Irish History: There has been a general resurgence in commemorative activity in Ireland during the last decade, observe Donal McCartney and Pauric Travers in their new book, The Ivy Leaf: The Parnells Remembered.
Alongside this renewal there has also been an increased interest among scholars in the history of such commemorative activity and the ways it has evolved up to the present day. In recognising the co-existence of these two trends in contemporary Irish life, Prof McCartney and Dr Travers explain that The Ivy Leaf is intended both as "an exercise in commemoration and an attempt to use commemoration to provide an insight into shifting relations between history and memory in the case of Charles Stewart Parnell and his family".
The potential of such a double undertaking is indeed intriguing, affording the authors a range of opportunities for reflecting critically upon the various ways the Parnells have been remembered by others, even as they offer examples of their own informed participation in such commemoration. Unfortunately, however, these two concerns do not come together sufficiently to make a coherent whole, such that The Ivy Leaf is finally a book that is less than the sum of its parts. That this should be so is perhaps unsurprising, given that the book largely consists of talks and lectures, most of which were delivered either to the Parnell Society or at the Parnell Summer School. It is nonetheless a pity that more effort was not expended in reducing the repetition of information and in strengthening the thematic links among the book's constituent parts.
That said, there are some strong individual pieces here, especially by Dr Travers.
His essays on particular aspects of CS Parnell's political career, on his funeral, and on the celebration of Ivy Day during the 20th century are all well-researched and concise contributions to Parnell scholarship. At the same time, they are engagingly written and, for all their specificity, manage to provide useful general insights into the life and death of this pivotal Irish leader. The essays on Parnell's funeral and the subsequent celebration of Ivy Day are especially illuminating of the way in which, despite his public downfall over his relationship with Katharine O'Shea, various factions began to wrangle over Parnell's political inheritance almost immediately after his death in 1891. That no Irish leader was able to galvanise the populace in quite the same way for another 25 years testifies not only to Parnell's political genius but also to his compelling if enigmatic personality.
Prof McCartney's contributions to The Ivy Leaf seek to shed light on the private Parnell in the context of his family, his American connections, and his relationship with Mrs O'Shea. Notwithstanding some of his critical comments about previous studies in this area, though, it is not clear that these pieces add anything new to the work of FSL Lyons, RF Foster and Jane M Côté, and the endnotes reveal the extent to which McCartney himself has relied upon these sources. The pieces are often chatty and speculative, and the content of Parnell's Women overlaps significantly with that of the commemorative orations delivered by Prof McCartney at the gravesides of Parnell family members.
What does come through strongly in these talks, along with Dr Travers's essay on Anna Parnell, is the extent to which these family members, regardless of how they may have influenced CS Parnell, were dynamic Irish people in their own right and worthy of the commemoration here afforded them. This, coupled with the helpful biographical notes at the end of the volume, make The Ivy Leaf a potential resource for anyone keen to explore further the full dimensions of the Parnell legacy, past and present.
Robert Tobin's study of essayist Hubert Butler and southern Protestantism after independence is forthcoming from Oxford Historical Monographs
The Ivy Leaf: The Parnells Remembered By Donal McCartney and Pauric Travers UCD Press, 204pp. €50(hbk), €25(pbk)