Mairin Marian Mitchell FRGS (20 May 1895 – 5 October 1986), registered at birth as Marian Houghton Mitchell, was a British and Irish journalist and author, mostly on political, naval, and historical subjects. She was also a translator from Spanish to English.
Early life
Born at Darlington, County Durham,"Thomas Houghton Mitchell" in England, Select Marriages, 1538–1973; "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 Mitchell was the daughter of an Irish-born general practitioner at Ambleside, Westmorland, Dr Thomas Houghton Mitchell, and his wife Gertrude Emily Pease."Obituary: Dr Thomas Houghton Mitchell", British Medical Journal, 21 September 1946, 2:443, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.2.4472.443 They had married at Darlington in June 1894. His wife's father, Edward Thomas Pease, was a wine and spirit merchant at Darlington and died in 1897, leaving a substantial fortune."PEASE Edward Thomas of "Oak Lea" Darlington wine and spirit-merchant died 27 December 1897… Effects £88929 15s 7d." [] in Wills and Administrations (England & Wales) 1898 (1899), p. 123
Dr Mitchell had two brothers who were also doctors. In 1901, his older brother Adam G. Mitchell was a GP at Kinnitty, King's County, Ireland.1901 United Kingdom Census, "Adam G Mitchell": "3, The Walk, Kinnetty, King's Co., Ireland / Adam G Mitchell / Male / Married / 42 / Head of Family / Medical Practitioner / Religion: Church of Ireland / Birth Place: Limerick", ancestry.co.uk, accessed 26 August 2021 Their Church of Ireland father, Adam Mitchell, Esq., of Parsonstown, was Sessional Crown Solicitor for King's County."Notes of Works", Irish Builder and Engineer 1 February 1891, Vol. 33 (1891), p. 33
The oldest of her parents’ four children, Mitchell had twin sisters, Edith and Gertrude, and a brother, Edward Pease Houghton Mitchell. She was educated away from home at St Winifred's, a boarding school for girls in Bangor, North Wales, and at Bedford College, London."Mitchell, Marian Houghton" in Calendar (University of London, 1915), p. 303
Mitchell's brother Edward passed out of Sandhurst in 1916The London Gazette, Issue 29708, 15 August 1916, p. 8029 and died near the end of the First World War, while serving as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force. Her mother died in 1935, leaving some £5,500,"MITCHELL Gertrude Emily of Rothay Garth Ambleside Westmorland (wife of Thomas Houghton Mitchell) died 22 January 1935… Effects £5584 3s." [] in Wills and Administrations (England & Wales) 1935 (1936), p. 402 and her father in 1946.
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."Mairin Mitchell, Storm Over Spain (London: Secker & Warburg, 1937), pp. 132-133
On a whim, Mitchell took a job as a ship's stenographer on the Canadian Pacific liner SS Minnedosa, which took her to Canada. There, she was initiated into the Iroquois at Kahnawake, before returning to England with Minnedosa. She did further work for Canadian Pacific.Mairin Mitchell, Back to England (London: Right Book Club, 1942), pp. 22–23
Mitchell became a journalist and London correspondent for Irish newspapers. She also wrote poems and books, choosing to use the Irish form of her first name. In a copy of her A Shuiler Sings (1932) she wrote an inscription in Irish and signed her name as "Máirín Ní Mhaol Mhicheil".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 Mhicheil' ptd. wrappers"
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 matters,Éilis Ní Dhuibhne, "Collection List No. 47 Sheehy Skeffington Papers", National Library of Ireland, p. 69, accessed 12 August 2021 such as infiltration of the political system in the Irish Free State by fascist and reactionary ideas.Katrina Goldstone, Irish Writers and the Thirties: Art, Exile and War (London: Routledge, 29 December 2020), p. 82 The two met many times, and in 1946 Mitchell wrote an obituary of Sheehy-Skeffington for the Connolly Association’s Irish Democrat, concluding that "... her loss to the London-Irish is as great as that to those at home."Mairin Mitchell, "A Great Irishwoman", in The Irish Democrat No. 19, July 1946, p. 5
In 1935, Mitchell’s book Traveller in Time, set in Ireland in 1942, explores a fantastic development of the age of television in the context of Irish history."Traveller in Time. By Mairin Mitchell, Sheed and Ward, 7s. 6d." in The New Statesman and Nation, Vol. 11 (1936), p. 52 Colm MacColgan, her traveller, uses his invention of "Tempevision" to tune in to events at different times and places in the past, observing the impacts of the Irish around Europe and beyond."GAELS, read this book!", in An Gaedheal, January 1936, p. 5 A glowing review of the work in An Gaedheal reported that Mitchell was one of the most enthusiastic members of the Gaelic League in London and urged its readers "GAELS, read this book!" In the same year, Mitchell wrote of a visit to Budapest in "An Irishwoman in Hungary"."An Irishwoman in Hungary", The Irish Press, 21 September 1935
While he was writing Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell reviewed Mitchell's Storm over Spain (1937) for Time and Tide and commended its well-informed analysis, adding that it was "written by a Catholic, but very sympathetic to the Spanish Anarchists".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 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 also stated that she was Irish, rather than English, as he had supposed.Martin Tyrrell, "Spanish Sketches", Dublin Review of Books, July 2021, accessed 30 July 2021 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".Fredric Warburg, An Occupation for Gentlemen (Plunkett Lake Press, 2019), p. 142
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."Goldstone (2020), p. 153
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. In Liechtenstein in 1937 she gave the head of government a copy of the new Constitution of Ireland.Clodagh Finn, "Meet Mairin Mitchell — honoured abroad but unknown at home", Irish Examiner, 18 May 2022, accessed 11 September 2022 Martin Tyrrell has described Mitchell's political views as being similar to the distributism associated with Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton.
During the Second World War, Mitchell worked in sea ports as an interpreter."Publisher’s Note", The Red Fleet and the Royal Navy (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1942), p. iii
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."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
Mitchell's Atlantic Battle and the Future of Ireland (1941) was written while she was serving at sea.Clair Wills, That Neutral Island: A Cultural History of Ireland During the Second World War (London: Faber, 2007), p. 125 In this, 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."The vast extent of Hitler’s coast-line" (review) in Illustrated London News, 4 October 1941, p. 6 She wished to see "a Federation of the British and American Commonwealths", based on sea power,"Atlantic Battle and the Future of Ireland. By Mairin Mitchell. 1941. (London: Frederick Muller. Sm. 8vo. 72 pp. 1s. 3d.)" in International Affairs Review Supplement, Vol. 19, Issue 6, September 1941, p. 337 and an end to the partition of Ireland, with a reunited Ireland joining an Atlantic alliance with Britain and the United States.
By 1946, Mitchell was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and she also became a contributor to Encyclopædia Britannica."Mairin Mitchell", britannica.com, accessed 30 July 2021; "Mairin Mitchell, Freelance writer" in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica: Propaedia (1997), p. 725
Of Mitchell's The Maritime History of Russia 848–1948 (1949), the Naval Review said "This is history in unusual form, if form it is, or indeed if history it is. The author holds firmly to the central idea that Russia has, mainly from the time of Peter the Great, been forcing her way outwards to become an oceanic animal as well as a land animal."Naval Review (London), Vol. 38 (1950), p. 222 The book was also published in French and Turkish.Histoire maritime de la Russie (Paris: Editions Deux Rives, 1952), translated into French by René Jouan; Rusyanın denizcilik tarihi (Istanbul: Deniz Basımevi, 1974), translated into Turkish by Sermet Gökdeniz
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.The London Gazette, Issue 40028, 27 November 1953, p. 6506