Life
British civil servant in Ireland; descended from Denis Cumberland, Bishop
of Clonfert, who was f. of Richard Cumberland; ed. Oxford; failed to qualify
in Indian Civil Service exams; appt. Treasurer Remembrancer and Deputy
Paymaster for Ireland, 1912, posts due for abolition with Home Rule, and
held it to May 1920; Irish Reminiscences (London: Robert Hale 1947),
autobiography.
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Works
Irish Reminiscences (London: Robert Hale 1947), 244pp.; ded., to
‘Those Who Have Loved Ireland and Do Not Care Much for Eire’;
CONTENTS; Preface [11]; I: To Ireland as a Tourist [I7]; Appointment as
Official in Ireland II: First Impressions of Dublin [29]; III: Ireland
in 1912 [42]; People, Clubs and Personalities; [IV] Work and Officials
[57]; V: Irish Sport [88]; VI: Irish Problems and Politics [118]; April
1912 - August 1914; VII: The War [145]; VIII: The Irish Rebellion and
After [163]; IX: Last Years in Ireland [192]; X: Irishmen - Irish Speech
and Irish Language - The Irish Country [218]; Index [237]. See extracts
in Quotations, infra.
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Quotations
Irish Reminiscences (London: Robert
Hale 1947), Poses the question why the English government, so set against
an Irish republic, capitulated to the Sinn Féin leadership just
when the latter was about to cave in, and attributes much to Lloyd George’s
inveterate lack of judgement (remarked by Sir Frederick Pollock), and
considers it an great error not to have consulted those in the ‘right
quarters’, viz.: ‘Now the “right quarters” in dealing
with persons of the calibre of Griffith and Collins and De Valera and
Co. would have been the advice of those who know these types - not uncommon
in Ireland - their provenance, their ingrained prejudices, their one-sided
view of history, and the right answer to all their distortions of fact.
There were two men who knew Ireland thoroughly arid Irish people; and
who - Irishmen themselves - could have shown the Cabinet how to deal with
Sinn Féin “mentality”. Those men were Sir Henry Robinson,
Vice-President of the Local Government Board, and Sir Henry Wynne, Chief
Crown Solicitor. So far as I know, these men were not consulted and Mr
Lloyd George had only the advice of his Private Secretary, Philip Kerr,
afterwards Lord Lothian, who, estimable as he was, had no experience of
Ireland or of the type of man with whom the Cabinet was dealing; though
it was rumoured that Lionel Curtis, with equal Irish experience, was consulted.’
[12]; regards that capitulation and later ones, such as the surrender
of the Treaty Ports and of the annuities for Irish Land Purchase, as part
of a policy of appeasement, later discredited in relation to Germany [13];
holds that the ‘Sinn Féin’ govt. proclaimed neutrality
in 1939 ‘to curry favour with the Germans if they should win’
[14], and urges negotiations to get back the Treaty Ports against the
necessity of saving lives in the Atlantic crossing during time of future
war; ‘is it too much to hope that that large enlistment [of Irishmen
in WWII] may have promoted the unity of the Islands?’ [14]; Further
(from personal diaries:) ‘It is hard to get an idea of Dublin society.
Lady Lyttelton quotes John Morley as saying that it is the only capital
he knows where you always meet on intimate terms and at all functions
everyone who is worth knowing. On the other hand, some of the Dublin people
give themselves airs and say that the Castle entertainments are ‘sadly
mixed’ nowadays, that the best people do not go there, and so on.
I am bound to say that the people seem all pleasant but not much more,
and all of about the same social standing, a sort of professional level
with no ‘nice clever’ people and rather of one type, even when,
as in the case of my Chief Clerk, they have ‘places’ in the
country. On the other hand, there seem to be none of the smart American
rich who make the inner ring of London society.’ (p.36) [See also
under Yeats]; narrates the story of Edward Martyn’s action against
the Kildare St. Club, and his subsequent profession: ‘Resign? Resign
from the only place in Dublin where I can get a decent dinner? Certainly
not.’ (p.43); ‘He was succeeded by Sir William Byrne, an Assistant
Secretary at the Home Office, who was appointed (as far as I could make
out) partly because he was a Roman Catholic. That reason was the usual
delusion of English politicians. They would not see that it did not conciliate
the extremists to give Government posts to Roman Catholics. On the contrary,
such people, called “Castle Cawtholics,” were considered traitors
- what we now call Quislings - and despised as such by the extremists.
However, appointments were increasingly made on this ground. The successor
to Sir Neville Chamberlain as Inspector-General of the Royal Irish Constabulary,
Sir Joseph Byrne, though he had had great success, owing to his legal
ability, in dealing with Sinn Féin trials, owed his appointment
largely to his religion. So did Sir William Byrne’s successor in
the Under-Secretaryship in 1918, James MacMahon (afterwards the Right
Hon.) who was then Head of the Post Office in Dublin. But by that time
every pretence of impartiality was abandoned, and MacMahon’s known
strong political affiliations were no doubt taken into account, as well
as his religion. Up to his time the Head of the Dublin Post Office had
generally been one of the higher officials from St. Martin’s-le-Grand:
MacMahon, a Civil Servant in the Dublin Post Office, had succeeded my
friend Mr Norway, whose wife wrote a brief, but useful, account of the
1916 rebellion as she saw it. No doubt the appointment of MacMahon as
his successor and his early promotion to Under-Secretary were part of
the policy of “appeasement.”’ (p.63); Headlam reserves
special obloquy for F. E. Smith (Lord Birkenhead) who spits fire about
the Sinn Féiners, but ‘like St. Paul’ achieves complete
conversion: ‘for he apparently took a major part in the surrender
to Sinn Féin which culminated in the Treaty.’ (p.72); evinces
concern about the control of employment in Primary Schools by clergy rather
than the state, though the schools are funded by the taxpayer, giving
instance of lady-teacher with brothers in the Army and the RIC who is
dismissed by priest for playing ‘God Save the King’ (p.84);
‘The Catholic hierarchy proclaimed a jihad, or Holy War, against
the iniquitous idea of local rates …’ (85); mistakes patrol of
Sinn Féiners for ‘Black and Tans’, about whom ‘certain
circles in London were getting up an agitation’ (p.102); ‘[…]
It was clearly my business to know as much as possible about Irish problems,
and especially about the Home Rule questions; and I read everything I
could lay my hands on. / It was varied and startling reading; and I soon
began to discover various other aspects of the Irish problems, as afterwards
summarised so neatly by Professor Alison Phillips. The first and overriding
one was the problem of nationality. As I have said, I never looked on
Ireland as a foreign country. And I was annoyed when one of my new friends
in Dublin told me that I spoke with an “English accent” - just
as if there were not fifty English accents or more. I was still more annoyed
when, on arriving at Mount Trenchard by the early train from Dublin, I
was greeted by Mary Spring-Rice with:- “How marvellous to catch the
mail; you English are wonderful.” Now this lady, whom I had known
in London, lived nine months of the year in Chelsea with her father, Lord
Monteagle. Though her mother was the daughter of an Irish Bishop (with
the hardly Celtic name of Butcher), her grandmother was the daughter of
the master of Downing College, Cambridge. Her only brother was a clerk
in the Foreign Office, one of her cousins had been a former chief of mine
in the Treasury, and his brother was the Ambassador Sir Cecil Spring-Rice.
Yet, though MacMorris in Henry V vehemently denied that he had
a nation - “My nation? Vat ish my nation?” - here was this London
young lady, who read the same books, heard the same music, lived with
the same circle of friends in London as myself, definitely putting me
into an alien nationality from hers. / [119] I am bound to say that I
could not understand it. I had read history at Oxford and elsewhere, and
knew that no Irish nation [ftn.; but see also infra. 204], as such, had
ever taken a place in European history. There was no record of a nation
of Ireland going on the Crusades under its own king; no king of Ireland
representing the whole country had married into the royal families of
Europe like the kings of Scotland; no king of all Ireland had led his
whole chivalry against the English, as the Scots king did at Flodden.
When Brian, one of the local chiefs, did for a short time obtain a real
kingship over all Ireland, he was killed at the Battle of Clontarf, after
a victory over Danes and rival Irish; and no other king was able to unite
the people; the real victory, as the Irish historian Professor Richey
says, was won by anarchy over order. / It is the fashion of most Irish
historians to lay the blame for everything that has happened in Ireland
on “the English,’’ though the Norman invaders from Wales,
who were not English, were not called in by an Irish chief till over 150
years after Clontarf, and I believe that even Mr De Valera does not count
those 150 years of anarchy as a part of England’s crimes. But all
the popular Irish historians, I found, identified the few Norman-Welsh
barons who went across with Strongbow in 1170, with England. Even in the
mythical times the Irish heroes fought with one another and not, as a
nation, against foreign foes. And it is significant that the most famous
of them, Cuchulain [ftn] fought for Ulster against the rest of Ireland,
long before there was any difference of religion or race between Ulster
and the rest. I often wondered, while waiting for the big trout at Ardee,
which was the exact ford of the little river that the hero had held against
them all - of his own “nation.” [120] / Now that I am older,
however, I have realised that men are swayed, not by fact, but by sentiment,
imagination and propaganda, open or tacit. In one term a boy will begin
to believe that his school is the finest in the country, in one term an
undergraduate will think his college the best in the university, in six
months a young officer will have no doubt that his regiment outshines
all others. Almost in my own time I have seen the creation of undoubted
nations in Australia, in New Zealand, in the republics of South America:
two or three generations of isolation and the thing is done. And how much
could unceasing propagandist sentiment do, certainly since the days of
Swift - who gave currency to the advice to the Irish to burn everything
English except their coal - to create that burning patriotism which has
led so many gallant men to their death for their “nation”? But
that propaganda was founded on false history. The Irish nation is a new
nation, not a “nation once again.” For if anything is established
in Irish history it is that, both before and after the Norman-Welsh incursion,
the battles of the Irish were nearly always between themselves, and that
there was nothing like unity, except perhaps for the six years before
the Battle of Clontarf. / Therefore, though the origin of the United States
is clear, and a nation was created by the inhabitants of the seceding
colonies, mostly men with English names; and though the nations of Australia
and New Zealand have developed though not revolted, springing from the
same source; there can be no legitimate claim from people who bear names
like Collins and De Valera and Griffith (nor could there have been from
Mitchell, Davis, and the rest) to represent, or to be re-creating, the
Gaelic State when they set up a centralised rule over twenty-six counties
of Ireland in Dublin. For the Gaelic race, as history shows, never formed
permanently in Ireland more than a collection of petty [121] principalities;
and the Norman knights only stepped into the places of the former Celtic
chiefs, joining in, but not initiating, the long series of internal feuds
and battles which form early Irish history. It is true that the nation
which came into being in 1922 made a brave effort to reproduce the Celtic
history by internal strife in the old style: it remains to be seen whether
there will be a successor to the present “Ard-Ri” who keeps
the twenty-six counties together. At any rate the exclusion of the six
Ulster counties recognises the traditional distinction between Ulster
and the rest of Ireland. (pp.119-22); [on the Curragh Mutiny:] ‘I
was beginning to have doubts of the views which I had always held as to
the duty of a civil servant, that it was my duty to obey the orders of
whatever Government was in power, expressed through my political chief.
Did that duty hold good in Ireland if, instead of obedience to one of
two parties, both owing allegiance to the King whose servant I was, one
party’s ultimate aim was to throw off that allegiance? I had read,
as I have said, a good deal of Irish history, not only that provided by
English writers, but books such as Mitchell’s [sic] Jail Journal,
which showed that the Nationalist sentiment was not the ordinary play
of “politics” but an attitude of definite rebellion against
the Crown / Every week I read in the Sinn Féin paper this sentiment,
defined and glorified in hatred and contumely, embellished by what I knew
to be false history, against the King’s government whatever party
was in power. I found it difficult to blame the Ulster people, who knew
that the extremists in Ireland would only use the Home Rule Bill as a
stepping-stone to separation and the dismemberment of the King’s
Dominions, for resisting that Bill, when the Liberal Government, with
their small composite majority in the House of Commons, persisted in forcing
it through.’ (p.139); makes reference to difference between the phrase
‘Manchester Murderers’, known to him in his youth, and ‘Manchester
Martyrs’, associated with memorial on St. Stephen’s Green (p.143);
doubts ability of Redmond to provide enlistments; characterises Sinn Féin
account of the responsibility of the British Govt. for the famine as ‘tosh,
repeated every week and never contradicted’ (p.152); quotes James
Connolly, ‘the German nation is fighting a necessary fight for the
saving of civilisation in Europe’ (p.153); records the casualties
inflicted in the unarmed company of Dublin Volunteers Corps - B Company’,
known as the ‘Methuseliers’ or the ‘Georgeous Wrecks’
from their insignia (Georgius Rex), who were fired on by Sinn Féin
volunters (‘rebels’), with a loss of five dead and 46 wounded
(159); alleges on personal evidence of the wounds inflicted on Mr. and
Mrs. Bagwell in his presence that the rebels used dum-dum (‘expanded’)
bullets (p.170); throws in a footnote citation from M. Escouflaire (Ireland,
an Enemy of the Allies?, 1920), in which it is recounted that
in the time of William III ‘brothers and cousins cut one another’s
throats’ (p.174); adverts to Pearse as ‘the English leader’
(p.175); copies an extended passage descriptive of the events of Easter
1916 in Kerry, where Austin Stack is being held, including an account
of how the RC Dean of Tralee rounds up and surrenders the weapons in the
town (some 95 rifles); the narrative includes suggestions that the Irish
rising was part of a wide German plot involving Casement and 16 German
transports sunk by the Navy, all of this recounted as ‘a prize bit
of bluff’ (p.182); quotes John Buchan (John Macnab), ‘Look at
the Irish, they are the cleverist propagandists extant, and managed to
persuade most peole that they were a brave, generous, humorous, talented,
warm-hearted race cruelly yoked to a dull, merchatile England, when God
knows they were exactly the opposite.’ (p.187); includes a letter
from Austen Chamberlain to himself admitting the opinion that conscription
could not be forced on Ireland (pp.189-90); modifies former strictures
regarding his obsession with the ancient ‘Irish nation’ in the
light of AE [George Russell]’s statement that in 1914 the Irish nation
‘was announced’, and secondly in the light of the recognition
that ‘what was talked about was really the Irish race, which, unlike
the [203] Irish nation, alleged historical nation, was the real thing.’
(p.204); role of Sir S. Hoare and his address in Parliament welcoming
the Treaty (p.204); Headlam remarks, ‘you cannot stoop half-way in
a revolution […] the irreconcilables would always insist on much more’
(p.205); release of SF prisoners as ‘Christmas gesture’ in 1917,
followed by release of remainder in July 1917 (p.205); narrates the story
of Chesteron appearing at a recruiting meeting in Ireland and coming near
to being lynched when he apologised for the Union Jack (‘I am ashamed
to be speaking under it’), unawares that only Unionists were in attendence
at the meeting (p.207); Headlam summarises Chesterton’s Irish
Impressions (‘great European people’, ‘European peasantry’;
‘intelligentzia that is intelligent’, p.208); further quotations
from P. S. O’Hegarty’s Victory of Sinn Féin and
from Gogarty identifying the behaviour of the Irregulars (IRA) with barbarism
and disillusionment (p.222); Synge’s waking words (‘God damn
the English, they cannot even swear without vulgarity’), recounted
in Hone’s life of Yeats, delighted ‘Yeats and his pseudo-Gaels’
(p.223); cites Yeat’s objections to the Divorce Bill (p.224); castigates
the pseudo-Celtic Lord Ashbourne (p.224); on the Irish language, alludes
to Bishop Bedell, an ‘English bishop’ (p.229); returns to the
‘latent savagery’ of the Irish (p.230); severity of Free State
with prisoners (p.231); ends by quoting Lloyd George’s announcement
to the effect that he feels glad to know that ‘with danger lurking
in our midst, Ireland will be by our side … our peril will be her danger,
our fears her anxieties, our victories will be her joy’, and remarks:
‘On which side of his ledger will the Recording Angel enter this
entirely baseless panegyric of an Agreement which he persuaded Parliament
to accept, and which has culminated in “Neutrality” and the
declaration of a republic?’ (p.236; END.) Headlam has read Arnold
Bax’s Farewell, My Youth, and marked AE’s saying that
1912-14 was ‘Dublin’s Golden Age’, adding that it certainly
was for him (Headlam) - for ‘I had a fuller, more healthy, more interesting
life than I could ever have had in the Civil Service in London.’
(p.136). [For further comments on Arthur Griffith, Countess Markievicz,
Captain White, R. M. Fox, Thomas Kettle, Erskine Childers, Katharine Tynan,
et al., see respective entries in “Authors”, supra.]
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Notes
Headlam-Morley papers - chiefly on World War I - are in
the University of Ulster (Special Collections).
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