Albert Kahn 1940s

Century of Endeavour

Albert Kahn Foundation: 1940s and later

(c) Roy Johnston 1999

Garnier correspondence

There was some correspondence during and after the war. The first letter is dated October 12 1941, from Busnieres (Saone et Loire). (Was this in the Vichy area? How did he survive during the war? Did the AKF exist? These questions await further research in Paris). Correspondence presumably took place via neutrals like Portugal, and took many months.

Garnier thanks JJ for his letter of March 13 which took 3 months to come, and contained the news of my sister's first child Pat, making JJ a relatively young grandfather and 'le retour du senator Cincinnatus a la terre..'. Garnier gave in return the sad news of the death of his wife at Busnieres, at the beginning of summer, indirectly a victim of the war.

He hopes in the next few days to get permission to go back to Paris to his old address '..pas de gaieté de coeur..'. He mentions family matters, and refers in guarded language to '..l'aimabilité do notre ami commun..' meaning the British, who had ensured delivery of Garnier's wedding present to my sister, after it had been salvaged from a sunken vessel; it was a painting by his wife. I remember it arriving, the worse for wear; we were at the time living near Drogheda. JJ must have written his March 13 letter to acknowledge receipt and to thank Garnier, who in his response remarks on the wedding present arriving after the first child.

Garnier goes on to thank JJ for thinking of doing a review '..des Houles(?) du Pacifique' and he asks JJ to add to his copy a note of the date of going to press, which was April 24 1940, '..avant la catastrophe..'. In view of the date, Garnier points out that the last two pages are of particular significance. (More Paris research agenda: does this book exist in the Library? We should look at this if we find it.)

The first post-war contact came by diplomatic bag via JP Walshe in Foreign Affairs and Sean Murphy of the Irish embassy in Paris. JJ had put out feelers to try to trace Garnier, and Sean Murphy, who had been earlier known to both JJ and Garnier in the Paris context, obliged, having Garnier's MS neatly typed up. It is dated March 23 1945 and acknowledges Sean Murphy as intermediary. He gives detailed family news: his nephew Daniel, a geologist, has found a petroleum deposit near St Gaudens. His daughter has been too occupied with the Resistance to make him a grandfather. Her uncle, Jacques Maritain, has been named as Ambassador to the Vatican; his mother was Protestant and his wife is a Russian Jew.

Garnier has just finished his history of Scotland. The Society Autour du Monde is asleep; the Rector of the University had dined with 'us' (presumably he means those who remained of the Cercle) in a restaurant, '..car les Huns ont vidé tout l'hotel que vous avez connu..'. This presumably refers to the quai de 4 septembre building.

July 24 1946: Garnier writes from Argyll, Scotland, where he is staying with the Michesons: GK, who is the MP, and Naomi his wife, who is a Haldane (sister of JBSH?). Naomi is locally an activist in the Scottish Nationalist interest, and is a local councillor; she seeks to support the establishment of a Parliament in Edinburgh. Garnier had known her for the previous 20 years or so and regarded her highly.

He declines with regret an invitation to come to Ireland. He mentions receiving a letter from Douglas Hyde's sister, and urges JJ to encourage me ('le scientifique de la famille', then just about entering TCD to do a science degree) to go to Paris.

The last letter I have from Garnier is dated April 25 1949, and is from 35 rue de l'Arbalete. The occasion is the declaration of the Republic in Ireland; JJ had recently completed a 10-year spell in the Senate, and had a public profile thanks to his association with the Post-Emergency Agriculture Commission. Garnier conveyed congratulations on the Republic. He was now 80 years old, and not very mobile. His daughter is working with the Marshall Plan. His nephew the geologist has recently been drowned in an attempt to save a colleague. He ended by asking 'when will you send Roy to me?'.

Epilogue

When I went to Paris in 1951, it was not primarily at my father's suggestion, but at the suggestion of ETS Walton, the TCD physics professor, and Nobel Prize winner (later, in 1953, for his work with Cockroft two decades earlier, which has led indirectly to nuclear weapons). Walton sent me to Louis Leprince-Ringuet in the Paris Ecole Polytechnique. I develop this thread elsewhere.

In this context I went to see Charles Garnier, at my father's suggestion. He was living in reduced circumstances, in Rue de l'Arbalete, 5ieme, and we exchanged civilities over coffee and biscuits, without my understanding his significance or that of the Albert Khan Foundation. It is a pity that I had not briefed myself better on the Garnier correspondence, because I would have been able to pick up on the Mitcheson / Haldane connection, and we would have found common ground. I had encountered JBS Haldane, JD Bernal and others of the 30s Marxist scientific cohort, in the context of the 1940s TCD student left, via the Promethean Society. My failure to do this indicates the width of the then gap between myself and my father, and it is a matter for regret that I was unable to do justice to this opportunity to have a living link with the time of Parnell.

***

I had begun to pick up some understanding of my father's political role when in the early 90s I had occasion to be in Paris in connection with an IMS development project supported by the European Commission; I describe this project, called IT-USE, in the 1990s socio-technical stream. I extended my stay, and made contact with the AK Foundation, primarily with Gilles Baud-Berthier, who has been helpful in enabling me to put this thread of the project together.

I provide here a link with a 90s module where I give something about the current significance of the Foundation.

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