An
Irishman’s Diary: The MulhallsBy Brian McGinn
An
Irishman’s Diary: The Mulhalls
The setting was Buenos Aires, the year was 1861, and the brothers were
the Mulhalls, both recent immigrants from Dublin. Michael George had studied for
the priesthood at the Irish College in Rome before deciding that he did not have
a vocation. Edward Thomas, trained as a solicitor, had left behind a promising
legal career in New York to take up sheep farming in Argentina.
Out of the complementary visions of this unlikely duo sprang The
Standard, South America’s first daily newspaper in English. And by
year’s end the Mulhalls had jointly authored South America’s first
English-language book, the Handbook of the
River Plate.
Michael’s
editorial philosophy, outlined in The
Standard’s premier issue of May 1st 1861, struck an inclusive
and idealistic note. “We have all come from the British Isles,” wrote the
former seminarian, “and English, Irish, Scotch and American acknowledge the
one mother tongue. Let us then meet upon the same broad ground and casting aside
the absurd claims to primogeniture, give to each an equal share. Monopoly is
unjust and bigotry hateful. To crush one and prevent the other is our object.”
A front-page advertisement in the same issue revealed both the diversity
of Michael Mulhall’s talents and—unintentionally--some lingering
uncertainties about his new venture. Mr. M.G. Mulhall, “late Professor of
Languages at the Royal College of Carlow” offered “lessons in English,
Italian, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Logic and Metaphysics at his private residence
or in his chambers—The Standard office--at No.137 Calle San Martin.”
Michael need not have worried about keeping his day job. His timing was
perfect, as Argentina’s political and business elites looked to the
English-speaking economies for the capital, technology, and labour needed to
develop their resource rich nation. The
Standard quickly established itself as a newspaper of record at home, and
the official voice of Argentina abroad. By 1875, the Mulhalls were shipping
20,000 copies of their weekly edition to Europe and North America.
Embracing the latest printing technology, the Mulhalls were the first publishers in South America to install Linotype machines. They overcame Buenos Aires’ lack of trans-Atlantic cable links with improvisation. Patrick O’Gorman met all incoming ships in Montevideo, where he collected the newspapers from home and telegraphed interesting extracts to The Standard office in Buenos Aires. The Montevideo correspondent, descended from Co. Laois immigrants, became known as Stand-by-O’Gorman.
Divided Loyalties
As
devout Catholics—all four of their sisters entered religious life in
Ireland—the Mulhall brothers shared their wealth and talents with
co-religionists in Argentina. Their names could be found, next to generous
donations, on subscription lists for the leading Catholic charities of the
Irish-Argentine community. When Patrick J. Dillon, a missionary priest from Tuam,
launched a weekly Irish Catholic newspaper in 1875, the Mulhalls looked on The
Southern Cross as complementary rather than competitive. They offered Fr.
Dillon the use of their printing presses and the journalistic talents of a third
brother, Francis Healy Mulhall, who arrived from Ireland in 1865.
For some compatriots, it was not enough. The problem was not their religious zeal, but the unforgivable fact that the Mulhalls appeared to combine Catholicism with loyalism. In his 1919 study of the Irish in Argentina, the nationalist historian Thomas Murray found it entirely predictable that in time the Mulhalls would turn their paper into an “out and out English organ.” As an O’Connellite, Murray noted with sarcasm, Michael Mulhall was “deeply loyal to ‘our gracious Queen.’ We would call him a shoneen now.”
While The Standard carried
dispatches from Dublin and Rome, its tone and orientation was indeed undeniably
British. And, if any further proof of ethnic disloyalty was needed, Michael
included the leading Irish heroes of South America’s wars of independence in
an 1878 bestseller titled The English in South America.
Ironically, English capital was at that time building the railroads and
other Argentine infrastructure on which many an Irish fortune in hides and wool
was carried to export markets. And Argentines commonly referred to all
English-speaking foreigners, including Irish, Scots and Welsh, as Ingleses.
But none of this mattered. In the minds of their critics, the Mulhalls had
forsaken their Gaelic heritage in a snobbish search for social prestige. Thomas
Murray, while himself misquoting the title of Michael’s 1878 work, took
vindictive delight in pointing out the “many glaring errors and
misstatements” in Mulhall’s books. All were uniformly attributed to
political bias, rather than the occasional slips or sloppiness of a prodigiously
prolific author.
Stop Press
Michael
Mulhall retired from The Standard in
1894 to devote himself to statistical work, a field in which he had already
achieved some fame. Today, he is better remembered for such path-breaking books
as The Dictionary of Statistics and The
History of Prices than for his pioneering role in South American publishing.
The Standard soldiered on, the
self-described Doyen of the Argentine Press, edited by the sons, nephews and
grandsons of Edward Thomas Mulhall. In 1959, just two years short of its
centenary, it succumbed to financial difficulties and the competition of
Argentina’s second English-language daily, the Buenos
Aires Herald.
Its death throes, writes Oliver Marshall of London’s Institute of Latin
American Studies in his comprehensive and fascinating history, The
English-Language Press in Latin America, were compounded by industrial
unrest and family squabbles. Its greener counterpart, The
Southern Cross, continues to publish as a monthly, and as the oldest
continuously published Irish community newspaper outside of Ireland.
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