by Ultan Macken
I did not believe – (having suffered exceedingly at the Abbey last year) – that it could be done so well and was accordingly shocked with surprise and delight when I saw it unfolding in front of my eyes, the play which I had written and not just a bowdlerised version, gelded by half-wits. So from Walter Macken to you a thousand thanks, and appreciation which I find hard to put into words, and regret that can only find form in words, since at this stage of my life they are my most precious possessions.
It was also a pleasure to look at the lovely team-work of the actors from the eye of a producer and remarkable when you think of it, that there wasn’t a line that didn’t come across, remarkable because here you had an audience listening to actors selling them people and places and twists of speech that were as unfamiliar as a tortilla in Piccadilly. So would you tell them from me how much I appreciated their work and the knowledge that if the play was done a thousand times in other climes that it will never be better done.
Peggy and myself are still very grateful for the evening we spent in your home – (even though I was skilfully being put to work much against my will) – and for the opportunity of meeting your husband.
To tell the truth we were both secretly hoping before we went at all that we would have a chance to meet the great Ivor Brown since we had been so familiar with his work for years and years and we could hardly believe it when it happened – just casually like, but we are still sorry for having tucked into your rations with heavy Irish appetites. It’s a bit late, now that we have demolished them of course, but the sorrow was there anyhow and sure someday if you both find your way to this town beside America we will put on an act with a few fatted calves.
It’s very nice to be home again – (although some of the Galwegians stare at me when I say that) – but I feel better working among people who despise me a little for being willing to stick in a small Irish town ‘playacting’ and playacting in Irish to make it worse. Someday when we are all dead and buried they may understand. Of course they think that I am a millionaire now that I had a play on in London and they are all only too willing to give me credit or ‘tick’, and are a little surprised to see me going to work on an old bicycle instead of a Rolls Royce with a gold bonnet. It’s quite a struggle to take them at their word about the credit but so far we have refrained and hope to be able to hold out indefinitely.
Well, as promised, I am sending you one play under separate cover. It’s one translated from Irish called ‘Salute the Servant’ (‘An Cailín Aimsire Abú’) and when you have digested it, I will have the other one that Macmillans are publishing ready by then. This farce has never been performed in English and I never bothered to send it to a publisher even. I don’t know why unless it is that I may be a little ashamed of it since it is not drama with a capital D. I wrote it with the idea of taking the Irish Play out of the kitchen, where it seems to be getting bogged down. It was successful in Irish and I can assure you that this is a recommendation, people came to see it. It is a mixture of an English farce, broad Irish comedy and a sprinkling of satire and is of course pure box-office.
Anyway let me know what you think of it and you needn’t be afraid of hurting my feeling because owing to the many difficulties I have been up against for many years, I have I hope acquired the glimmering of a philosophy about these things, so when you are giving a verdict on it would you tell me at the same time whether in your opinion it would be worth my while sending it to a publisher apart from its producibility. It’s my only copy so would you try and preserve it for me.
I have been long-winded enough now I think, so I will take myself away from your sight, and hope I have said all the things I meant to say, which is a ridiculous assertion since it’s a thing no Irishman has ever succeeded in doing. Once again thanks for all you have done about ‘Mungo’ from the cradle to the grave so to speak, and I hope we may meet again in the future and that as a writer of the play you had to produce that I have not been too obnoxious.
Yours sincerely,
Walter Macken
Mungo did not have a successful run in London and my father was so depressed about it that he wrote to Macmillan saying that he probably owed them money instead of them owing him any money. They had asked him also to write a 200-word description for Quench the Moon which he did. The following letter was sent to him toward the end of March 1947:
Macmillan & Co. Ltd.
25th March 1947
Dear Mr Macken,
Thank you for your letter of March 19th. I am sorry that you feel a little disheartened about the fortunes of ‘Galway Handicap’ in London, but I hope that it is only a temporary mood. After all, it was an achievement, and I feel sure that people would have gone to see the play if conditions had not practically confined them to their homes. [There was snow, frost and ice throughout the run of the play.]
I am told that the ‘Company of Four’ do not intend to take up either of their options, and as they have both lapsed, you are free to make any other arrangements. It seems to me that it would be certainly worthwhile to let your friend in New York see what he can do there for the play. If you will let us have the name of the producer you have in mind, we will see what can be done through our New York house.
The broadcasting and television rights are your own. We will certainly send Mr Fred Donovan of the BBC Television Department a copy of ‘Mungo’s Mansion’.
As regards the financial position, you are about £10 in our debt, but we can, of course deduct this from your book royalties next autumn.
Thank you for the photograph and for the note about ‘Quench the Moon’. I think they will both be useful to our Publicity Department.
With all good wishes.
Yours sincerely,
Thomas Mark [a director of the firm]
During this period, my father did carbon copies of all the letters he wrote, typing them all. Unfortunately in the 1950s, he changed and instead wrote all of his letters to his publishers in long-hand, keeping no copies. When I tried to get them back, I only managed to obtain a few from Terese Sacco, the editor who succeeded Lovat Dickson. Mr Dickson had returned to his native Canada, taking all the letters he had from my father with him and I failed in my attempts to contact him before he died, so was unable to retrieve them.
By this time my father knew of the failure of Mungo’s London run and wrote a follow-up letter to Irene Hentschel in March:
2 Whitestrand House.
27–3–’47
Dear Miss Hentschel,
I have just heard today from Macmillans the summation of the catastrophe and it sounds like nothing else but the laconic communiqué issued after a last battle. So I thought I would write to you and I don’t know whether I should apologise or sympathise. If it is any help I would like you to know again that I know how much infinite trouble you took with the play and all the work you put into it, and after that it deserved to be a success. The fact that it wasn’t is a severer blow to you than it is to me and I think with dismay of the mountains of energy and talent that was expended on the thing when all the time the jinx was on it.
If it hadn’t been for you the play would not have gone on and it seems all the worse that you didn’t make enough out of it financially to buy a pound of tea and it is unusual for you to be mixed up with anything that smacks of failure.
I am sorry about the whole thing and I think with horror of the second play which I sent you to read [a script of ‘Salute the Servant’], knowing the way my name and fame must by this time be stinking in the nostrils of theatrical men, so if you would return the thing to me, we will forget that you ever had the misfortune to be mixed up with me and that I have ever had any aspirations to being a playwright and will concentrate on the art of novel writing, an art which the human equation nor the elements of nature ever enter. Once again thanks for your kindnesses and accept my condolences over the corpse of poor oul Mungo.
Yours sincerely,
Walter Macken
His second play, Vacant Possession,
is set in the same milieu as Mungo’s Mansion, in a condemned house called the Gantry. One Saturday night four people break in to sleep there for the night. They are Fixit Maloney, Gunner Delaney, his wife, Maggie and their son, Chicken. In the course of the weekend other characters come in: Mister Kilcullen (nicknamed Dummy), the representative of the Corporation; Jamesy Horgan (Revenge), the bailiff; Wee Wee Brady, a smart aleck type of crook; Gabbler Blake, a gentle old man; and Sergeant Matterson, a member of the gardaí. The setting and language of the play was so similar to Mungo’s Mansion that Ernest Blythe and the Abbey rejected it for a production, but Macmillan accepted it and published it in 1948. It was never produced professionally until the 1990s, when Sheila Meehan produced and directed it on stage in Galway (with myself playing the part of ‘Revenge’). It ran very successfully to full houses both in the Taibhdhearc for a week and later in as part of the Galway Arts Festival, for another week.
In April another letter came from Macmillan. My father was in Dundalk where he was adjudicating at a festival, giving his judgement on the plays.
Macmillan.
18th April 1947
Walter Macken, Imperial Hotel, Dundalk.
Dear Mr Macken,
Thank you for your letter of April 14th. We will attend to every-thing as regards sending ‘Quench the Moon’ for the MGM awards, but we thought it would be interesting for you to see the announcement. Thousands of MSS will be submitted, of course, but one can never tell. Can you let us have the lines from which the title of ‘Quench the Moon’ was taken, and we will then use them as a motto in place of the passage from the Bible that went with the old title?
It must be a grim business adjudicating on something like forty plays at a Drama Festival. I hope they give you time to escape before your verdicts go in.
Yours sincerely,
Thomas Mark
Two weeks later, Thomas Mark wrote another letter to him, addressed to his house in Galway:
1st May 1947
Dear Mr Macken,
Thank you for your letters of April 24th and April 25th with the motto and dedication for ‘Quench the Moon’.
As regards, ‘Vacant Possession’, the title need not be settled until quite late in the day. We don’t care for ‘Gaels in the Gantry’, which seems to have only alliteration to commend it, and promptly suggests Bats in the Belfry. The pun on ‘Gaels’ would not be very obvious here, and in England ‘gantry’ has only the meaning of the structure that supports a crane or a set of signals. If you go on thinking about the matter, I hope that you will concentrate on something short and crisp. Think of what a saving it means in ink, paper, signs and electric lights! Something like ‘Hamlet’ is the ideal, though that has been used already.
Yours sincerely,
Thomas Mark
Lovat Dickson wrote my father a letter in July 1947:
18th July 1947
Dear Mr Macken,
As you know, we submitted ‘Quench the Moon’ for the MGM Novel Contest. We have had an announcement of the winning competition this morning. Two novels have been given the award, but both are by American authors. I am so sorry that ‘Quench the Moon’ was not successful. I hope the news will not disappoint you too much. There were, of course thousands of MSS entered, and it is not at all certain that quality always wins in competitions the aim of which is to find good material for the films rather than good literature.
I meant to have written to you before about ‘Cockle and Mustard’. I had an illness this spring, and I have been rather pressed with work during the last month or two, but I am looking forward to reading ‘Cockle and Mustard’ in the next few weeks, and I will write to you about it then. I hear from Mr Mark that we are to see a new MS of yours [‘And Then No More’]. I think that much energy does deserve success.
Yours sincerely,
Lovat Dickson
He received another letter the same day from Thomas Mark about the spelling of the name of one of the characters in Quench the Moon:
18th July 1947
Dear Mr Macken,
Thank you for your letter of July 14th. I am glad that you think ‘Malachi’ can stand for all the very good reasons you give. I am glad to hear that we may expect to receive your new novel – ‘And Then No More’ (I hope there is no dire significance in the title) – in a few days’ time. I am slowly recovering from my own holiday, but the weather is not helping one to be particularly cheerful.
Yours sincerely,
Thomas Mark
There followed some very good news for my father about Quench the Moon from Lovat Dickson:
11th August 1947
Dear Mr Macken,
I hope to be able to give you good news soon about the American rights in your work. Mr Huebsch, the Vice-President of the Viking Press, a distinguished New York firm, has just been visiting London. I gave him a proof copy of ‘Quench the Moon’ to read while he was here and I had a telegram from him just before he sailed on the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ last Saturday to say that he was interested in the book and that he thought he would like to make an offer for the American rights. I hope to hear from him as soon as he arrives on the other side.
These negotiations sometime fall through before they are completed, so do not let your hopes rise too high; but if you are taken up by the Viking Press you will be with an excellent American publisher and your work will have every chance in the United States. I shall try to persuade them to import copies of ‘Mungo’s Mansion’ so that they have the complete canon, so to speak. I will let you know more about this as soon as I have anything definite to tell you.
In October 1947, he received a disappointing letter from Lovat Dickson:
Macmillan & Co. Ltd.
2nd October 1947
Dear Mr Macken,
I have a mixture of good and bad news to send you with this letter, for I was just about to write to you with our views – unfavourable, I fear – of ‘And Then No More’, when a letter arrived from Mr Huebsch of the Viking Press enclosing a contract for the American publication of ‘Quench the Moon’. I am very relieved that we have been able to fix up American publication for you, and with so good a firm as Viking Press. The contract is being checked in our Accounts Department to make sure that no advantage for you is overlooked, and when it is ready, we will send you a copy.
I have been at fault for holding on to the MS of ‘Cockle and Mustard’ for so long. I read it some time ago, but I thought it would be best to let the impression it had formed in my mind rest for a little, as a test of the permanency. Just at that time you sent in the new MS of ‘And Then No More’, and that has been under examination by our readers since.
I am afraid that our advisers do not think well of ‘And Then No More’. From what I know of you through correspondence I am sure it is better to be entirely frank with you than to beat about the bush. A genuine artist can accept criticism of his work, even if he doesn’t agree with it. We have already advised you to discard one book, ‘Cockle and Mustard’ and turn to something fresh; and now we must tell you that in our opinion ‘And Then No More’ does not succeed, and we cannot believe that it could be improved by revision. Our frank advice is to put aside both these books.
After declining them both we could hardly venture to suggest what theme you should embark on next, but speaking in a purely personal capacity, and having just read ‘Cockle and Mustard’, I would suggest to you that you are on firmest ground in using a background you know well. The attraction of ‘Cockle and Mustard’ is in the pictures, each of them quite separate, of Joe Hellegan’s boyhood; the book seemed to me to fail to hold the interest when Joseph fell in love with Gráinne and with Socialism. There is especially in that latter part, a good deal of over-writing in the book. What there is of this in the beginning is attractive because it somehow conveys the sense of boyish urgency and enthusiasm. It becomes less attractive as Joseph grows older, and I think you should look upon the tendency to over-elaborate a scene as deleterious to the effect you want to produ
ce. There is no doubt that you are at your best when you are economical of words, as is in describing the drowning of Daisy. Indeed as a general principle, you would be well advised to work on a smaller scale.
A long novel can only hold the reader by means of a much greater variety of characters and incidents than your theme and setting allow you to provide. The trouble with ‘And Then No More’ is one of construction. The interest is centred on Mabbina for the first half of the book; in the second half she ceases to be the central figure, and the interest shifts to her daughter. It comes as somewhat of a surprise that Ina’s father should be Maelisa Ross. It is clear why you have introduced this character; it is to make your Ina wholly Irish. But our readers feel that your handling of Maelisa’s love for Mabbina, and his subsequent life as an Art Student in Paris, a poliu [sic] in the 1914–1918 war and later a successful author, is too stereotyped. Is it possible that you wrote this part quite separately from the rest of the book? I don’t know whether that is a fair guess or not, but it would explain why the story seems made up of two quite separate parts.
The background, when you stick to Ireland, is good, though it lacks the magical quality that you gave it in ‘Quench the Moon’. But the trouble is not in the background, it is in the characters and the story. These are not worth the length and the treatment you have given them, and I think that you would waste your time if you tried to revise or prune this work.