Mary Hayden Irish Historian and Feminist 1862–1942 by Joyce Padbury

Abstract

Joyce Padbury, Mary Hayden Irish Historian and Feminist 1862–1942 (Dublin: Arlen House, 2021), 362 pages. In his foreword to this captivating biography of Mary Hayden by Joyce Padbury, historian Donal McCartney says that Hayden’s chief contribution to independent Ireland was as a feminist. Her campaigns were for the equal rights of women, especially in education and suffrage. Her scholarly output was modest but this reflected the custom of the time in the university, which placed emphasis on teaching rather than research. She held the Chair of Modern Irish History in UCD, the successor to the Catholic University, for twenty-three years. Padbury identifies the origin of Hayden’s feminism in her efforts to escape from the conventional life centred on marriage and family then expected of women. Mary Hayden was born in May 1862 at 30 Harcourt Street, where her parents and older brother lived. A sign of changed times, her old home is now the location of the night club, Copper Face Jacks, named after Lord Earlsfort who had once resided in Harcourt Street. Mary’s father, Thomas, was a professor in the School of Medicine in the Catholic University. Like her father, her mother Mary Ann (Ryan) came from Tipperary. Mary’s brother, John, comes across as something of a dreamer compared with his seriousminded sister. Her mother died when Hayden was aged eleven and her father would die when she was twenty. It appears that for a time Mary found it hard to settle at school. She spent a couple of years as a boarder at the Ursuline convent in Thurles; then she transferred to Mount Anville, where she remained for just two weeks before transferring to the day school. She also spent time at Miss Cantwell’s school in Mountjoy Square. At age sixteen she moved to Alexandra College where she found a home for her questing, independent spirit. Teachers at Alexandra, especially Alice Oldham and Isabella Mulvany who advocated higher education for women, had a big influence on Hayden. Mulvany, headmistress of Alexandra at age twenty-six, became both role model and friend. Following private study and some relevant courses in private tutorial colleges, Hayden graduated with a BA in English, German, French and Modern Literature in 1885 from the Royal University, an examining body which allowed women to take degrees. Two years later she proceeded to an MA. It seems that at this time a traditional marriage was off the agenda. She remarked in her diaries, ‘a husband might get in my way’. On another Studies • volume 110 • number 439 375 Autumn 2021: Book Reviews occasion, she remarked that as for babies, it could be ‘all well enough if one found them in the cabbage plants’. These diaries are the primary source available to Padbury for twenty-five years of Hayden’s life from age fifteen to forty. In her twenties Hayden showed an appetite for travel. An early trip abroad was to Bonn in 1885 to study German. For someone with limited income and who worried about her finances, she managed a remarkable amount of travel which included several months in Athens, visits to Spain, India, North Africa and North America. Following the passing of the Irish Universities Act in 1908 and the establishment of the National University of Ireland, Hayden set her sights on the university world and she obtained a lectureship in Modern Irish History. In 1911 she was appointed to the Chair of Modern Irish History, a position she would hold until she retired, somewhat reluctantly, at age seventy-six when she was succeeded by her former student, Robin Dudley Edwards. At the same time as she was appointed to the Chair, she was also appointed to the Governing Body along with fellow academic Agnes O’Farrelly. Hayden did not engage in party politics. It may seem surprising that a woman ‘almost a Unionist’ adopted Home Rule. She supported the Irish Parliamentary Party although John Redmond had opposed votes for women. She supported non-violence and, although a friend of Pearse through the Gaelic League, she did not support the 1916 Rising. Like some other professors in UCD at the time, she supported the Treaty and the Cumann...