Item 1 - Memoir written by Julia Cecilia Harris née Ryan

c. 385 pp.

Hardback volume containing a typescript entitled My Memories, written by Julia Cecilia Harris née Ryan. The memoir commences with a brief history of the Ryan sept, mostly copied from notes apparently compiled by the Limerick historian Maurice Lenehan for Julia’s father. This is followed by pedigrees listing the children and grandchildren of Julia Harris’s great-grandfather Edmond Ryan (1745-1829) and those of her grandfather Michael Ryan (d. 1830). Also included is her own immediate family pedigree giving details of her parents, siblings, husband, children and grandchildren. This is followed by a lengthy description of the life, death and funeral of her great-grandfather Edmond Ryan, mostly extracted from newspapers and other published sources, recollections of her paternal grandparents Michael and Maria (née Fitzgerald) Ryan and of her uncle Edmond Fitzgerald Ryan, one-time Mayor of Limerick. These recollections include her grandmother’s account of the gunpowder explosion which took place in Limerick in 1837. She describes the courtship and marriage of her parents and provides anecdotes of her father’s work as agent to Lord Emly of Tervoe, Count Moore of Mooresfort and the Earl of Kenmare. She recalls incidents from her childhood, her nursery governesses, a pet donkey called Pedro and a feral cat named Tiger she managed to tame. She describes the illuminations in Limerick city to mark the marriage of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) to Princess Alexandra in 1863 and recounts many stories of sporting events, particularly her family’s favourite pastime of fox hunting. Among them is a description of a dangerous hunting accident during which she met her future husband, George William Harris. Julia lost both of her parents when she was nineteen and provides lengthy accounts of their deaths, particularly that of her father, to whom she appears to have been exceptionally close. She recalls the sale of her family home, which was purchased by her father-in-law, given to her and her husband as a wedding gift and sold again some ten years later as a consequence of her father-in-law’s bankruptcy. Following this setback, she and her husband emigrated to Australia but grew to regret their decision and returned to Ireland just five months later, during which voyage their youngest son Richard died from pneumonia. She describes family life at Alston House near Croom following their return and recounts several more fox hunting stories. She recalls the emigration of her eldest son George to Australia and his work there on a sheep station. She also recalls the emigration of her younger son James (Jim) to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where he worked in gold mines, inoculation stations and trading stations. She provides an account of the Matabele Rebellion and siege of Bulawayo which her son witnessed first-hand. Following the sudden and unexpected death of her husband in October 1897, Julia moved to England to the village of Mayfield to be near her only daughter who at the time was studying at St Leonard’s Catholic boarding school in Mayfield. She gives a lengthy account of the Second Boer War (1899-1902) in which her sons participated and recounts her eighteen-month visit to Rhodesia in 1911-1912 to see her two sons, both of whom had by now settled in that country. From Rhodesia she travelled to India to spend a year with her daughter whose husband, a military officer, was stationed in Bellary. As she was preparing to depart for Ireland, the First World War broke out. Julia, her daughter and her two grandchildren sailed with the Indian Army from Bombay (now Mumbai) to Port Said and on to Gibraltar, thus witnessing first-hand the mobilisation of Britain’s colonial forces. Back in England, she describes the bombing of London, the death in action of her son-in-law, the Easter Rising (‘I hang my head in shame’) and the Irish Civil War. She then returns her attention to events unfolding in Rhodesia, where a pride of lions attack her son Jim’s homestead and he miraculously escapes from the jaws of one of the lions. One tragic event follows another. Her son George’s wife, Margaret (Peggy) née Bradshaw, dies in 1921 from sepsis following a late miscarriage or still-birth of a son. In the same year, George falls ill with recurring high fever which his doctors are unable to diagnose or treat and to which he eventually succumbs in August 1922. Meanwhile her younger son’s gold mining business collapses and the family is left in near-penury. In the final pages of her memoirs, Julia provides further recollections from her childhood, girlhood and womanhood. She takes pride in having lived through the reigns of five popes and three monarchs. She describes the rapturous welcome afforded to Queen Victoria on her second and final visit to Ireland in 1900 and relates amusing anecdotes of the visit of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in 1903. A devout Roman Catholic, a woman proud of her Irish blood and a monarchist to the core, she was appalled to witness the events that shadowed the early twentieth century: ‘Loyalty not only cooled, but froze. Agitators triumphed, the patriotic, yet loyal John Redmond and the old Nationalists behind him who had fought the cause as gentlemen with clean hands were spat on. A new idol was worshipped as Leader, who was not even an Irishman and did not own a foot of Irish soil – the Spaniard de Valera!!’ The memoirs conclude with an account of a visit she made to Rome and the Vatican in spring 1924. She describes her audience with Pope Pius XI and the Holy Communion she received from his hand at the Pope’s Mass in his private chapel. Interspersed with the life story of Julia Harris, her husband and children are those of some of her siblings, including her sisters Eugenie and Bertha, both of whom became nuns; Rosetta who died in San Francisco from consumption in 1884; Anna who made an unhappy marriage; and her brother Kieran who became a solicitor in New South Wales, Australia and died following an operation to remove an inflamed appendix in 1922. She augments her personal recollections with transcripts of letters, extracts from books and newspaper articles, poems, epitaphs and extensive and devout religious contemplation. Her memoirs form a unique record of the life of the prosperous Roman Catholic middle class in late nineteenth-century Ireland, of the many and varied fates of family members dispersed across the British Empire and the dramatic and often violent events that defined the turn of the twentieth century, both in Ireland and abroad. The memoir is paginated throughout, with some pages appearing twice but none missing.

• Béarla

Content warning: Parts of the memoir describing life in colonial Africa and India contain language which is considered inappropriate today but is reflective of its time, and which some readers may find offensive.