Francis Stuart

Francis Stuart was born in Townsville, Queensland, Australia[3][4] on 29 April 1902[5] to Irish Protestant parents, Henry Irwin Stuart and Elizabeth Barbara Isabel Montgomery. His father was an alcoholic and killed himself when Stuart was an infant. The widowed Elizabeth Stuart returned with her son to Ireland. The boy's childhood was divided between his home in Ireland and Rugby School in England, where he boarded.

In 1920, at age 17, he became a Catholic and married Iseult Gonne, Maud Gonne's daughter. Maud Gonne's companion, Mary Barry O'Delaney, stood as his godmother upon his conversion.[6] Aged 24 years, Iseult had had a romantic but unsettled life. Maud Gonne's estranged husband John MacBride was executed in 1916 for taking part in the Easter Rising. Iseult Gonne's father was the right-wing French politician, Lucien Millevoye, with whom Maud Gonne had had an affair between 1887 and 1899. Because of her complex family situation, Iseult was often passed off as Maud Gonne's niece in conservative circles in Ireland. Iseult grew up in Paris and London. She had been proposed to by W. B. Yeats in 1917 (he had also earlier proposed to her mother; Yeats was 50 at the time, Iseult 20). She also had a brief affair with Ezra Pound prior to meeting Stuart. Pound and Stuart both believed in the primacy of the artist over the masses and were subsequently drawn to fascism; Stuart to Nazi Germany and Pound to Fascist Italy.

Gonne and Stuart had a baby daughter who died in infancy. Perhaps to recover from this tragedy, they travelled for a while in Europe but returned to Ireland as the Irish Civil War began. The couple were caught up on the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) side of this fight. Stuart was involved in gunrunning and was interned after a botched raid.

After the establishment of the Irish Free State, Stuart participated in the literary life of Dublin and wrote poetry and novels. His novels were successful and his writing was publicly supported by Yeats. Yeats, however, seemed to have had mixed feelings for Stuart who was, after all, married to a woman he regarded almost as a daughter and, even, as a possible wife. In his poem "Why should not Old Men be Mad?" (1936) in which he lists what he regards as provocations to rage, he claims he has seen

"A girl that knew all Dante once

Live to bear children to a dunce"

The first of these lines is accepted as referring to Gonne and the second to Stuart (Elborn 1990).

Stuart and Gonne had three children, a daughter Dolores who died three months old, a son Ian and a daughter Katherine. Ian Stuart went on to become an artist and was married for a time to the sculptor Imogen Stuart and later to the Berlin-trained artist and jewellery designer Anna Stuart [7] whom he first met in 1970. They gave Stuart three grandchildren; food entrepreneur Laragh, photographer Suki and sculptor Sophia.

Stuart's time with Gonne may not have been an entirely happy time; from the accounts given in his apparently autobiographical novels, both he and his wife struggled with personal demons, and their internal anguish poisoned their marriage. In her letters to close friend William Butler Yeats, Iseult Gonne's mother Maud Gonne characterizes Francis Stuart as being emotionally, financially, and physically abusive towards Iseult: "Stuart's conduct towards Iseult is shocking. While they were staying with me in Dublin he struck her & one day knocked her down. He threw her out of her own room with such violence that she fell on the landing half-dressed at the feet of Claud Chevasse who was staying in the house at the time."[7] Another time, neighbors reported seeing a fire in the couple's house: "They found Iseult in her dressing gown outside. Stuart had locked himself in her room from where the flames were coming. They could see him pouring petroleum. Finally he opened the door -- he had been burning Iseult's clothes to punish her! Frequently he locked her up without food."[8]

It was also during the 1930s that Stuart became friendly with German Intelligence (Abwehr) agent Helmut Clissmann and his Irish wife Elizabeth. Clissmann was working for the German Academic Exchange Service and the Deutsche Akademie (DA). He was facilitating academic exchanges between Ireland and the Third Reich but also forming connections which might be of benefit to the Abwehr. Clissmann was also a representative of the Nazi Auslandorganisation (AO) – the Nazi Party's foreign organization – in pre-war Ireland.

Stuart was also friendly with the head of the German Legation in Dublin, Dr Eduard Hempel, largely as a result of Maud Gonne MacBride's rapport with him. By 1938 Stuart was seeking a way out of his marriage and the provincialism of Irish life. Iseult intervened with Clissmann to arrange for Stuart to travel to Germany to give a series of academic lectures in conjunction with the DA. Stuart travelled to Germany in April 1939 and was hosted by Professor Walter F. Schirmer, the senior member of the English faculty with the DA and Berlin University. He visited Munich, Hamburg, Bonn and Cologne. After his lecture tour, he accepted an appointment as lecturer in English and Irish literature at Berlin University to begin in 1940. At this time, under the Nuremberg Laws, the German academic system had barred Jews.

In July 1939, Stuart returned home to Laragh and confirmed at the outbreak of war in September that he would still take the place in Berlin. When Stuart's plans for travelling to Germany were finalised, he received a visit from his brother-in-law, Seán MacBride, following the seizure of an IRA radio transmitter on 29 December 1939 which had been used to contact Germany. Stuart, MacBride, Seamus O'Donovan, and IRA Chief of Staff Stephen Hayes then met at O'Donovan's house. Stuart was told to take a message to Abwehr HQ in Berlin. He arrived in Berlin in January 1940. Upon arrival he delivered the IRA message and had some discussion with the Abwehr on conditions in Ireland and the fate of the IRA–Abwehr radio link. He also reactivated his acquaintance with Abwehr asset Helmut Clissmann who was acting as an advisor to SS Colonel Dr Edmund Veesenmayer. Through Clissmann, Stuart was introduced to Sonderführer Kurt Haller. Around August 1940, Stuart was asked by Haller if he would participate in Operation Dove and he agreed, although he was later dropped in favour of Frank Ryan. While Stuart maintained contact with Ryan until his death in June 1944, there's no record of any further involvement by him with the Abwehr.

In 1945 Stuart decided to return to Ireland with a former student, Gertrude Meissner; they were unable to do so and were arrested and detained by Allied troops. After they were released, Stuart and Meissner lived in Germany and then France and England. They married in 1954 after Iseult's death and in 1958 they returned to settle in Ireland. In 1971 Stuart published his best known work, Black List Section H, an autobiographical fiction[13] documenting his life and distinguished by a queasy sensitivity to moral complexity and moral ambiguity.

In 1991 he made an extended appearance on British television: on 16 March he took part in an After Dark discussion called The Luck of The Irish? alongside J. P. Donleavy, David Norris, Emily O'Reilly, Paul Hill and others.[14]

In 1996 Stuart was elected a Saoi of Aosdána. This is a high honour in the Irish art world and the influential Irish language poet Máire Mhac an tSaoi objected strongly, referring to Stuart's actions during the war and claiming that he held anti-Semitic opinions. When it was put to a vote, she was the only person to vote for the motion (there were 70 against, with 14 abstentions).[15] She resigned from Aosdána in protest, sacrificing a government stipend by doing so. While the Aosdána affair was ongoing, Irish Times columnist Kevin Myers attacked Stuart as a Nazi sympathiser; Stuart sued for libel and the case was settled out of court. The statement from the Irish Times read out in the High Court accepted "that Mr Stuart never expressed anti-Semitism in his writings or otherwise".[11]

For some years before his death he lived in County Clare with his partner Fionuala and in County Wicklow with his son Ian and daughter-in-law Anna in a house outside Laragh village. Stuart died of natural causes on 2 February 2000 at the age of 97 in County Clare.[5][16]

Stuart wrote many novels including Black List Section H (1971). His best known work is heavily autobiographical. Much of his writing is now out of print.

Fiction

• We Have Kept the Faith, Dublin 1923
• Women and God, London 1931
• Pigeon Irish, London 1932
• The Coloured Dome, London 1932
• Try the Sky, London 1933
• Glory, London 1933
• Things to Live For: Notes for an Autobiography, London 1934
• In Search of Love, London 1935
• The Angels of Pity, London 1935
• The White Hare, London 1936
• The Bridge, London 1937
• Julie, London 1938
• The Great Squire, London 1939
• Der Fall Casement, Hamburg 1940
• The Pillar of Cloud, London 1948
• Redemption, London 1949
• The Flowering Cross, London 1950
• Good Friday's Daughter, London 1952
• The Chariot, London 1953
• The Pilgrimage, London 1955
• Victors and Vanquished, London 1958
• Angels of Providence, London 1959
• Black List Section H, Southern Illinois University Press 1971 ISBN 0-14-006229-7)
• Memorial, London 1973
• A Hole in the Head, London 1977
• The High Consistory, London 1981
• We Have Kept the Faith: New and Selected Poems, Dublin 1982
• States of Mind, Dublin 1984
• Faillandia, Dublin 1985
• The Abandoned Snail Shell, Dublin 1987
• Night Pilot, Dublin 1988
• A Compendium of Lovers, Dublin 1990
• Arrow of Anguish, Dublin 1995
• King David Dances, Dublin 1996

Pamphlets

• Nationality and Culture, Dublin 1924
• Mystics and Mysticism, Dublin 1929
• Racing for Pleasure and Profit in Ireland and Elsewhere, Dublin 1937

Plays

• Men Crowd me Round, 1933
• Glory, 1936
• Strange Guests, 1940
• Flynn's Last Dive, 1962
• Who Fears to Speak, 1970

• Elborn, Geoffrey (1990). Francis Stuart: a Life. Dublin: Raven Arts Press. ISBN 978-1-85186-075-3.
• Hull, Mark (2003). Irish Secrets. Blackrock: Irish Academic Press. ISBN 0-7165-2756-1.
• McCartney, Anne (2000). Francis Stuart. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, Queen's University. ISBN 0-85389-768-9.
• Stephan, Enno (1963). Spies in Ireland. London: Macdonald.
• Barrington, Brendan, ed. (2001). The Wartime Broadcasts of Francis Stuart, 1942–1944. Dublin: Lilliput Press. ISBN 1-901866-54-8.
• Kiely, Kevin (2007). Francis Stuart: Artist and Outcast. Dublin: The Liffey Press. ISBN 978-1-905785-25-4.
• Lengthy interview conducted in 1998 by Naim Attallah

• IRA Abwehr World War II – main article on IRA Nazi links

• Aosdána short biography Archived 5 May 2005 at the Wayback Machine
• RTÉ short obituary
• The Guardian obituary
• Francis Stuart Papers, 1932–1971 Archived 25 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Special Collections Research Center
• Colm Tóibín, "Issues of Truth and Invention" – Essay on Francis Stuart
• Amanda French, " A Strangely Useless Thing': Iseult Gonne and Yeats," Yeats Eliot Review: A Journal of Criticism and Scholarship 19.2 (2002): 13–24. (pdf)