A trip to the Jesuit archives
The recent Lyric Feature on RTÉ examining the life of Lady Gilbert (Rosa Mulholland,1841-1921), included a trip to the Jesuit archives in Leeson St. There, the documentary maker Sara Lodge (Professor of English, St Andrew’s University), enlisted the service of the archivist Damien Burke, who showed her letters and papers that gave listeners a unique insight into Lady Gilbert’s friendship with the late Fr Matthew Russell SJ (1834 – 1912).
Rosa Mulholland — better known after marriage as Lady Gilbert — moved within influential artistic and literary circles yet maintained a strong personal connection with Fr Russell, the Jesuit founder and editor of the Irish Monthly. Their correspondence highlights a relationship defined by mutual respect, shared aesthetic sensibilities, and a deep but subtle spiritual affinity.
The visit to the Jesuit archives reveals that Rosa Mulholland was someone who challenged Fr Russell while also supporting his editorial mission. Overall, her letters reveal how she influenced the tone and direction of the Irish Monthly, particularly in encouraging openness to new artistic styles and to writers whose work did not always fit conventional Catholic expectations. Fr Russell, in turn, provided her with an intellectual sounding board and spiritual mentor, while also relying on her instincts as a reader and cultural observer.
Given her talent as a writer, commentator, and poet, Lady Gilbert deserves to be far better known than she is. Producer of The Lyric Feature, Clare Cunningham, tells the story of visiting her grave in Glasnevin, where she is buried with her husband.
Below a long list of his achievements is engraved the line ‘Buried with John T Gilbert is his wife, Rosa Mulholland.’ Clare writes, “Not a word about the fact that she had been one of Ireland’s foremost female writers of fiction, a passionate advocate for women’s roles as reforming landlords, entrepreneurs, and cultural leaders of an Irish revival that could heal the rift between social classes, one of Ireland’s first town councillors, influential on a raft of younger writers, including W B Yeats and Katherine Tynan. Her work was once widely taught in Irish schools.”
Clare’s Lyric Feature sets out to redress this, and in so doing, Lady Gilbert emerges not just as an artist of note but also as a perceptive critic and an unusually candid voice within the Catholic cultural sphere of her time.
In this documentary, Wanted: An Irish Novelist, which first aired on Sunday, 16 February, at 6 pm, Rosa Mulholland is restored to a more central position in Irish history, not merely as a figure adjacent to better‑known personalities, but as an influential cultural agent in her own right.
Another tale of Jesuit friendship and bibliography was the subject of an article in The Tablet, by former Justice Garrett Sheehan, a retired judge of the Court of Appeal in Ireland. He recalled his relationship with the late Joe Veale SJ (1921 – 2002), who taught him English and Religious Knowledge whilst in secondary school.
Unusually, Justice Sheehan noted that Joe encouraged them, as students, to critique the Catholic faith they had inherited. He also allowed the boys to choose whatever topic they wanted for their weekly essay. And even more unusually, “The return of our essay with Joe’s comments marked in red ink was a highlight of our week.”
‘A pocket -filled presence’ is the title of Justice Sheehan’s Tablet article, where he recalls “the lifetime of books and reading” inspired by Joe, whom he describes as “…a tall, quiet man with an imposing presence. He opened up our lives, freeing us from the narrow constraints of Irish Catholicism, and gave us a wider and more positive sense of what being a Christian might entail.”
Not surprisingly, then, Joe’s recommended reading included Patrick Kavanagh, Albert Camus, and J.D. Salinger.
