Hugh Lane Gallery Marks Casement Centenary

Irish Political Review – June 2016

The Hugh Lane Gallery, Parnell Square, hosts two exhibitions marking the centenary of the 1916 Rising.  They are especially concerned with the life, death and legacy of Roger Casement. They represent the main ongoing public presentation in honour of the man which is to be viewed in the capital. Admission is free. The gallery is little more than five minutes walk from O’Connell St, up a modest incline. The exercise could only be beneficial for those with the mild audacity to venture forth and a guarantee of enlightenment in some shape or form awaits.  

The main exhibition is called High Treason after Sir John Lavery’s famous painting of Casement’s appearance before The Court of Appeal. This large canvas in oils is the centrepiece. The bearded visage of Casement in the dock is at the centre of the painting. Lavery had been allowed into the courtroom, on the 17th and 18th of July 1916, so he could make his initial draft as the case was being heard. The work captures the tense public spectacle of a once renowned high state official on trial for consorting with the enemy in time of war. 

Alongside hang portraits of various personalities from the time associated with Casement’s story. There are also a number of reproductions of relevant popular posters, song lyric sheets and verse sheets from the time. It is the collection of portraits, however, which is most striking. They have come from the hands of such masters of the genre as Orpen and the already mentioned Lavery. Most of the works displayed are on loan from other institutions situated both here and in Britain. Those portrayed include, among others, FE Smith, Edward Carson, Dr Douglas Hyde, WB Yeats, Lord Chief Justice Sir Rufus Isaacs and Casement himself. 

In a room nearby the 2002 prize winning documentary film The Ghost of Roger Casement is being shown on a continuing basis. The writing and direction were by Alan Gilsenan. The film covers the main details of Casement’s biography with an emphasis on his groundbreaking investigations of atrocities against native rubber gatherers in the Congo and Peru and his personally fatal embrace of Irish Republicanism in the last years of his life. The end of the film concerns itself with the international conference on Casement organised by the Bertie Ahern led administration in 2000 and the bizarre attempt at something resembling a forensic examination of the contentious diaries which was to follow. The film lasts about 90 minutes.   

The film is an artwork in itself. A variety of scholars and public figures are caught on camera making contributions. Some of these are brief snatches of opinion others are at greater length. By far the most are well chosen. They are artfully edited and presented so ensuring a provocative and dramatic effect. Newly filmed scenes are alternated with archival footage. Still images and music are evocative. 

It happens more often than not with written and filmed attempts to come to terms with Casement’s life and legacy, that the dubious rubs shoulders with the credible. This film is no exception. Claims that he attempted to take his own life while being held in the Tower of London are reported without quibble. These attempts were reported to have been twofold. One story had him attempt to use poison he had taken with him from the submarine and had managed to hide from his captors in his hair. A second story had him eat bent nails which had been embedded in the firewood in his cell (yet all the while under 24 hour guard). 

Owen Dudley Edwards, the Edinburgh based historian, makes the point that:

 “Casement … was a walking disaster to the British government. The fact that a figure of such integrity in international humanitarianism was on the German side, and not the British and had broken with his own people feeling so strongly about it...” 

Regarding the Diaries he says: 

“They arrived quite extraordinarily conveniently. That is one of the most suspicious things about them. They are there when they were absolutely urgently needed.”

Eunan O’Halpin, Professor of Contemporary Irish History at Trinity College, Dublin confidently says:

 “…the forgery narrative, which tends to have more holes than a colander…this is an article of faith, I said at the conference this is the Irish Roswell, and so I think it is.”    

Towards the end of the film the results of the Giles examination are announced by Prof W.J. McCormack. 

Taken as a whole the film in substance is more favourable to the contention the diaries are genuine than the opposite. The viewer fresh to the controversy would be led to believe that something that could meaningfully be called a “forensic examination” had, in fact, taken place. However, following the announcement of the outcome of the examination partisans of forgery were among those recorded giving their views. This is an absorbing documentary. 

Running contemporaneously there is another exhibition called Our Kind by the Dublin born instillation artist Alan Phelan. One part of this is an instillation and a related part is a 30 minute feature film. They are meant to be experienced in tandem. They are meant as a response to Casement’s famous speech from the dock after his conviction. 

The instillation is confined to one white walled room. Around the room there is a dark band on which phrases taken from the speech are written in white capitals. These phrases are deliberately taken out of their original context and so are utterly subverted in meaning. For example, in the speech, towards its end Casement declared:

 “Self-government is our right, a thing born in us at birth, a thing no more to be doled out to us, or withheld from us, by another people than the right to life itself -- than the right to feel the sun, or smell the flowers, or to love our kind.” 

On the wall we read in capitals: “THE RIGHT TO FEEL THE SUN, OR SMELL THE FLOWERS, OR TO LOVE OUR KIND” 

On the walls of the room there are words which can at first just barely be made out as they are in white lettering on a yet whiter background. This wall text covers a substantial part of the eye level wall surfaces. We read and notice this text is taken from various sexually explicit passages from the infamous Diaries. For example December 14th 1911 was recorded as a particularly stupendous day from the point of view of same-sex talent spotting: “seven school boys (one a Cafuzo 17-18) and 5 of them white and 4 had huge ones”. So, in this very different context the phrase “to love our kind” is subverted into a reference to homosexuality. 

The game of taking phrases from the speech and de-contextualising them also happens in the accompanying film. Likewise, just as on the wall, dark bands appear on the bottom of the screen from time to time bearing white capitals. There is a sentence in the speech:

 “But for the Attorney-General of England there is only "England"; there is no Ireland; there is only the law of England, no right of Ireland; the liberty of Ireland and of an Irishman is to be judged by the power of England.” 

From this comes the phrase “THERE IS NO IRELAND” which subverts the whole concept of nationalism on which the sense of the speech is based. 

Similarly there is a sentence: 

 “It is not necessary to climb the painful stairs of Irish history -- that treadmill of a nation, whose labours are as vain for her own uplifting as the convict's exertions are for his redemption, to review the long list of British promises made only to be broken -- of Irish hopes, raised only to be dashed to the ground.” 

From this is extracted the phrase: “IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO CLIMB THE PAINFUL STAIRS OF IRISH HISTORY” which is as much as to say Irish history is as well ignored. 

It is interesting that in the exhibition the uncontested words of Casement uttered after his conviction for treason are deliberately taken out of their original context and distorted in their meaning. Meanwhile, the long contested content of his Diaries is artfully placed before the world as if sacred text. The room containing the instillation has the aspect of an oratory where the blessed Diaries are honoured in solemn exposition. So called post-Catholic Ireland has retained a talent for unexamined dogmatic faith.   

The feature film has a cast of three. The style is described as “counter-factual”. This means that the script writer has taken liberties with historical facts for the sake of some objective understood only by them. The liberties taken here have been extravagant. The action happens in Norway in 1941. One character is Casement who, had he lived would have been 76 in 1941. In the film he appears to be a man of about 40. 

Another character is Alice Stopford-Green who in real life died in 1929. Had she been alive in 1941 she would have been 94 years old. She was the daughter of a County Meath Church of Ireland Rector who became an influential Nationalist historian at the beginning of the 20th century. She had been a close friend and collaborator of Casement. Gina Moxley plays her as a woman in her 50s. 

The third character is Adler Christensen. He was a man servant or male lover to Casement depending on which biographer you want to believe. They travelled from the US to Germany via Norway in 1914. Christensen was a young tearaway who found it difficult to stay out of trouble. After a stay in Germany he travelled back to the US where he married and abandoned a series of women. The film has the two men living together as lovers in Norway. 

Alice has travelled from Ireland to Norway to visit Roger. There is no dialogue for the first 5 minutes. The strange eerie music blends with the spectacular snow covered Norwegian landscape. The music was composed by Michael Fleming. The black and white film gives surfaces and facial expressions extra definition. The panning shots of the mountainous terrain draw in the viewer. 

Alice and Roger ‘learn’ that Countess Markievicz has committed suicide in Ireland. They speculate it could have been an assassination. (The real Markievicz died in 1926) This is the only reference to Ireland in the film. This is where one of the leaders of the 1916 Rising has, on its 25th anniversary, suffered a sordid death. The implication is disillusion with the enterprise of national revolt and nation building. 

Over and above modest elements of drama and plot the audience has to endure a painfully tedious and convoluted verbal rigmarole. A film editor was needed who would have been prepared to cut out most of this superfluous dialogue leaving a reasonably coherent and evocative short film of 15 or so minutes. 

Interestingly the actor playing Adler sports a Nazi or Nazi like uniform. This is meant to be Nazi occupied Norway in 1941. This means Casement was sleeping with a Nazi. Nudge, nudge; profound and sordid meanings and understandings are ours for the taking.  

It is not to be forgotten that this is all meant as a reflection on the speech from the dock. As mentioned already two of the last phrases to appear on bands at the bottom of the screen are: “THERE IS NO IRELAND” and “IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO CLIMB THE PAINFUL STAIRS OF IRISH HISTORY”. 

Our Kind reflects a point of view which challenges the self-satisfied centenary commemorative ethos. This viewpoint holds the passionate ethnic nationalism which Casement’s speech was based upon, to be out of date and positively dangerous. It has elements of the old German nationalism of blood and soil. The world has moved on. Ireland, such as it is, is part of a wider political, economic and cultural world. States are blending together. An obsession with Irish history threatens to lead to ethnic tribalism and possibly ethnic violence. The nationalism of Casement’s day is passé. Now our political leaders look to the abolition of the Irish state and its absorption within a wider European political entity. 

In challenging Casement’s famed speech from the dock Phelan does us a service in so far as he might provokes us to reflect.

The exhibitions High Treason and Our Kind will continue at the Hugh Lane Gallery, Parnell Square until 
October 2nd. 
Tim O’Sullivan