by Ultan Macken
Anyhow the whole case was solved for me the evening of March 25th when you came home and said you were going to join The Work. I can never forget that evening. I thought that the Holy Ghost was tangible with the three of us in the room. There was a tremendous lift in the atmosphere which we desperately tried to hold on to. Impossible, but it was there and it was unforgettable. I hope you will understand when I say that even the moment of your ordination in Madrid takes second place in my mind to that. I think it is because of the first event I never had any doubts about the second and final event. Just a sort of case of holding your breath for nearly seven years until it actually occurred. It is a wonderful thing to have a son a priest; I don’t think there is any human honour that is comparable to it.
Unlike his normal routine, where he would rarely write for more than an hour at a time, with his historical novels he would spend many hours writing each day. He wrote to me on 6 August:
August 1963
Nobody visited us. We have heard from nobody interesting. So pretty barren. Still having trouble with the book. I had to dump two or three chapters and start all over again – but God is good, I’ll get on the right lines soon now and bash it out.
Later on in the letter he tells me:
Peggy and myself are certainly getting a foretaste of what it will be like to be living on our own and have come to the conclusion that you are an asset to the place. This information will probably horrify you.
He wrote again on 14 August:
I went to the mass on Inchagoill on Sunday. It was most moving. They had set up a bower clad altar in front of the old church. The sun shone but the lake was rough. About 500 people there. A Galway band playing the Royal Salute at the Elevation; the trumpets muted by the open, sounding soft and beautiful over the graves of all the saints there …
A very nice family staying in King’s bungalow – the one near Vesta’s – they are the family of Mr Dan Costigan who is the head of all the cops in Ireland. He is a daily communicant, we noticed. I met his wife and children in Inchagoill. They are very nice. The girls are blonde and pretty and intelligent and nice. They all came and played tennis here. We said it was a pity that you weren’t here. You would have enjoyed meeting them and showing them around a bit.
I think I have got over the hump in the book. I’m now about one-third of the way through and if I can keep on as I am going I should have it finished by the end of October.
He completed the manuscript of The Scorching Wind by the end of October. A letter from Terese Sacco confirms this:
Macmillan & Co. Ltd.,
London.
30th October 1963
Dear Walter,
We are delighted to hear that we may expect the manuscript of ‘The Scorching Wind’ next week and we have every confidence that the marriage will be a long and happy one for this book.
We are equally delighted to hear that you are coming over in two weeks to see Wally Óg – whom I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of weeks ago.
The German edition of ‘Seek the Fair Land’ has come in today and I have sent you five copies under separate cover. They have printed 3,000 in hard covers and 2,000 in the usual Continental paperback edition. They now want to get their hands on ‘The Scorching Wind’.
See you soon,
Yours ever,
Terese
Lovat Dickson also wrote:
Dear Walter,
I am delighted to hear that the manuscript of ‘The Scorching Wind’ is winging its way over here. I hope that I will have time to read it before we meet, as I hear from Wally Óg that we will do when both you and Peggy are here in mid-November. It doesn’t give me much time, but I am longing to get at it.
I am sure you are sorry to bring such a long work to a close. You have been living with it now for eight years, and it must feel like losing a good friend. We can talk of all this when we meet. I am looking forward so much to seeing you both.
Yours ever,
Rache Lovat Dickson
My father and mother postponed their visit until after Christmas but Lovat Dickson wrote to him to re-assure him about the reception The Scorching Wind was receiving from their readers:
London.
21st November 1963
Dear Walter,
You must be worrying about ‘The Scorching Wind’ and I thought I should put your mind at rest by saying that we have just received on it a most favourable report. I am now going to read it myself and I hope to do that by the end of next week and I will write to you then without delay to say what I think of it.
But this much is already clear from the readers, whom we trust, judging the work of an author who has proved that he can also be trusted to turn out the goods. To them, the readers, it seems better than the two previous volumes in the trilogy, and I am delighted that this should be so.
More next week, and love to Peggy.
Yours ever,
Rache Lovat Dickson
My brother was based in London from September 1963 up until the autumn of 1964. My father wrote to him in November 1963:
Gort na Ganiv.
27th Nov. 1963
My dear Wall,
It was nice to hear you on the phone, just to know that you were there, since we have more or less forgotten what you look like! It was odd that Rache Dickson should have been there. One of the reasons I rang you was to tell you that we were not going until January, as I had already told Rache this in a letter about the book but he got the news in first.
I’m most pleased that they liked ‘The Scorching Wind’. I don’t know what I would have done if they didn’t. I found it the hardest book to write of all, I don’t know why.
Maybe it was because I’m dealing with almost contemporary history and I know there are people around who could be hurt by what is written. Anyhow it’s mainly a human story of a fight for liberty, an anonymous fight for liberty. I wanted it to have more of an impact than the first two books, since the first two were sort of introductions – and the third had to be a crushing and exciting finale.
I’ll tell you one thing – no more trilogies for me. A man can only do one in a lifetime. I’m pleased to be finished. It seemed an awful long road that I started out on. I hope to have proved something – if only to myself; hoping I have a better knowledge of myself and our people and why we are as we are.
I met some wonderful people in the course of writing the book – the ordinary men who went out to fight for freedom and when it was over went back to their various jobs and got on with living. It was the greatest period of our history and then we had to smash it all with a Civil War. This was a very sad business but I had to bring it in …
Isn’t it terrible about President Kennedy. The Irish took him to their hearts when he was here. They waited a while to see if he was really sincere and when they found he was, they pulled out all the stops. He was really a literate statesman and they are so rare that I suppose they must die, since apparently God permitted it to happen.
Looking forward to meeting you and seeing you,
Much love,
Your father
Good news came from Lovat Dickson soon afterwards:
2nd December 1963
Dear Walter,
I spent a pleasant weekend reading ‘The Scorching Wind’, and I wholeheartedly congratulate you on it. You have brought this trilogy to a triumphant close. We must now send the book to the printers in order to get estimates, and I won’t write to you about royalties until we have the figures before us, but you need not worry, and I hope you will put all these matters aside now and let us settle them when you are in London in January.
I will talk to you then about the detail in the book, but there is nothing I can criticise. I have only praise for everything. Tess has been through the manuscript and has tidied up the typing and spelling, and I think she has one or two editorial queries she has to put to you when you are here. We look forward to meeting you and a discussion of your future plans now that you have this great
project behind you.
Yours ever,
Rache Lovat Dickson
My father wrote a pre-Christmas letter to my brother on 11 December 1963, saying that he was looking forward to seeing him in January and then he gave the following description of our Christmas:
Christmas – as a family feast, I mean – loses some of its meaning when the family breaks up. It is grand when children are young and cursing fathers are tripping over shoes when they are playing Santa Claus first and then playing with their children’s toys afterwards. God be with the days when you and Ultan used to be up at 4 a.m.
He also wrote to Rita Joyce, summarising what the family had been doing for the past year:
My dear Rita,
Many thanks for your letter. I’m glad your mother took such pleasure in the ordination of our son. He was in Barcelona since until last September. He is in London since then. We haven’t had a chance to see him since he was ordained but we are hoping to go to London for a few days in January.
I just managed to get the last book of the trilogy written before Christmas. It is called ‘The Scorching Wind’. The London publishers think it is even better than the other two which cheered me, because it was meant to be the climax of the trilogy – the burst into freedom. I always thought of the books as one book really, a large piece of music – agitato, dimmunondo and crescendo. I hope to have it published as one book under the title – ‘The Sons Of Milesius’. Then they can be read as one. I have been 8 years writing them. It seemed a long time since I set out to write them and now that it is over, I feel a bit lost – having to winkle my way out of history back to the contemporary scene again. Still it gives one a good feeling to have accomplished something (whether good or bad) that started as a small thought so many years ago.
My other son, Ultan is still going along with science. He is doing his pass BSc this year, honours next year and MSc the following year if all goes well. Then he will presumably get married and leave the nest like all fledglings but this is life and we had lots of fun while he was here.
I’m glad you liked ‘The Silent People’. That took a lot of sweat and agony – it was such a terrible period, so difficult to find any hope at all in it – and yet there must have been a little since we are here to prove the people survived. I hope you like, ‘The Scorching Wind’. I read a lot for it but talked even more to people who are still alive and I hope that I captured even the tail-end of the dream and the reality of the time. It too was a sad period but somehow here and there was also laughter. I hope that when you read it, you will write to me about it.
In the meantime to your mother and yourself and all the family, our sincere good wishes and affection.
Yours,
Walter
My father wrote to my brother on 9 January 1964:
I’m glad you wangled ‘The Scorching Wind’ out of Macmillans and I am also glad that you liked it and that it brought you home for a few hours. I don’t know why but it was the most difficult book I ever tried to write. On at least 3 occasions during the writing of it, I had to abandon what I had written and start again. I think the Irish and the Russians are happiest when they are most oppressed. Then I wanted this book to be a climax of the other 3 – the burst into freedom. It was a wonderful period, but look what happened, we started to kill one another. I wanted to bring this out in the stories of the two brothers. It is merely an expression of the lesson that life is constantly teaching us – when what seems to be unattainable is finally attained, it is no longer as beautiful or as desirable as it seemed to be.
So we have to look somewhere else and strike out in anger, our eyes filled with blood, because inside we are crying – but this is not what I meant. This is not what we wanted. This was the Irish Civil War, when you talk to men who were there in those days, you can still sense their anguish, inarticulate but overpowering. Yet they were great men, because the greater percentage of them just got on with it and when it was over put down their guns and just went back to their jobs, bewildered, still more or less inarticulate but inside they know. It will be no surprise for you to hear that most of them are very good-living men, although a few of them died still in revolt; but God understands them.
I’m glad you noticed the absence of politics. These fellows had no time for politics. All they were there for was to get on with the job and go home. But they were very determined men. On this occasion England just didn’t have a chance of winning no matter what she threw at them.
I still haven’t heard from the Americans re ‘The Scorching Wind’. This stalled me for a time but now I’m now down to work again trying to earn some bread and butter, which we are beginning to need.
Glad that things are going well with you. I remember the day I went alone from the pier. Even if you didn’t lose one father that day, you certainly gained a better one [the father and founder of the work, José Marie Escríva, becomes the father of every member].
All my love,
Your father
During the months of January, there were some letters from Al Hart of Macmillan in New York asking my father to consider cutting the first seventy pages from his novel. But then at the end of the month came good news, first in the form of a telegram:
Macmillans taking The Scorching Wind. $5,000 advance and improved royalties. New editor Cecil Scott says pay no attention changes Hart’s letter. Letter following – Don Congdon.
Don Congdon followed up the cable with a letter the following day:
January 30th 1964
Dear Walter,
This letter follows my cable of yesterday. Macmillan came through a day sooner than they expected to. Cecil Scott read the novel last night and this morning and called me, just before the end of the working day, to say that they were delighted to make an offer on the same terms as the last. I asked him to improve the royalties to 10% up to 5,000 copies, twelve and a half percent to 10,000 copies and 15% thereafter. This is agreeable to Cecil and they are drawing up the contracts.
He also said he didn’t agree with Al Hart’s letter to you. He thought the first seventy pages are fine just as they stand and asked me to tell you that he will be writing to you himself should there be any minor points which he would like to check with you. I’m delighted, after all this time, to have this news. The last novel, as you know, did not do well and, since Macmillan is willing to offer these terms, it is probably advantageous to you to have this third novel in the trilogy published by them.
Cecil Scott has been with the company for a long time. He is a serious editor, is most admiring of your work and is fully familiar with your record at Macmillans.
Yours,
Don Congdon
The new editor, Cecil Scott, wrote to my father on the same day as his agent Don Congdon wrote:
Macmillan and Co. Ltd.,
London.
As you must have heard by now, Al Hart has left us, and the task from now on of acting as your editor devolves on me. I look forward to it. Al made his formal adieus last Friday, and on Monday of this week, I took the manuscript of ‘The Scorching Wind’ home with me and read it on Monday evening and most of yesterday, Tuesday. Before I did so, I read through the correspondence between you and Al, and also with the Harold Matson office. Let us now hasten to say two things: the first is that I think Al was quite wrong in his estimate of the first seventy pages. I think they are essential to the structure of the book, and I would not change a word. The second is that I am most enthusiastic about the book. In fact I have not been thinking about anything else all day yesterday and today.
One other criticism that Al made, I feel sure, is quite unjustified. This refers to Dualta’s siding with the Irish Free State. It seems to me that this was true to character in the first place, and it was also necessary in order to provide a dramatic climax.
Scott confirmed that he would be sending my father a contract for the book and also asked him to write an explanatory historical note to explain to readers about Sinn Féin and the Black and Tans,
the Truce and the troubles that followed. He was so keen on the book that he wanted it to stand on its own rather than associating it with the previous two books.
The move towards publication quickened now as Macmillan of London editor Terese Sacco wrote to him to tell him that they would offer the same royalty terms for the new book as they had offered for The Silent People: 10% for the first 5,000 copies and 15% thereafter. She also told him that they were willing to commission the artist Seán Keating to do the cover once again, as he had done the covers of the first two books.
News came in May 1964, that Robert Hogan of Purdue University in Indiana sought permission to include Mungo’s Mansion in an anthology of Irish plays to be published by the Devin-Adair Company of New York. There was also news that a film company, Seven Arts, decided to take out a film option on Seek the Fair Land.
My father and mother visited London in July of 1964 and they met producer Kenneth Hyman of Seven Arts. They got on very well with him and while he was there, Kenneth arranged for my father to do a screen test for a big Hollywood film he was about to make called The Hill. He thought he had a chance of getting the part but it was given to Harry Andrews – Sean Connery was the co-star. I had an impression that my father was disappointed he did not get it, as he felt the money he would earn would ease the worry about his financial situation. Although his books were very successful, the long periods of time spent researching meant that there were often periods where not much money was coming in. I don’t really remember my father ever not being worried about his financial situation.