Meagher travel diary part 5 – Fort Benton

It’s a long way from Waterford, Ireland to Fort Benton, Montana but that was the life trajectory of Thomas Francis Meagher. The Irish revolutionary turned American civil war general ended up in the wild west for the final two years of his life as secretary and acting governor of Montana Territory. Based in then-capital Virginia City he had a large territory to cover. Fort Benton was a trading post on the Missouri River established by the American Fur Company. There, tribes exchanged buffalo robes and furs for sugar, paint, beads, calico, blankets and tobacco. Meagher first visited Benton to negotiate a flawed treaty with the Blackfoot nation and Native American issues would plague his time in Montana. His final visit was on July 1, 1867 when he was due to pick up rifles for settlers nervous about the ongoing conflict for land and resources. I took a drive on Friday to check Fort Benton out for myself.

Mountains north of White Sulphur Springs.

Fort Benton is on the uppermost navigable reach of the Missouri. Steamboats took two months to meander north from St. Louis. In the 1860s Benton was a bustling trade post linking the river to the 600-mile Mullan Road wagon trail heading north west to Oregon. From here, passengers could also traverse all the way from the Canadian border down to the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi.

View of the Missouri river near Fort Benton.

Front Street facing the Missouri River is a peaceful place now but in Meagher’s time it had a reputation of “the bloodiest block in the West”. It housed saloons, dance halls, gambling houses and brothels which attracted the fur traders, miners and immigrants heading west. Rarely a day went by without a scuffle, shoot-out or knife fight over stolen wallets, jilted lovers, underhanded aces and old vendettas. Businesses like Mose Solomon’s Medicine Lodge and the Jungle were roaring night and day with “hurdy-gurdy girls” available for “dancing” in the saloons. The Cosmopolitan was owned by Eleanor Dumont, known as Madame Mustache because of “a distinguishing feature” of a dark hair line on her upper lip. Dumont was fearless, reputedly once leaving her blackjack game, and sprinting across the street where she flourished two pistols and warned off a boat with smallpox aboard.

IG Baker house, Front St. Fort Benton.

One of the quieter spots on Front Street was the house of merchant Isaac Gilbert Baker, now lovingly restored by the Montana Historical Society. There are conflicting accounts of what happened on Meagher’s last day, but they agree Meagher rested at Baker’s house that afternoon to read newspapers and write letters. Baker arrived in Benton a few years earlier and had opened a small store which evolved into I. G. Baker and Co which had a large influence in the trans-border development of Montana and the Canadian West. Here Meagher found out the promised rifles were not in town and he would have to go another 120 miles downstream to get them at Camp Cooke.

Shopfront on Front St.

The two main accounts of what happened next came from boat pilot John Doran and Meagher’s political enemy Wilbur Sanders who were both in Fort Benton that day. Doran and Sanders disagree on several key facts and both were recounted after the event. Sanders told his story in a 1902 newspaper. He said he travelled to Fort Benton to meet his family coming from the east. Around noon “a number of horsemen in military” appeared, which was Meagher and his staff. Meagher told Sanders he was heading to Camp Cooke. Sanders said the afternoon was “delightfully spent in social visits through the business portions of the town” though Meagher turned down “that form of hospitality which Fort Benton then abounded.” 

That afternoon Sanders claims he introduced Meagher to “Dolan,” the pilot of a “cheap and rude old craft” called the GA Thompson, and he asked if this was the same Meagher “renowned in the Irish rebellion of 1848”, which Sanders assured him it was. Sanders said the pilot invited him to travel by boat to Camp Cooke the following day. 

Sanders said they next met around dusk at Baker’s when Meagher approached with others “in loud conversation”. Sanders said “it was apparent that he was deranged” and was loudly demanding a revolver to defend himself against locals who he said were hostile to him. Sanders said he calmed Meagher down while the pilot suggested he go back to the boat’s stateroom. Sanders and others accompanied him to the room “which was on the starboard side of the boat near the bank”.

Sanders said he then went to a nearby office when 20 minutes later he heard a man excitedly exclaim “General Meagher is drowned”. Sanders rushed back to the boat and met the boat’s black barber who told him “a man had let himself down from the upper to the lower deck and jumped into the river and gone down stream”. Sanders said boats were lowered and manned, “many anxious eyes were peering in the darkness at the swift rolling waters.” The search went on for several days without success.

There were many troubling aspects of Sanders’ account, not least the idea that Meagher would spend delightful time with the vigilante leader he told the Secretary of State was the “most vicious of my enemies”. Several details were plain wrong. John T. Doran (not “Dolan”) was a pilot on the steamer G. A. Thompson which had arrived on June 29 after a hard 67-day trip from St. Louis. It suffered damage along the way from a collision and the railings outside the state cabin were damaged. Sanders could not have introduced Doran to Meagher as they already knew each other. Doran guided Meagher’s wife upstream a year earlier on a different boat.

Doran told his story in a letter to Meagher’s biographer WF Lyons in 1869 and in it, Sanders is not mentioned at all. Doran said he was fishing from the deck when he saw 12 riders come into town. He later found out it was Meagher and his staff. He went to Baker’s where he found Meagher in a back room reading a paper. They greeted each other warmly. Meagher told him he had been sick six days and disappointed the arms had not arrived. He was now determined to finish his task. Meagher said he was grateful to Doran for the way he looked after his wife on her trip north and the couple were as happy “as two thrushes in a bush”.

Doran invited Meagher to dinner aboard the boat. They then strolled through the town politely avoiding invitations to visit bars. Doran said they continued to talk on the boat sitting in chairs and smoking cigars. He gave Meagher a book which he read for half an hour. He then suddenly closed it and exclaimed “Johnny, they threatened my life in that town. As I passed I heard some men say ‘there he goes’.” After Doran showed him his guns he persuaded Meagher to retire to his berth around 9.30pm. Doran showed Meagher to a stateroom on the side of the ship facing away from town, not the port side as Sanders claimed.

Doran said the door was defective, “but I intended to return without delay”. The handrails that normally encircled the deck had also been removed as a result of a collision downriver. Doran was on the lower deck “but a short time” when he heard a splash. He heard two groans, the first short, the second “prolonged, and of a most heart-rending description”. Meagher was gone. Doran rushed to the paddle-wheel with a sentry. They lowered themselves hip-deep in the water while others threw out ropes and boards. “The river below is dotted with innumerable small islands,” Doran said, “the activity of hostile Indians preventing us from exploring the ones furthest down; and no doubt the body of the gallant but unfortunate General was washed ashore on one of them.” 

Meagher plaque in front of the Baker House.

Doran had also lied in his account with some details contradicted by other eyewitnesses. James Wright’s wife saw her husband with Meagher, Doran and Captain Woods drinking heavily together while a watchman on another boat saw Doran and Meagher coming back to the Thompson after dark. Baker told two versions of the story, one at the time where he said Meagher was drunk, the other many years later when he was “stone sober”. It’s possible that Baker unwittingly triggered Meagher’s drunkenness as another witness said Baker gave Meagher three glasses of blackberry wine for his dysentery.

Meagher’s death was reported as an accident at the time. It was only many years later that rumours of foul play emerged and suspicions of Sanders’ role. In 2019, on the 152nd anniversary of Meagher’s death, the Montana Order of Hibernians put up this plaque to him in front of Baker’s store. “A few yards from here, Meagher met his mysterious Fate on July 1, 1867,” the plaque says. It’s probably best it stays a mystery, that way it will always be talked about.

See part 4 here.

Meagher travel diary Part 4 – Montana Historical Society

Not far from the Montana State Capitol building – and its prominent Thomas Francis Meagher statue – is the current building which houses the fabulous Montana Historical Society. I say “current” as there is a large building project next door which will be its new home when complete. I found out only this morning that the MHS will close in December and be shut for two years while it makes plans to be re-housed. So I’m lucky with my timing and the fact I have three days booked here to do my research.

The building houses a large museum showing Montana’s early history with a strong focus on Native American settlement which, after all, was the lion’s share of its 12,000 year human history. My focus was on something more recent and just inside the door I saw a large cardboard cutout of Thomas Francis Meagher so I knew I was in the right place. Upstairs is the Big Medicine Research Centre and as soon as I climbed the stairs I was welcomed by smiling staff at the centre.

I had contacted them months ago to let them know I was coming and they seemed to know who I was straight away. I was shown to a desk where I could keep my computer but not my bag or pens (a restriction common to many such centres across the world.) Having put my stuff away, I sat down and looked at the forbidding bunch of folders they had supplied me with. This was based off a list I supplied when I made my request. There was a large folder of Thomas Francis Meagher papers so I immediately dug into that. An important early find was the letter from local judge Lyman Munson, indignant over Meagher issuing a pardon to a man named James Daniels that Munson had sentenced to three years for the murder of another. Meagher had released the man after a petition saying Daniels had killed in self defence. This was dubious as Daniels was a card sharp, but he was Irish so Meagher felt sympathetic. Munson argued Meagher was acting beyond the law and menacingly added “the judges of Montana will not be bought by promises of reward nor bullied or intimidated by threats from any source” (underlines in original). Daniels stupidly returned to Helena to face his accusers and was hanged by vigilantes with Meagher’s pardon in his pocket. The long-term damage was to Meagher’s relationship with the Republican-appointed judiciary.

The next glorious find was Meagher’s 1855 love letter to his (second) wife-to-be Elizabeth (Libby) Townsend, heiress to a prominent New York Yankee Protestant family. In the letter Meagher outlines his background and his troubles. “You know I was a ‘rebel’ – and you know I am an ‘exile’. You know I was married and you know there has been left to me a little fellow, who knows not what a mother would have been.” He ends with his declaration of love. “(A)lthough our intercourse has been limited… I could not be considered as acting with haste or thoughtlessness in pledging myself to you.” He said life would be joyous “with you, as my noble wife and the mother of my little boy”. Libby accepted and they married in November that year. They lived with her father Peter Townsend in New York. Townsend never fully forgave his daughter for marrying an Irish rebel and becoming a Catholic with him. He gave her a tiny portion of his will when he died many years later.

I then found the handwritten journal of Lieutenant James Bradley of the 7th Infantry, who was in Fort Benton the day of Meagher’s death in 1867. Bradley did not see what happened but a day later interviewed merchant I.G. Baker with whom Meagher spent much of his last day. According to Baker’s account, Meagher wrote a letter to his wife at Baker’s store that afternoon before retiring to the GA Thompson steamboat which was parked on the Missouri River in front of the store. There he said the evening was “passed in a convivial manner” with others and Meagher became intoxicated. “When offended by some meaningless remark.. he charged some of the gentlemen present with desiring to take his life.” The party broke up and a drunken Meagher retired to the state room. 

Baker was seated by the window of his riverside house when a dock watchman came by to tell him he’d seen a man fall off a boat and disappear under the keel of a second boat. “He seemed to be vomiting and lost his balance,” the watchman reported to Baker. Baker said it was likely an accident as Meagher’s stateroom looked out on a narrow strip of deck without guardrails. Many years later Baker contradicted his own story telling a newspaper Meagher was “stone cold sober” on the last day. I hope to get a feel for whatever happened when I head to Fort Benton on Friday.

See Meagher travel diary part 3 here.

Meagher travel diary Part 3 – Hail Helena

After two days in LA, it was time to move to Montana, where Thomas Francis Meagher spent the last two years of his life. After a day at Huntingdon Library on Monday, I was up at 3am on Tuesday which was no drama – jetlagged, I had not slept a wink all night. I grabbed a ride to LAX Delta terminal and was shocked to see large queues at 3.30am. Took an hour to get to bag drop, then 60 to 90 minutes through security so there was not a great deal of time to kill before we boarded to Salt Lake City with some great views along the way.

View of salt plains from the air, near Salt Lake City.

After a couple of hours on the ground we were off again in a smaller plane to Helena, 90 minutes north. We got in around 1pm and were the only flight in Helena’s small airport so we got through quickly. It took a while to find a ride but soon enough I was at my town centre motel just 5km from the airport. I got something to eat then had a much needed nap but roused myself for a late afternoon walk to the Capitol district 20 minutes away. Helena was voted to be the capital of the new state of Montana in the 1880s and they built a huge new capitol building between 1896 and 1902 with wing-annexes added between 1909 and 1912. The building, constructed of Montana sandstone and granite, is in Greek neoclassical architectural style. The exterior of the dome is covered with copper and on top of the dome is a feminine statue affectionately dubbed Montana.

But why is the capitol’s only outside statue dedicated to Montana’s early acting governor? The Irish copper miners led by Butte’s Irish-born copper magnate Marcus Daly wanted the state capital to be in Anaconda but lost the vote. So they decided to put their own monument up outside the Helena capitol, “erected to the memory” of none other than first acting governor Thomas Francis Meagher.

Miners founded a Meagher Monument Committee in 1898 accepting donations from everyone except, pointedly, Meagher’s political enemy Wilbur Fisk Sanders. Montana’s head Fenian and Meagher’s friend Andrew O’Connell donated $25 for which he received a certificate of membership to the “Thomas Francis Meagher Memorial Association”. After seven years the committee raised $20,000, enough to put up a monument. On plaques underneath are selections from Meagher’s speeches in Ireland before the 1848 rebellion and in New York in 1861 recruiting Irishmen to fight for the north in the Civil War. On July 4, 1905 his wife Elizabeth Meagher was invited to the new Montana capital of Helena, but was too frail to travel. There an equestrian statue of her husband, with sword raised, was unveiled outside the state house. It took his native Waterford another 99 years before it reciprocated with its own statue.

I also saw the nearby headquarters of the Montana Historical Society which has a museum and a research reading room which I was booked into for three days starting the day after. Among the many Meagher related documents I saw was O’Connell’s certificate for helping fund Meagher’s equestrian statue. I saw papers showing a constant stream of requests to fill positions across the territory such as probate judges, county commissioners, magistrates, inspectors of weights and measures, commissioner of deeds, and justices of the peace, all which Meagher had to answer. There were also petitions such as one from S.B. Mathews who wanted an escort of 100 men for his train of 26 wagons and 28 men. Mathews’s train was imperilled by “hostile Indians” who had “declared openly their intentions of making a general masacre (sic) of all white men.” Meagher also spent three days giving “serious consideration” to the divorce application of John and Mary Godfrey which he finally approved as a “just, proper and necessary act”.

I’ll talk more about what I found in the library and about Helena itself in the coming days.

Meagher travel diary Part 2 – California drafting

After a 14 hour flight from Brisbane I arrived in Los Angeles around the same time on Sunday morning as I left thanks to the international date line. The American homeland security officers weren’t much interested in my project and were more concerned with whether I had a return ticket to leave the states. I negotiated myself out of the international terminal and found my way to the ride share pick up point called LAX-IT. I took a cab to my accommodation but arriving at 10am I found it wouldn’t open until 3pm and the area looked dodgy. So I grabbed my bags and after buying an American SIM card I found a more tolerable motel reasonably close by. I noticed I was close to the LAFC stadium and museum precinct and went for a walk.

I peeped in at the Colosseum and the Rose Garden and grabbed a bite to eat. The highlight of that first afternoon was the Californian African American Museum which had an exhibition on Buffalo Soldiers which had relevance to my project. Most people would be familiar with the term from the Bob Marley song but American Plains Indians referred to the black cavalry troops as “buffalo soldiers” because of their dark, curly hair, which resembled a buffalo’s coat and because of their fierce nature of fighting.

Black soldiers weren’t always welcome in the US Army. In the Civil War initially neither Union nor Confederate forces would allow them though as the war progressed they were gradually assimilated into the Northern army, albeit for lower pay initially. In the end 12pc of the Union army was black. Over 200,000 of them served, 175,000 of them were formerly enslaved. Their greatest advocate was the black abolitionist and newspaper editor Frederick Douglass. After Lincoln issued the Emancipation Declaration in 1863 Douglass issued the broadside, “Men of Color to Arms”. He recruited 100 volunteers for the first all-black regiment in Massachusetts and helped paved the way to a permanent black presence in the army.

Grounds of the Huntingdon library, San Marino, California.

Desperately tired I returned to my motel and suffered a night of jet-lag deprived sleep. On Monday I was up early as I had an appointment. I booked an Uber to drive me the 25km up in the San Bernardino hills to the suburb of San Marino. Here was the Huntingdon library which had papers related to Meagher’s brother-in-law Sam Barlow. My destination was the Munger Research Centre at the library. I walked past the forbidding door that said “staff only” and sat through a 10-minute induction on how to use the facility before I was ushered to my seat where my pre-ordered papers and books were waiting.

I mentioned in part 1 there were dozens of boxes of papers so I had to choose carefully which ones I wanted. After a busy morning I found a couple of Meagher’s letters to Barlow but not as many as I’d hoped. Given Meagher’s spidery handwriting they were not easy to read either.

In the afternoon session I found other useful documents including Meagher’s message to the Montana Legislature in March 1866 and a rare book about the Irish Brigade of which I took photos of numerous pages. By mid afternoon I was feeling drowsy so called a halt to proceedings. I considered taking a tour of the gardens but it was late and I wasn’t sure I’d get my money’s worth. So I called an Uber and got a lift back into LA downtown.

LA downtown.

I disembarked at Grand Park and walked down South Hill St before getting something to eat at Grand Central Market. From here it was a 90-minute walk in one great straight line to my motel. Can’t say it was a particularly interesting walk. It was hot, well over 30 degrees, I was tired, and the weight of my backpack was starting to tell. I was glad to get back and have a shower. Not sure if it was jetlag or stress or the fact that I’d set my alarm for 3am the following morning but I tried in vain a second night to sleep. I had an early morning flight to Salt Lake City before transfer to Helena and airline Delta notified me to be at LAX three hours in advance, which turned out to barely enough time. But that’s a story for the next day.

Thomas Francis Meagher travel diary Part 1

Brisbane Airport August 21, 2022. My flight to LAX leaves in an hour and a half. My head and my heart are a mix of swirling thoughts and emotions. Have I got everything I need? Have I booked all my hotels? What if I get COVID? Why do I feel slightly sick inside? What the hell am I doing anyway?

Waterford’s statue to Thomas Francis Meagher.

I thought I knew the answer to that last question anyway. I’m on a journey to America in search of material for a book on fellow Waterford man, Thomas Francis Meagher. I won’t find Meagher in America or anywhere else. He died long ago in 1867. Meagher has no grave and his ghost still likely walks the earth. Meagher was a great adventurer who lived in three continents and fought in two wars, one to split Ireland from England, the other to keep America from splitting.

I hope to find trails of his presence across the centuries in the days and weeks to come in places Meagher lived. Montana, then New York, Washington and the Civil War sites. In October I fly to Ireland then in November I fly to Tasmania. First stop is Los Angeles. Though founded in his time, Meagher never lived in LA, but I hope I will find clues to his life here at the magnificent Huntington Library in San Marino, one of the most exclusive suburbs in the San Rafael Hills area of LA. Huntington will be my Disneyland for a day on Monday. There I want to access the files of Samuel Latham Mitchill Barlow who practised law in New York City from 1849 to 1889. 

Barlow married Alice Townsend from another well-connected New York family. Alice’s sister Elizabeth married Thomas Francis Meagher. Meagher admired Barlow not just as his brother-in-law but as a wealthy lawyer and a politically well-connected force in the Democratic Party. He sent Barlow many letters over the years and I wanted to read them. But when I put in a request to the Huntington Library to access Barlow’s papers, they turned me down. There weren’t just a handful of letters. There were 205 boxes of letters, 53 tissue copy letter books (with indexes), and 6 boxes of miscellaneous legal-business records and personal family letters, thousands of pages of material. I’ll have to be more specific and get the fine tooth comb out.

Barlow was a hugely influential figure in the Democratic party from 1856 to about 1870 and he corresponded with many people besides Meagher. Barlow’s optimistic faith in economic growth, his considerable financial resources and contacts, as well as reputation, led him to become involved in mining, trading, and utility ventures. Barlow helped Democrat James Buchanan become president in 1856 and was responsible for getting George B. McClellan to a high position in the Ohio and Mississippi railroad around the same time. McClellan would become overall commander in the Union army during the civil war and lead Meagher into battle. 

Like many New York Democrats Barlow was slow to sense that the Civil War and its aftermath had destroyed his federal union. Barlow believed the anti-slavery supporters needlessly challenged the integrity of his southern friends. He tried in vain to stop the split of the Democrats in 1860 and although Lincoln sacked McClellan as commander in late 1862 because of his unwillingness to engage with the Rebels, Barlow never lost faith in him and was his unofficial campaign manager when he contested the presidency for the Democrats in 1864 against Lincoln. With the war going badly for the north (in part due to McClellan’s prior decisions as commander) there was a time when it looked as if McClellan would win the election. Had he won, he would have made a negotiated peace with the south allowing slavery to continue. Meagher’s views in many respects reflected Barlow (though crucial differences would emerge as the civil war progressed). Meagher also respected McClellan as a commander and hoped Barlow could use his influence to gain him high office too.

On Tuesday I fly to Montana where Meagher lived the last two years of his life, most of it as acting governor of the new territory, carved out of Idaho by president Lincoln just a year earlier in 1864. Meagher is a controversial figure in Montana, his reputation marred (pun intended) by disputes with Republicans, vigilantes and warring Native American tribes, but his memory is honoured by an equestrian statue outside the Helena capitol building. Erected in 1905 by private subscription from Montana’s Irish miners, Meagher sits on his horse, sword raised. It took his native Waterford almost a full century to reciprocate.

I’ve got two days at Montana Historical Society in Helena to find out what Montana meant to Meagher and what Meagher meant to Montana. On Friday I drive west to Fort Benton, the northernmost navigable point on the Missouri river. In this frontier town, Meagher died in mysterious circumstances on July 1, 1867. He fell from a steamboat, his body never recovered. Will I find his ghost, or clues to the manner of his death?

On Saturday I drive south to another frontier town, Virginia City, which was Montana’s capital in Meagher’s time. What clues will I unearth here? Will the old buildings spill their secrets to me?

Then next Wednesday I fly to New York where Meagher lived from 1852-1865. The Prince of New York they called him and he was one of the most influential Irishmen of his day. I will visit the grave of his second wife Elizabeth, Barlow’s sister-in-law, at Green-Wood cemetery, Brooklyn. The New York Public Library too has more clues to the puzzle.

Then Friday week I fly to Washington DC. I will pay homage to Willard’s Hotel, the real seat of political power during the mid 19th century. Abraham Lincoln inhabits my story as a background colossus and I will pay homage at his memorial. The Library of Congress will also be my friend.

Then I hire another car and drive west to Antietam, the bloodiest single-day battle of the civil war where Meagher fought with his Irish Brigade. This was McClellan’s last battle in command and he failed to press home his army’s enormous advantage in men. The battle’s real significance, however, lies in Lincoln issuing in the aftermath the Emancipation Declaration to free the slaves in Confederate territory. This single decision lifted the war onto a new moral plane that neither Barlow nor Meagher liked, though Meagher at least would later agree with his president.

After visiting Antietam, I will spend the night at nearby Harpers Ferry, a crucial site on the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. Meagher was stationed here after Antietam and the town changed hands eight times in the war. It was also where John Brown’s Raid in 1859 took place, setting America off on its fatal path to war.

The following day I head south into Virginia where most battles of the war’s Eastern Theatre took place. In Virginia Meagher fought at First Bull Run, Fair Oaks, the Seven Days Battles, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville and I want to pay homage at as many of those killing fields as I can. Over half a million people died in the four-year-long civil war and Lincoln joined them shortly afterwards, the victim of embittered Confederate-supporting Washington actor John Wilkes Booth. I’m hoping for inspiration from one of Lincoln’s quotes: “The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” Here’s hoping those mystic chords will inspire me in the days to come.

Franz Kafka: A cage in search of a bird

It’s been nearly 15 years since I was last in Prague, but my memory amid the winter snow is as strong as ever: Franz Kafka was everywhere. Wherever you looked, the unsmiling visage of the city’s greatest writer popped up. The pensive face was in shop windows, on road signs, postcards, t-shirts, coffee mugs, graffiti and beer bottles. Such ubiquity seemed Kafkaesque as his writings dealt largely with matters that were usually not quite within reach. In 21st century Prague Kafka was all too easy to grasp.

Yet nothing is ever quite what it seems with this Czech genius. During the Communist era all mention of Kafka was suppressed. His nightmarish visions were too dangerous a reminder of the totalitarian mentality the country was immersed in. Indeed it seems bizarre to call Kafka Czech; he was Jewish and wrote in German. He never explicitly mentioned Prague in his work, yet most of it is clearly set here. Like James Joyce and Dublin, Kafka had a love-hate relationship with his birthplace and Prague informed his every written word.

Franz Kafka was born on July 3, 1883 into a middle-class family. His father Hermann was a merchant and haberdasher and a domineering presence. His mother Julie came from the intellectual and spiritual family of Jewish merchant and brewer Jakob Lowy. Kafka inherited his mother’s delicate intelligence and his father’s spiritedness. Franz grew up in the Jewish quarter of the old city. Every day he walked through the cobbled streets to school and he graduated from the German University in Prague as Doctor of Law in 1906. He spent most of his productive years working for the Austrian-Hungarian Empire as an insurance accident assessor in the Workers Accident Insurance Bureau. He retired early due to ill-health and died of tuberculosis in 1924. During this time he also wrote some of the most enigmatic fiction of the 20th century though few of his famous works were completed. In his notes he compared himself to a cage in search of a bird.

On a snowy Saturday in November 2008, I tried to find the cage, if not the bird. I went to the newly opened Franz Kafka museum at Cihelná 2 in the riverbank shadow of the great castle. The entry courtyard of the museum has an amusing tableau. Visitors are confronted with rotating statues of two men en pissant. The gentlemen are not furtive urinators. They stand proudly and openly, heads arched back, in a puddle of their own making, and wave their willies with gay abandon. I don’t recall reading anything in Kafka related to urine; perhaps the sculptor was merely taking the piss.

What I did know was Kafka lived in the shadow of his father. The museum exhibit opens up with a rasping letter that Franz wrote to his old man. “You asked me recently why I maintain that I am afraid of you,” Franz began. He contrasted the businessmen father who was “a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind” with himself, the son, “a timid child” and castigates his father for failures as a parent and his inability to talk calmly about “a subject you don’t approve of or even one that was not suggested by you”. The letter forensically diagnosed their relationship. Perhaps mercifully, it was never read by its intended recipient.

Franz Kafka was equally harsh to women in his life. He was engaged twice to Berliner Felice Bauer and broke it off both times. Bauer married another man in early 1919. She loved Kafka, but could not endure his depressions and manic episodes. A year later he became involved with Czech journalist Milena Jesenská. He was 37 and Milena was 13 years younger. They were close but the relationship was hamstrung by a problem: Jesenská was already married.

They split and Jesenská eventually died in a Nazi concentration camp at Ravensbruck (Kafka’s two sisters died at Auschwitz). In 1923 Kafka found a new companion, Polish Zionist Dora Diamant. The pair travelled together during the last year of Kafka’s life, and after his death she moved to Tel Aviv.

Suffering tuberculosis, Kafka spent that last year in and out of sanitaria. He died of starvation. In the final weeks of his life his condition made it too painful to digest food. Because intravenous therapy had not been developed, there was no way to feed him. He wrote his last letter to his parents on June 2, 1924,. “It is not a shady well, it is life, dear sweet life preserved in a well form”. He died a day later in Berlin with Dora at his side. His body was taken to Prague where he was buried in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague-Zizkov.

Kafka ordered Diamant and his great friend and publisher Max Brod to destroy all his writings. Diamant complied but after initial misgivings, Brod refused. He saved Kafka’s great works “The Trial”, “The Castle”, “America” and “Metamorphosis”. As Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges observed about Brod’s actions, “we owe a full knowledge of the most singular works of the century to this case of happy disobedience.” The last words belong to Kafka, as quoted by the museum: “the messiah will arrive only after we no longer need him.” But it’s clear Prague tourism still needs its Jewish messiah.

When the Wyses of Waterford married Napoleonic royalty

Harriet Wyse’s portrait of Thomas Wyse (1791-1862) hangs in the Bishop’s Palace museum, Waterford.

The Wyses of the Manor St John were one of the great Waterford families and members have been mayors of the city 15 times. I’ve learned more about them from my research into Thomas Francis Meagher. One of Meagher’s great-great-grandfathers was farmer Thomas Wyse, related to the Manor St John family. Thomas’s son, James became a wealthy Waterford butter merchant helping set up the trading firm of Wyse, Cashin and Quan. One of the Quans, Alicia, married Thomas Meagher, Thomas Francis’s father.

The Wyses came to Ireland in 1170 with the Anglo-Norman invasion as tenants of the Powers, a wealthy Anglo-Norman family. By 1375 the Wyses were themselves wealthy landowners. Maurice Wyse became mayor of Waterford in 1478 and his son John was chief baron of the exchequer in Dublin. They were loyal to the crown and John’s son William Wyse was educated at Henry VIII’s court. The king liked young William and granted him the royal manor of Chapelizod near Dublin in 1523. As reward for support during the Silken Thomas rebellion of 1534, Henry granted Wyse the lands of the dissolved Benedictine priory of St John’s and the estate of the Knights Hospitaller in Waterford. Henry also honoured Wyse in 1536 with a ceremonial hat called a “cap of maintenance” and knighted him in 1543. A contemporary historian wrote Wyse was “a worshipful gentleman (who) stood high in King Henry’s grace.”

The Wyses kept their holdings despite the penal laws of the 18th century against Irish Catholics. From the 1750s Thomas “Bullocks” Wyse (1701-70) organised Catholics into a delegate committee to restore rights while still swearing allegiance to the crown. His nickname derives from using bullocks instead of horses to draw his carriage in protest against the law which obliged Catholics who owned a horse to accept an offer of five pounds from any Protestant wishing to purchase it. Bullocks’ son John Wyse commissioned John Roberts to build Newtown House which later became the Quaker school. The Wyse estate eventually passed to “Gentle” Thomas Wyse (1770-1835) whose eldest son, also Thomas Wyse, was born at Newtown House.

Like Thomas Francis Meagher, this Thomas Wyse was educated at Stonyhurst College. Unlike Meagher he also went to Trinity College Dublin, where he distinguished himself as a scholar. After the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815 Wyse did a grand tour of Italy, Greece, Egypt and Palestine. In Rome Wyse met exiled Prince Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon’s younger brother. Wyse took a shine to Lucien’s eldest daughter Princess Letitia Bonaparte (some spellings called her “Letizia”) then barely 11. Letitia was born in 1804 on the eve of her uncle Napoleon’s coronation as emperor and was rumoured to be her uncle’s favourite.

Though Wyse continued his tour he returned to the Bonaparte residence in Viterbo, Italy “dazzled by the beauty” of Letitia. On March 4, 1821 they married at Canino, Wyse aged 30, Letitia just 16. Their first son, Napoleon Alfred was born a year later. The newlyweds were not a good match and after a quarrel Letitia entered a convent for six months where she wrote letters apologising and begging to see her son. After they made up, the Wyses returned to Waterford. The old Manor House of St John had been demolished and Newtown House sold so they lived on the Adelphi, and later a house on the Mall.

Letitia was popular as a niece of Napoleon though “her manners were more suited to sunny Italy than the peculiarities of the clime and people among whom she cast her fortunes.” A second son William Thomas was born in 1826 though the marriage was still troubled. Letitia hated the fickle Irish weather and even more fickle Irish manners. As a member of Bonaparte royalty she flew into anger when treated as an inferior by local Protestant aristocracy. At a party she took offence not to be given precedence entering a room. “Such a voice, such a temper!” a local source reported. The same source reported rumours of a separation and they proved correct.

Letitia Bonaparte-Wyse.

Thomas Wyse was an important ally of Daniel O’Connell and a key figure in the 1826 Waterford election which replaced the Tory Marquis Beresford with the pro-Emancipation candidate Henry Villiers Stuart. Wyse was the secretary of a movement to unseat Beresford who previously owned the seat as the leading local landholder. Letitia gleefully played her part allowing orange ribbons on her footwear go through the mud, a calculated insult to Orangeman Beresford, which the ladies of Waterford loved. Wyse was less happy at other stunts. After an election ball O’Connell wrote to his wife in amusement at the contrast between Wyse and Letitia. “You never saw anything so ludicrous – his sepuchral aspect and funeral step and her elegant Italian dancing”.

Letitia pined for Italy and complained Thomas neglected her. In January 1828 she announced her intention to leave but had to go without her two boys. She told Thomas “our tastes and dispositions are too much opposed.” She returned to Waterford a month later to sign a deed of separation. The boys were educated in Waterford at the Quan sisters’ school (maternal aunts of Thomas Francis Meagher, who they also educated). Letitia was denied entry to the house and to the school to see her boys. A local newspaper said “these Bonapartes are troublesome folk” though there was sympathy for her as a mother. There was a scandal on the bridge when one of Wyse’s female relatives hurled abuse at Letitia as she left town. Thomas eventually gave permission for Letitia to see the boys in boarding school. She never saw her husband again.

Thomas was elected MP for Tipperary in 1830. Like O’Connell he supported the Whigs and voted for the great measures of the reform era. Wyse believed that education should not be restricted to the privileged classes, that every person had a right to an education, irrespective of religion or class, and that the state had a responsibility to provide this education. He was chair of a committee into education in Ireland, and helped establish provincial colleges at Cork, Galway and Belfast. From 1835 to 1847 he was MP for Waterford City until Catholic bishops turned against him for his support of ecumenical colleges. From 1839 to 1841 he was a Lord of the Treasury, from 1846 to 1849 he was Secretary to the Board of Control, and in 1849 he was made British minister to Greece. He was knighted in 1857 and died at Athens on April 16, 1862.

Back in London a depressed Letitia tried to commit suicide in the Thames when she was pulled from icy waters by young soldier, Captain Studholm Hodgson. She and Hodgson travelled around Europe and had three children. She sailed to Greece to contest Thomas’s will but he ordered the ship not to land. She died in 1871 in her home town of Viterbo, aged 66.

Wyse disinherited all five of her children, including his two sons. Nevertheless they all proudly called themselves Bonaparte-Wyse. Their first son Napoleon Alfred (“Napo”) became a justice of the peace and a High Sheriff of the County of Waterford. He bought the new Manor of St John in Roanmore but his improvements were extravagant and was forced to sell up before dying in Paris. Second son Captain William Charles Bonaparte-Wyse became a soldier and well-known poet. He moved to Provençal where he became known as “lo felibre irlandés”. William’s son Andrew Bonaparte-Wyse (1870-1940) was a British civil servant and for many years the only Catholic in the Northern Ireland administration to become Permanent Secretary.