Testy Tim

At Chapelizod, outside Dublin, complications of jaundice, dropsy and heart disease brought Death last week to a bearded, brilliant gentleman with a testy tongue, Timothy Michael Healy, first Governor General of the Irish Free State, in his 76th year. Three years ago failing health made him resign the Governor-Generalship. Fortnight ago his condition became critical, relatives were summoned. Tim Healy (nobody ever called him anything else) died in the night.

Even 15 years ago if anyone had seriously suggested in the House of Commons that Tim Healy was destined to become His Majesty's Representative in Ireland, laughter would have shaken the chandeliers. Timothy Michael Healy was born in Bantry, County Cork, in 1855, son of the local poorhouse guardian. His earliest memories* were of creaking farm carts marked with rude white crosses, piled high with corpses of the famine on their way to common burial in the lime pits. These were not memories to make any boy a loyal British citizen. At the age of 14 he had taught himself shorthand. At 17 he made his way to England, worked as a railway clerk, a reporter. He first attracted attention by the brilliance of the political articles which he sent to his uncle's Dublin paper, The Nation.

After his return to Ireland he became private secretary to his hero, the late great spade-bearded Charles Parnell. Home Rulers enthusiastically elected him to Parliament at the age of 25. At 28 he was arrested and imprisoned for making seditious speeches.

With Parnell he toured the U. S. several times, collecting money from fervent Fenians for The Cause, but he finally broke with Parnell after the latter's life with Kitty O'Shea had become an international Victorian scandal.

In the House, on the lecture platform, Tim Healy was known as a master of invective. Time & again he was dismissed from Parliament for abusive language. Each time enthusiastic Irish majorities voted him in again.

"Mr. Speaker, if the noble Marquess thinks he is going to bully us with his high and mighty Cavendish ways, all I can tell him is he will find himself knocked into a cocked hat in a jiffy, and we will have to put him to the necessity of wiping the blood of all the Cavendishes from his noble nose a good many times before he disposes of us."

"A fine national anthem we'll have," chortled Testy Tim when he heard that Ulster was to be left out of the Irish Free State. " 'God Bless the Greater Part of Ireland.' "

For all his intense nationalism, Tim Healy generally kept out of jail, never joined the Sinn Fein, and thoroughly disapproved of the Easter Rebellion of 1916. It has been said that picking Tim Healy for first Governor General of the Free State in 1922 was the most brilliant political stroke that Prime Minister Bonar Law ever made. King George would never have approved anyone connected with Sinn Fein. Catholic Ireland would not have accepted anyone who was not a confirmed Home-Ruler.

When the Countess of Oxford was a little girl she was solemnly introduced to the late great William Ewart Gladstone.

"He was quite nice," said candid Margot afterwards, "but you see Mr. Healy has really spoiled me for all other men."

--LF.TTF.RS AND LEADERS OF MY DAY-- Stokes--2 vols. ($10).

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