The Life and Legacy of Caroline Townshend - Part One
The harp, the symbol of Ireland. We see it all around us every day, on our passports, on our coins, even on the branding of our famous stout and yet there was a time, not so very long past, when ‘the harp that once through Tara’s Halls’ was seldom heard in this country.
The name Caroline Townshend is known to only a handful of people in Ireland but if any deserves to be a household name, surely it is hers, for it almost entirely due to her efforts that the ancient Irish harping tradition became firmly re-established.
In ‘Our Musical Heritage’, the late Seán Ó Riada wrote:
In or around 1914 Carrie moved to Shorecliffe House in Glandore, Co Cork, another Townshend property a few miles from Castletownshend.
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| Singer with a clàrsach by Cathleen Mann (1896--1959) |
In ‘Our Musical Heritage’, the late Seán Ó Riada wrote:
"At the end of the nineteenth century, attempts were made once more…..to get the true ancient harping tradition going again, but by this time the nature of the tradition had been forgotten. It was not until the early nineteen twenties, when a Miss Townsend (sic) of Castletownsend (sic) in County Cork put her mind to it, that any progress was made."
A significant acknowledgement of the importance of Caroline Townshend’s contribution to Irish music, by the man who himself was arguably the greatest influence on the genre before his premature death in 1971.
Caroline Mary Townshend was born in Dublin on 31 July 1859. The Townshends were a well-established family of Anglo-Irish landed gentry, whose family seat was located at Castletownshend in Co. Cork.
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| Castle Townshend, Co Cork |
Her father, Charles Uniacke Townshend a businessman and philanthropist, was vice-president of the Royal Dublin Society from 1893 until his death in 1907 and ran a successful land agency in Molesworth Street, where, for a time, he employed a youthful George Bernard Shaw. Shaw would later marry into another branch of the Townshend family, an event not welcomed with unreserved joy by his in-laws!
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| 15 Molesworth Street, offices of Charles Uniacke Townshend. |
Caroline, known as Carrie, was the third of what was to become a family of eight children, seven of whom survived infancy which was pretty good going for the time. Her mother died just a few weeks before Carrie’s fourteenth birthday and her father remarried two years later. He went on to have seven more children with his second wife, the last of them born in 1890 making her more than thirty years Carrie’s junior.
No information has been forthcoming about Carrie’s childhood or early life and one can only surmise as to what sort of education she had. What we do know is that she was intensely musical and described by those who knew her in later life as an accomplished pianist. We can also surmise that she was not only a musician, but a singer of some ability, as her particular interest lay in revival of the art of singing Irish songs to one’s own harp accompaniment, and it is in this art that she instructed her many pupils.
In 1907 her father died, leaving her a sizeable inheritance of three thousand pounds, equal to about four hundred thousand pounds in today’s money. Clearly this, wisely invested, would have provided a reasonable annual income and placed her in a position of financial independence. Like many Anglo-Irish women of her class, she was interested in politics, social reform and women’s rights. By 1912 she was living at the Castle in Castletownshend and was an active member of both the Gaelic League and the United Irishwomen. She was also teaching Irish to anyone willing to learn, including her cousin Violet Martin of Somerville and Ross fame, Martin noting in her diary of 1912 how she went for her Irish lesson with Carrie and had ‘the usual talk about politics’.
In or around 1914 Carrie moved to Shorecliffe House in Glandore, Co Cork, another Townshend property a few miles from Castletownshend.
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| Shorecliffe House, Glandore, Co Cork |
It was here in 1919 that she hosted an Irish language summer school, which was in fact a cover for an Irish Volunteers training camp. The men were housed in the gate lodge and in tents on the front lawn. The RIC received a tip-off and raided the house one night, finding revolvers and rifles hidden in the bushes in the garden. According to an account in The Guardian newspaper of the time, four people were arrested, including a rural councillor and the military took possession of the house and grounds, forcing the occupants to leave. We must hope that Carrie found shelter in the Castle!
In 1921, as an officer of the Gaelic League, she accompanied Louie Bennett, the Irish trade union activist and Suffragette, to America, where she gave evidence regarding the activities of the Black and Tans to a congress in Washington. During these years she was teaching harp locally in Co. Cork, but at some point during the 1920s, already approaching seventy, she made the decision to return to Dublin and it is then, that she began to instruct the pupils who would go on to make harping history not only in Ireland but on the world stage.
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| Pupils of Caroline Townshend, circa 1926, Máirín Ní Shé is first on the left in the back row. |
This post was written by Angela Frewen, based on her research into the life of Caroline Townshend. Further information on the Townshend family can be found here, a site curated by Colonel John Townsend.
So, your first illustration, the Cathleen Mann painting, is of Heloise Russell-Fergusson... who was Scottish, playing her Clark, which is American.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I have the harp Caroline Townshend bought from Wales when she wanted to learn, and couldn't find a harp in Ireland.... It's a converted Erard pedal....
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DeleteHello there,
Deleteso, yes, Clark called his instrument Irish, but he was following on from Morley, and his wife, Cecilia Praetorious, who made/ produced a tutor for 'The Old Irish Harp'.... though their Irish harp is completely derived from pedal harp construction, as the modern neo-celtic is. There is an idea in harp history that Clark Copied Morley who copied Egan, but that doesn't pan out when you put the instruments next to each other (I'm lucky enough to have o a couple of Egans, a Clark, and a late Morley)... and a Dilling, with the mechanism instead of blades or levers. They are all related, but very different.
The Erard I have that came via the writer Dorothy Macardle, and is claimed to be Caroline Townshend's has had a solid neck put on it, and the pedals removed.... this was a fairly common reaction in Wales up until the 1970's for pedal harps that were beyond repair. It has threaded brass hooks, rather than blades. When macardle died, the harp was left in a house that was unroofed in a storm, and got rather damaged, and was going to be burned... I offered to buy it, and spent a while putting it back into playing order. Basically, it looks like a Grecian pedal harp, but works like a blade harp.
Post Egan, there doesn't seem to have been anyone building harps in Ireland, commercially, at least, until MacFall started building c. 1902, and his designs were carried on by Waltons, and McCullough, so choice of harp would have been very limited in Ireland. I the 1940's Mother Alphonsus bullied Quinn into building harps, and the story starts up again.... all rather fascinating.
Hi Valerie - I checked my notes for the above article and the information about Carrie Townshend having gone to Wales to find an instrument actually comes from Nora Joan Clark author of 'The Story of The Irish Harp'. She visited Ireland in 1978 and met with Mairin and Roisin Ni She,(by that time Mrs Ferriter and Roisin Ni Tuama) who were both pupils of Caroline Townshend. It must have been from them that she obtained the information contained in her book and indeed I remember that at one time you were under the impression that Mrs Ferriter's teacher was Welsh, so clearly there was always a Welsh connection associated with Carrie. Mrs Ferriter was of course your own teacher and I remember the many long conversations and gossip on all things harp related that took place in our household when she visited :)
ReplyDeleteMike, how wonderful to hear that we've identified the location of at least one of Carrie's harps! This is a very significant and important find for those of us with an interest in Caroline Townshend - and of course of great interest to the Townshend family. I am unclear however as to whether you are being tongue-in-cheek when you say that she bought it in Wales - are you saying that you have the receipt/bill of sale and that it was purchased in Wales, therefore debunking the idea that she bought an 'Irish' harp there - or are you saying that she never bought a harp in Wales at all? Because I don't think it's safe to make that assumption.
I think that as a member of a landed Anglo-Irish family, she would certainly have had access to a concert harp had she wanted one and given her family's considerable wealth and her own undoubted love of music, I would make two inferences. Firstly, that during her lifetime she owned several harps in which case the converted Erard in your possession may have been only one of them. Perhaps it was an instrument on which she initially learned to play before deciding she wanted an 'Irish' harp.
Sean O Riada says that Carrie's harping style owed more to the Welsh tradition than to the original Irish style and that is perfectly in keeping with the fashion of the time, but the question is where and from whom did she learn to play in that style?
I hope you will get back to us with a bit more information about Carrie's Erard.
The story that came with the harp, is that Townshend was not able to find a harp locally, so was put in touch with someone in Wales who bought. sold and lets be polite and say 'repaired.' I suspect an Owen lloyd connection.
DeleteThis has had the neck replaced with a solid neck, and the pedals removed, basically converting it from a pedal harp to a hook harp.
The writer Dorothy Macardle was either given it, or inherited it, and when she died, it got rather badly treated, and it was nearly burned.... so I was able to rescue it. The Townshend connection is what came with it....
One more thing, apart from Egans, which have never been plentiful, before 1902, nobody was making neo-celtics in Ireland commercially, if at all... In Scotland, they start being created in the 1890's, and then Morley and Harnaack made them in London.... depending on when Townshend stated learning, she may not have been able to find an 'Irish' harp.
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DeleteThank you so much for all that information Mike. It is really wonderful that you were there to save that instrument from a terrible fate and at the same time preserved and repaired a very important part of Irish harping history. Yes that is very true regarding the lack of availability of Irish harps at the time. As you can see in my Bio I was a student of Marin Ni She who was a pupil of Caroline Townshend and the harp room at Sion Hill was what would now be regarded as a treasure trove of antique harps. Both Mairin and her sister Rosin had beautiful McFall harps and I do remember her talking about the difficulty in her early harping days about finding a suitable instrument in Ireland but that is a long story.
I also experienced difficulties finding an instrument I truly liked in the early Seventies. There was only Waltons and McCullough Piggots and alas there was but slim pickings in their harp departments. I didn't like the sound of the Walton Harps but eventually bought an Aoyama from McCulough Piggots as it was the only one that I could find. Dan Quinn had already started making harps at the time (his workshop was in the basement of the Royal Irish Academy of Music) but the waiting list was very long and yes I have played the old Quinn harps with the blades during my early years.
Mike, it would be wonderful if you could perhaps share a photo of Carries harp and maybe eventually even a video of you playing a short piece on it?
I would love to feature it on the blog in a separate post about how the harp was found. Or perhaps you would like to do a guest post about it if you have time? Who better to tell the tale than the main protagonist!