Life
1844-1940; b. Kilconly, Tuam, Co. Galway; ed. hedgeschool; family evicted; moved to England; recruited to IRB by Michael Davitt; ed. back in Ireland, St. Jarlath’s, Tuam; taught by Canon Ulick Bourke; studied medicine at Queen’s College, Galway and in Dublin; organiser for IRB; remained in England thereafter; and swore in John MacBride, inter al.; organised financial support for the IRB from the Boers through Solomon Gillingham, a friend in Pretoria; joined IRB Supreme Council; leader of Irish National Alliance, 1895; co-fnd. Irish Literary Society; wrote an autobiography, published posthumously, Fenian Memories (Dublin: M. H. Gill &
Sons 1945). DIH
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Commentary
W. B. Yeats, “Autobiography”, in Memoir, ed. Denis Donoghue (London: Macmillan 1972): ‘Rolleston introduced me to Dr. Mark Ryan, a London doctor who was head of the new organisation [Irish National Alliance]; through his hands the American money which went no longer to the members of Parliament [82] would pass. [... I]n Dr Mark Ryan I discovered a very touching benevolence. He was I not an able man but had great influence because during his long life he had befriended many Irishmen, often giving them the money to set them up in business. Lionel Johnson, my most intimate friend through these years, came with me to see him and felt the charm of that man who tolerated fools too gladly because of a nature naturally indulgent. I found he had a naive and touching faith in men who were better educated, and as yet he had not, as a little later, fallen under the influence of a clever, rather mad rogue [F. H. O’Donnell]. His associates in this new secret society were almost all doctors, peasant or half-peasant in origin, and none had any genuine culture. In Ireland it was just such men, though of a younger generation, who had understood my ideas. Rolleston and Johnson and I had perhaps the instrument we had been looking for.’ pp.82-83.)
References
Library of Herbert Bell, Belfast, holds Dr. Mark F. Ryan, Fenian Memories (Dublin 1945).
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Notes
Oh Willie!: As a member of the Wild Geese Society, Dr. Mark Ryan was present in the audience of W. B. Yeats’s lecture on the “Future of Irish Drama”, given at the Bijou Th., Bedford Park, London, on the night when Yeats received a letter from Maud Gonne announcing her impending marriage to John MacBride. (See Anthony Jordan, The Yeats Gonne MacBride Triangle, Westport 2000, p.13.)
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