Life And Speeches Of Daniel Henry Deniehy Deniehy, Daniel Henry (1828-1865) University of Sydney Library Sydney 1998 http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit © University of Sydney Library. The texts and Images are not to be used for commercial purposes without permission Source Text: Prepared from the print edition published by McNeil and Coffee Sydney 1884 Preface and Biographical Memoir by E. A. Martin. All quotation marks retained as data All unambiguous end-of-line hyphens have been removed, and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line. Author First Published 1884 Australian Etexts essays biographies political history 1870-1889 prose nonfiction 21st July 1998 Creagh Cole Coordinator Final Checking and Parsing Life And Speeches Of Daniel Henry Deniehy Sydney McNeil and Coffee 1884 MEMOIR. E.A. Martin Daniel Deniehy portrait. DANIEL HENRY DENIEHY was born in Kent Street, Sydney, in the year 1828. His father, Daniel John Deniehy, a native of Ireland, was a man of limited education but of great natural ability, and early seeing in his only child indications of those talents which, if cultivated in himself, might have made the name of Deniehy renowned in New South Wales, resolved upon giving his son the very best advantages money could afford. The old gentleman, who had been for many years engaged in a large and lucrative business, that of a produce merchant, and by the exercise of rare capability had succeeded in getting together a considerable fortune, looked forward with pride and pleasure to the day when his boy should take his place amongst the foremost in the land. After finishing at the Old Sydney College, and bearing off all the honours and prizes of that institution, to the enthusiastic delight of his companions, the future orator, accompanied by his parents, set out on a visit to England. Arrived there, his father at once proceeded to put into execution his ambitious project of entering him at Cambridge, but his extremely boyish, indeed childish, appearance and unfinished colonial training prejudiced the authorities against him, and they consequently refused him admission. Nothing daunted by this, Mr. Deniehy insisted that his son should at some future time enjoy the high privilege, and as a preliminary placed him under the care of a professional tutor, a Cambridge man himself, with the intention of preparing him for admission. After a short stay in Ireland, the parents returned to Sydney, and Daniel Henry for some months pursued his studies with great earnestness and ardour. However, seeming all at once to tire of the monotony of his existence, he gave up all hope of a university career, and bidding his tutor a hurried farewell, set out to visit Ireland, whose mournful story and romantic history had for his poetic mind a singular charm. It was during his brief sojourn, “a swallow's season,” as he himself called it, in that land of joy and melancholy, that much of that deep spirit of patriotism which afterwards so passionately, and as some thought destructively, distinguished him, came into being. I allude to his devoted attachment to Ireland and his enthusiastic advocacy of her cause upon all occasions. Prior to returning to the colony, Daniel Henry, who had received ample remittances from his father, ran through Europe, visiting on his way the principal cities of the Continent, and making himself familiar with all the renowned galleries, works of art, and objects of vertu which those centres of civilization contain. He spent whole weeks exploring the famous collections of Munich and the Louvre alone, nor did he, whilst engaged in this delightful occupation, neglect the most essential portion of life's education — reading, research, and study. At the end of a few years he gladdened his father's heart by his reappearance in Sydney, and was at once hailed by a crowd of enthusiastic and admiring friends as one of the most promising and scholarly young men of the time. Having evinced some predilection for the study of law, he was articled to Nicol D. Stenhouse, the father of literature and the bar in New South Wales, and in due course, after passing an exceptionally brilliant examination, was admitted to practice as an attorney and solicitor. It is remarkable that Mr. Deniehy was the first native born member of his profession on the rolls; the whole of the legal fraternity at the time he joined its ranks being composed exclusively of gentlemen who had received an English training and who had enjoyed the incalculable advantage of an English law apprenticeship; yet “little Deniehy” even upon the most critical points held his own with the best of them, and upon many occasions won the warmest commendations from the lips of such men as John Hubert Plunkett, Edward Broadhurst, Q.C. and Terence Aubrey Murray; nor was his chivalrous antagonist, William Charles Wentworth, himself slow or ungenerous in his acknowledgments of the attainments and talents of the boy-orator whose stinging satire was so often levelled against his mightiest projects. The student's passion, however, was too profound with young Deniehy to devote himself with any great degree of assiduity to the dry details of his profession, and he chiefly occupied himself in literary pursuits, haunting old bookstalls and ferreting out those antique gems and rare works which the ginger-bread notions of the wealthy colonists passed by as worthless. Thus early in life he commenced to lay together the nucleus of that magnificent library, which for numbers, taste, choice, and elegance, no other reader in the Australias has ever approached. His collection of books at one period weighed over four tons, and comprised some of the best and most costly specimens of English and Continental literature, for in all the languages of modern Europe he was as much at borne as in his native tongue, and in classical lore his young mind was deeply and richly stored. It was prior to his trip to England, in 1844, that he published his first literary essay — a novelette entitled “Love at First Sight” — in the pages of the Colonial Literary Journal. The proof sheets of this manuscript were carried to the young author at his father's house in Chippendale by the Hon. Thomas Garrett, M.P., sometime Minister for Lands in New South Wales, then a mere boy engaged in the Government printing office. The little volume, though displaying much sweetness and delicacy of touch, is only remarkable as being the first legitimate contribution of the bright genius which afterwards gave to Australian literature some of its fairest, if most fugitive gems. In 1854, he made his first appearance as a political speaker, on the occasion of the great meeting in the Victoria Theatre, to protest against Mr. Wentworth's Constitution Bill, in which that gentleman proposed to introduce a Chamber of Peers on the model of the British House of Lords,—an innovation which was regarded by the colonists with mingled indignation and derision; in any case, the warm opposition which met the wild attempt upon all sides was strongly flavoured with ridicule and contempt. In moving the adoption of the third resolution, Daniel Henry carried the entire assemblage with him, as with fervid, passionate eloquence and scathing satire he analysed the claims of Mr. Wentworth and his followers to titles of nobility, immortalizing the clique as “the shoddy aristocracy of Botany Bay.” This address will be found under the heading of “Speech against the Constitution Bill.” After this he freely took part in all demonstrations of public moment, and although his position in society was scarcely defined, he was invariably listened to with the utmost respect and deference, and frequently had amongst his auditors Gregory Blaxland, Dr. Bland, Wentworth, and other veteran speakers who had grown gray in the already troubled field of Australian politics. About this period he became acquainted with Miss Adelaide Ironside, the gifted Australian painter. The intimacy soon ripened into a warm affection upon either side, but, alas! with all Adelaide's brilliant endowments, and she was a woman of commanding intellect and rare literary genius, being one of the very few of her sex who have ever aspired to and reached the position of leader-writer on the press, she lacked the one thing which, to attach a temperament like Daniel Henty's, half poet, whole dreamer, was vitally necessary, a fair face, and his love soon calmed into a protecting brotherly tenderness, but which never wholly forgot its first devotion. A disciple of Art and a critic of the highest order, he saw at a, glance the splendid and untried capabilities of her budding genius, and earnestly advised her to pursue her studies in Rome, where he was confident she only needed acquaintance and association with the productions of the great masters to perfect those talents which were even then rapidly developing in her. Woman-like, however, poor Adelaide was true to her girlish love, and long after Deniehy's marriage, refused many brilliant offers by which she might have been happily placed in life. Deniehy, with the full knowledge and approbation of his highminded wife, maintained an unbroken correspondence with Miss Ironside up to the very last few months preceding his death. Adelaide was at Rome when the sad intelligence was borne to her, and she told John Gibson, who was the bearer of the mournful tidings, “that there was nothing worth living for now.” The following letter, written by Deniehy from Goulburn to Miss Ironside in Sydney, and whilst her young genius was almost unknown, will give some notion of the fond, brotherly affection with which he regarded the woman, and the chivalresque generosity with which he strove to encourage the development of gifts whose presence he had been the first to acknowledge, but of whose existence the forming of nearer and happier ties might have rendered him careless or oblivious:— “MANDELSON'S HOTEL, GOULBURN.