Rev. Desmond Forristal: A literary life

March 2^nd 2011

Portrait of Rev. Desmond Forristal

The Desmond Forristal Archive was donated to the Library in 2001, and provides an intimate view of the life and work of Rev. Forristal in the latter half of the twentieth century. Forristal is known for his work as a scholar, author, playwright, and TV producer.

Presentation Primary School, George’s Hill in Dublin, 1963

Desmond Forristal was born in Dublin on 25 September 1930 and was educated at O’Connell School and Belvedere College. He went on to study Philosophy at University College Dublin (1948-1951) and then Theology at Holy Cross College, where he was ordained into the priesthood in 1955. Forristal was awarded an MA degree in Philosophy from University College Dublin in 1956. He served in several Dublin-based parishes, including Palmerstown, Halston Street, Bray, Iona Road, and Dalkey, and was elected to the Dublin Diocesan Council of Priests in 1969.

Forristal studied film and television in New York in 1959, and on his return to Ireland he assisted Fr. Joseph Dunn in establishing the Radharc film unit. Working as a director and scriptwriter, Forristal’s work on Radharc productions brought him to Europe, America, Africa and the Far East. Radharc, meaning ‘view’ or ‘vision’, was a series of films about Ireland written and presented from a religious perspective. The Radharc team made their first production in 1960 in Donegal, a short film about customs relating to St Brigid's Day. Over four hundred films broadcast in Ireland and in locations around the world were to follow, with the series coming to an end in 1996.

Forristal’s first play, The True Story of the Horrid Popish Plot, was performed at the Gate Theatre as part of the 1972 Dublin Theatre Festival. A Hilton Edwards production, the historical drama addresses the lives of Oliver Plunkett and seventeenth century perjurer Titus Oates who fabricated a supposed Catholic conspiracy to kill King Charles II. His second play entitled Black Man’s Country was performed in the same theatre in 1974, and was based on the author’s visit to Biafra in Southern Nigeria in 1968 whilst making a documentary about the Civil War. The Seventh Sin, another play, was first performed at the Gate in 1976 and focuses on the election of hermit Peter of Murrone as pope (Celestine V) in the thirteenth century, and his subsequent abdication and death. Again, the production was directed by Hilton Edwards.

Forristal’s next production was for television, a play entitled Enquiry at Knock (1979). This play was based on the testimony of witnesses for the evidence of the miraculous appearance of Mary at Knock. Returning to the stage that same year, Forristal’s next dramatic effort was the play Captive Audience, which concerns the relationship between a young girl who is in the Charismatic Movement and her de-programmer. The Crozier and the Crown, a religious drama based on the life of St. Laurence O’Toole, was performed in 1988.

Forristal is also known for his literary work. He has written several books on historical and religious subjects, including Oliver Plunkett (1975), Maximilian of Auschwitz (1982), The Bridge at Lo Wu (1987), The Man in the Middle (1988), The Second Burial of Bishop Shanahan (1990), and Edel Quinn 1907-1944 (1994). In addition, he has contributed articles to a number of journals, and was drama critic for ‘The Furrow’, a diocesan magazine, for many years.

Selection of documents from the Forristal Archive

The Desmond Forristal Archive consists of a wide range of document types, including letters, scripts, essays, research notebooks, photographs and newspaper clippings. Forristal’s close ties with Dublin’s thriving theatre scene are revealed in a letter contained in the archive from actor, writer, and director Hilton Edwards, dated 15 March 1978. The letter, addressed to Forristal, was written by Edwards on the death of his partner and co-founder of the Gate Theatre, Micheál MacLiammóir.

‘You and I worked together – and I hope we will again – but nothing we can do can reach the artistry, if I may use that word in this sense, of the work you have just done. The rightness of the services, both unsurpassable in their simplicity and beauty gave me much comfort, and I know, has given Micheal peace. Thank you again for administering the last rites to him in hospital.’ (PP/1/55A).

This important collection provides researchers with a fascinating overview of Forristal’s life and work, and reflects his movements in both religious and literary circles in Ireland during the latter half of the twentieth century.

Lord Morpeth’s Roll: A pre-famine census in the Russell Library

January 27th 2011

The conservation team is participating in a project involving the Russell Library, the History Department NUIM, Castle Howard in Yorkshire and Ancestry.com.

The Morpeth Testimonial Roll, wrapped around a gigantic bobbin, measures 412 metres in length and contains around 250,000 signatures gathered from across the whole of Ireland. It arrived in the Russell Library in 2009, when our role in the project officially began.

Created in 1841 at the instigation of the Duke of Leinster, Daniel O' Connell and others, this remarkable document marks the occasion of Lord Morpeth departing from his political office in Ireland.

The roll consists of 652 sheets of paper which were either signed in Dublin or sent out to the counties of Ireland for signing, and returned to Dublin for assembly. This remarkable feat was undertaken in the space of a month; from collecting the signatures to compiling the roll to constructing the wooden bobbin and chest.

Some of the sheets still bear their postage stamps and franks, which are secondary additions of great historical importance as printed stamps were only introduced in 1840.

This photograph shows one of the sheets sent in the post

It was sent from Bailyboro, Co. Cavan to Dublin and shows both the old franking system and the new postage stamps. Postage stamps were used for the first time in May of 1840 when the penny black was introduced. In September 1841 this sheet was posted with 2d blues. Note that the stamps had to be cut with a scissors. It would be 12 years before Henry Archer invented the stamp perforating machine.

An Irish hand amongst the signatures

The address was written out by T.M. Ray

and is both signed and dated within the flourishes of words ‘My Lord’

The sheets are joined by glued paper strips, tail to head, originally creating a continuous length of paper which was subsequently rolled onto a wooden spool.

The vast majority of the paper used is of good quality and retains much of its original flexibility. There are, however, a small number of fragile, chemically unstable, sheets.

The glue used to join the individual sheets has caused staining where it has been applied, though again, not universally. A small number of sheets exhibit staining across the entire surface despite otherwise being of good quality. Paper length and width are not uniform, nor are the weights of individual sheets. All these variables and complexities render the roll vulnerable to damage and degradation. Our role in this project is to facilitate an understanding of the physical object which will complement both research and the future curatorial care of the object itself.

The first two sheets boast an elaborately written address which opens with:

To The Right Honourable Lord Viscount Morpeth: The Address of the Nobility, Gentry, Clergy, Merchants, Traders & People of Ireland

First Leaf of Address Before and After Treatment

Only during cleaning of the first sheet were gold embellishments to the title revealed, a glimpse into how lavish those first pages were. Undertaking edge repair and infilling of missing portions of the original sheet protects it from further damage and this combination of investigation, understanding and care are key to our conservation approach.

A new acquisition! The teetotaler’s catechism

In the midst of dire poverty, the people of Ireland in the mid-1830s were drinking more than 12 million gallons a year of legal spirits alone. It was an appalling problem. Avoiding the usual chilling rhetoric, Theobald Mathew, the Capuchin friar who became known as the Apostle of Temperance, began exhorting people to give up intoxicating liquors, re-assert their dignity and use that money to better their condition. He preached to vast crowds and persuaded thousands at a time to take the pledge.

frontispiece

Matthew Scally, a Carmelite friar from Knocktopher, produced a short twopenny tract in 1846 to encourage the faint-hearted. It is written in the form of a dialogue between a father and his son, with a graphic frontispiece of Theobald Matthew preaching, and the words of the pledge beneath. To clinch matters, there is a personal letter of approbation from Theobald Mathew himself.

title-page

Such tracts are rare for they are too flimsy to survive in normal circumstances. This one has been given an exceptionally fine binding of red goatskin and a gold-tooled centrepiece; even the edges of the boards are decorated in gold.

binding

As indicated on the title-page above, the publisher was William Joseph Battersby, an energetic and innovative Dublin publisher who flourished from the 1830s to the 1850s. He was also an author in his own right and his entire working life was motivated by a passionate interest in the promotion of the Catholic faith. His most enduring contribution has been the Irish Catholic Directory, begun in 1836 as Battersby’s Registry for the Catholic World. He was also the driving force behind the Catholic Book Society which sought to produce cheaper but informative books and make them widely available. As is appropriate for this publication, he was also a teetotaller!

As the Irish balloon championships get under way in Longford…

Olivari’s balloon (1798)

Imagine the impact of the first hot-air balloon rising into the sky in 1783. Suddenly, it was possible to fly! The first living flight was from Versailles in June 1783, with a sheep, a duck and a cock in the car. Four months later the maestro himself, Étienne Montgolfier, rose above the earth in a splendidly decorated balloon. Others across Europe quickly followed suit.

The first manned flight in Ireland was made by Richard Crosbie on 19 January 1785 when he rose up from Ranelagh Gardens in Dublin before a vast crowd. Wind and bad weather affected his departure and he was obliged to land at Clontarf. A poem was published in celebration, The aerial voyage (Dublin, 1785), prefaced by an account of the event.

For the next five years, the hold on the popular imagination was evident. The pamphlets of the time convey the febrile excitement of it all. Farces were in vogue -Frederick Pilon, in his Aerostation (1785), urged with tongue in cheek the need for ‘legislation of the upper regions’, formerly the realm of poets only. There were ‘diverting accounts’ of flights, novels, balloon jests, and songs in the streets and public gardens. There were even silken ‘balloon hats’ covering lofty coiffures.

Serious experiments and advances were reported to the Royal Society. Then, in time of war, balloons became political. Francis Olivari (possibly a pseudonym) in The balloons of Citizen Campenas (Dublin, 1798) took up a suggestion made by a French hydraulic engineer that Napoleon could use balloons for a military invasion. Not to be scoffed at, said Olivari, and carefully calculated that if each were 100 yards in diameter it could carry 500 soldiers with hammocks, baggage, food, canons, arms and ammunition.

A vivid account of an attempt in 1812 to cross the Irish Sea from Belvedere House, Drumcondra, was published by veteran balloonist James Sadler, who was then 59 and had carried out more than 40 flights since his first attempt in Oxford in 1784. In Balloon (Dublin, 1812) he gives a graphic description of swarming up the cords to close a rent that had appeared, and of how finally, he was dragged through the sea before rescue.

Sadler’s Balloon: an authentic narrative (1812)

September 2010

WEDDING BELLS AT CASTLETOWN HOUSE: THE BYNG-CONNOLLY MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT

Castletown House

Archival work has recently been completed on a document of national and great local interest currently held in the Russell Library. The Byng-Conolly marriage settlement was acquired in May of this year, and relates to the marriage in 1761 of George Byng, (1735-1789) of Wrotham Park, Middlesex, and Anne Conolly (d. 1806) of Castletown, Co. Kildare.

George Byng was the eldest son of the late Hon. Robert Byng (1703-1740), and the Hon. Elizabeth Byng, of Wrotham Park in Barnet, Middlesex, England, and grandson of British naval officer and statesman George Byng, 1st Viscount Torrington (1663-1733). George’s father, Robert, had an active career, serving as Member of Parliament for Plymouth, Paymaster of the Navy, and Governor of Barbados. His mother, Elizabeth (d. 1786), was the daughter of Jonathan Forward, a transport contractor for the Admiralty. George was later elected to represent the borough of Wigan in Lancaster in 1768 and 1774, and then Middlesex in 1780.

Anne Conolly was the second daughter of the Right Hon. William James Conolly (1706–54) and Lady Anne Wentworth (eldest daughter of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford of the second creation) of Castletown in Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland. Anne’s father, William James Conolly, was the nephew of politician and speaker of the Irish House of Commons, William Conolly (1662–1729). ‘Speaker’ Conolly was born in Ballyshannon in 1662, the son of a local innkeeper, and despite his humble beginnings was to become the wealthiest and most powerful politician in Ireland. He built Castletown House in Celbridge, County Kildare, between 1722 and 1729 as a symbol of his great wealth and power. After Speaker Conolly’s death in 1729, the Palladian mansion and Conolly’s estates and fortune were divided between his widow, Katherine, and nephew, William James Conolly. The latter finally inherited Castletown in 1752 on Katherine’s death, passing away himself just two years later. He was succeeded by his son Thomas (1738-1803), brother of Anne Conolly. Castletown House remained in the Conolly family until 1965, and has been in state ownership since 1994.

The marriage settlement is dated 4 March 1761, the day before the marriage of George Byng and Anne Conolly. The document is made of parchment and consists of eight sheets of handwritten text. It outlines in great detail the terms and conditions relating to the couple’s union. The document is signed and sealed by the couple and their witnesses: Elizabeth Byng, Thomas Conolly ‘of Dublin City’, Right Hon. William Earl of Strafford, Hon. Henry Osborne (Admiral of the Blue), Edmund Bramston (of Hall Place in Southampton), Right Hon. Lady Anne Conolly, Henry Vernon (of Hilton in Strafford); and Hon. George Pocock (Admiral of the Blue). The settlement summarises other relevant documentation, including an earlier marriage settlement dated 27 April 1833, that of William Conolly and Anne Wentworth, the last will and testament of William James Conolly dated 14 December 1738, with a codicil dated 27 December 1753.

Detail of marriage settlement with Conolly signatures

CONSERVATION OF ENEAS MACDONNELL LETTERS

Original housing of the MacDonnell letters

The Russell Library undertook a re-housing project for a collection of letters written to Eneas MacDonnell (1783-1858), who was Parliamentary Agent in London for Irish Catholics between 1825 and 1829, the period prior to Catholic emancipation. He was formerly a student at the lay college in Maynooth.

The collection spans the period 1823-55 and contains letters and a few contemporary printed items.

As is not uncommon, these had come to the library closely folded, tied in bundles and stored in a non-archival box. They had both surface dirt and minor handling damage, but were mostly robust.

The collection is a rich and varied resource which provides an elegant snapshot of the period. The letters are themselves of interest for their content but it is also interesting to link the individual authors of the letters to the wax seals present. Furthermore, the paper has both makers’ watermarks and, on some of the sheets, the paper-type is embossed on the pages. All of these are interesting from an historical perspective, thus the material provides diverse research and study potential.

Letter before treatment Letter after treatment

Our aim was to list the documents prior to cataloguing, flatten the pages, carry out minimal repairs, and provide archival housing that would ensure safe reader access.

The challenges that this body of material posed were many. The pages were not of uniform size, many of them had text on both sides, and there was sensitive secondary media present on the paper: fragile wax seals and fugitive postal franks.

Present on letters: seal, embossed stamp and postal frank

The material was lightly surface cleaned, but conservation intervention was kept to a minimum as some of the media was known to be fugitive and unsuitable for washing or aqueous treatment. Larger tears were repaired using lens tissue and wheat starch paste and it was decided that the housing chosen would provide stability, durability and protection for the material.

Each letter is to be housed in an archival polyester sleeve after treatment. This allows visual access to and physical support for the paper, as well as some breathability within the binding structure. Archival polyester is perfect for this task. All the sleeves are uniform in size but have been internally modified to accommodate three different dimensions within the collection. The bindings can be housed vertically on open shelves, preventing the risk of crushing to bottom documents which can arise where collections are housed loose in boxes. It also reduces the risk posed by direct handling of the pages.

Once bound, it is possible to dismantle the binding without any risk to the collection, either for access or rearrangement should the need arise. It has been a pleasure to be involved in preparing this material for readers to enjoy and to address the challenges posed by such a historical body of work.

The following links may be of interest for further reading:

The North East Document Conservation Centre Preservation leaflet: [see unbound flat paper]

http://www.nedcc.org/resources/leaflets/4Storage_and_Handling/01StorageMethods.php

Housing single sheet material at the Bodleian Library, Oxford:

http://eprints.ouls.ox.ac.uk/archive/00000911/01/47405_Honey