by Ultan Macken
All that but I felt sorry for them for being such eejits, if you know what I mean, so here you had what the Irish call – A Tadhg an dhá thaobh, a Tadhg of two sides – and I made an approach to it, as coldly and logically as possible, lest it might have dipped either way into hopeless sentimentality or partisanship on one side or the other. I wanted to get them as people and pin them as people, and I wanted to get my style of writing, concentrated and controlled so that ‘And Then No More’ would become a memory. And I felt it was good writing, and that the people in it were well drawn, because they were types I knew and had met, even the fair Lelia.
I don’t know if despite all this splurge I have made myself clear. The fact that you will publish it, has done at least one thing. It has given me back a little confidence, because I cannot feel that you would honestly publish it at all, if it hadn’t some good in it. Also I wanted to get away from ‘Quench the Moon’. Can you understand that?
I wanted to get away, even once, in print from Galway and Connemara, so that having done so, I might return, to show that I could leave if I wanted to, and now I will settle dutifully back to my familiar mise en scene (like Thomas Hardy) and put all the heart back into it.
I had already tentatively returned. I had been planning a book of short stories called ‘Tales of a Citie’ (remembering your criticism of ‘Cockle and Mustard’, that each chapter seemed to be a separate incident). I have written very few short stories but the few I have seemed to be good, so I thought of slowly embarking on them. I could only turn out one a month if that, and at the end of the time I would have levered myself home again and would have been ready for ‘Rain on the Wind’, full again of the sea and the sky and strong men in ships. I don’t know what you think of that idea. Anyhow I am sending you a sample to show what I mean, the introductory chapter and one story. I think the heart is in both of them. What do you think?
I’m sure there are lots of other things, I meant to say to you, but I have overflowed enough now. Thanks again for your letter, and more so for the sermon, because it makes me feel like a filly at the end of a rope. As long as you hold the rope maybe I won’t go over.
Yours sincerely,
Walter Macken
After his splendid defence of I Am Alone, he began submitting his book of short stories and was hopeful it would become his fourth book to be published. Lovat Dickson’s first reaction to the short story idea wasn’t very encouraging:
Macmillan & Co. Ltd.
12th October 1948
Walter Macken Esq.,
31 Ardpatrick Road.
Dear Macken,
Thank you for your letter of Oct 2nd and Oct 7th. I have delayed writing to you until I had a chance to read your introduction and the short story. Let me say at once that the short story is quite charming, although I think it could be tightened up at the beginning. The reader does not realise what you are getting at while the descriptions of the band, delightful in itself, is going on. It is only when the boys emerge and particularly Joe, that the themes become clear. If I were you, I should try to reduce the first four pages to two pages.
I think you will find that you will heighten the effect if you do that. It is not easy to criticise the Introduction, because there you have an excellent idea, and you have something worth saying. But here again I think you write at too much length. The point you are making is that it is a fatal thing for a person to sweep through a small town without observing the life that is going on there. But that point will be made emphatically enough if you say it only once, as you do at the beginning, and if you do not turn several times to curse the unobservant. There are fine bits in this Introduction. The description of Galway is very impressive, although I don’t like ‘carpeted with fish: back grounded by the blue misty mountains’; and I don’t like ‘She was a very beautiful girl, perfect as to figure and form.’ The other bits of your writing are so much better than that.
You realise, of course, that an Introduction of this length is a very solemn thing to attach to a book of short stories. All that you say is this Introduction could really be said in a short story itself, the title story perhaps, and there it would be more effective than if you present it with an introduction, which some readers will skip and others will quarrel with.
I know that the point you are making in the Introduction is a spelling out of the background to all the stories that are included in the collection. But I am sure that will be clear enough in the stories themselves, and it need only take ten or twelve lines to say why you are calling the book – ‘Tales of a Citie’. I am not sure by the way about that title. I note the way you have spelt ‘Citie’ and the explanation you give of the origins of Galway explain it all. But before the reader begins he will think it is a book about the streets of the Metropolis.
I am sure that the best thing for your style will be to discipline it a little more. When you are writing simply and there are no straggling bits you can be very moving, but I think overwriting and over-emphasis sometimes blur the effect. Anyone with your ability does not need to write too loudly.
Of course I agree with you that there are many good qualities in ‘I Am Alone’, and if there is not so much of the heart, there is a good deal of the head in it. I was most interested in what you told me of the conditions under which you wrote it. I am taking advantage of this letter to enclose the agreement for ‘I Am Alone’, which I hope you will find in order. If you will let us have this back signed, we will send you back a copy for your retention.
As for your letter of Oct 7th, it is true that Graham Greene’s publishers made a successful appeal against the banning of that book. I think the censorship board relented because this was a very distinguished and well-known book, and very liked by a great many Catholics. I must say, I dislike the idea of having to submit the book with a fiver attached to it for review by this Board, but I will refer this matter again to my fellow Directors this week, and will write to you again about it.
With all good wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Lovat Dickson
There was a brief note from Macmillan on 21 October enclosing a copy of the contract for the publication of I Am Alone and a cheque for £50 as an advance payment.
A further note from Lovat Dickson came on 25 October telling him that another story, ‘Homecoming’, had arrived and added the following: ‘I am glad you agree about the uselessness of appealing for a reinstatement of “Quench the Moon”.’
My father revised the first story in the proposed short story collection, The Boy and the Brace, and sent it back to Lovat Dickson. The result was positive:
Macmillan & Co. Ltd.
2nd November 1948
Dear Macken,
Thank you for your letter of October 30th, and for the re-written pages for ‘The Boy and the Brace’. You have done an excellent job of compression here, and I think you must agree that the effect is much more impressive. You now have a good story, and I hope there will be more to come like it.
Yours sincerely,
Lovat Dickson
Then there was bad news from Viking Press:
Viking Press, New York.
November 15th 1948
Dear Mr Macken,
The delay in writing to you about ‘I Am Alone’ is due only in part to my having had to postpone reading it because of the accumulated tasks which awaited me on my return to the States in October. It took some time, too, to get action from the readers to whom the manuscript was submitted. You may have surmised from the delay that there were differences of opinion about the book, and that is actually the case.
All of us found much to admire in the story, the characters the treatment, but none was wholly enthusiastic …
In the end it came down to a question of the best procedure in the circumstances; the best for you and for us. We published, ‘Quench the Moon’ not so much in the hope of a substantial commercial success as in the belief that the book gave promise of still better things to come. The story has a fair critical
success, sufficient to confirm our own view, but the public held aloof. The practical question which we face is whether to present a novel about which we ourselves lack enthusiasm to the trade whose first reaction – intelligible enough – will be to point out the failure of the first book. To press in on them would be to work against the tide.
We feel that it is important for your future in America to offer only the best of which you are capable. Of course, ‘I Am Alone’ is publishable and is much better than many books that are published, but if you are looking to build up a big reputation as a novelist rather than merely to get what you write published, a long view suggests that it is desirable to withhold and to wait. It is our thought that our common interest will be best served by not putting ‘I Am Alone’ on the American market now. We would like to hold back until you have a book that we can present with greater good faith than this one. It is not impossible that at a later date you yourself may wish to work over, ‘I Am Alone’ and re-shape it into something more powerful and effective. Your second published novel, however, should not be a let-down from ‘Quench the Moon’.
Another argument – a coldly practical one – against publishing ‘I Am Alone’ now is that the book business is in a bad state and that novels are being mowed down as quickly as they appear. Only a few of outstanding quality survive the temper of the times. Frankly, we consider that it would be a disservice to you to offer to bring the new book out merely because [of] the faith which ‘Quench the Moon’ engendered in us.
I judge from your letters to me that you prefer honest opinion to evasive politeness and I am writing accordingly. Please be equally open in responding.
Sincerely yours,
Huebsch
My father wrote a very eloquent response to Viking Press:
c/o Abbey Theatre.
Dear Mr Huebsch,
Thanks for the letter of 15th and your frankness about your rejection of ‘I Am Alone’. I have always appreciated frankness above all. I will look at the rejection first from your point of view, and seeing the distressing (and to me inexplicable) failure of ‘Quench the Moon’ in America, for my part I say, ‘If the Americans didn’t like that book, how the hell would they ever like anything I would write.’ If I were you I would do exactly what you have done. It would be ridiculous to publish a book in which you lack enthusiasm, and for my part I would be ashamed and deeply distressed to think that you would publish anything of mine as an act of charity. I find it difficult to argue with your side of the question.
Macmillans are going to publish the book. Why? They have more or less the same outlook as yourselves on it, except they say they will bring enthusiasm to bear on its publishing. They think the story is good etc., but that it lacks power and heart, and that the mise en scene is drab. That is being very frank now isn’t it, and I’m sure Macmillans wouldn’t object to my giving you their views on it, so if it is any comfort to you to know that you can have it for what it’s worth. It sort of backs up what you think yourself.
So here you have two great publishing houses almost of one mind, and yet about the book itself I find it impossible to agree with you. It’s not that I’m not a good critic of my own work. I am, and very severe one too. I have probably written and destroyed more words than a lot of writers. But I’m holding out for ‘I Am Alone’. I’m afraid that I have faith in it.
I know it lacks the sweep and power of ‘Quench the Moon’, and above all the background of that book, but I still consider that it is an achievement in the ordinary, if you know what I mean. I lived two years in the surroundings described at the time described and the things that happened. So I wrote it cautiously in order to be non-partisan, but what it lacks in caution I consider it makes up for in solid disciplined writing, and argue with me if you will, I don’t think there is a spare word in it.
It is deliberately ordinary, and deliberately drab and lacking in colour, and it was a harder book to write than any I may write in the future with my powerful romantic tendencies. I know that readers of ‘Quench the Moon’ will get a sad let down when they start through it. What, they’ll say, what’s this? Where is Connemara and Galway and the violent men and the passionate women and the colour and beauty and sun glinting on lakes and the sweep of it all? But, Mr Huebsch, I wanted to write this book, badly, about very ordinary people in a very ordinary setting. I wanted to write about an ordinary young man who left his own glamorous shores for the drabness and greyness of life in a London suburb.
It was very hard and it took a lot of sweat, but I did it and I believe in it, devil the damn do I care what they say. I have done it and one publisher has cautiously accepted the publishing of it, for which I’ll be ever grateful to them, and let it be cast on the water now and sent sailing. It won’t bring me money and it won’t bring me fame, but it brings me faith, that I could leave all the great glory of Connemara to go to it, and now I will go home after it refreshed and I will dip a pen into the lakes and the clouds again and I will colour them like I did before and I will stir the heart, but I will do it all the better because I have succeeded in doing the other. Can you understand at all what I mean? It’s very misty, I know and you will probably think there is altogether too much Celtic Twilight in it for your taste, but it is true that you find it always hard to defend the things you believe in but no matter what anybody says now or in the future about it, I will remain steadfast about it, and when I die at the age of 105 and they carry out an autopsy on me, I hope they will see ‘I Am Alone’ engraved on my heart.
Please believe me when I say that I can see your side of it very clearly and that if I were you I would not look at me, and I appreciate the faith you had in ‘Quench the Moon’, and I regret terribly that your faith in it wasn’t rewarded. In fact I feel a little guilty about it all, but there is nothing I can do to atone.
My next book is buried alas, in the mists of the future. It will be called ‘Rain on the Wind’, but I don’t know when it will be written. It will be sometime. It will be essential first that I go home to Galway for a time and look up things and suffer a few things and enjoy a few more. But God knows when, because since I can’t make a living as a writer, I have to persist in making a living in the Theatre and that puts a brake on movement and means one is still subservient to Bosses, so you can’t do what you like.
In the meantime Macmillan are interested in a book of short stories I am compiling called ‘Tales of a Citie’, the ‘Citie’ in question being Galway which is known in Ireland as ‘The Citie of the Tribes’. Dickson has been vetting them as they come from the heart, and I think he is impressed. He has got me to alter a little here and there, but the heart is in them, and he actually used the word excellent twice. So that coming from Dickson (a stern and capable taskmaster like yourself) must mean that they are good. But you probably don’t publish books of short stories or do you? If you are interested let me know and I will send on the few I have completed for your inspection. Even if you don’t publish them you might like to read them to see what you think.
All the best and I think I have said everything I want to say and that there is nothing else left in me.
Sincerely,
Walter Macken
11
LIFE IN DUBLIN – RAIN ON THE WIND
When we came to live in Dublin in 1948, we established a daily routine in the Dublin suburb of Cabra. My brother was at secondary school. At first, he went to the Marist CUS (Catholic University School) in Harcourt Street, a tough school with a tough regime of discipline. My brother was forced to play rugby and there were stories of how the sports master used canes to beat the boys on the legs if they did not form a proper scrum. He left that school and went to Belvedere College where he was much happier. I began my schooling as well, attending the Phoenix Park National School about 500 yards from where we lived.
My strongest memory of those years at Ardpatrick Road was that, for the first time in my life, I was spending time with my father. I don’t know how it came about, but I seemed to spen
d a lot of Sundays on my own with him. Ardpatrick Road was right beside Phoenix Park and on Sundays, my father would take me for walks in the park, where all kinds of sports were played every Sunday. I was aged between five and six when he taught me the rudimentary skills of hurling and how to play Gaelic Football. But we would also watch other sports: soccer, rugby and cricket.
He would also take me to mass with him at Phibsboro church, where we usually attended the 11 a.m. mass. Right opposite the church lived my father’s first cousin, Dr Christy Macken. He was married to a beautiful woman called Molly and as they had no children, they treated me as if I was their own. Dr Macken acted as doctor for anyone staying in a prestigious Dublin hotel, The Gresham, so we often ate there. He was always invited to the major GAA matches in Croke Park and we were seated in what was the old Hogan Stand (probably in the VIP area). I can remember the wonderful matches we attended: I saw such legends of sport as Nicky Rackard and Christy Ring playing. In one particular match between Cork and Galway, I recall a fast-running Christy Ring making for the Galway goal and striking the ball hard. Then the Galway goalie, Seánie Duggan, leapt up and caught the sliotar in his hand, belting it outfield.
We were not really conscious that my father was working as an actor in the Abbey Theatre. I have vague memories of being taken to the theatre, and brought around backstage where I met many of the actors and actresses. Jack Cruise, who dominated Irish variety theatre circles from the 1940s right up to the 1970s, told me he often travelled into work on the same bus as my father and he used to try out his stand up jokes on him on their bus trips.
One Christmas Eve, I remember my father sitting with my brother and me in the living room in front of a roaring coal fire and he helped us both to write our letters to Santa Claus. I remember asking for a train set. My letter was folded up and placed in the heart of the fire and then as it went up the chimney – my father explained that it would go straight up to Santa Claus. The following morning I got up at about 4 a.m. and ran down to the living room and there it was in a big red box, my mechanical railway set. My father helped me to set it up and soon the little train was making its way around the circular track. The extraordinary thing about those Christmas mornings in that Dublin suburb was that as soon as you had seen the toys that Santa Claus had brought you, you ran out into the street to tell your pals. The street in front of our house was full of children just like it would be in the middle of the day even though it was about 5 a.m.