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You are > Home > Mayo to reap the benefit of Jackie’s legacy
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Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Mayo to reap the benefit of Jackie’s legacy
By: James Laffey
Jackie Clarke was well-known in his native Ballina as a collector of Irish artifacts. But no-one ever guessed the full extent of his outstanding library. James Laffey reports.
At first glance it looks like a very ordinary autograph album. Its green cover, embellished with gold lettering, is in immaculate condition, suggesting the book is no more than thirty or forty years old. The pages are in equally pristine condition; there are no tears or dog-ears to be seen.
Yet it is only on turning the first few pages of this simple, unadorned autograph album that one realises its significance in Irish history. The first page contains the signature of Eamon de Valera, beautifully inscribed in a neat, firm hand. The next page boasts the autograph of Arthur Griffiths, followed by Michael Collins, Kevin Boland, Countess Markievicz.
After a few more pages one quickly realises that this is, indeed, no ordinary autograph book. It is, in fact, a priceless piece of history; a personally signed album of all those who participated in the first Dáil in 1919 and the Treaty debates of 1922 as well as those who were involved in the Treaty negotiations in London. It is a ‘who’s who’ of founding fathers of the Irish State; every single participant in those early years of Irish independence has signed the book.
But it is not only the signatures of men like de Valera and Collins that make the album so significant. There are two pages at the rear that are filled with neat pen strokes, as if someone was carefully recording a particular event. The event in question was the poll taken in Dáil Eireann on the day that deputies voted for and against the Anglo-Irish Treaty that established the Free State and gave rise to the Civil War.
Each vote has been meticulously tabulated in separate columns across opposing pages - those for and against the Treaty. In a third column, on the right hand side, there are some shorthand notes - yet to be deciphered - with a quotation in long-hand.
The quotation resonates with the poignancy and bitterness of the anti-Treaty side. It simply says: The last moment of the betrayal of the Irish people. The name, ‘Mary McSwiney’ is signed underneath the quote. Mary McSwiney was the elder sister of Terence McSwiney, the Mayor of Cork who died on hunger strike in 1924.
As one flicks through the pages of the album for a second time it is hard not to feel the “hand of history”. This little autograph book has travelled through the generations, from the august chamber of Dáil Eireann on the day of the Treaty debate to another historic building – the old Moy Hotel – on the banks of the River Moy in Ballina eighty years later.
Its story is the story of one man’s passion for preserving the history of his people. It is the story of a Ballina man – a Mayo man, an Irishman – who devoted his entire life to the acquisition and safeguarding of a nation’s historical legacy. It is the story of a man called Jackie Clarke.
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He was 13-years-old when he first began his collection of Irish historical memorabilia. A student at Blackrock College in Dublin, Jackie Clarke was no stranger to Irish history. His family had been prominent business people in Ballina for decades and Jackie grew up in his father’s newsagents where all the newspapers arrived from Dublin each day. It was little surprise, then, that he first began collecting contemporaneous periodicals and journals, the sort of material that no-one else regarded as valuable in those days.
The Irish State was still young when Jackie Clarke began his sixty-year voyage of recording and collating the history of his native land. Many of the participants of the 1916 Rising and subsequent War of Independence were still alive, and limited value was placed on the memorabilia from those historic years in Irish history. The priceless contents of many attics were thrown onto bonfires and scrap-heaps as the Irish public rid itself of the relics of yesteryear.
There were only a small number of people who truly appreciated the enormous significance of the historical items that were being thrown to the wind in those early years of the Free State. Jackie Clarke was one such person, a visionary who recognised the importance of these items to future generations. The early teenage passion of collecting newspapers and journals was to evolve into an all-consuming past-time as he moved into manhood. Jackie decided that if no-one else was going to preserve the history of Ireland he would do it himself.
“My brother was interested in Irish history from the earliest age,” recalls Loretta Clarke. “He was always on the look out for memorabilia from the past, whether it was books, journals, pamphlets or photographs. He had a particular interest in the 1916 Rising and he devoted a lot of time to collecting material pertaining to it. But, really, his interest as a historian encompassed all aspects of Ireland’s fight for freedom, whether it was the Rising or the 1798 Rebellion.”
Jackie Clarke was no amateur when it came to acquiring artifacts from the past. He had an unerring sense of what was important, an innate understanding of what was rare and what was commonplace.
“I didn’t know Jackie but I have been able to build up a picture of the type of man he was from his collection,” says the noted historian, Sinead McCoole, who has been appointed Curator/Keeper of the Jackie Clarke Collection. “He was able to see things noone else could see and he knew the value of something – and I’m not talking about the monetary value. As far as money was concerned Jackie did not care - he wasn’t buying these items as a financial investment; he was buying them because he understood their importance to future generations. He was so clever and brilliant in the types of artifacts he acquired. Everything was acquired for a reason.
“Jackie was what is known in the business as a connoisseur collector. It was like as if he had 17 degrees in modern Irish history, such was his appreciation of the material that he was acquiring.”
It’s a view that is shared by Belfast man, Peter Rowan, a renowned seller of antiquarian books, who was astounded by some of the rare material he found in the Jackie Clarke Library during a visit to Ballina last week.
“I’m thirty years in the business and it gets to the stage where it is hard to find things you have not seen before but I’ve only been looking at this collection for ten minutes and already I’ve seen things I didn’t know existed.
“I never met Jackie but we talked a lot on the telephone and we got on very well, even though we wouldn’t have shared the same political ideology! But, as far as Jackie was concerned, politics was put to one side when it came to collecting books and other artifacts. His first loyalty was to Ireland and its history - he felt he was duty bound to preserve Ireland’s past and political ideologies never interfered with his work as a historian. I think he was fairly unique in that respect and he was well known in the business as someone who was an honest broker and a genuine connoisseur collector.”
Such was the respect that Jackie Clarke commanded in antiquarian circles that he was often given first refusal when rare artifacts or memorabilia came on the market.
“Booksellers liked him and they had a lot of respect for him,” says Sinead McCoole. “He was someone whose reputation preceded him. The booksellers knew he had this love of history and Ireland and he was their first stop after the national institutions. That’s why the collection is so impressive.”
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Jackie Clarke’s boundless enthusiasm for Irish history was well known in his native Ballina. He was the quintessential Ballina man, involved in a plethora of community organisations. He was a former chairman of the local Urban District Council and he was a popular businessman: Clarke’s fish shop has been one of the distinctive landmarks on O’Rahilly Street for decades. But no-one could have guessed at the extraordinary library that Jackie compiled over six decades of assiduous collecting of Irish artifacts.
“I saw some of the material ten years ago but I never realised the full extent of the collection,” says Johnny O’Malley, Mayor of Ballina. “Jackie was collecting when it was unfashionable to do so and he was always on the look out for new material. It was a passion that never left him - he started it at a young age and never stopped.”
It is only when one glances through the catalogue of the Jackie Clarke Library that its true significance becomes apparent. The collection spans nearly 400 years of Irish history, with documents dating from 1617 (the Penn manuscript) to the present day (a copy of the Good Friday Agreement).
Some of the material is utterly priceless. There is a letter, written by the Governor of Kilmainham Gaol to Fr Aloysius, requesting him to go to the jail to give Patrick Pearse his last rites on the night before his execution. There are books from Joseph Mary Plunkett’s own library as well as an extremely rare copy of the poet’s Sonnets to Columba, which was a private, limited edition of less than 25 copies. There is the unpublished Le Roux manuscript, The Life of Sean McDiarmada, long believed to have been destroyed. And there are letters from Michael Davitt, Maud Gonne, O’Donovan Rossa, Charles Gavan Duffy as well as a typescript notice from de Valera ordering that arms be dumped at the end of the Civil War. The historical breadth and depth of the collection is astounding.
“In my view the Jackie Clarke Library is undoubtedly the most important single collection of nationalist/republican memorabilia in the country, outside the collections in the National Museum and Kilmainham Jail,” says Pat Cooke, who is the Curator of the Kilmainham Jail Museum. “It is an extraordinary thing to have in a town like Ballina and I think there will be immense benefits from it. There is huge research potential in the collection – basically it tells the story of Ireland from the 1600s right up to the present day. It is an incredible collection.”
Peter Rowan is equally impressed by the fruits of Jackie Clarke’s “all-consuming passion” for Irish history.
“Jackie had a passion for original sources and that is what you find in this collection. It’s all about primary sources, which means it will be extremely valuable to researchers and historians.
“Jackie understood the importance of primary sources. All the newspapers, pamphlets, broadsides, leaflets that we see here - they were all produced by people with a view to changing other people’s minds. It’s street literature and Jackie understood that. Lots of people with much grander reputations don’t understand it. Jackie knew what was important and that’s why the collection is so valuable.”
The collection of newspapers in the library is phenomenal and is possibly without precedent anywhere else in the world.
“There are entire runs of the Dublin Evening Post which was a newspaper in the 1700s as well as copies of the Freeman’s Journal from the 1700s and the Dublin Chronicle,” says Sinead McCoole. “There are more than fifty different newspapers from Easter Week 1916 and its aftermath. Some of the newspapers are not even in the British Libraries let alone the Irish libraries. It really is astounding material and not a day goes by that I do not find something that I have never seen before.”
Mayo County Librarian, Austin Vaughan, who is charged with making the collection available to the public, is equally impressed by the material that has been unearthed.
“It’s an incredible library and it will be the envy of every other county in Ireland. It has enormous potential and we in Mayo Co Library are absolutely committed to ensuring that it is properly showcased. We are determined to do it full justice.”
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IT was always Jackie Clarke’s intention that Ballina should benefit from his magnificent library. He spent his whole life in the town and he loved its streets, its buildings and its people. He was also someone who was deeply respected and loved by his community - everyone knew that Jackie Clarke had the best interests of Ballina at heart. And, six years after his death, the full extent of his attachment to the town has been revealed.
“My father always wanted Ballina to benefit from his library,” says Cllr Peter Clarke, who is carrying on the proud family tradition of representation on the local Town Council. “I suppose he knew himself how important the collection was and he felt that it would be a huge boost to Ballina if it was on display in the town. From the point of view of the family we are more than happy to donate it to Ballina and Mayo. It’s great to be able to give something back to the people of our town and county. Hopefully, people will flock to see it, thereby bringing business into Ballina and North Mayo.”
The Jackie Clarke Library will be officially opened at the end of 2006 or in early 2007. Sinead McCoole is continuing to catalogue the 15,000 documents that make up the most impressive private library on modern Irish history anywhere in the world.
“I would say that in terms of an individual collection it is on the same level as the Chester Beatty Library - that’s the sort of scale we are talking about. I haven’t even completed my work on it. I thought I had all the best bits taken out by now but only last week I discovered a book belonging to Michael Davitt. There is still another shed full of papers to be catalogued and I don’t know what else I am going to discover there. To be honest, there are no words to describe the magnitude of the library.”
The officials of Mayo County Council are only too aware of the importance of the material that has been placed in their care. The Jackie Clarke Library will be located in the former Moy Hotel on Pearse Street, a building that Jackie would have known only too well.
Daniel O’Connell once addressed the people of Ballina from the balcony of the hotel and many famous faces in Irish history would have stayed there over the years. It is a fitting ‘resting place’ for Jackie Clarke’s peerless library.
“It’s a very famous building and the family are particularly pleased that the library is going to be based in it,” says Peter Clarke. “My father would have been delighted.”
The Jackie Clarke Library will be located on the second and third floors of the imposing building, with the town’s public library at ground level. An international award-winning designer, Ann Scroope, has been commissioned to devise an appropriate design for the library.
“We had originally intended to locate the County Museum in this building but when we became aware of the extent and quality of the Jackie Clarke Library we decided to change our plans,” says Seamus Granahan, Director of Services with Mayo County Council. “We have now devoted two floors - a total of 5,000 square feet - to the collection. The Jackie Clarke Library presents a fantastic opportunity for Ballina and it’s great that we have this state-of-the-art building for it. The timing couldn’t be better.”
Mayor Johnnie O’Malley is equally excited about the potential of the library.
“There is material in the collection that cannot be found anywhere else in the world. That means that anyone with an interest in Irish history will ultimately find their way to Ballina. I think the Clarke family deserve tremendous credit for making this available to the town. It really is an extraordinary gesture.”
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Peter Clarke recalls with a smile the private room in the family shop where Jackie Clarke kept his most valuable artifacts. Jackie was the only person with a key to it and he kept that key on his person at all times.
But Jackie was never ‘precious’ with his historical material; he was always willing to share it with those who had an interest. Many old photographs of Ballina and Mayo published in the Western People over the years had their origins in Jackie Clarke’s shop on O’Rahilly Street. Students of Irish history found the Ballina man equally obliging. Jackie would never turn someone away from his door if he thought he could be of assistance to them.
Pat Cooke recalls travelling to Ballina from Dublin in the 1990s to meet Jackie for the first time.
“I had heard rumours of this extraordinary collection in Ballina and I wanted to see if they were true. I found Jackie to be a most charming and helpful man. He spent a whole afternoon showing me material from his collection. I remember there was one dramatic moment when he was taking out a folder of documents and one sheet fell to the ground. It was folded into four quarters and I picked it up and unfolded it. I looked at it closely and then turned to Jackie and said: ‘Is this what I think it is?’ He started laughing in that genial way of his and replied: ‘What do you think, Pat?’.”
The document in question was an original copy of the 1916 Proclamation, regarded by many as the single, most valuable document in modern Irish history. It now forms the centrepiece of the Jackie Clarke Library in Ballina.
“When I was a young girl in college in Dublin, Jackie would have me going to auction houses and sales to acquire memorabilia for his library,” recalls Loretta Clarke. “It was the great passion of his life and all he wanted in death was to ensure that his library was made available to the public. His words to me were: ‘I want to leave the history of my country unedited for the people to judge.’”
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