Mairin Mitchell

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Mairin Marian Mitchell FRGS (20 May 1895 – 5 October 1986), registered at birth as Marian Houghton Mitchell, was an English journalist and author, mostly on political, naval, and historical subjects. She was also a translator from Spanish to English.

Early life[]

Ambleside
Ambleside

Born at Darlington, County Durham,[1] Mitchell was the daughter of an Irish-born general practitioner at Ambleside, Westmorland, Dr Thomas Houghton Mitchell, and his wife Gertrude Emily Pease. They had married at Darlington in 1893.[2] Dr Mitchell had two brothers who were also doctors.[2] His father-in-law, Edward Thomas Pease, a wine and spirit merchant at Darlington, died in 1897 leaving a substantial fortune.[3]

St Winifred's, Bron Castell, Bangor
St Winifred's, Bron Castell, Bangor

The oldest of her parents’ children, Mitchell had twin sisters, Edith and Gertrude, and a younger brother, Edward Pease Houghton Mitchell.[2][1] She was educated away from home at St Winifred's, a boarding school for girls in Bangor, North Wales,[1] and at Bedford College, London.[4]

Mitchell’s brother Edward passed out of Sandhurst in 1916[5] and died near the end of the First World War, while serving as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force.[2] Her mother died in 1935, leaving some £5,500,[6] and her father in 1946.[2]

Career[]

Soon after the end of the First World War, Mitchell, an aspiring writer, was living in London and was a member of a circle of anarchists. She later recalled an evening on a rooftop talking of Marx, Hegelian dialectic, communalism, and the future of Ireland, and commented on it "Better in youth the endless talk, even the “isms” that show the divine discontent, than the young who do not question and who never rebel."[7]

Mitchell became a journalist, as London correspondent for Irish newspapers, and also wrote poems and books, choosing to use the Irish form of her first name.[8] In a copy of her A Shuiler Sings (1932) she wrote an inscription in Irish and signed her name as "Mairin Ni Mhaol Micheil".[9]

In the 1930s, Mitchell was corresponding with Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington about arrangements for meetings of the Women Writers’ Club and the Roger Casement Committee, and about other events.[10] In 1946, she wrote an obituary of Sheehy-Skeffington for the Connolly Association’s Irish Democrat.[11]

While he was writing Homage to Catalonia,[8] George Orwell reviewed Mitchell's Storm Over Spain (1937) for Time and Tide and recommended it, commenting that it was "written by a Catholic, but very sympathetic to the Spanish Anarchists".[12] Mitchell wrote to Orwell to thank him for his review but added that she had read The Road to Wigan Pier, and in politics they were on different sides. She added that she was English, and not Irish, as he had supposed.[8] Fredric Warburg, the publisher of Storm Over Spain, later wrote that the book had been "a flop", but added that it was "the only pacifist study I ever read of the Spanish War".[13]

In 1939, Mitchell was highly critical of the Irish leftists for their views on the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and wrote to Desmond Ryan in September "Brian O'Neill, Bloomsbury, and Daiken will sing Russia right or wrong."[14]

From 1937 to 1939 Mitchell travelled in Europe, visiting France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and Liechtenstein, and her Back to England (1940) describes her travels and adds her thoughts on conditions in Britain in 1940. It was later republished by the Right Book Club as its book of the month.[8]

In April 1940, an article appeared in Irish Freedom under Mitchell’s name, praising Betsy Gray and urging Irish women to follow her example and support the Irish Republican and Labour movement. In the next month’s issue, an apology was printed which made it clear that Mitchell had not written the article and that her name had been printed in error.[15]

In her Atlantic Battle and the Future of Ireland (1941), Mitchell described herself as a British citizen of Irish parentage. She praised de Valera and his policy of neutrality, but foresaw great impacts on Ireland from the outcome of the war in the Atlantic.[16]

By 1946, Mitchell had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society[2] and she also became a contributor to Encyclopædia Britannica.[17]

In November 1953, The London Gazette recorded Miss Marian Houghton Mitchell as the personal representative of James Garrett Peacocke, deceased, retired merchant seaman, of Walworth, who had died in September of that year.[18]

Mitchell’s The Bridge of San Miguel (1960) is a fictionalized account of the first European sighting of the South Sea by Vasco Nunez de Balboa in 1513, with a map of the Isthmus of Panama showing the route taken by Balboa.[19] Her last book, published in 1986, was a study of Berengaria of Navarre, the queen of Richard I of England.[20]

Mitchell died at Holy Cross Priory, Cross-in-Hand, East Sussex, in 1986, aged 91.[1][21]

Selected works[]

  • Songs of the South, The Hidden Land, Pedlar’s Pieces, Road Rhymes (verse)[22]
  • A Shuiler Sings (London: M. Michael, The Columbia Press, 1932), a collection of short poems dealing with Ireland.[23]
  • Traveller in Time (London: Sheed & Ward, 1935)[24]
  • Storm over Spain (London: Secker & Warburg, 1937)
  • Atlantic Battle and the Future of Ireland (London: F. Muller Ltd. 1941)
  • Back to England: an Account of the Author's Travels on the Continent from 1937 to 1939 and Her Observations on Wartime Conditions in Britain in 1940 (1940; Right Book Club, 1942)
  • The Red Fleet and the Royal Navy (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1942)
  • We Can Keep the Peace (London: Grout Publishing Co., 1945)
  • The Maritime History of Russia 848–1948 (London: ‎Sidgwick & Jackson, 1949 ASIN B0006D95RU)
  • Histoire maritime de la Russie (Paris: Editions Deux Rives, 1952)
  • The Odyssey of Acurio who sailed with Magellan (London: Heinemann, 1956)
  • Elcano the First Circumnavigator (London: Herder, 1958)
  • The Bridge of San Miguel (London: Herder, 1960, ASIN ‎B0000CKV0C)
  • Friar Andrés de Urdaneta, O.S.A. (London: Macdonald and Evans, 1964)
  • Berengaria: Enigmatic Queen of England (East Sussex: A. Wright, 1986, 1986, ISBN 0951181505)
Selected articles

Translations[]

  • José de Arteche, The Cardinal of Africa, Charles Lavigerie, Founder of the White Fathers translated by Mairin Mitchell (London, Catholic Book Club, 1964)
  • Fray Maria Pablo Garcia Gorrez, The Visigothic Basilica of San Juan De Banos and Visigothic Art, English version by Mairin Mitchell (Diario-Dia, 1973, ASIN ‎B00A0N101U)

As editor[]

  • José Luis Martín Descalzo, A Priest Confesses, translated into English by Rita Goldberg, ed. Mairin Mitchell (The Catholic Book Club, 1962)

Notes[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d "Marian Houghton Mitchell" in England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837–1915, ancestry.co.uk; 1911 United Kingdom Census, St Winifred’s School, Bangor, ancestry.co.uk; "Mairin Marion Mitchell" in England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916–2007, ancestry.co.uk; accessed 30 July 2021 (subscription required)
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f "Obituary: Dr Thomas Houghton Mitchell", British Medical Journal, 21 September 1946, 2:443, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.2.4472.443
  3. ^ "PEASE Edward Thomas of "Oak Lea" Darlington wine and spirit-merchant died 27 December 1897… Effects £88929 15s 7d." [equivalent to £9,979,132 in 2019] in Wills and Administrations (England & Wales) 1898 (1899), p. 123
  4. ^ Calendar (University of London, 1915), p. 303
  5. ^ The London Gazette, Issue 29708, 15 August 1916, p. 8029
  6. ^ "MITCHELL Gertrude Emily of Rothay Garth Ambleside Westmorland (wife of Thomas Houghton Mitchell) died 22 January 1935… Effects £5584 3s." [equivalent to £390,484 in 2019] in Wills and Administrations (England & Wales) 1935 (1936), p. 402
  7. ^ Mairin Mitchell, Storm Over Spain (London: Secker & Warburg, 1937), pp. 132-133
  8. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Martin Tyrrell, "Spanish Sketches", Dublin Review of Books, July 2021, accessed 30 July 2021
  9. ^ Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers Summer Rare Books Catalogue, scribd.com, accessed 16 August 2021: "Mitchell (Maírín) A Shuiler Sings, 8vo L. (Michael The Columbia Press) n.d.. Inscribed 'E. Lafavelle Le Meas Moír, Mairin Ni Mhaol Micheil' ptd. wrappers" (subscription required)
  10. ^ Éilis Ní Dhuibhne, "Collection List No. 47 Sheehy Skeffington Papers", National Library of Ireland, p. 69, accessed 12 August 2021
  11. ^ Mairin Mitchell, "A Great Irishwoman", in The Irish Democrat No. 19, July 1946, p. 5
  12. ^ George Orwell, "Review Storm over Spain by Mairin Mitchell" in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: An age like this, 1920-1940 (Secker & Warburg, 1968), pp. 296–297
  13. ^ Fredric Warburg, An Occupation For Gentlemen (Plunkett Lake Press, 2019), p. 142
  14. ^ Katrina Goldstone, Irish Writers and the Thirties: Art, Exile and War (London: Routledge, 29 December 2020), p. 153
  15. ^ "Betsy Gray", Irish Freedom No. 16, April 1940, p. 2; "Apology", Irish Freedom No. 17, May 1940, p. 2; connollyassociation.org.uk, accessed 22 August 2021
  16. ^ "The vast extent of Hitler’s coast-line" (review) in Illustrated London News, 4 October 1941, p. 6
  17. ^ "Mairin Mitchell", britannica.com, accessed 30 July 2021
  18. ^ The London Gazette, Issue 40028, 27 November 1953, p. 6506
  19. ^ "New Fiction" in Birmingham Daily Post, 3 January 1961, p. 22
  20. ^ Mairin Mitchell, Berengaria: Enigmatic Queen of England (East Sussex: A. Wright, 1 December 1986, ISBN 0951181505)
  21. ^ "MITCHELL Mairin Marian of Room 19 Holy Cross Priory Cross-in-Hand E Sx died 5 October 1986" in Wills and Administrations 1987 (England and Wales), p. 5429
  22. ^ "MAIRIN MITCHELL", Irish Freedom, No. 50, February 1943, p. 8
  23. ^ Studies, Vol. 22 (1933), p. 176
  24. ^ John Lyle Donaghy, "Review of Traveller in time, by Máirín Mitchell", The Dublin Magazine, Vol. XI, New Series, No. 4, October–December 1936, pp. 91-93
  25. ^ Mairin Mitchell, "Eire of the Swift Ships", in Irish Freedom, No. 50, February 1943, p. 8

External links[]

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