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Life
| [Timothy Michael Healy; Tim Healy] b. Bantry, 17 May 1855; nephew of A. M. and T. D. Sullivan; ed. Fermoy CBS; left school at 13; became a railway clerk in Newcastle-upon-Tyne; afterwards become parliamentary correspondent for The Nation, London 1878; he organised an IPP mission in Canada for Parnell; was arrested for an inflamatory speech in support of evicted family in Bantry whose pater familias had died in their temporary shelter under a boat, 1880; imprisoned and released on bail; meanwhile elected MP for Wexford, 1880; successfully defended in court by Peter O’Brien (afterwards Lord O’Brien of Kilfenora, Chief Justice of Ireland, and known as “Peter the Packer” by the IPP); |
| became associated of Joseph Bigger [q.v.] in obstructionist tactics in Westminster; noted for the wit and irony of his assault on the Speaker and Sir William Harcourt, the a minister; secured tenant protection from rent-raises, as the Healy Clause in Land Act of 1881; arrested with Michael Davitt for inflammatory speeches, and imprisoned for six months on refusal to give securities; elected MP for Monaghan, surrendering his Wexford seat, 1883; called to the bar and law, 1884; showed a consummate knowledge of the Irish Statutes and land-law; elected MP for S. Londonderry, 1885; |
| learned of the Parnell scandal on his sickbed, and emerged as Parnell’s chief opponent in the Party Split that ensued in Committee Room 15 of the House (Westminster), 6 Dec. 1890, speaking vitriolically and often scabrously in opposition to him in Ireland; answered Parnell’s assertion, ‘I am the master of the Party’ with, ‘And who is the mistress?’ - earning odium with many such as Joyce père and his son James Joyce; continued to attack Mrs. Parnell (Kitty O’Shea) after Parnell’s death; thrashed by Parnell’s nephew Tudor McDermott, 3 Nov. 1891; became QC, 1899 [var. King’s Counsel of Ireland]; |
| called the RIC the ‘army of no occupation’; increasingly quarrelled with the IPP and was expelled in 1902; elected MP for North Louth 1891-1910, supported by the Catholic Church and William Martin Murphy; elected MP for North East Cork, 1910, supported by William O’Brien; became KC, 1910; he was an early critic of John Redmond; legally defended Leigh and Evans, the suffragettes who attempted to burn the Dublin theatre where Asquith appeared with Redmond, and was unique among IPP colleagues in voting against the “Cat and Mouse” Act designed to combat feminist hunger strikes, 1913; |
| declared his sympathy for Sinn Féin but not for physical force politics; protested in his last speech at Westminster against the use of court-martial against trivial offences; resigned his seat in Cork in favour of a Sinn Féin candidate in prison; signalling his disbelief in a parliamentary solution, 1918 (acc. Dunbar Barton); appt. Governor-General of Irish Free State, 1922, in spite of Republican and Parnellite critics, occupying the vice-regal lodge (“Uncle Tim’s Cabin”); retired 1928; |
| d. 26 March 1931, at his home “Glenaulin” in Chapelizod, Co. Dublin - facetiously known as “Healiopolis”, and so-named by George Wyndham - a witticism echoed in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake); survived by three dgs. and two sons, his wife having predecessed him; a son Joe was called to the Irish bar and served at Gallipoli; his second son Paul became a Jesuit; a third son became master of a Dublin hospital; his brother Maurice was, like him, an MP, and his son and namesake became an English KC; Healy’s country home,. DIB ODNB FDA |
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Works
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Criticism
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See also brief remarks in D. H. Akenson & J. F. Fallin, ‘The Irish Civil War and the Drafting of the Free State Constitution’’, in Éire-Ireland, 5, 2 (Summer 1970), pp.42-93, and Margaret Ward, ‘“The Suffrage Above All Else!”: An Account of the Irish Suffrage Movement”, in Irish Women’s Studies: A Reader, ed. Ailbhe Smyth (Dublin: Attic Press 1993), p.35.
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Commentary
Sir Dunbar Plunket Barton, Timothy Healy: Memories and Anecdotes (Dublin: Talbot Press; London: Faber & Faber [1933]): ‘It was in his conflict with Parnell over this [35] divorce scandal that Healy incurred more odium and made more enemies than at any other stage in his life. It cannot be denied that in th arena of politics, Healy’s temperament sometimes led him to strike aright and left without restraint or discrimination, and with a regrettable disregard of the pain that his blows might infict. Almost every man of striking personality has some defect iwhich is a counterpart of his better side; and here lay the special defect of Healy’s qualities. / In excuse of Healy’s unbridled utterances abou the lady who figured prominently in the case, it has been urged that he regarded her as having brought about the ruin of the Irish cause. Trojan-like he lost his self-restraint in his reference to one who in his eyes, “like anouther Helen had fired another Troy.” So far as the charge of truculence towards Parnell was concerned, Healy’s defence was that Parnell and his lieutenants had themselves dropped the buttons from their foils, and that he was following the French maxim: À Corsair, corsair et demi. In justiceto Healy it should be remembered that he often expressed himself in terms of admiration for Parnell’s gifts of leadership and for his courage in adversity [...]’ (pp.35-36.) [Cont.]
Sir Dunbar Plunket Barton (Timothy Healy, 1933) - cont.: ‘There was a Jekyll-Hyde duality in Tim Healy’s parliamentary activities and reputation. The House of Commons he was personally acceptable, and to his friends he was always a gentle and loving companion. But so predatory and so cunning was the way in which he prowled at large in the devious depths of the parliamentary jungle, so quick was his ’wild-cat spring’, and so citriolic was his vocabulary that a journalist in the Press Gallery of the christened him ‘tiger Tim’, and portrayed him as a ferocious quadruped with a striped body, a feline pose and a carniverous expression in his eyes. [...; 51] Healy was the inventor of a parliamentary device which became known as “The Collusive Block”. When he anticipated that a desirable measure was in danger of being blocked, he adopted the bold device of blocking it in the names of himself and of several trusted associates. He defended himself from criticism for resorting to such ingenious devices by pleading that he was “counteracting obstruction” by throwing dust in the eyes of hs adversaries. The Collusive Bloock cleard the paths of several Irish Bills ot the Statute Book.’ (pp.51-52.) Healy was called called the greatest parliamentarian by Lord Beaverbrook, whom he once in parliament got off the hook with an artful diversion, making his ‘the master of red-herring tactics’ (Beaverbrook; here p.54.)
Sir Dunbar Plunket Barton (Timothy Healy, 1933) - cont.: ‘Healy was one of the few lawyers of me time who wore the silk gown of a King’s Counsel both in Ireland and England. In Ireland Healy was “offered silk,” as the saying is, by the Irish Lord Chancellor, Lord Ashbourne, in 1899 [...] Eleven years afterwards he met the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, Lord Loreburn, in the corridors of the House of Commons. “Can I do anything for you, Healy?” said the Lord Chancellor, who, as Sir Robert Reid, had known him well in Parliament. “Well,” said Healy, with a twinkle in his eye, “are there any Bishoprics vacant?” “No,” said the Lord, Chancellor, laughingly. “Then,” said Healy, “since you cannot give me ‘lawn’ you might give me ‘silk.’” The Lord Chancellor smiled a willing assent, and Healy thus became a King’s Counsel in England as well as in Ireland.”’ (p.87.) [See further under Quotations - infra.]
Liam O’Flaherty: ‘[T]hough Tim Healy was endowed by nature with great gifts and great potentialities, his mind was a plastic mould, a pool of clear water that reflected all the ghoulish figures that stood over it, menacing, murmuring, incantations, howing about devils, raising a great noise that was deafening.’ (Life of Tim Healy, London: Jonathan Cape 1927, q.p.; cited in Benedict Kiely, ‘Liam O’Flaherty: From the Stormswept Rock …’, in A Raid into Dark Corners and Other Essays, Cork UP 1999, p.194.) [For Kiely’s additional remarks, see under Liam O’Flaherty, q.v.]
Richard M. Kain, Fabulous Voyager: James Joyce’s Ulysses (Chicago UP 1947): ‘A national humiliation so long ingrained is bound to confirm one’s innate tendencies to revolt and to sharpen one’s eyes to injustice, chicanery, and hypocrisy wherever they are found. Nor was the rising Irish nationalism any more to the young Joyce’s [13] liking. He could never forgive the betrayal of Parnell. Whether it was attributable to provincial morality or to cowardice, it was unforgettable. Tim Healy, the politician who succeeded Parnell, was to Joyce little better than a traitor. It is said that he was the subject of a youthful polemic - “Et Tu Healy?” - written by Joyce at the age of nine. He appears in Ulysses as one of the hue and cry who pursue Bloom in a nightmare. (U171)
Further: In Finnegans Wake, in a characteristic triple pun, Dublin becomes ‘Healiopolis‘ (FW24) Egyptian home of the embalmed phoenix (Phoenix Park in Dublin was the scene of terroristic murders in Joyce’s youth), as well as the city of the careerist politician.’ (pp.13-14; and see title-reference to “stuffed phoenix” in Kenner, infra.)
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Richard Kain, Dublin in the Age of William Butler Yeats and James Joyce (Oklahoma UP 1962; Newton Abbot: David Charles 1972): ‘By his witty speeches in the English Parliament, Tim Healy overcame much of the unpopularity that stemmed from his earlier defection from Parnell. Diarmuid Russell reprints two of his classic utterances in The Portable Irish Reader (1946). At the time when the Boer War was becoming almost as unpopular in England as it had been in Ireland, Healy charged that “You want to syndicate Christianity, and take the Twelve Apostles into your limited liability company.” Laudable as it may be to have other nations contemplate your virtues, a privilege already enjoyed by the Irish, the English should realize that the Dutch in South Africa are not so near, and that “misunderstandings may crop up.” Unlike the Irish, the South Africans do not have the advantages “of seeing the British constantly, of reading your newspapers [...]’ Note: lost text but see longer extracts from Kain, in RICORSO Library, “Criticism / Major Authors” > Joyce, infra.
Hugh Kenner, “The Stuffed Phoenix”, in Dublin’s Joyce (1955) [Chap. 15]) takes the appointment of Healy to the governorship of the Free State as one of the inspiration for Finnegans Wake and quotes a statement (by implication an obituary): ‘His aim was to make the peace treaty between England and Ireland a success and his boyhood’s dream of a free and independent Ireland a reality. It is not out of keeping with his life - for he was ever a devout man - to say that in his last days he could have breathed his Nunc Dimittis with gratitude and sincerity.’ (no ref.; p.268.) Kenner writes: ‘And in the very year Ulysses was published, contemporary Ireland achieved, as the Free State, factitiuous resurrection, with the same Tim Healy whom Joyce at the age of nine had excoriated for betraying Parnell (“Et Tu, Healy?”) as its first governor-general. Thirty-one years ago Joyce Stanislaus Joyce had walked proudly round to a printer with his eldest’s son’s philippic. Now John Stanislaus was recumbent among visions while Healy lexuded frigid hospitality from the governor’s mansion, apotheosis in his grasp.’ (Idem.) He goes on: ‘Plainly, the New Ireland was no more than an old man’s dream; andwhat had been the dreams of the ubiquitous Healy?’ (Idem; see reference to “embalmed phoenix” in Richard M. Kain, supra.)
Conor Cruise O’Brien, Ancestral Voices, Religion and Nationalism in Ireland (Poolbeg 1994): ‘As Frank Callanan shows in [...] The Parnell Split, 1890-91 (Cork 1992), what did most to break Parnell in 1891 was the fiery, scurrilous, ruthless, populistic Catholic-nationalism of Timothy Michael Healy ... many respectable anti-Parnellites were disgusted by Healy’s demagoguery. But it worked ...’ [29].
Frank Callanan, T. M. Healy (Cork UP 1996) - epigraph quotes Joyce in Finnegans Wake (1939): ‘but hunt me the journey on, iteritinerant, the kal his course, amid the seminary of Somnionia. Even unto Heliotropolis, the castellated, the enchanting. (FW.) Quotes Healy: ‘If men allow themselves to be evicted out of their property by means of bad seasons, I say by reason of the circumstances over which they have no control - if they allow themselves to be hunted out like vermin and like rats and dogs, then they deserve the fate of rats and dogs (applause). But if they stand up and resist, then what will happen to them is what has always happened in Ireland, the law will be changed to suit them (applause) [...] the whole history of this country is and of its success is the history of defiance in the law (applause) [Callanan, p.177]. Callanan notes that ‘Healy’s laxly opportunistic stance on the Plan of Campaign was to serve him well. His rhetoric in defence of the Plan, and his appearances as counsel on behalf of Dillon and O’Brien in the prosecutions which ensued, were coupled with a careful avoidance of involvement in its direction. [177].
Epigraph from Joyce: ‘but hunt me the journeyon, iteritinerant, the kal his course, amid the seminary of Somnionia. Even unto Heliotropolis, the castellated, the enchanting. (FW.)
Frank Callanan (T. M. Healy, 1996) - cont.: ‘Healy cunningly devised his rhetoric to cheat Parnell even of the sympathy which heroic adversity might attract. In particular, he sought to deprive him of the romantic allure of the embattled lover. He charged that Parnell’s relations with Katharine O’Shea were actuated by a combination of lust and venality. Parnell’s purpose was to marry a woman who stood to inherit a substantial fortune from her aunt. Rather than the romantic paramour, Parnell was the grasping aristocrat [...]. Heckled in Derry .. Healy vituperated: “I will tell you the price of him - the fortune of Mrs O’Shea. They hear great talk about place-hunting, and great talk about selling their country, but the baseest of all sales and barater was to sell the fortune, the faith and the rights of your country for the enjoyment of a loose woman.’ [315.] Kevin O’Higgins wrote to Lady Lavery on 27 Oct. 1922, regarding the appt. of Healy to the Governorship and with clear political intent: ‘[...] You cannot measure the effect it would have here if they agreed to appoint me. It would be worth more than a completely smashing military victory. If they are statesmen they will do it - if they are merely politicians they probably won’t, and a wonderful opportunity will have been lost.’ The letter was passed in time to the Colonial Sec., Duke of Devonshire. [597]. Healy regarded the civil war as a fair price to pay for the exclusion of de Valera, whom he thought solely responsible for it, ‘a conscious humbug’ and ‘the most disastrous person to who has ever meddled in Irish affairs.’ [Callanan, p.610.] Harold Frederic, as “X’, author of “Ireland of Today’, “Ireland of Tomorrow’ and “Rhetoricians of Ireland’, in Fortnightly (1891), was considered a conduit of Healy’s views and preference for Catholic ascendency over Home Rule. (Callanan, op. cit., Notes, p. 694.)
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T. P. O’Connor, 1929) relates that John Redmond, when said of Parnell in Committee that ‘[h]e is the master of the Party’, ‘Mr Healy cried, “Who is to be mistress of the Party?” [ibid.] (Quoted in Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 1991, Vol. 2, p.331.) |
Stolen Waters: A Page in the Conquest of Ulster (London: Longmans, Green 1913), 485pp, with map & index. Draws on Calendar of Irish State Papers, esp. ‘A King’s Letter’, Charles I, 24 Sept. 1638. The text concerns the fisheries of the Bann [‘the pearl of the adventure’], and Lough Foyle, promised as part of the inducements to the London Company in the plantation of Ulster.
‘Three centuries ago a number of counterfeits were issued by the Viceroy of Ireland’ - when Arthur Chicester secured these assets for himself. ‘The Bann is still in the hold of the Deputy’s descendants’. Healy’s strategy in this work is to show how many officers of the Crown were in fact consistently enemies of the crown’s interests in Ireland. On p.403 he quotes Froude and cites Lecky against a later Chicester: ‘Sir Arthur Chicester, the great Viceroy of Ireland under James I, was, of all Englishmen who ever settled in the country, the most useful to it. His descendant, the Lord Donegall of whom it has become necessary to speak, was perhaps the person who inflicted the greatest injury upon it.’ (Froude). To Donegall’s evictions, Froude traces the uprise of the Peep of Day and Heart of Steel conspiracies [Healy, 404], and adds ‘Lord Donegall, for his services, was rewarded with a marquisate ... a fitter retribution ... would have been forfeture and Tower Hill ...’ The book ultimately focuses on the necessity for net fishermen in inland waters to take out licences under the Act of 1848, and the power of refusal invested in the Bann leasees from the grandson of Donegall, Lord Shaftesbury [434-44], and adduces a forged lease. [452], narrating the trial which was occasioned by it resulting in victory for Shaftesbury. Reference is made to a select committee of 1842 which included Richard Lalor Shiel, Daniel O’Connell, Villiers Stuart, Viscounts Adare, and Clements [Lord Leitrim], Maurice O’Connell [Tralee], Viscount Newry, Lord Hillsborough, Mr Murphy [Cork City], Burke Roche [ibid.], Ffolliot [Sligo], Stafford O’Brien [Limerick], Sir Thomas Esmond [Wexford], and is seen as representing the conflicting claims of territorial ownership of the landed interest with general public. Healy concludes: ‘The fishermen of the North are but a friendless company. Still, the tale of their undoing has a prelude which pierces to the marrow of Irish history. It has also a living import. For their sake it is that one whose eyes have never looked upon Lough Neagh, has “written these lines and taken these pains.’”
| ‘As a native of Uganda ...’ |
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| —Sir Dunbar Plunket Barton, Timothy Healy: Memories and Anecdotes (Dublin: Talbot Press; London: Faber & Faber [1933]), p.87 [see commentary - supra]. |
C. S. Parnell: ‘We created Parnell … and Parnell created us. We seized very early in the movement the idea of this man with his superb silences, his historic name, his determination, his self-control, his aloofness - we seized that as the canvas of a great national hero.’ (Quotes in Conor Cruise O’Brien, Parnell and His Party, p.10; quoted in Michael Valdez Moses, ‘Dracula, Parnell, and the Troubled Dreams of Nationhood’, in Journal X: A Journal in Culture and Criticism, Vol., 2, No. 1, Autumn 1997, p.69 [citing in R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland, p.401.)
Saving Shanahan: ‘I had with me to-day a solicitor with his client, a Dublin publican named Phil Shanahan, whose licence is being opposed, and whose house was closed by the military because he was in Jacob’s during Easter week. I was astonished at the type of man - about 40 years of age, jolly and respectable. He said he “rose out” to have a “crack at the English” and seemed not at all concerned at the question of success or failure. He was a Tipperary hurler in the old days. For such a man to join the Rebellion and sacrifice the splendid trade he enjoyed makes one think there are disinterested Nationalists to be found. I thought a publican was the last man in the world to join a rising! Alfred Byrne, M. P., was with him, and is bitter against the Party. I think I can save Shanahan’s property.’ (Quoted on Wikipedia page on Alfred Byrne, Lord Mayor of Dublin - online.)
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References
Dictionary of National Biography, Irish political leader and first gov. general of Irish Free State, ed. Christian Brothers ... recommended Parnell’s temporary retirement when Gladstone refused to co-operation further with him after the O’Shea divorce case.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, selects Letters and Leaders of My Day (1928) [328-32]; Rems at 212 [Redmond could not control]; 310 [BIOG: Parnellite MP for several constituencies; broken over O’Shea in Galway election of 1886; his biting sarcasm made him a dangerous critic of Parnell; attempted to lead clericist party; represented employers in 1913 lock-out, rewarded [sic] with first governorship of Irish Free State]; 317n. [his phrase for Parnell, ‘the man at the wheel’ coined at Dublin meeting in Nov. 1890]; 319-20n. [Edward Dwyer Gray was ed. of Freeman’s journal in succession to his father, deserted Parnell at last moment, under clerical pressure, thereafter amalgamated with Healy’s National Press, the leading anti-Parnellite paper; the reorganization of the board a bitter affair that lasted till 1893]; 323 [boldly contested Parnell’s account of secret conversations with at Hawarden Gladstone, in Committee Room 15 (account by TP O’Connor, Memoirs of an Old Parliamentarian, 1929)]; 324-28 [quarrels with Parnell in committee (ibid.)]; 335 [called by Parnell a ‘chimney sweep’, and a ‘gutter sparrow’, hence the pamphlet Under Which Flag? Is Parnell to be the Leader of the Irish People. By a Gutter Sparrow (1890)]; 352n. [object of criticism by William O’Brien (1918) form his founding Irish national Federation, 1891-1900, and People’s Rights Association, 1897-1901]; 369 [Healy dubs Parnell ‘the uncrowned king of Ireland’ while on tour with him in America in 1879-80].
Hyland Books (Cat. No. 224) lists Irish Tales and Wonders, Popular Tales as Told to the People (NY: Weathervane Bks n.d.) Loyalty Plus Murder (1884), xv+96pp.; A word for Ireland (1886), xvi+163pp.; The Great Fraud of Ulster (1917).
De Burca Books (1997 Cat.) lists Sir Dunbar Plunket Barton, Timothy Healy: Memoirs and Anecdotes (Dublin: Talbot Press n.d.), 128pp.
Library of Herbert Bell (Belfast) holds Vol. 2 of Letter and Leaders of My Day (London 2 Vol n.d); also T. M. Healy, MP, Stolen Waters: A Page in The Conquest of Ulster (Longmans, Green 1913), 485pp. [inscribed by author, 1928].
Belfast Central Public Library holds Great Fraud of Ulster ([Dublin] 1917); Letters and Leaders of My Day (1928); Stolen Waters (1913). MORRIS holds The Great Fraud of Ulster (1917) 192p; The Planter’s Progress, to which is appended the victims of 1615 (1921), 71p; Stolen Waters, a page in the conquest of Ulster (1913) 492pp.
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Notes
James Joyce - 1: Joyce adverts to Healy’s discreditable reputation under the form of the pseudo-Latin phrase, Et Cur Heli! (Finnegans Wake, 73) - itself an echo of “Et Tu Healy” incorporating the pun cur (Eng. dog) and cur (L. why?). Healy’s home appears as ‘Gleannaulinn’ in a Wake-passage concerned with the location of Earwicker’s pub (FW264-65). [See also under Richard Kain, in Commentary, supra.]
Tom Kettle admired Healy’s wit and deplored his politics, calling him ‘a brilliant calamity’ (The Ways of War, 1917, pref. Memoir, p.45).
Maurice Headlam, quotes his witticism, when asked why all his ADC’s were generals: ‘And why wouldn’t they be generals? Sure, weren’t their mothers generals?’ (Irish Reminiscences, 1947, p.227.)
De Valera: Tim Healy referred to the ‘reign of terror’ of the ‘barren impostor’ de Valera (see Books Ireland, Dec. 1996).
Portraits: There is a portrait of Tim Healy by J. Davidson, see Anne Crookshank, Cat., Ulster Mus Portrait Exhibition (1965).
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