Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/54

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Oliver
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Oliver

of the paper, gave damaging evidence, and O'Leary and others were sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment. He was released after nine years, chiefly spent in Portland. A condition of the release was banishment from Ireland, and he retired to Paris. There he cultivated his literary tastes, and became acquainted with Whistler and other artists and literary men. In 1885 the Amnesty Act enabled him to settle again in Dublin, where his sister Ellen kept house for him till her death in 1889 and where his fine presence was very familiar. Mainly encouraged by his friends, he devoted himself to writing his reminiscences. The book was published in 1896 under the title of 'Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism.' The work proved unduly long and was a disappointment to his admirers. His critical treatment of his associates seemed to belittle the Fenian movement. To the end of his life he pungently criticised modern leaders, and especially various manifestations of the agrarian movement, while retaining his revolutionary sympathies. In the Irish literary societies of Dublin and London he played a prominent part, but chiefly occupied himself till his death in reading and book collecting.

He died at Dublin unmarried on 16 March 1907, and was buried in Glasnevin cemetery, where a Celtic cross has been placed over his grave. His books, papers, and pictures were bequeathed by him to the National Literary Society of Dublin, which transferred the first portrait of him by John B. Yeats, R.H.A., to the National Gallery of that city. He published, besides his 'Recollections,' the following pamphlets : 'Young Ireland, the Old and the New' (Dublin, 1886), and 'What Irishmen should Read, What Irishmen should Feel' (Dublin, 1886); and he also published a short introduction to 'The Writings of James Finton Lalor,' edited by the present writer in 1895. The article on John O'Mahony in this Dictionary was written by him.

[Recollections of O'Leary, 1896; Ireland under Coercion, by Hurlbert, 2 vols. 1888; O. Elton, Life of F. York Powell, 1906; Sullivan's New Ireland; Richard Pigott's Recollections of an Irish Journalist, 1882; Irish press and London Daily Telegraph, 18 March 1907; personal knowledge and private correspondence of O'Leary in present writer's possession;]

D. J. O'D.


OLIVER, SAMUEL PASFIELD (1838–1907), geographer and antiquary, born at Bovinger, Essex, on 30 Oct. 1838, was eldest and only surviving son of William Macjanley Oliver, rector of Bovinger, by his wife Jane Weldon. He entered Eton in 1853, and after passing through the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, he received a commission in the royal artillery on 1 April 1859. In the following year he went out with his battery to China, where hostilities had been renewed owing to the attempt of the Chinese to prevent Sir Frederick Bruce [q. v.], the British envoy, from proceeding up the Pei-ho. Peace was however signed at Peking soon after Oliver's arrival (24 Oct. 1860), and his service was confined to garrison duty at Canton. On the establishment of a British embassy at Peking in 1861 he accompanied General Sir John Michel [q. v.] on a visit to the capital, and subsequently made a tour through Japan. In the following year he was transferred to Mauritius, and thence he proceeded with Major-general Johnstone on a mission to Madagascar to congratulate King Radama II on his accession. He spent some months exploring the island, and witnessed the king's coronation at Antananarivo (23 Sept.). A second brief visit to the island followed in June 1863, when Oliver, on receipt of the news of King Radama's assassination, was again despatched to Madagascar on board H.M.S. Rapid. The history and ethnology of the island interested him, and he devoted himself subsequently to a close study of them. On his return to Mauritius he studied with attention the flora and fauna of the Mascarene islands. In 1864 the volcanic eruption on the island of Reunion gave him the opportunity of recording some interesting geological phenomena. A curious drawing by Oliver of a stream of lava tumbling over a cliff was reproduced in Professor John Wesley Judd's 'Volcanoes, what they are and what they teach' (1881).

Oliver returned to England with his battery in 1865. But his love of adventure would not allow him to settle down to routine work. In 1867 he joined Captain Pym's exploring expedition to Central America. A route was cut and levelled across Nicaragua from Monkey Point to Port Realejo; and it was anticipated that this route might be more practicable than that projected by M. de Lesseps for the Panama canal. At a meeting of the British Association at Dundee on 5 Sept. 1867 Oliver read a paper in support of this view on 'Two Routes through Nicaragua.' His descriptive diary of this journey, 'Rambles of a Gunner through Nicaragua' (privately printed, 1879), was subsequently embodied in a larger volume of vivacious