Life
1878-1916 [given-name Skeffington; known as Frank]; b. Bailieborough,
Co. Cavan; ed. locally and UCD where he was a fellow-student with James
Joyce; first auditor of L & H, 1897; led Catholic students’s
objections to W. B. Yeats’s The Countess Cathleen, 8-10 May
1899; taught at Kilkenny College and shared rooms with Thomas MacDonagh,
next teaching at St. Kieran’s, 1902; registrar at UCD, 1902-04; resigned
after dispute over rights of women; m. Hanna Sheehy, dg. David Sheehy
(Nat. MP), 1903; wrote in support of objectors to Yeats’s Cathleen
Ni Houlihan; campaigned against conscription, and arrested and sentenced;
hunger-strike forced his release; supported Home Rule; play, Prodigal
Daughter: A Comedy in One Act (April 24, Molesworth Hall), benefit
for Irish Women’s Franchise League; 4-page open letter to in Irish
Citizen (22 May 1915) asking Thomas MacDonagh to reconsider his militarist
policy and his implicit anti-feminism; murdered by Capt. Colthurst-Bowen
in Portobello Barracks, having been arrested while attempt to preventing
looting, 1916; called by Sean O’Casey ‘the ripest ear of corn
that well in Easter Week’; P. S. O’Hegarty prepared a bibliography
in 1936; he is McCann in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist
(1916); his widow wrote an account of her husband’s death, and conducted
a campaign for his vindication and the trial of Colthurst Bowen, assisted
by Sir Francis Fletcher Vane [who lost his commission through his intervention];
James Stephens called Skeffington the most absurdly courageous man he
ever met. DIW DIB DIH FOST FDA OCIL
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Works
Monographs, Michael Davitt: Revolutionary, Agitator
and Labour Leader (London: T. Fisher Unwin 1908; Boston: Dana Estes
1909), and Do,. facs. rep edn. 1967); War and Feminism (Dublin
[q. pub.] 1914); Speech from the Dock (Dublin: Liberty Hall 1915);
In Dark and Evil Days [1908], with a biographical notice signed
H. S. S. [Hanna Sheehy Skeffington] (Dublin: James Duffy 1916), Do.,
another edn., (1919; rep. 3rd. edn. Dublin: James Duffy 1936).
Miscellaneous, Two Essays [‘A Forgotten Aspect of the University Question’, and James, Joyce, ‘Day of the Rabblement’] (Dublin: Gerrard Bros. 1901); ‘More Shavian Prefaces’, Irish Review 1911), pp.152-155 [review of The Doctor’s Dilemma, Getting Married, and The ‘Blanco Posnet]; ‘Frederick Ryan, An Appreciation.’ Irish Review 3 (May 1913): Prodigal Daughter: A Comedy in One Act (Dublin 1915); ‘Open Letter to Thomas MacDonagh’, in Irish Citizen (22 May 1915), rep. Owen D. Edwards & Fergus Pyle, The Easter Rising (London: MacGibbon & Kee 1968) [q.pp.]; ‘Forgotten Small Nationality’, in Century, 91 (February 1916), pp.561-569.
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Criticism
Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, British Militarism as I Have Known It
(Kerryman 1946).
Owen Sheehy-Skeffington [d.1969], ‘Francis Sheehy-Skeffington’, in Owen Dudley Edwards & Fergus Pyle, eds., The Dublin Rising (1968).
L. Levenson, With Wooden Sword, A Portrait of Francis Sheehy Skeffington, Militant Pacifist (Boston, Northeastern UP; Gill & Macmillan 1985).
George Bernard Shaw, ‘On Behalf of an Irish Pacifist’, in The Matter with Ireland [ed. Dan Lawrence and David Greene] (London: Hart Davis/NY: Hill & Wang 1962), pp.90-92.
C P Curran, Under the Receding Wave (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1970), p.111-18.
William J. Feeney, ‘The Informers of ’98 sd Characters in Irish Literature.’ in Éire-Ireand, 19 (August 1977), pp.1-16. See also Irish Booklover, vol. 8, and A. M. W. ‘Leading Statesmen of the Co-operative Commonwealth.’ Leader (15 November 1913) [satirical verses incl. Yeats, AE, and Skeffington as ‘Skeffy’].
Robert
Lynd, ‘Memoir of Tom Kettle by Mary Kettle’, prefixed to The Ways of War (1917).
Sean O’Casey [P Ó Cathasaigh], The Story of the Citizen Army (1919), cited in Paul Coston, in ‘Prelude to Playwriting’, Ronald Ayling, ed., Sean O’Casey: Modern Judgements, 1969, p.55.)
Maurice Headlam, Irish Reminiscences (1947), p.147.
Richard Ellmann (James Joyce, 1959). p.69.
Declan Kiberd, ‘The Elephant of Revolutionary Forgetfulness’, in Ní Dhonnchadha and Dorgan, eds., Revising the Rising (1991).
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Notes
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919),
listed as Skeffington, Francis Sheehy; In Dark and Evil Days (1916),
about the Kyan family in 1798; Women’s Suffrage, Labour Reform and
International Peace.; b. Co. Cavan, 1878, UCD Chancellor’s Gold Medal.
Shot by Colthurst in 1916. IF lists, In Dark and Evil Days (1916),
a Wexford family in 1798.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, p.853 [John Bowen-Colthurst, a relative of Elizabeth], [1002, index. err.], pp.1003-04 [Griffith’s response to Sheehy-Skeffington’s outraged defence of Ryan as an nationalist, following Griffith’s ambivalent encomium/obituary of 12 April 1913 in Sinn Féin], [1020 bio-note, err.]; 1020 [fnd. The National Democrat, ed. with Frederick Ryan, 1907]. Bibl., Thomas Kettle, biog. [p.1018], Roger McHugh, ‘Thomas Kettle and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington’, in Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Shaping of Modern Ireland (London: Routledge & KP 1960); Field Day Anthology Vol. 3, selects ‘War and Feminism’, and ‘Speech from the Dock’, in which he makes a point about Carson’s avowal of unconstitutional action [‘if Sir Edward Carson, as a reward for saying that he would break every law possible, gets a Cabinet appointment, what is the logical position as regards myself?’]; ed. remarks that the same half-heartedly urged by defence barrister A. M. Sullivan in defence of Roger Casement [Vol. 3, pp.712-14]; also p.809, as supra]. Note also bibl., F. Sheehy-Skeffington, ‘Open Letter to Thomas MacDonagh’, in Irish Citizen 22 May 1915, rep. in Owen Dudley Edwards and Fergus Pyle, eds., 1916, The Easter Rising (MacGibbon & Kee 1968) [Vol.3, p.566].
Belfast Public Library holds Michael Davitt (1908).
Hyland (Cat. 214) lists Eugene Sheehy, Law & Human Progress (1911) [Law Students Debating Soc. of Ireland [copy inscribed with auditor’s compliments.]
Irish Literary Theatre: When Yeats’s Countess Cathleen is premiered in May 1899, Sheehy composes and signs with others a protest: ‘We feel it our duty in the name and for the honour of Dublin Catholic students of the Royal University, to protest against an art even a dispassionate art, which offers as a type of our people a loathshome brood of apostates.’ (Skeffington was “Knickerbockers” to his fellow-students on account of his revolutionary legwear, and “Hairy Jaysus” to Joyce on account of his ethical pretensions.)
No fatuity: Threshold, No. 30 (Spring 1979), editorial quotes Skeffington’s application for the post of Registrar of NUI, ‘I will spare you the fatuity of testimonials’ (p.3).
Eva Gore-Booth wrote verses at his death declaring that he was not alone, ‘for at his side does that scorned Dreamer stand/Who in the Olive Garden agonised’ [cited by Richard Kearney, ‘Myth and Terror’, in Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies, 1982, p.287.]
Bowen-Colthurst: There is an account of the court martial of Captain Bowen-Colthurst given by Louie Bennett in Louie Bennett by R. M. Fox (1955), p. 59ff; also by Monk Gibbon, ‘Murder in Portobello Barracks,’ in Inglorious Soldier (1968), pp. 29-84.
IWFL: Skeffington founded with Margaret Cousins in 1908 the Irish Women’s Franchise League, a group that ‘from its inception harried the Irish Home Rule Bill.’ (Margaret MacCurtain, ‘Women, the Vote and Revolution’, in Women and Irish Society, the Historical Dimension, ed. MacCurtain and Donncha Ó Corrain, Dublin 1978; quoted in Cheryl Herr, For the Land they Loved, 1991, p.60. Also, feminist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, ‘who had been banned from entry to the Theatre Royal,; nonetheless put on a clerical costume, became part of the crowd gathered there to hear the English prime minister, and was ‘heckling’ him about universal suffrage before being thrown out. (ibid., p. 61.)
Richard Sheehy, ‘Skeffington’s brother in law, wrote of Synge’s Playboy at the time of the riot: 'the play was rightly condemned as a slander of Irishmen and Irishwomen. An audience of self-respecting Irishmen had a perfect right to proceed to any extremity.’ (See Stan Gébler Davies, James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist, Davis-Poynter 1975, p.135.)
Richard Ellmann speaks of Sheehy-Skeffington 'quixotically’ attempt to stop British soldiers [sic] from looting during the Easter Rising. (See James Joyce, 1959; 1965 Edn.).
Female policemen: Rebutting Skeffington’s feminist thesis, Joyce asked ‘if Skeffington believed in feminism, did he think the police force should be composed of women?’ (See Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, 1966 Edn., p.63.)
Kinsman?: Stephen Brown, in Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), lists E. Skeffington Thompson, dg. of John Foster, last Speaker of Irish House of Commons; ardent Nationalist, who founded Southwark Junior Irish Literary Society with Mrs Rae in c.1889; author of Moy O’Brien (Gill [1887]; rep. 1914) [see RX].
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)