Chapter 18
At the beginning of 1935 the director of the National Historical Museum in Buenos Aires, Federico Santa Coloma Brandsen, entrusted the Argentine chargé d’affaires in Lisbon, René Correa Luna, with an unusual mission. He asked Correa if he could find the final resting-place of one of the heroes of Argentine independence, John Thomond O’Brien.1
This was part of a project launched by the Argentine government to discover the whereabouts and to look after the remains of all the national heroes of the independence era. O’Brien was adjudged important enough to be included in this list, having served on campaigns with Bolívar and San Martín.
It was known that O’Brien was buried in Portugal. He had crossed the Atlantic countless times during his lifetime and, having visited his native County Wicklow for the last time in the winter of 1859, was returning to Chile when he fell ill in Lisbon. He died in his house in the Rua do Alecrim in Lisbon at 6 o’clock in the evening on 1 June 1861.
Having read Brandsen’s letter that February morning, Correa began his investigations. After making a few inquiries of the Portuguese historian Antonio Ferreira de Serpa about the best manner in which to proceed, Correa looked up the old newspaper collection in the National Library. In the edition of the Jornal do Comercio for 3 June 1861 he came across O’Brien’s funeral notice, which gave Correa the information that O’Brien was buried in the Cemitério dos Prazeres (which translates as the Cemetery of the Pleasures) in Lisbon. The Prazeres is the equivalent of La Recoleta in Buenos Aires, Glasnevin Cemetry in Dublin or Père Lachaise in Paris, being the last resting-place of some of Portugal’s most eminent citizens, including poets, writers, actors and fado singers. Its aisles are lined with elaborate stone tombs, many of them the size of small chapels. In the registry of burials, Correa discovered that O’Brien had been buried at 11 in the morning on 3 June 1861 in tomb No. 1244. A metal badge inscribed No. 759 was attached to the coffin.
Looking at the registry of graves, Correa found that the city council had sold the tomb to Father Patrick Bernard Russell on 11 May 1861. However, the ownership of the tomb had passed to a man by the name of José Enrique dos Santos Jones on 28 August 1893. On 8 January 1894 it passed to José da Costa.
Though he had found the place where O’Brien had been buried in 1861, Correa was now faced with a problem. There were countless families in Lisbon with the name of Costa; finding which one owned the tomb in Prazeres was going to take time. But Correa was a diligent detective and was fully conscious of the importance of the task he had been charged with by his government. After making more inquiries, he discovered that José da Costa was dead but that his son, Joaquín Faria Costa, would be able to help him.
Joaquín Faria Costa showed Correa the document confirming ownership of the tomb. It revealed that O’Brien’s remains had been removed from No. 1244 on 16 August 1893 and reinterred in No. 3694. Correa returned to Prazeres cemetery to examine the registry of graves and discovered that the Irish Dominicans in Lisbon had bought tomb No. 3694 on 22 October 1890.
Correa now had a firm lead. He paid a visit to the Dominican college at Travessa do Corpo Santo. He was welcomed by the rector, a Kerryman by the name of Paul O’Sullivan. Born in Tralee in 1871, O’Sullivan had lived in Lisbon for 40 years, having arrived in 1895 for health reasons. Appalled by what he perceived as the low regard in which the Church was held in Portugal, and spurred into action by the anti-clericalism of the First Republic in 1910, O’Sullivan became an ardent Catholic propagandist. He founded a publishing company in an office in the Dominicans’ premises and established Catholic magazines for distribution throughout Portugal and beyond. He wrote several of the booklets and pamphlets that were published by the company, including such titles as The Wonders of the Holy Name, How to Be Happy – How to Be Holy, All About the Angels, The Holy Ghost: Our Greatest Friend, The Secret of Confession and Read Me or Rue It: How to Avoid Purgatory.
O’Sullivan confirmed to Correa that tomb No. 3694 belonged to the Irish Dominicans, and that it contained a wooden urn with the remains of John Thomond O’Brien. He also told Correa that his predecessor, Father Patrick Russell, had spoken to him in glowing terms about O’Brien, whom he remembered well. O’Sullivan agreed to show the tomb to Correa.
On a pleasant May afternoon the two men passed through the gates of the Prazeres cemetery into the shadows of the dark-green cypress trees. They walked slowly past the doors of the faded marble mausoleums, through the windows of which one could see mouldering coffins. Lisbon is hilly, and from the elevated position of the cemetery O’Sullivan and Correa were able to look down on the River Tagus flowing through the city. Neither man was frail – indeed they were both tall and well built – but both were beginning to show signs of age. O’Sullivan was dressed in clerical black and collar; Correa wore a pin-striped suit, as befitted the dignity of his diplomatic office.
Grave No. 3694 was on the left-hand side of Rua 35. O’Sullivan took out his key and opened the metal door. Correa peered into the darkness. The tomb was clean and well looked after. On the right-hand side was an urn made of wood, in the shape of a coffin. Attached to it was a metal badge, on which was inscribed No. 759. Within this urn were the remains of General John Thomond O’Brien, O’Sullivan told Correa. They had been transferred to the wooden urn from the coffin in which the general had been buried, which was discovered to be completely rotten when O’Brien’s original tomb was opened in 1893.
Correa had found the urn, but he needed proof that the remains within really belonged to the hero of Argentine independence. O’Sullivan did the needful: in a written declaration he certified that the urn contained O’Brien’s mortal remains. The late rector, Patrick Russell, who was a friend of the general’s, had often spoken of it.
Correa was pleased with his work and wrote to Brandsen, as well as to the Ministry of External Relations in Buenos Aires, reporting that he had found O’Brien’s remains and that he would await further instructions. On 8 August he received a telegram from the minister for external relations in Buenos Aires instructing him to make the necessary arrangements for repatriation.
On 4 October 1935, at 11:30 in the morning, in the presence of the Argentine consul-general, the Irish Dominican fathers and other luminaries resident in the city, a commission representing the Portuguese authorities, officially handed over the remains of O’Brien to Correa in the Prazeres cemetery. The urn had already been opened to verify its contents before being resealed. Ribbons were placed at either end of the urn bearing the Portuguese and Argentine colours. The members of the Portuguese commission then signed a document verifying once again that the urn contained O’Brien’s remains. The Irish Dominican fathers were obliged to carry out the same ceremony.
The urn remained in the chapel for three days, until 9 o’clock in the morning on 7 October, when it was transferred to the Church of the Corpo Santo, in the charge of the Irish Dominicans. The urn was draped in an Argentine flag and placed on a catafalque in the centre of a church; below it Correa placed a wreath on behalf of the Argentine legation.
Correa had obtained the permission of the Portuguese authorities to allow a company of a hundred sailors to disembark from the Argentine frigate and navy training vessel Presidente Sarmiento, which was standing by in the port ready to take O’Brien’s remains to Buenos Aires. Four naval cadets stood guard around the catafalque. At 10:15 the company of Argentine sailors, including a navy band, marched up to the front door of the church. A squadron of cavalry from Portugal’s National Republican Guard accompanied them. At 10:30 the Superior of the Irish Dominicans in Lisbon, Father Dominic Clarkson, assisted by other members of the order, celebrated a requiem mass. In attendance were members of the city’s diplomatic corps, including representatives of Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Mexico and Uruguay. At the end of the mass the urn was carried from the church and placed on a gun carriage pulled by six horses. The bands of the National Republican Guard and the Presidente Sarmiento played funeral marches while the cortege made its way through the winding streets of Lisbon towards the docks. Two guards of honour, one Portuguese and one Argentine, lined up on either side as the urn was brought aboard the Argentine frigate. On board, Correa officially handed over the urn to the captain of the ship. It was placed in a specially constructed box to prevent it from being damaged during the crossing. The ceremonies in Lisbon were covered extensively in the Portuguese press.
The decree authorising the transfer of O’Brien’s remains from Lisbon to Buenos Aires was signed by the president of Argentina, Agustín Pedro Justo, the minister for external relations, Carlos Saavedra Lamas, the minister for war, Manuel A. Rodríguez, and the minister for the navy, Eleazar Videla. It stated that ‘General O’Brien, though born on foreign soil, identified with Argentina, joining at an early age the celebrated Regiment of Mounted Grenadiers, and taking part in a great number of battles from Chacabuco to Ayacucho.’2
On 28 November, O’Brien’s remains were transferred from the Presidente Sarmiento to the gunboat Rosario in a ceremony on the River Plate estuary. The following day General Tomás Martínez and Vice-Admiral Enrique G. Fliess headed a party that left the docks at Buenos Aires on board the gunboat Paraná, bringing with them a new urn made from an independence-era bronze cannon. On board the Rosario, Martínez and Fliess oversaw the transfer of the remains to the new urn. They then returned to shore with the old urn, which was deposited in the National Historical Museum. At 10 in the morning on 30 November the Rosario docked in Buenos Aires.
The president and the ministers for war and the navy were present to receive the remains, which were transferred to a gun carriage and escorted by a regiment of grenadiers on horseback to the Plaza de Mayo in the heart of Buenos Aires, where a minute’s silence was observed in front of the cathedral. The cortege then made its way to the Church of Our Lady of the Pillar in the Recoleta district, where a solemn mass was held. After the mass the remains of O’Brien were brought to the entrance of the Recoleta cemetery. Before the urn was committed to its final resting-place, the minister of war, Manuel Rodríguez, gave an oration on behalf of the government. The ambassadors of Chile, Uruguay and Peru also spoke, as did the president of the Comisión Irlandesa-Argentina in Buenos Aires, Dr Huberto M. Ennis.
The Comisión Irlandesa-Argentina was centrally involved in the ceremonial for the repatriation of O’Brien’s remains, and members of the Irish-Argentine community in Buenos Aires turned out in force for a mass in memory of the Irish general in the Church of the Holy Cross. During the speeches outside the Recoleta ceremony, Ennis said that ‘those of us of Celtic blood take pleasure in thinking that [O’Brien] was able to devote all his energies to the service of the American cause, without forgetting the old traditions of his native land.’3 According to Ennis, O’Brien’s interest in Catholic Emancipation for his compatriots and his schemes for promoting Irish immigration to his adopted home showed that he belonged to the ‘spiritual empire of the Emerald Isle’s exiled children.’ He continued:
O’Brien was one of the innumerable children of Ireland whose ill-fated destiny was to see them abducted from her native soil and dispersed throughout the world; like those who fought in the sixteenth century on the battlefields of Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the Low Countries, and the hundreds of thousands of Irishmen who gave their lives in sacrifice in France in the eighteenth century, a countless legion which has given the names of Brown, O’Higgins, Barry, O’Donnell, and O’Leary to other nations’ histories.4
The spiritual empire that Ennis had in mind on that cold morning in Buenos Aires in 1935 no longer exists. It has been replaced by a global community of Irish expatriates of differing creeds and colours who share memories of home in much the same way as the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children who fled religious and political persecution and economic disadvantage in Ireland to make better lives for themselves throughout Europe and the Americas.