He Died One Christmas Eve

William John Fitzpatrick, who died on Christmas Eve forty-six years ago, has many claims to the kindly esteem of his countrymen. Without his tireless industry and painstaking research, many interesting phases of our history—particularly the romantic period of ’98—might not even yet have emerged into the clear light of intimate and detailed knowledge.

Fitzpatrick’s father was a successful Dublin merchant whose premises were situated in Thomas Street—for ever linked up with the name of Emmet and Lord Edward—and there can be little doubt that it was a boyhood spent in a spot with such imperishable associations that first turned his thoughts in the direction of the researches which he afterwards undertook.

After he had completed his studies at Clongowes Wood College, Fitzpatrick adopted a literary career. His first published book was, characteristically, a biography of Lord Cloncurry, the Irish peer whose sympathies with the United Irishmen led to his imprisonment in the Tower of London, where he was pelted by a hostile mob. But this cannot be regarded as more than an apprentice effort; its turgid and involved style makes it difficult reading.

His next book, however, showed Fitzpatrick’s real quality. It was entitled “The Life and Times of Bishop Doyle,” and it proved a fitting monument to a powerful personality and a patriotic prelate, as well as shedding useful light on an interesting period in Irish history. His next effort was rather a curious one, and one that illustrates how even such a sleuth of research as Fitzpatrick afterwards proved himself to be can go wrong by mistaking the importance of a single clue. He published a long pamphlet to which he gave the provocative title: “Who Wrote the Waverley Novels?” and in which he set out to argue that the major portion of the credit for them should go, not to Sir Walter Scott, but to his brother, Thomas. It was tantamount to charging the famous novelist with plagiarism, and naturally it was the cause of a great ferment in literary circles. But the bombshell proved to be no more than a Chinese cracker when the three surviving daughters of Thomas Scott wrote a joint letter to the London “Times” repudiating the claim made on behalf of their father.

This, however, was Fitzpatrick’s only excursion down a blind alley. Turning his thoughts back to his own country, he compiled his “Lord Edward Fitzgerald, or Notes on the Cornwallis Papers,” in which he first started the inquiries which became his life-work—the investigation of the inner history of Ireland before and during the Union period. His father’s will having left him amply provided for, he had sufficient leisure to pursue his researches, and he became a familiar figure in Dublin Castle, in the Public Records Office, and in every other place where documents of historic interest were preserved. Year after year he toiled at his task, until he had, in his own words, examined a pile of papers “big enough to fill ten lorries.” Never was labour better rewarded. Lecky and Froude in their Histories of Ireland had found themselves baffled time and again when they attempted to unravel mysteries of the pre-Union period. To many of these Fitzpatrick found the key—in the shape of a forgotten, yellowing document. In Dublin Castle he obtained permission to investigate the contents of two rusty iron-clamped chests, guarded with the Government seal, and bearing the legend: “Secret and Confidential: Not to be Opened.” Amongst the contents were no less than 136 letters from Francis Higgins, arch-informer, “Sham Squire,” and proprietor of the “Freeman’s Journal.”

In his famous books, “The Sham Squire” and “Secret Service Under Pitt,” Fitzpatrick gave the world the result of his investigations into such sources as these. He revealed in detail the whole amazing net-work of secret activities associated with the name of Castlereagh, Cooke, Marsden and Sirr; he exposed the full iniquity of informers like Higgins, Reynolds and Turner; he gave the lists of payments and pensions awarded to them; and he laid all future Irish historians under a debt which they have been ready to acknowledge.

It is pleasant to recall that the value of his work was generously acknowledged by contemporary English writers, however distasteful to their national pride some of his revelations may have proved. The “Edinburgh Review” described Fitzpatrick as “the greatest living authority on Secret History,” and declared that he had presented “the best-kept secrets of espionage with as much certainty as the speeches of Grattan or the letters of Cornwallis.” The most distinguished English literary critic of modern times, Professor George Saintsbury, said in a review of “Secret Service Under Pitt”:

“The book may be cheerfully and confidently recommended to people who do not care greatly either for history or for politics as a rule. Almost everybody likes plots and treasons and hairbreadth escapes, and mysterious houses, and scrimmages with military and police, and quaint bits of old manners. Of these things ‘Secret Service Under Pitt’ is chock-full. We should very much doubt whether there is any other man living who has a more extraordinary acquaintance with the published and unpublished documents of a particular period. The industry with which he fishes out, and the ingenuity with which he pieces evidence together, are quite surprising, and would supply the romantic novelist with matter for half-a-hundred volumes. If Ireland ever has a real historian, he will lift up his hands and bless Mr. Fitzpatrick, and not for this book only.”

In any other country save ours, I imagine, such a glowing tribute (and Saintsbury was only one of a score of enthusiastic voices) would have been enough to keep the historian’s work alive for at least half a century. Yet—if I am not mistaken—it is the melancholy fact that neither “Secret Service Under Pitt,” “The Sham Squire” nor “Ireland Before the Union” (to take only three of Fitzpatrick’s many books) is in print to-day. In another few years he will have been fifty years dead, and I can conceive no more fitting tribute to his memory than the re-publication of some, at least, of the volumes in which he first lifted the veil from many of the dark secrets of our country’s past.