Winifred M. Patton and the Irish Revival in London

Abstract

The place of London in the Irish Revival is sometimes overlooked, yet, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the city served as a place where Irish political and cultural identities were reinvigorated amongst the migrant community there and fed directly into events back home. The experience of living in London, at one remove from Ireland, appears to have reinforced a sense of belonging and nationhood for many writers, the most prominent of which was Yeats. This article examines the life and work of Winifred M. Patton, a gifted Irish writer and nationalist who lived there between 1893 and 1914. Whilst she never achieved the same reputation as some of her contemporaries, Patton, nevertheless, published widely in Irish nationalist newspapers of the time. Apart from writing poetry, short stories and essays, she was also active in political and cultural organisations such as the Gaelic League and the Irish Fireside Club helping ferment Irish nationalist aspirations at a crucial turning point in British–Irish relations. Based on new research into an archival collection of Patton's papers, this article examines the relationship between migration, gender and nationalism and the role of literature in mediations of cultural identity in the Irish diaspora.

Keywords::

• migration
• diaspora
• gender
• Irish nationalism
• Michael Collins

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the invaluable advice and assistance provided by Ríona Nic Congáil and Séamus Ó Diollúin during my research for this article. I would also like to thank Margaret Broderick for donating Winifred M. Patton's papers to the Archive of the Irish in Britain.

Notes

^1.Morris, “Becoming Irish?,” 79.

^2.Ní Dhuibhne, Voices on the Wind, 9.

^3.Steele, Women, Press and Politics during the Irish Revival, 27.

^4. Date of birth as recorded in Post Office records. British Postal Museum and Archive, POST 35/996.

^5. It is possible that Patton met Doyle through the Gaelic League where they pursued a mutual interest in amateur drama. They appeared alongside each other in a production of Padraic Colum's play The Saxon Shilling, which was staged at the Dungannon Club in Hampstead in early December 1905. See Inis Fáil, no. 16 (January 1906): 2.

^6.Nic Congáil, “Young Ireland and The Nation,” 57.

^7.Nic Congáil, “‘Fiction, Amusement, Instruction,’” 91.

^8. See, for instance, Patton, “Immortality,” 11.

^9.Luddy, “Women and Politics in Ireland, 1860–1918,” 73.

^10.MacPherson, Women and the Irish Nation, 90.

^11.Ó Súilleabháin, Conradh na Gaeilge i Londain 1894–1917, 10. Patton had begun to adopt various Gaelic pseudonyms by this time, one of the most common of which was Úna Nic Pháidín, as cited on this occasion.

^12.Biletz, “Women and Irish-Ireland,” 60.

^13.Inis Fáil, January 16, 1906, 10.

^14.Fitzpatrick, “A Curious Middle Place,” 35.

^15.Foster, Paddy and Mr. Punch, 289.

^16.Hutchinson and O'Day, “The Gaelic Revival in London, 1900–22,” 262.

^17. British Postal Museum and Archive, POST 59/1895.

^18. Patton's elder sister, Jeannie, joined the Post Office on 8 August 1890. POST 59/1890.

^19. British Postal Museum and Archive, POST 35/1306. This was clearly a very difficult time for Patton. Her mother died the following February. See Inis Fáil, no. 41 (February 1908): 8.

^20.Winifred M. Patton Collection, Archive of the Irish in Britain, London Metropolitan University. GC2: “Gift Card, 28 January 1908.”

^21.Hutchinson, “Diaspora Dilemmas and Shifting Allegiances,” 110.

^22.Hart, Mick, 26–8.

^23. As quoted in Hutchinson and O'Day, “The Gaelic Revival in London,” 266.

^24.Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 100.

^25.Coogan, Michael Collins, 82.

^26. As quoted in Hart, Mick, 28.

^27.Sinn Féin, February 7, 1914.

^28.Weekly Freeman, June 2, 1894, 11.

^29.Weekly Freeman, September 15, 1894, 11.

^30.Weekly Freeman, July 11, 1896, 11.

^31. See, for instance, Patton, “The Reformation of Kilglowney”; “The Big Fire at Drumahinch”; and “Taken at the Flood.”

^32.Patton, “Untitled.”

^33. Ibid. Patton makes specific reference to Eleanor's reading of “Dr Henry's Handbook” whose author regularly gave lectures to the Gaelic League in London. Henry, Handbook of Modern Irish.

^34.Weekly Freeman, June 11, 1898, 11.

^35.Patton, “Prophesy.” The poem is about the anticipated return of an exiled queen to her rightful throne in Ireland.

^36.Sinn Féin, February 7, 1914.

^37.Patton, “Erin Go Bragh!,” 188. Shan Van Vocht was an influential nationalist literary magazine founded the previous year by Alice Milligan and Anna Johnston (aka Ethna Carbery) in Belfast.

^38.Innes, Woman and Nation, 135.

^39.Patton, “My Star of Dreams,” 90.

^40.Patton, “The Adventuring Soul,” “Hope,” and “A Song of the Sea.” It would appear that the spiritual dimension to Patton's work became more pronounced once she had contracted TB and knew her days were numbered. Her courage in the face of the illness, however, is apparent in the poem “The Doctor”, a witty polemic against the medical regime she was forced to endure whilst confined to a sanatorium. Patton, “The Doctor.”

^41.Shirmer, Out of What Began, 218.

^42. See, for instance, Hopper Chesson, “A Song of Four Winds” and “A Drowned Girl to Her Lover,” 138–9.

^43.Patton, “By the Sea.”

^44.Patton, “Freedom.”

^45.Patton, “An Deoraidhe,” 12.

^46.Patton, “A Passage Paid.”

^47.Fitzpatrick, “A Curious Middle Place,” 39.

^48.Collins, Poetry by Women in Ireland, 24.

^49. Nic Congáil, “‘Fiction, Amusement, Instruction,’” 100.

^50.Patton, “The Poets of Young Ireland,” 11/11.

^51. See, for instance, Sigerson, “A Vagrant Heart,” 68; and O'Neill, “Marriage,” 8.

^52.Patton, “The Irish Convention in English Novels.”

^53. Winifred M. Patton Collection, EB2/PR3.