When former diplomat Michael Lillis was first regaled about the story of the fascinating but almost completely unknown in her home country Irish-born Eliza Lynch by the then Paraguayan President General Andrés Rodríguez while on a visit to the country, little did he know the following ten years or so would become something of a treasure hunt to find out the truth behind one of the most revered and loathed women in South American History. He was also unaware of how the process of researching and writing The Lives of Eliza Lynch: Scandal and Courage would become something of a gripping tale of its own accord.
Although almost unknown in the land of her birth, if you mention her name in Paraguay or Brazil, Eliza Lynch will cause a reaction. There have been numerous books written about her from as far back as 1870, but very few contain the truth that Lillis and his co-writer Dr Ronan Fanning discovered while researching this woman. Many of their questions were answered and myths were cleared up, but there are still some black holes that may never come to light; not for the want of trying by the authors.
When Michael Lillis approached his friend of many years Ronan Fanning with the tale of Eliza Lynch on his return from Paraguay, they both found the story fascinating and mysterious and definitely a tale that must be told. At the time, Lillis was a diplomat and Fanning was a Professor of History in UCD.
The writers found that Lynch was born in Cork and, at some point in her young life, moved to France with her mother. Here, she entered into, what the writers found out to be, a sham marriage with a French military surgeon which she walked away from not long after. “One of our big discoveries was that marriage was a lie. If you are an officer in the French army you have to have permission to marry from you superintendant, which he didn’t have. He could never acknowledge her as his wife.”
Another truth that was uncovered by the team was the long-running discrepancy about Eliza’s time in France and the myth that she was a prostitute. A fellow UCD professor, David Kerr, who was an expert of 19th century French history, looked at the French archives and the history of prostitution, the police records and, according to Fanning, “There was no evidence to suggest that Eliza ever worked in a brothel as a prostitute; despite this being common knowledge in Paraguay and Brazil”. It was in Paris that Eliza met the soon to be president of Paraguay, Francisco Solano López. “The hostile biographers said she met Lopez in a brothel. She careered around Europe with him, became pregnant and spent the next fourteen or fifteen years of her life with him in Paraguay.”
After reading the story of Eliza Lynch, it comes as quite a surprise that she is not better known in her home country but, as Ronan Fanning explains, “Well I suppose she’s not going to be claimed or venerated as if she founded a religious order or something. There is something disreputable about her and also there was a certain ambiguity about her Irishness.”
In fact, her previous biographers, and indeed Lynch, have spent the past
150 years adding to the confusion of her nationality and this was
something that took quite a lot of investigating to untangle. “Until we
discovered exactly where she was baptised, nobody knew where she came
from. When she was surrounded by Brazilian troops after her lover was
killed in 1870, and after the last skirmish of war, she started waving a
Union Jack and saying ‘I am a British citizen’. Of course, Ireland was
then part of the United Kingdom. When she was taking her court case in
Edinburgh, trying to get back some of the money that was embezzled,
there was no percentage emphasizing her Irishness or that she was
Catholic. When she was in Paraguay she did stress her Irishness.”
The Lives of Eliza Lynch: Scandal and Courage reads more like fascinating fiction than the real life story of a Cork woman born in a small town in the 1800s. Her life was one that was borne of drama. From her sham marriage to a French officer, to burying Lopez and her son with her bare hands after they had been killed in the battle she was blamed for, her life was never quiet or easy and she lived ahead of her time in many ways.
The authors also faced quite a lot of challenging circumstances while writing this book. The biography is dedicated to a close friend of Michael Lillis, Rolim Amaro, who was killed in a helicopter crash while on his way to meet the authors at the location where Lynch was said to have buried her son and her lover. After this event, Michael Lillis was very much disheartened and it took some time before the authors decided to complete the work. “As he says in the introduction, when his friend – to whom he was close – was killed in the helicopter crash, that really put him off the whole thing and it all ground to a halt after that. He lost all appetite for it because of what had happened. Ultimately, it was his decision to come back to it. I suggested the best compliment we could pay to Rolim would be to finish the book.”
Upon its publication, the authors were once more faced with an unexpected event; namely a threat on their lives. “There were people who felt that we shouldn’t be writing about their national heroine in Paraguay and there were other extremists.”
This being said the reception for the book in Paraguay was astounding, with many descendants of Lopez and Lynch breaking into tears to finally hear the truth about Eliza Lynch, a woman who led an extraordinary life and who became an even more extraordinary character for many years after her death. The Lives of Eliza Lynch: Scandal and Courage makes not only a fascinating read, but also serves to vindicate a woman whose history has been sensationalised and fictionalised for far too long.
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