1840
Thomas
Osborne Davis made his first public 'Address'
to the Historical Society in 1840, and it was 'a profound surprise to
his few intimate friends, almost as much to the bulk of the students.
Where they expected familiar platitudes on a subject exhausted by use,
they heard the voice of an original man, who echoed no-one, but uttered
his own opinions with the fervour of complete conviction. The dumb man
spoke, and spoke like a mature teacher. It was like the fruit of the
fig tree, rich and succulent, but of which no preliminary blossoms had
given warning" (Duffy). Wallis who was present, and who was among
those who expected little, bears witness to it's immediate effect:
"it excited the surprise and admiration even of those who knew
him best, and won the respect of numbers, who, from political or personal
prejudices, had been originally most unwilling to admit his worth. So
signal a victory over long-continued neglect and obstinate prejudice,
as he had at length obtained, has never come under my observation, and
I believe it to be unexampled. There is no assurance of greatness so
unmistakable as this. No power so overwhelming, no energy so untiring,
no enthusiasm so indomitable as that which slumbers for years, unconscious
and unsuspected, until the character is completely formed, and then
bursts at once into life, when the time for action has come."
That address
began:
"Gentlemen, - I am now about to surrender the office which you
entrusted to me. Its duties up to the last night of the session, may
be well discharged by any man of common courtesy and firmness. But to-night
your President has a harder task……..We leave a single evening
in the year for consideration of what are or what should be those duties
and pursuits, and by what rules we should guide ourselves in that preparation."
He went
on to criticise the subjects taught in Trinity College and the method
of teaching them, the schooling system in Ireland and the parents for
tolerating such a system, he informed these men of privilege that the
classes who had in the past been banned from education in Ireland were
now being educated, and that those who sat in front of him would have
to really prove themselves with the competition which was coming their
way. "Your country and your times offer opportunities for a generous
- temptations to a selfish ambition. I trust, I am sure, your impulses
are not ungenerous."; "your hearts are with your country-men
- yours is a generous ambition to lead them, not their foes.";
"Chosen from among yourselves to advise you touching your intellectual
pursuits, it is my plain duty to tell you your defects: thus alone can
I convince you of the necessity for a remedy, and not until then can
we be prepared to discover it."
If we
read through this speech - and listen to it, and then re-read it, we
can see that Davis is practising exactly what he advises in the speech
itself.
The 'Address'
marked him as an individual, with new thoughts and not afraid to criticise
where it was needed, to say what he felt should be said with all his
convictions, regardless of the reception. This speech opened the eyes
of those with whom he associated and others to the 'new' Davis, the
Davis who would be heard, listened to, respected and who was going to
make a difference. The address actually has another title.
From the
day he gave his address to the Historical Society in Dublin to the day
he died, less than five years later, that was the 'life' of Thomas Osborne
Davis. Up to that point he had simply been an athlete in training, preparing
himself for what was to come and doing it thoroughly, to the best of
his ability.
Between
1840 and 1842 Davis wrote and published a number of works. His papers
on the Irish Parliament of 1688 were published in 'The Citizen'. Lecky
in his 'History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century commented: "By
far the best and fullest Account of this Parliament with which I am
acquainted is to be found in a series of papers upon it by Thomas Davis….."
The Citizen had been established by Wallis and McCullagh - two of Davis's
Trinity friends. His essay 'Udalism and Feudalism' an historical survey
of land tenure in Europe also appeared in the Citizen. In March of 1842,
Davis's works began to appear on the pages of the 'Morning Register',
a popular Dublin daily (the mouthpiece of the English Whig Government
in Ireland) and those essays concerned topical questions of the day,
nation al organisation and foreign politics.
The
Nation
Gavan
Duffy and Davis met one another in the Autumn of 1841. Duffy was from
County Monaghan and a professional journalist. John Black Dillon, Charles
Gavan Duffy and Thomas Osborne Davis became friendly and the following
spring they walked through the Phoenix Park discussing a new 'educative
weekly paper'. Duffy believed he could raise the funds and so on the
15th of October 1842, the day after Thomas Davis's twenty eighth birthday
'The Nation' was born!
In that
first issue the words of James Clarence Mangan (who also wrote 'My dark
Rosaleen) rang out:
"We announce a New Era - be this our first news
When the serf-grinding landlords shall shake in their shoes,
When the ark of a bloodless and mighty Reform
Shall emerge from the flood of the popular storm"
From that
point forward Davis flourished, his mind never stopped, his pen never
stopped and he had come into his own. Essays on Irish Music and Poetry;
Ballads; Schools; Slavery; Thoughts; Treason; Gentry; Nationalism; Antiquities;
Ribbonism; Townlands; Separation; Self Reliance; Home Industries; the
Irish Brigade; National Life, Possessions, Wealth, Art, Defense, Health,
and Militia appeared.
Another
lecture by Davis on 'Our
National Language' showed that Davis believed that there was a connection
between language and nationality, he said in that speech that "The
language, which grows up with a people, is conformed to their organs,
descriptive of their climate, constitution, and manners, mingled inseparably
with their history and their soil, fitted beyond any other language
to express their prevalent thoughts in the most natural and efficient
way." "To impose another language on such a people is to send
their history adrift among the accidents of translation - 'tis to tear
their identity from all places - 'tis to substitute arbitrary signs
for picturesque and suggestive names - 'tis to cut off the entail of
feeling, and separate the people from their forefathers by a deep gulf
- 'tis to corrupt their very organs, and abridge their power of expression."
Of the
numbers who spoke Irish in his time he said "About half the people
west of a line drawn from Derry to Waterford speak Irish habitually,
and in some of the mountain tracts cast of that line it is still common".
If we look to the works of people who knew something of Ireland at the
time, we have Lappenburg, a German traveller reckoning that four out
of seven million spoke the mother tongue in Ireland in 1835. O'Neill
Daunt says that ninety percent of the people spoke Irish in the 1840's;
the census returns for 1861 give us a figure of 1,105,536 (figures by
county for a number of years can be seen on from-ireland pages with
county descriptions). It can be taken that by 1861 the population of
Ireland had decreased considerably, and that people did not want it
recorded that they spoke Irish as their mother tongue. We can assume
then that the numbers who spoke Irish in 1841 may have been twice that
of the official 1861 figure. Thomas Osborne Davis was writing about
language and nationality being inseparable to a large number of people
for whom the Irish language was a troublesome thing. They did not want
to give up their language or their heritage, they had struggled through
the days of the Penal Laws, but they were living in a country where
they were not supposed to speak Irish. Thomas Davis was the first person
to say this is wrong, be proud of your heritage, be what you are.
Duffy
believed that poetry should be a focal point of the Nation, Davis believed
in using every faculty to rouse the people, he produced poetry - some
good, some not so good: 'Fontenoy' Lament
for the Death of Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill' 'My
Grave' Tone's Grave',
Our Own Again' 'A Nation
Once Again', 'The sack
of Baltimore', to name but a few.
The name
of Thomas Osborne Davis became a household one. He had set out to "to
hallow or accurse the scenes of glory and honour, or of shame or sorrow;
to give to the imagination the arms, and homes, and senates, and battles
of other days; to rouse and soften, or strengthen, and enlarge us with
the passions of greater periods; to lead us into love of self denial,
of justice, of beauty, of valour, of generous life and proud death;
and to set up in our souls the memory of great men, who shall then be
as models and judges of our actions - these are the highest duties of
history, and these are best taught by a Ballad History." He did
just that for three short years.
Personal
Life
We know
very little about his personal life other than he cherished his mother
and his sister Charlotte and their differences in political opinions
did not damage their personal relationships. His friends thought very
highly of him as a person, regardless of his achievements. His friends
included Patrick Robert Webb, Maddyn says that Davis and Webb were like
brothers together 'faithful and loving'; the painter Frederick Burton
who did the cover design for 'The Spirit of the Nation' said 'I could
refuse Davis nothing'(Two paintings of Davis were shown at the Burton
exhibition in Dublin in 1900) Davis went to the Aran Islands with Petrie,
who would speak of him to Lady Gregory in London in his later years.
On the
22nd of December 1843, Davis attended dinner in the house of Thomas
Hutton, a wealthy coachbuilder with liberal sympathies. He was a subscriber
to the 'Nation'. At that dinner, he met Hutton's youngest daughter -
Annie - and they fell in love. She compared him to Fichte, a German
metaphysical patriot. Davis was all of 29 years old and Annie was only
18. The Hutton's did not immediately approve of this relationship, that
did not deter Thomas Davis and at the end of July 1845 he was accepted
as a suitor by the Hutton family. Of Annie he wrote:
"Her eyes are darker than Dunloe,
her soul is whiter than the snow.
Her tresses like arbutus flow
Her step like frightened deer;
Then still thy waves capricious lake!
And ceaseless, soft winds round her wake,
yet never bring a cloud to break
The smile of Annie dear.
During
August of that year, 1845, Annie wrote to Davis "O, I am so very
happy; a happiness beyond all I ever dreamed………."
Little
did they know what the next few months would bring them.
