by Ultan Macken
The pattern of their romance meant that Peggy and Walter were spending more and more time together. My mother explained: ‘As your father would often have a bigger part in the plays, sometimes I would go down to his house to wait for him to come back from the rehearsals. His dear mother grew very fond of me and one night she asked me if I could do her a favour.’ My grandmother brought my mother into a back room and there she showed her a large trunk. She opened the trunk and it was full to the brim with papers covered in writing.
‘Would you ever look at these?’ my grandmother asked my mother.
She wanted Peggy to read what her son had been writing for many years. In my grandmother’s eyes, my mother was a professional journalist and she would value her opinion of this writing.
My mother was astonished when she read the manuscripts. She could see that there were faults in the writing, the style was underdeveloped, but for someone who was still not twenty-one, it was an extraordinary body of work. While my mother was astonished at the extent of the work, she was always very clear, when talking to me, that there was a considerable distinction between the kind of writing she did as a journalist and the creative writing that my father was engaged in. She often emphasised that these were two distinct types of writing. I am not so sure that, with hindsight, I totally agree with her.
When my father came back to the house that night, he was pleased when he found out that she had looked at his work. From that point on, my mother formed a vital audience for his writing and throughout his life, once he began to write regularly each day, the pattern he followed was the same. He would always read the piece he had written that morning to her. Later on, while working in the Taibhdhearc, he decided to burn all his early manuscripts. He described them as part of his apprenticeship and did not see any reason to keep them.
Within two months or so, my mother realised that this was not just an ordinary romance, it was serious. She had such a close relationship with her father that she thought it was time she told him the truth. She was aware too that the maids in the Crescent were gossiping about her romance with Walter. One morning when her father was in his office, she went in to see him. She was very cautious in revealing to him that the man she had met was important to her:
I said to my father, ‘I have met a man’ and my father asked me the question: ‘Well who is he?’
I answered him, ‘His name is Walter Macken.’
My father said that he knew him and he knew the family. Then he asked me the crucial question, ‘What does he do?’
I answered him by telling him that he worked as an actor in the Taibhdhearc. He then asked me how much did he earn. When I told him, 30/– a week, his response was immediate – ‘Well that won’t keep you in the comfort you are used to.’
That was it, the conversation was over. ‘I knew then that he disapproved and that I couldn’t raise the subject again.’
She never spoke to her father again about Walter Macken, although because she was the acting editor, she managed to publish some book reviews that my father wrote for her. This was the beginning of two years of heartbreak for my mother. Here she was, the eldest daughter of Tom Cork Kenny, going out with a man that her father did not approve of.
Whenever she talked to me about those years, it was always with mixed memories. However, there was a lot of joy as my parents discovered each other and in their love letters, which my mother gave me, you can see the depth of feeling between them. Reading those letters it seems to me that my father was more open in talking about his feelings than my mother was.
5
ROMANCE AND LOVE LETTERS
The Taibhdhearc would send my father to Rosmuc in the Connemara Gaeltacht to improve his Irish and so he became a great letter-writer. The letters bring the reader right into the lives of these two young people. My father always expressed his feelings in a full-blooded manner and spelled out just how important my mother was to him.
As I said earlier, my mother gave me the original love letters which she wrote to my father, and his replies. My father’s are not dated, so it is difficult to work out what sequence they should fall in; I have put them in here in the sequence I think most likely. The letters are so numerous they would take up a whole book, so here are some extracts:
The Connacht Tribune.
July 22nd 1935
Wally dear,
I said I’d write to you – first, you will have to put up with the old typewriter – otherwise I’d never have the necessary time. It is now my dreaded Monday morning – elevenish – and I don’t feel so bad. I have been working hard since approximately 9.05, not bad says you – and I am giving myself some relaxation now writing this – or should I be terribly correct and say, typing this … However, I hope you can make some sense out of this.
Even from my office window, I can see a hopeful bit of blue sky, and if I listen very intently I can even hear ‘the wandering water ever whispering’ – good old Dante Gabriel Rossetti. You know the funny way that the weir whispers in the morning – and yet it keeps on and on – to some destination unknown I suppose.
Wally, there are such a lot of things I would like – I wonder shall I get anything approaching the elusive dream?
Peace is very important, isn’t it? Almost the most important, I should think. I’ll go back to Rossetti again before I stop – there are a few of his quotations I have on the brain this morning, and this is a nice one, isn’t it?
‘The sky leans dumb on the sea
Aweary with all its wings,
And oh – the song the sea sings
Is dark everlastingly.’
Don’t you like the last line? And the first – marvellous what pictures the man could paint with one short line-stroke of the ever powerful pen. Indeed, there are lovely things in life – sunset glow, changing sea, somnolent summer – applies to me very much I’m afraid [referring to the fact that the summer made her sleepy] – and good friends – the later the best of all. Good morning, Wally dear, I must stop pro tem. I hope to return to this again later.
She continues the letter quoting various poets and then she talks about her daily life:
This time tomorrow night DV [Deo Volante] we shall be tripping [this comes from the expression tripping the light fantastic] at the Hangar, I hope so anyway – I am dying for a dance – it seems ages since we had one – however, there is next week when we shall undoubtedly get a surfeit. I must look up my white frock in the weekend and see if it is still intact – let’s hope so anyway. The birds are singing most charmingly just now, and as I look at the old clock – again the slave of time – I discover it is just 9 and I have been writing to you since 8.30.
Jack is hovering around – I think he is waiting for me to give him the necessary adieu – I shall tell him to depart anon. I am sure he wonders what on earth his big sister is writing for so long, and so frantically.
Good night, Wally dear, and I imagine you will be a trifle tired by the time you have waded to the end of this – God bless you.
Peggy
Although the date of this first letter is July 1935, my mother and father met sometime in May 1935 when she joined the Taibhdhearc and they began seeing each other regularly.
My mother, when writing her early letters, was careful not to mention her own feelings and instead quoted famous poets and their views of love. My father, however, did not hold back in his letters:
St Judes,
St Helen Street,
Galway.
My own dear darling Peggy,
I am scheduled for a rehearsal with Sheila Finlay at 1 p.m. so in case I don’t get out to the Augey [Augustinian church beside the Taibhdhearc] to see you, I am scribbling this note. I got home from the Taibhdhearc at 10.15 p.m. last night. There was a light in the parlour. God, said I, she’s there, my ticker ceased to function for many minutes. I crept cautiously in. Mother was kneeling down saying her prayers. Hell, I felt like blue murder.
‘She didn’t come,’ said mother [meaning Peggy].<
br />
‘So I noticed,’ said I, freezingly.
It was only a night anyhow and what matter. I had stolen Tommy’s bicycle [Tommy King, the long-serving caretaker of the Taibhdhearc]; as it being so early, I returned same and walked home again. I wrote that old review for want of something better to do.
I’ll send Tommy up with this. I never wanted to see you more than I did last night. I am dying to see you now. Please go to the Augey at once and say a few Hail Marys for me. Just wait five minutes. If I don’t turn up, I will be there at ten to four on the dot. We will have the evening anyway and Mother has invited us home for the tea so that is something.
You will have a rehearsal tonight as he is doing ‘Sovereign Love’. I am falling in love with you all over again. That’s about a hundred times now. I feel like a sick calf. Will you please send me a photograph some time? God knows I want it. I see so little of you lately.
If I don’t get some honest labour soon I believe I will lose the equilibrium. One alone would miss me. Wouldn’t you darling? I’m horribly lonely, I don’t know why but there it is, and here am I. I don’t know why I wrote to you today. To get into touch with you, I suppose. I refuse to put that in inverted commas. Besides talking about commas reminds me of coma and who has it or who wants it. Not your obedient lover.
Wally
P.S. Ten to four for sure.
The last paragraph here is revealing – my father felt that by working as a general dogsbody at the Taibhdhearc he was wasting his time, and was hoping to find another job that would give him a salary that would allow him to get married. His letters from this period reflect a general frustration at the situation.
The next letter I have was written by my mother on 5 August 1935:
Wally dear,
Strange – strange there is peace even here – at least there is now the entire editorial staff is at their respective dinners – and I am alone, I shall write this. But I must say, that in spite of all the vicissitudes that I enjoyed Race Week immensely and I loved the dancing – and we certainly had plenty of it.
I am going to try and scoot home early this afternoon, and get a wee sleep if possible at all. And young man you forgot to return to the Lady her keys and most important of all, her rosary, last night or rather this morning. Why is it that we have such a lot to say to each other? Can you explain it?
And sometimes we don’t talk so much at all, that is the queer thing. That just reminds me that I should have answered Harry’s letter – I am a very rude girl. I am going to finish this scrawley epistle.
Please go and pray for me, and I shall pray hard for you at Lough Derg. I always put you into my prayers these days, but I do feel such a heathen because I was not at mass this week at all. Joan gave me a lovely bunch of carnations this evening which she grew in her own garden at the back – they are wafting lingering perfumes at me just now. Wouldn’t I just love a garden full of sweet smelling flowers?
This time next week I expect I shall be in the sunny – I hope – south – far far away Wally, but the same old moon will be looking at me – and I shall picture it casting a faery-like radiance over Galway Bay – and you will think of me too, won’t you?
Anyhow, if I discover any memorable milestone on my southward trek, you shall have a full and detailed description of them when I come back, if I don’t write them to you.
I’ll do my best, I promise, even if I have to sit up in bed when they have all retired, to scrawl them. And don’t forget that you are to write to Inchydoney Hotel, Clonakilty, Co. Cork, which will, I understand be our headquarters. These people have a car, you know, and they propose to tour me around a lot.
I hope to get out to you as per arrangement, but one never knows – anyway tomorrow night at 7.15 DV. Goodnight Wally, don’t forget Saturday and Confession and think lots of me while I am away – I really think you should consign this to the flames – nice curling fire all red and rosy with purple tinges – ahem.
Peggy
Here is another letter from my father:
St Judes,
St Helen Street,
Galway.
Monday, 11 a.m.
My darling Peggy,
It seems queer to be writing to you now when I have been so long writing to you while I have been away. It also seems queer to think that I’m going away again today and to tell you the truth darling it is getting me down. Saturday and Sunday were like a dream – what a beautiful dream – and like a dream they passed in a flash.
They were so beautiful that they have taken on the burden of being un-scorchable memories – incapable of being burned from the mind.
Can you realise darling how I hate going to Rosmuc. You don’t realise my own love how lonesome it is. The only joy we have in the whole thing is the knowledge that on Friday we will be free. How I long for Friday to come. We really have become so necessary to one another. Going away for a few days is like an eternal parting. And you hate the word ‘parting’ love, it’s a beastly word too, I’m tongue tied this morning. I seem to be able to do nothing but pen short sentences which sound terrible to my own ear.
I love you, Peggy, love you, love you. I could never stop and I will love you until I die and much – oh much beyond. It grows stronger and stronger and has become so strong that it is impossible to break it now. Keep, loving me, Peggy because it is only in your love that Salvation lies. Someday we will find the reward of our present sufferings.
Anything worth fighting for is worth the attaining. Anything that makes you fight is the true thing and you must keep fighting until it is yours. We might have a big fight in front of us yet. So let us regard Rosmuc as but another cross, added to our already heavy lot; it will soon be over. I love you Peggy, I love you and I will never cease from thanking God for giving you to me. How empty life would be without you. Say that, and you get hope for the morrow.
I love you. Goodbye darling,
Yours, Wally, always
Being separated from his love clearly sent my father off into torturous sadness. This next letter was written by my mother to my father in November 1935, when he had been sent by the Taibhdhearc to Ballinasloe to do some work for them:
My dear Wally,
As there is a totally unexpected lull in operations this morning, I am seizing my – I was just about to write pen, when I realised that it was good old typewriter – and also that awful telephone rang and I had to seize it (the telephone receiver I mean) and modulate my voice to suit the editor who rings me before going to 11 mass to make all kinds of un-helpful suggestions – all of which I rejected scornfully, and maintained strongly that I wanted to get out the paper early – so there.
With which militant beginning I shall proceed. I am very glad you are going by train. I am going to write a note to May Kilmartin and ask her to meet me on Sunday night after Harry [Casey] leaves and we will go to the pictures. I imagine he will leave about 8 or so. In fact I think I will give it to you to deliver today [the letter for May Kilmartin]. The sky is actually brightening, Wally, perhaps the rain will stop. Do you know I prayed quite a lot for you at mass this morning – I hope they do some good – one never knows …
I am taking up this letter again at 4 p.m., my dear just after my bath. Unfortunately, this will be rather interrupted because both Daddy and Ivor are parked here with me in the dining-room. Harry has gone up to town with Jack and Ma.
You are in the train by now – I was tempted to write slush – slush – but reformed so now! I shall miss you lots my dear but DV this day week we shall have resumed our peregrinations! Daddy has just said that Ivor and he will go for a walk – they will hesitate for a long time – I have just asked is he going to Dublin and he says not till the week after next, just as well isn’t it?
Wally dear, hurry back soon, I shall be looking forward to Thursday. And don’t get wet in Ballinasloe. Hoping to hear soon of your safe arrival therein – I shall really have to stop, Cherebeen, here they all come descending on me. The wind howls without and it’s fa
mily five. Au revoir my dear, I have to stop this time really.
I shall miss you – even so – to remain as ever, my dear, I hate to think of you even 40 miles away. Be good, Wally dear, and write soon to me.
Yours,
Peggy
Ivor and Jack, who Peggy mentions in this letter, are her stepbrother and brother respectively.
My parents hated to be separated and this comes out very clearly in these extracts from my mother’s letters written around Christmas 1935:
Wednesday night, Dec. 11th 1935
Wally, old dear, here I am absolutely on my own, and for the moment I have a lapse or lull of whatever you like to call it, and I feel a sinking sensation – it is rather lonely here you know. By now, you are well on your way to Clifden and to the discovery of the nature and origin of that mysterious message. I hope, for your sake, that it means something good. You have become such a part of my life – I nearly said my normal existence – that I cannot imagine it without you. I hope you get a break – it is certainly coming to you. And I do hope, selfishly, that you come back tomorrow – I should hate it if you didn’t …