Photocopy of a letter from Patrick Hickey, ‘C’ Company Irish Brigade, c/o General O’Duffy, Cáceres, Spain to his parents: ‘I have good news, this time I expect to be home in less than four weeks time we are back from the front now for a rest in caceres… I am looking forward to going home as we are all fed up with this place’.
Stradling, Robert Arthur, scholarPhotocopy of a letter from Patrick Hickey, ‘C’ Company Irish Brigade, c/o Caixa Postal 71 or 74, Lisbon, Portugal to his parents, describing life in the trenches: ‘Well mother we are on the front line at last it is safe enough only for the shells comeing over but we have got that used to them comeing over that we take them as a joke… we get paid every week and we spend on grub and cigs, I never touch the drink now it is only a cod getting drunk out here you need your head where I am… Well mother it is terrible to see the way the Reds smashed up the chapels here it would make your blood boil but they are rotten cowards’.
Stradling, Robert Arthur, scholarPhotocopy of a letter from Pádraig Quinn, Uisce Mor, Graig-na-Managh, county Kilkenny, to Maurice Fennell, regarding a letter in the Irish Independent and confirming some facts regarding his time in Spain.
Stradling, Robert Arthur, scholarPhotocopy of a letter from Morosini Whelan School of Dancing, 2 Leslie Court, Phibsboro, Dublin 7, attaching N48/2/32.
Clarke, Barbara (1939-2007), dancerPhotocopy of a letter dated 18 September 1920 from [Louie Ransom née O’Malley], Kuala Selangor estate, Kuala Selangor, Federal Malay States to her brother Charles Vincent O’Malley. She describes the depressed state of life in Malaya and the low price of rubber, and reluctantly agrees to ‘resign any claim we think we have’ in her brother Patrick’s favour, but reserves the right to look to for financial assistance ‘should anytime in the future I be in severe want, & Paddy in good circumstances.’ Lacking last page(s).
Cantillon, Grace née O'Malley (b. 1934), family historianPhotocopy of a letter from Liam [Walsh], Secretary of Irish Brigade Association, to Joseph A. Cunningham, 281 Antrim Road, Belfast, referring to enclosure of Cunningham’s passport.
Stradling, Robert Arthur, scholarPhotocopy of a letter from Joseph A. Cunningham, Solicitor, Templeshannon, Enniscorthy, county Wexford to Captain Maurice J. Fennell, Church Street, Rathkeale, county Limerick, regarding his article in the Irish Independent on 2 March 1976 and Cunningham’s own published memoirs, and notes ‘I am wondering is Sergeant Sheehy (Garryowen?) alive or Tom Neaney. Tom saved my life once (I have always felt) when he stopped a runaway mule in Ciempozeulos one afternoon with Paddy Casey (Donegal) and myself helpless in the dray. I can still see it careering furiously for the narrow archway leading from the town to the lines.’ In addition, notes holding an interview with General Franco in 1973. Also gives an update on the whereabouts of some of his former colleagues from the Irish Brigade. Concludes by stating ‘For me the fight in Spain was Christ – v – Anti-Christ and everything really Irish must be radically Christian. A Republic that would not be Christian would not be Irish’.
Stradling, Robert Arthur, scholarPhotocopy of a letter from Joseph A. Cunningham, Quarter-master of ‘C’ Company, entitled ‘IRISH CRUSADE IN SPAIN, addressed to La Quince Bandera del Tercio (La Bandera Irlandesa), noting intention of surviving members of ‘the Irish Crusade to Spain’ to mark the tenth anniversary of their ‘departure for the Battle Field of Christ’, marked by a mass offered in Dublin to deceased comrades, followed by a visit to the grave of General Eoin O’Duffy, noting ‘Let us all – from Antrim to Kerry, from Wexford to Donegal – for the sake of those of us who lie out beyond (Cáceres, Valdemoro, Ciempozuelos, La Marañosa, Brunete) or in graveyards keep still noble the memory of the men who formed the most memorable military crusade in Irish History’.
Stradling, Robert Arthur, scholarPhotocopy of a handwritten letter from James McCarthy, Enniskeane, county Cork, former Legionnaire in Irish Brigade, to Maurice Fennell, congratulating him on a letter in the Irish Independent: ‘You stated facts, which every member of the brigade can endorse. No group has ever been so misunderstood and their motives more misrepresented over the years’.
Stradling, Robert Arthur, scholarPhotocopy of a letter from James Joyce, Via Giovanni Boccaccio, Trieste, Austria to Grant Richards, in which he agrees to modify certain words and passages in Counterparts and other stories in order that the story Two Gallants may be included. Suggests to Richards that he find another printer ‘who was dumb from his birth, or, if none such can be found, a person who will not “argue the point”’. Concludes by saying that he has sent Richards a copy of a Dublin paper which will illustrate that ‘the Irish are the most spiritual race on the face of the earth’ and hopes that this will reconcile him to Dubliners. States that he seriously believes that Richards ‘will retard the course of civilisation in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass’.
McGrath, Edward Patrick (1929-1994), journalist and consultant