‘The Queen of College Societies’

 - J.B. Armour

 

Compiling a history of this society and indeed of this university can only be described as a labour of love. For some years now a number of people, well myself and Mr Mark Hanniffy, have investigated the early history of the society in the nineteenth century. Information about the era is sketchy, though new material is continually emerging, thus the history of this society will be an evolving process.

 

Two absorbing accounts of life in the society and indeed in this university from the 19th century were written by a medical graduate, James Mullin, and a law graduate, James Rentoul. Mullin was from Cookestown, and though poor was a bright and able student in school, so much so that a head teacher advised him to go for a scholarship to Queen’s College Galway. Scholarship in hand, Mullin proceeded to spend upwards of seven years in QCG. Specific to the Lit ‘n’ Deb he recalls: “I am sure too, that no person ever acted as Chairman who was less cheered with the sound of his own voice. This may have been the fundamental reason why I was elected so often, for I never bored a meeting with oratorical flights. No speech of mine lasted more than ten minutes, so that my success as a chairman made up for my failing as an orator.” (A Toiler’s Life, p. 125)

 

If Mullin demurred about his own abilities as a speaker he was also less impressed by the abilities of others. He regarded some speakers as “blatant humbugs” and referring to the rather relaxed attitude of the society’s members “had a whole hearted belief that the more a man orated the less he worked” (A Toiler’s Life, p. 126). Still Mullin enjoyed the society’s ability to bring the Fenian and Orange together as, like Mullin, many northerners had taken the opportunity to study in Galway for “good education and economic living” (A Toiler’s Life, p. 107).

 

A less cynical account of Galway is relayed by J. A. Rentoul, a fellow graduate of the Cookestown Academy. Rentoul became a judge in London and was an M.P. for East Down in the 1890’s and 1900’s. He spent a year in Queen’s College Cork and then three years at Queen’s College Belfast, but recalls little of either. Galway seemed to be a more bountiful period, at least academically. It is not clear whether Rentoul was ever Chair of the society but he was decidedly more impressed by the characters of the Lit ‘n’ Deb than Mullin was. The value of the society is extolled in the highest terms: “…perhaps nowhere could a better intellectual training ground be found than in that Society where many, who were afterwards to occupy high and important positions, expounded and defended their opinions with a brilliance and audacity for which Young Ireland is and always will be remarkable” (Stray Thoughts and Memories, p. 78).

 

Rentoul also famously recalls a contribution by Frank Hugh O’Donnell, later an M.P. for Dungarvan, when one Saturday evening he described Elizabeth I as “Elizabeth the Infamous”. Such was the uproar in the Society that “Dr Moffett (Sir Thomas Moffett, then President of the College), whose interest in the students was not confined to the class room, left the chair in indignant protest and for some time chaos reigned supreme” (Stray Thoughts and Memories, p. 78). Such was the outrage at the incident that it became the subject of questions in the House of Commons, an event which “evoked a pride similar to that of a youthful Irish Rebel or a militant suffragette” (Stray Thoughts and Memories, p. 79).

 

Many exceptionally gifted graduates emerged from QCG between the 1860’s and 1880’s. Unfortunately very few committed their experiences to paper. In 1905 at an Alumni Dinner Sir William Thomson (then President of the Royal College of Surgeons) “looked back with a feeling of pleasure to the time when he and others, including T.P. O’Connor and Sir Anthony MacDonnell, used to meet in friendly combat in the Debating Society” (Q.C.G., Nov 1905, p. 28). Those others included judges, politicians, civil servants and medics who attained the highest ranks in their respective positions. We can only hope to emulate them, and that we are imbued with their boundless energy and sense of adventure.

 

Keith Maye, M.A.

Auditor of the Literary and Debating Society, 2000-2001