Walter Macken

by Ultan Macken

  It was a revelation to me. Not that they weren’t heartbroken but the way they took it! This all happened just a month ago. It seems much longer. We are having them all out here for Christmas, putting up a tree and inducing Santa Claus to pay a call in the hope that they might help them get over Xmas.

  Do you remember Jimmy Joyce and Alma? Their baby – a girl – was very sickly when she was born but the doctors got to her in time. Jimmy got an attack of gall bladder and when they brought him in they discovered a TB patch on his lung. They haven’t told him yet.

  I go to visit him every day. In six weeks if he shows no sign of improvement they will just have to tell him. Dr Seán Maguire told me. Alma knows but there is great stuff in that woman. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this tale of woe but I just thought it might help to console you with your own troubles. Tell Big Pete I was asking for him, all the best to you and Pete and Stephen and I hope that 1956 will bring us all together again.

  All my love,

  Walter

  We had the Lohan’s out for Christmas 1955 and, from that time on, they became regular visitors to Gort na Ganiv. The father of the house, Mick Lohan, began fishing regularly with us on Sundays and sometimes on Thursday afternoons.

  Twilight of a Warrior was first staged in the Abbey Theatre on Monday 21 November 1955. It was very realistic contemporary play as it tackled a very modern theme for that period in Ireland. The father of the house, an old IRA man, Dacey Adams is a successful businessman who suggests that his daughter Elva visit one of his old haunts, Toobreena, where he had staged a successful ambush. The play opens when Elva arrives back at her home with a new boyfriend, Abel, a young farmer Elva met at Toobreena. Elva has been engaged a number of times before and her father believes that this new boyfriend will be as easy to dismiss as the previous ones.

  Living in the house with Dacey is his brother Affy, who is a bit of a drunk; his sister Gubby, who spends her time criticising everyone; Dacey’s wife Nessa; and their son Ross, a poet. Dacey married into the business and is, to a degree, under an obligation to his wife and her family. This new man coming into their lives causes friction, he is not afraid to face Dacey.

  It struck me that the hostility between Dacey and Elva’s boyfriend is a bit like the way that my mother’s father regarded my father as not being good enough for his daughter. Even the way that Dacey spells out for his daughter what she would be facing her if she was to marry Abel – having to go back to live in a backward small farm where she would have to work to the bone – reminds me of my grandfather’s attitude to my mother marrying a thirty-shilling-a-week actor.

  15

  MAJOR LIFE CHANGES IN THE LATE 1950s

  The year 1956 was a very important one in our lives. It started well with some good news from Don Congdon in New York:

  Harold Matson Company.

  January 4th 1956

  Dear Walter,

  The deal has finally gone through with Kraft Theatre, and they’re going to do ‘Home is the Hero’, a live hour television show, tentatively scheduled for January 25th for a fee of $1,500. The contract should be along soon for your signature. I hope this may stir up a little interest in the motion picture rights, incidently.

  Very best wishes for the New Year to you and Mrs Macken.

  Sincerely,

  Don Congdon

  Ann Thomas, the actress, wrote to my father about the televising of the play:

  Of course to do any full-length play in 50 minutes is a chore, while we who knew the play hated to see so much cut out. The review I read – all those who saw it – thought it most superior television. The cast was as follows:

  Brian Donlevy as PaddoAnthony Perkins as Willie

  Glenda Farrell as Daylia Loretta Leverese as Josie

  Dennis Patrick as Manchester Pat O’Malley as Dovetail

  Ann Thomas as Bid

  We were directed by a new young director called William Graham. Anthony Perkins, son of the late Osgood Perkins, was a mumbling actor. He speaks so low, we couldn’t hear him in the scenes – no matter the mike picked him up – as a result all the rest of us were told we were yelling. Brian Donlevy did a remarkable job in one week – nice fellow to work with too.

  My father wrote to Sabina in February 1956, to let her know that they were hoping and praying that her husband, Peter, would get a job with the Grace Corporation:

  Gort na Ganiv.

  Feb. 21st 1956

  Dear Sabina,

  It was good to hear from you. Please don’t leave us in a vacuum as regards Peter and the Graces. I think he would have scope with them. They have such wide interests. If it’s the right thing for him, he will get into it. They would be very lucky to get hold of him but anyhow we will pray like mad that he will get whatever makes him happy.

  I have one piece of good news for a change. You remember me telling you that Jimmy Joyce had TB and that he didn’t know it. Well he was in bed for six weeks and then they told him to go home and remain in bed for two months. So he got fed up and went off to a clinic in London where they examined him and told him that he never had TB. He had an allergy and this allergy collapsed the lung.

  All our love and best wishes from Walter and Peggy.

  In the spring of 1956, there was a dramatic change in our family. During my brother’s last year in school 1955–56, we sensed a change in his life. Our parents had handed deep religious convictions on to both of us and there was no doubt that he had a religious vocation. The usual pattern in those days, would be for him to either join and study for the diocesan clergy or else study for the priesthood with an order such as the Jesuits. The Jesuits in our school were aware of his deep attachment to religion and were sure that he would choose them.

  However, a new secular organisation called ‘Opus Dei’ had recently been established in Dublin and then it moved to places outside of the capital, like Galway. Opus Dei was founded by a young Spanish priest, José Maria Escríva, in the 1930s in direct opposition to the Community Party who were actively recruiting young people all over Spain.

  One of their first recruits in Galway was a member of the Irish army at Renmore, Dick Mulcahy. Their second was Oliver Powell, a member of the well-known music shop family and Walter Macken Óg was their third. He was seventeen in 1955 and began to attend retreats and meditations at their small flat, just off Domnick Street, during his final year at school.

  It did not come as a surprise to us when, in the spring of 1956, he told us that he was going to join ‘the work’, as they called it. He explained the primary thrust of Opus Dei was to offer ordinary people the chance to sanctify their lives by dedicating their working lives to God. The majority of their members were lay people.

  There were both men and women in Opus Dei and different categories of member also. To become numeries, members dedicated their lives to God and took the same vows as priests – poverty, chastity and obedience. They lived together in communal houses, usually residences for university students in Ireland. Members could also become supernumeries, living ordinary lives, with marriage and children, but still dedicating their lives and work to God. Only 5% of the numeries were selected to become priests.

  I think it was hard for my parents to come to terms with the idea that their son was joining a religious organisation, but would not become a priest. I remember my mother telling me:

  Through his years at school as you know, your brother always came in first in his class, now in the Christmas of 1955, he came third – he was really upset and disturbed, looking to make his mind up about joining the Opus Dei.

  My brother formally joined Opus Dei on 25 March 1956 and our lives changed. From that point, the organisation took precedence over his family life. My father’s original plan was that my brother and I would both go to university in Galway, but this was not the plan that Opus Dei had for my brother. Once he had finished his exams in June, he went off to a retreat centre, leaving home almost overnight. He did not return to the house for some time and this wa
s very difficult for my mother in particular. I can remember her crying in the kitchen as we laid the table for meals. Having spent the summer going to courses and retreats, my brother went to Nullamore University Residence in Milltown, County Dublin, and began a BA in University College, Dublin.

  I became like an only child. I was the person my mother talked to when my father was working, and while out walking, working in the garden or fishing, I was my father’s principal companion.

  This letter to Sabina portrays what was going on in our lives. In a letter to my father she had invited us as a family to come to stay with them in a villa in the south of France, but we were unable to go:

  Gort na Ganiv.

  May 29th 1956

  My dear Sabina,

  We were very pleased to get your letter today and more than pleased that you will be within striking distance of us during the summer. There are a number of reasons I’m afraid that we won’t be able to fit in with your plans: – viz – We have already arranged our vacation in Cork from June 16th to June 30th. This is paid for. While we are away for the 2 weeks, Peggy’s sister May and her family are taking over the house here and her other sister, Joan is taking over their house in Woodquay. All this is already arranged and unalterable. This takes care of any free money I might have had this year.

  As you can imagine I haven’t made a lot of money this year, so in order to live next year we have to be tight this year. Maybe next year, I will make a lot of money. So I can only afford to take the 2 weeks we are taking away from my work.

  I am just finishing a novel [‘Sullivan’] but there won’t be any money out of that for some time – I have been writing it for nearly a year and in that time have only got one short story on the market.

  Then we love you and Peter too much to endanger our friendship by living on top of you at a time when it would weigh on the peasant pride of W. Macken. Can you understand that? It’s psychological and unfortunate but I honestly have to work and here, at home is the only place I can work.

  Apart from that we couldn’t leave the place here. We have no help and it would go wild. Also Wally Óg only partly belongs to us now – he is not permitted to come on holidays with us (I will explain this mysterious sentence when we meet) and as we will be reluctantly leaving him behind when we go to Cork, we couldn’t do it for longer than that.

  We spent two weeks in Ballylickey House Hotel in West Cork. There was a river full of white trout running through the hotel grounds but we could not get the fish to take any kind of fly. In the south, the white trout tended to be caught at night. We did go fishing on Lough Gougane Barra one day and we caught some small brown trout. The main thing was to be away and spend time by the sea, swimming and relaxing. It was our first holiday without Wally Óg and it was strange not to have him with us. My father finished his letter inviting Sabina and her family to come over and visit us during the summer, but they did not come.

  When we arrived back home, my father resumed writing Sullivan. He took a break from his writing in July, going over to BBC Radio in London to take part in a radio production of King of Friday’s Men. There was a brief note from John McNulty, posted end of June:

  New York.

  June 30th

  Dear Walter,

  This is one of our funniest magazines from a pictorial point of view, if you or the two boys like it, I’ll be pleased to put in a subscription for you.

  Faith had a story in last week’s ‘New Yorker’. Be sure and watch out for it. It’s called ‘A Man’s Country’ and it is about Ireland.

  Love to all,

  McNulty

  It was in 1956 that my father’s first book of short stories, The Green Hills and Other Stories, was published. He introduced it with the following description:

  The title of this book could be ‘Tales of a Citie’ because it is about the people who inhabit the city, with history which most old towns possess as their background, and the struggle for existence which is eternal as their foreground. All cities have their hinterland. The hinterland of this one is wild and beautiful; so the lives of the people are wild and beautiful.

  From the city you will meet Gaelgoirs, a bad do-gooder, The Turk – a city boy, a pub keeper; also a bookmaker, a poet, a doctor, a tinker, a dog, an angry fisherman, a handicapped child and a regal distiller of illicit whiskey. From the hinterland you will meet a farmer, a pensions’ inspector, an old athlete, a lover, a Connemara pony, an aristocrat, a murderer and a policeman.

  All these and the people and places and the drama that surrounds them go to make up a living land and all the created land is enriched by the bones of the people and when you know the people, you know the place:

  Everyman is indebted to his home town,

  He may sneer at it; jeer at it, rail at it or

  Be secretly proud of it.

  Righteous when you fault it:

  Incensed when a stranger does so

  You cannot get away from it

  It bred part of you –

  So this book is dedicated to

  My home town – The City of the Tribes.

  The publication of The Green Hills and Other Stories in 1956 proved that he was a master of the short story form. Many of his stories were published in various magazines during the 1950s including The New Yorker, Argosy and Saturday Evening Post in America.

  Sullivan, my father’s sixth novel, was completed and posted to both Macmillan of London and to his American agent in July:

  Macmillan & Co. Ltd.

  4th July 1956

  Dear Walter,

  Thank you for your letter of July 1st. I am so glad to hear that you all had such a good holiday. The contract for ‘Sullivan’ is just being arranged by the Accounts Department. We are bettering the royalties we offered you on ‘Sunset on the Window Panes’ – and are suggesting 15% to 10,000 and 17 and a half percent thereafter. I hope you will think this is satisfactory. We won’t send the manuscript to the printer until you let us have Chapter 29. I am simply wondering whether Chapter 29 is not really missing that you simply numbered the chapter after 28 as chapter 30. I notice chapter 28 finishes on page 249 and chapter 30 begins on Page 250.

  I am so glad that you like the cover design for ‘The Green Hills’. I think it has a marvellous tone too. It is to be published tomorrow. You already have your six author’s copies so all I need offer here is my heartfelt wishes for its success.

  I am going on my summer holidays on Friday July 20th and I see that you and Peggy will be in London from July 23rd to July 30th. That is a great disappointment. It would have been so nice to have an evening or two together, but it looks out of the question. Anyone in the office will be glad to see you and I do hope you will come in. I do not return from holiday until August 8th.

  Yours ever,

  Lovat Dickson

  Reaction to Sullivan was not very positive. Even his American agent, Don Congdon raised doubts about some parts of the novel:

  Harold Matson Company,

  30 Rockefeller Plaza,

  New York 20.

  July 11th 1956

  Dear Walter,

  I caught the lapse in the numbering of the chapters as I was finishing the novel over the weekend. I was halfway through the novel when I received your note which is why I cabled you immediately … I simply looked at the numbered chapters and noted that one seemed to be missing. As soon as I’d read through the chapters, it was clear that the manuscript was intact.

  I like the novel very much, and particularly the background of the stage, and the zest by which you draw Sullivan. I did feel that the novel let [the reader] down a little when Sullivan got to New York, and somehow I wanted to have Bernie Taylor more in the end of the book She seems to me to be as strong a character as Pie and Sullivan, and to have her wait off-stage so long, to have her give up and wait for Sullivan to work things out, while understandable in character motivation, was a little unsatisfactory to me as a reader.

  I also found it difficult to believe that S
ullivan would stay in America; he seemed to be firmly rooted in Ireland, and so it was only a matter of time until he decided to go back to Ireland. I’m not suggesting that a big reunion scene between Sullivan and Bernie would have been preferable, but it did seem to me that his resolution in finding himself ought to take place on stage among the three of them. I say this also in the knowledge that you can stage a conflict such as this so beautifully.

  I’ve sent the novel over to De Wilton at Macmillans and hope to hear from him soon. It seems to me that the novel has a possibility with the magazines in a condensed version over ever. I don’t suppose you have an extra carbon copy that’s legible, that I could use for this, by any chance? Lacking this, I’ll try and get the novel from Macmillans for a couple of months when they’ve made up their minds about it and show it to several editors.