Born: 29 September 1828, Ireland
Died: 2 June 1908
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: Hope Connolly, Thomasine, Celtica
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Michèle Milan. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Knight (Hope-Connolly), Olivia Mary (1828?–1908), poet, translator and teacher, was born at Rathbawn, Castlebar, Co. Mayo, probably on 29 September 1828, the only daughter of Simon Knight, a civil engineer, and his wife, possibly Sarah D’Alton of Ballaghadereen, Co. Roscommon. Olivia had one brother, Arthur E. Patrick Knight. Simon Knight was the brother of Patrick Knight, also an engineer and author of a study of Erris, Co. Mayo, Erris in the Irish highlands and the Atlantic railway (1836). They were both appointed for a study of the bogs in Ireland that took place from 1810–11.
Olivia was educated locally, and claimed it was from her mother she received her ‘thirst of information and reading’ (Poems, xv-xvi). When she was a child, her parents brought her to visit historic places of patriotic interest, told her Irish legends and sang her Thomas Moore’s melodies. Her father died when she was still young, and the family moved to Tucker Street, Castlebar.
Olivia became a teacher in the national schools, helping to support her mother and brother. She taught in Ireland for fourteen years, six of them at a private school in Castlebar, four years as a governess and a further four years at Gainstown national school, near Mullingar. In 1860 she received professional training at the Dublin Training Establishment, from which she obtained a teacher’s classification certificate as well as certificates in drawing and music. She could play harmonium and piano, and was taught music by John W. Glover, editor of Moore’s melodies and renowned church organist. Her brother Arthur, a musician and composer, taught music privately in Castlebar. Olivia’s poem ‘A Christmas carol’ was set to an air composed by him.
Around 1844 Olivia began corresponding with the editors of the Nation, having already adopted the pen-name ‘Thomasine’, probably out of admiration for Thomas Davis. When she heard that Davis was preparing a new edition of John Philpot Curran’s speeches, she sent him some reports from an old magazine. She corresponded with the ‘old’ Nation over several years, yet only becoming a prominent contributor after it was revived in 1849, publishing numerous poems, as well as several prose and verse translations, and became known as ‘Thomasine of the Nation’. Her verses and their traditional nationalist images fitted the paper’s overall national-patriotic tone, and she wrote tributes to a number of Irish nationalists. The dominant themes in her poetry include parting, exile and emigration, but also hope, perseverance and religious faith.
As a translator, she concentrated mainly on fiction. Her translations, mostly short stories with a historical setting, were done from the French of various authors, appearing throughout the 1850s. She also translated a selection of French contemporary fables which carried witty sociopolitical messages, addressing topics such as freedom of speech and censorship. She also translated stories for (and sent poems to) several of James Duffy’s magazines.
Following his appointment in 1859 as catholic bishop of Brisbane, Australia, James Quinn, who had run a private catholic school in Dublin, endeavoured to develop a strong catholic educational system under his episcopacy, and offered Olivia a position in a projected training school for catholic teachers. He also founded the Queensland Immigration Society to bring migrants, mainly Irish, to Australia. One of the ships chartered was the Erin-Go-Bragh, which sailed from Liverpool in January 1862 and thence from Cork on 7 February, beginning one of the most infamous migrant ship journeys of the era. The ship carried Olivia and her brother Arthur among 431 immigrants. It appears that their mother had died in 1860, and Olivia emigrated as a ‘servant’ – most likely to facilitate her immigration process. Reportedly shipping water, the Erin-Go-Bragh took six months to make the crossing, during which there were 54 deaths on board from typhoid fever and scarlatina. After a time in quarantine in Moreton Bay, St Helena, the ship finally arrived in Brisbane on 2 August 1862. While both Olivia and Arthur survived, the voyage took its toll on Arthur, who died four years later at Ipswich in south-east Queensland. On board the ship, Olivia had met Thomas Hope Connolly of Ballintogher, Co. Meath. They married at Rockhampton, Queensland, in 1869, but Thomas died in 1872. Several accounts indicate that she had an adopted daughter, but this part of Olivia’s life is still shrouded in mystery.
Bishop Quinn’s training school project failed and was abandoned, and Olivia taught at a catholic school in Ipswich for eight months (1863). She was then offered a post at the Brisbane Normal School on 1 October 1863 and afterwards held various teaching posts in Queensland. She was head teacher at the Girls’ National School of Rockhampton for several years, and in June 1879 was transferred to Toolburra, near Warwick, remaining there until she resigned from state education on 31 December 1886.
It seems that Olivia published fewer writings after emigrating, though she did contribute some poems, and probably several anonymous translations, to a number of Australian newspapers and magazines including the Austral Light. She occasionally wrote under her other pseudonym, ‘Celtica ‘. She participated actively in the Thomas Moore centenary events held at Brisbane in 1879, reciting an ode she wrote for the occasion. In 1883 Charles Gavan Duffy, who had remained a lifelong friend from the days when young ‘Thomasine’ sent spirited letters to the Nation, persuaded her to publish a volume of her poems which he edited (Wild flowers from the wayside), published by James Duffy and Sons in Dublin with a generous introduction by Gavan Duffy.
After resigning from state education in 1886, Olivia remained active, as evident from her appointment as librarian and secretary of the newly established Sandgate School of Arts, Brisbane, in 1888. Moreover, she took a prominent part in events organised by the Brisbane Literary Circle. She then reportedly took up a position at a small high-class school in Clermont (Queensland) for a short period in the 1890s, residing at Barcaldine, Clermont, where she also worked as a governess. She ran a French class after school hours. In 1895 an ‘unknown friend’ made an appeal in her behalf in a newspaper. As soon as she heard about it, she wrote to the paper and made the public know that, contrary to what had been suggested, her fire was far from being ‘quenched’; that even though she was certainly ‘alone and poor’, she was still able to fend for herself ([Sydney] Freeman’s Journal, 27 July 1895).
Olivia M. Knight Hope-Connolly died on 2 June 1908 at Bundaberg, Queensland, and was laid to rest in Bundaberg Catholic Cemetery. Tributes and obituaries followed both in Australia and in Ireland, paying due acclaim to the Irish ‘patriot-poetess’. Some of her poems, particularly ‘A prayer to St Patrick’ and ‘The green flag’, were reprinted in several papers. She has been one of the most neglected women of the Nation, yet was one of its most regular contributors in the 1850s. While parts of her life and personality remain obscure, ‘Thomasine of the Nation’ appears above all as an energetic, witty and articulate woman who showed tenacity of spirit, hope and survival in the face of loss and hardship. She had no hesitation in making her opinion heard. For example, she wrote strongly in defence of Lajos Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, after reading what she considered unfair criticism of him by a Nation correspondent in 1851 (Poems, ix). In 1852, when Eva Mary Kelly, known as ‘Eva of the Nation’, contributed a poem which Thomasine felt presented a rather gloomy view of Ireland’s future, she immediately responded with ‘A remonstrance to Eva’, in which she urged her ‘sister’ to be more hopeful (Nation, 20 March 1852).
John T. Donovan (1878–1922), an Irish nationalist envoy, visited her at her home in Bundaberg in 1906 when touring the British Empire with Joseph Devlin in support of home rule. Donovan recalled the impact that the meeting had upon him at the time, particularly the details which she related of the early days of the Nation (Advocate, 2 January 1909). She kept a close eye on her native Ireland, and one of the first questions she asked him was ‘How does the old country look, and how goes the cause?’ Her close connection with the French language was an integral part of her career, and she often inserted French words and sayings in her speech. Looking back at her life, she once wrote ‘As for my small share in the national propaganda … I have done, as the French say, “mon petit possible”’ (Catholic Press, 18 June 1908).