in a special edition to mark the 225th anniversary of his death, the latest History Ireland claims in a headline that he was also responsible for, ahem, “the finest diaries written by any Irishman”.
This at least is the verdict of Thomas Bartlett, emeritus professor of Irish history at the University of Aberdeen, who in his essay for the edition, suggests that Tone’s diaries have a special and enduring charm.
Written in Paris in 1796 and 97, says Bartlett, they “show his fondness for irony and self-mockery, his impatience with anything that looks like humbug or pretentiousness, and a sense of fun and gaiety that has endeared him to readers ever since”.
All joking aside, your Irish Times diarist is charmed as a fellow member of the profession to see that Tone’s subjects also included such trivia as the extravagance of audience applause in theatres.
Prince of the church – Brian Maye on Cardinal Michael Logue
Conflict of many colours – Frank McNally on a finely illustrated atlas of the Civil War
Lunar quest – Frank McNally on moon missions, misinformed quiz questions, and mountweazels
The Dromcollogher cinema fire disaster – Frank McNally on a fateful day in 1926
One of our own recent obsessions in this column has been the obligatory standing ovations now afforded to even mediocre productions in Dublin. But in this vein, Tone may have had better material to work with.
Attending a revolutionary play in Paris, he noted that the word “slavery” operated like an “electric shock on the audience”; that at the line “aux armes citoyens” in La Marseillaise, “all the performers drew their swords”; and that after a rendition of the anthem, “around one hundred members of the National Guard rushed onto the stage with bayonets fixed, sabres drawn, and the tricolour flag flying.”
“It would be impossible to describe the effect of this,” he confided in his journal. “I never knew what enthusiasm was before.”
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In her contribution to the edition, Trinity College historian Sylvie Kleinman notes that Tone’s autobiography and diaries are often confused, even though their styles differ. The biography is “consistently serious,” she says, the diaries “bouncy and meditative”. But even at his most frivolous, Kleinman adds, the diary-writing Tone made a deep impression on later Irish revolutionaries, including Ernie O’Malley. In his own record of the 1916-23 Troubles, O’Malley praises Tone for including such confessions as “Drunk again” (a regular feature of diarists’ lives, then and now) in the journals: “it brought him down to mortal level.”
Speaking of inebriation, the great Protestant patriot could nevertheless be condescending about the Catholic majority’s weaknesses in this area, and not above the thought of using them as British recruiting sergeants might.
Of a plan to recruit Irish prisoners of war in France to the French army, Bartlett summarises Tone’s thoughts as follows:
“I know the Irish a little,” he announced grandly, declaring that, since “poor Pat is a little given to drink”, the best way to get the POWs to enlist would be to march them to a port of embarkation under false pretences, “send in a large quantity of wine and brandy, a fiddle, and some French [filles de joie] and then, when “Pat’s heart is a little soft with love and wine”, persuade him “to take a trip once more to Ireland.”
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Wolfe Tone tribute acts also feature in the History Ireland special, although not the eponymous ballad group, mercifully. Instead, there is an essay (by Donal Fallon) on Theobald Wolfe Tone Fitzgerald, born in 1898 and named with patriotic fervour for the centenary.
Thus primed, he grew up to fight in the 1916 Rising and, later, as a captain in the National Army in 1922, to take possession of the Viceregal Lodge, now Áras an Úachtaráin.
But he was from a family of painters, as Fallon notes, and arguably his most notable contribution to the independence movement was to paint the words “Irish Republic”, in orange and white lettering, on the green flag that flew above the GPO during Easter Week.
The work took place in Countess Markievicz’s house in Rathmines on Easter Thursday. Alas, as I noted in a column on the subject here some years ago (Irishman’s Diary, September 5th, 2015), paraphrasing a Cumann na mBan member who had also been present, there was a saboteur lurking. As a result, the flag came under attack even before it reached the GPO.
“Madame’s dog, Poppet, always had to play his part in whatever she was doing,” recalled Maire Mackey more than half a century later, in 1968, “and kept jumping up and down pulling at the material until eventually he tore a piece out of the side. This piece is still missing, as I pointed out in the Kildare Street museum when the flag was placed on view during the Golden Jubilee commemoration”.
I’m not sure if Mackey’s recollection explains the current state of the flag, which is today on display in the National Museum at Collins Barracks, minus the top half of the letter “C”. But whatever about the original Wolfe Tone’s republic, the painted “Republic” of Theobald Wolf Tone Fitzgerald is unfinished business. And among the suspects for this situation, it seems, is Countess Markievicz’s cocker spaniel.