Walter Macken
Page 38
Kenneth Hyman wrote to him on 7 September:
I enjoyed meeting with you and your wife, and hope that in the not too distant future we can all get together again.
I leave for Spain on the 10th for locations on my film, ‘The Hill’, and return around the 12th October for five weeks Studio work. After that I hope to be able to get down to ‘Seek the Fair Land’ and start moving on it.
In the early part of 1964, Don Congdon wrote to him and suggested he should attempt to write a children’s adventure story. He wrote a thrilling story, Island of the Great Yellow Ox, featuring four boys on an island off Connemara in about three months. After the serious nature of his work over the previous eight years, writing his first children’s book was an enjoyable exercise. He captured the voices and dialogue of young ten-year-olds perfectly.
Terese Sacco mentioned it in her letter dated 30 October 1964:
We are delighted to hear about ‘Island of the Great Yellow Ox’. I remember you telling me about this, and we all think it is a medium to which you can bring something really fresh and exciting besides gaining you a well earned rest from historical research.
I enclose the ‘Cork Examiner’s’ encomium of ‘The Scorching Wind’. You are the pride of Ireland.
In January of 1965, my father wrote his annual Christmas letter to his American cousin, Rita Joyce:
Gort na Ganiv.
Jan. 7th 1965
Dear Rita,
We were just saying that we hadn’t heard from you this year, when your letter popped in. We were genuinely sorry to hear about the death of your mother. I wish you had let us know at the time it happened, we might have shared your sorrow a little. We remember her so well, so kind and so good that it emanated from her. There can be no doubt of where she is now and that must be a great consolation to you. I’ll bet the place is not the same without her. It’s odd how one feels the world is so much poorer a place by the death of a good person and then again, it is richer by the birth of a little baby. I’m sorry we have not had the opportunity of getting back to America to see you all again, but that’s life.
I’m glad you understand what a relief it is to be finished with the trilogy. It took eight years of hard unrelenting work. I don’t know how many times, I wanted to throw it all up. I felt I owed it to my country to find out as much about her as I could and then say to this generation – Look, this is how it was and what you are, the way you are! The books were moderately successful, that is I made enough on them to be able to scrape a living, but no more than that because the great majority of people are not interested in their own history, not to mind other peoples’. A film company has only taken an option on the film rights of ‘Seek the Fair Land’, it remains for them to take up the option – for a very modest sum, I’m afraid, if they do do it. However, all is welcome.
In order to break away from all the history and research I have spent the last few months writing a story about boys – a tale of pure invention and imagination (such a relief to not have remain inside the limits of history) called ‘Island of the Great Yellow Ox’. I just finished writing it today in fact. After that I will write a new play, I hope and so on and on until invention dies in the ageing mind.
Fr Walter was changed to Dublin last September. We are off to see him this week-end. Ultan got his BSc degree last year and is now studying for honours. We are absolutely delighted that there is a chance of you coming to Ireland and seeing Galway in June. You can’t let anyone else but me show you Galway so please Rita keep us informed about your trip. If it wouldn’t embarrass you, we’d love to have you stay with us for the few days, sincerely, genuinely, absolutely.
We are bound to be here unless something extraordinary happens and that’s not likely. Anyway we are looking forward to seeing you very much and having a chat. Peggy is immensely pleased. She took a great shine to your mother. May 1965 give you everything you want from it.
Most sincerely,
Walter
There was a note from Cecil Scott of Macmillan of New York on 28 January that they had shipped out 7,500 copies of The Scorching Wind so far and he anticipated that they would reach a figure of 10,000 copies by the middle of the year.
19
THE ABBEY THEATRE AND BROWN LORD OF THE MOUNTAIN
Every year for about ten years, members of the Repertory Abbey Theatre Company came on their summer holidays to Galway. They stayed in Spiddal and we always went to meet them and had dinner with them in a restaurant or sometimes they would come to visit us in our house. Every year they complained about how they felt the existing manager, Ernest Blythe, was ruining the theatre and they were always putting pressure on my father to do something about the management of the Abbey.
They approached the government and asked them to help set up a new governing body for the theatre and the actors requested that the government appoint my father as a replacement for Blythe as artistic advisor/manager of the theatre. In June 1965, Jack Lynch, Minister for Finance contacted my father and invited him to become one of two government representatives on the Abbey board.
Office of the Minister For Finance.
24 Meitheamh (June) 1965
A Chara,
For the reasons indicated in the attached memorandum, changes have been made to the Articles of Association of the National Theatre Society. The 25 persons who accepted invitations to become new shareholders have been selected from lists submitted by the Directors, The Arts Council and the Irish Actors Equity Association. Another feature of the reorganisation is the increase from four to five of the number of directors by the addition of a second Government representative. The nominees of the Government hold office for a term of four years and may be re-appointed.
I would be greatly obliged if you would agree to become the second Government representative on the Society’s Board of Directors.
If you accept you will be allotted two hundred shares subject to the condition which applies generally to shares held by directors that on your ceasing to be a member of the Board they shall be transferred to your successor. Shares are allotted without payment.
Directors may not be paid fees but will be able to recoup out-of-pocket expenses.
Please let me know as soon as you conveniently can if you are willing to become the second Government representative on the Board.
Mise le meas,
Jack Lynch
Eventually and reluctantly, my father agreed and his acceptance of the appointment was well received by the press. This story appeared in the Irish Independent of 1 July 1965, as part of the Tatler column:
Abbey playwright, actor, author of international repute, Walter Macken is to return to the Abbey Theatre soon as a director. I learned that the Government has asked Mr Macken to become the second nominee on the Board of Directors under the recent revitalisation plan which involved the appointment of a number of shareholders. Mr Macken is willing to accept and he should be shortly joining, Ernest Blythe, Gabriel Fallon, Riobeard Ó Fearacháin and Dr Seamus Wilmot, the other Government man on the board.
Mr Macken joined the theatre in the late 40s and his first role was as a walk-on policeman in a play which he cannot now remember but he established himself as an actor of very great talent with his unforgettable portrayal of Bartley O’Dowd in M.J. Molloy’s, ‘King of Friday’s Men’. It is a performance that is still talked about; it ranks among the greatest of the past two decades.
His plays, ‘Mungo’s Mansion’, ‘Home is the Hero’, ‘Twilight of a Warrior’, ‘Look in the Looking Glass’ were all given Abbey premieres. More recently he wrote ‘The Voices of Doolin’ specially for Cyril Cusack. This was presented at the Dublin Theatre Festival of 1960. Mr Macken tells me he has now completed another play, with Cyril Cusack specially in mind. It is set in the west of Ireland it is called, ‘The Last Gentleman’ and is a straight piece dealing with the end of an era in the country’s evolution. It will be presented in a Dublin theatre, as soon as Mr Cusack’s other commitments leave him free and t
he author will direct and may also take a part.
He has also finished another book due to be published in September. Titled ‘Island of the Great Yellow Ox’, he says it is about children and is for children up to the age of 90.
Ernest Blythe sent a letter in July explaining the duties to be performed by an Abbey director and telling him that the Abbey Board of Directors met every two weeks on a Tuesday evening at 8 p.m. My father wrote back to him explaining that at the moment he intended to continue living in Galway as they were selling their house in Oughterard and building a new house in Menlo village near Galway city. After they had made the move to Menlo, he planned to spend some time living in Dublin. He also said he would like the Abbey to pay for him to stay in Dublin both on the Monday night and the Tuesday night so that he could get to see the latest Abbey play on stage on the Monday night.
In June of 1965, I got the results of my Science Degree. I had hoped to get high enough marks in Zoology to go on and study for an MSc, but unfortunately my marks were not high enough and so I needed to go and find a job.
My father wrote to Rita Joyce on 7 August:
Dear Rita,
So pleased to hear from you today, also the cards from the Continent. We are very glad that you loved Europe. All it amounts to is that you have to travel the world to find that people are the same everywhere, just that they use their tongues differently. Apart from that the father of all of us was Adam …
We were genuinely pleased to have you with us. We enjoyed your visit so much and we had great fun. Peggy is well, a kitchen veteran grumbling like all good GIs. Ultan is getting over the shock of his exam results. He is duly looking for a job. Once he gets something to start with, I think he will work out his life from there. One forgets how vulnerable you are at 21, although I was married by then and earning six dollars a week selling insurance to Cockneys. He is far better equipped than I was, so I’m sure he will make a go of it.
We have the house on the market but have not succeeded in selling it yet. Some people have called looking it over. This is a terrible feeling, like strangers seeing you in your underwear. It’s the result of going into the market-place. Writing in a way is the same. Once you go into the market-place to sell your wares, people have a licence to throw garbage (or verbiage) at you.
We still haven’t got the cottage at Menlo started, so now it won’t be built until next February/March. This is frustrating – but life is filled with frustration which is good for one if only to find another way of getting around it.
I’m going to Dublin on Monday to attend my first meeting as a Director of the Abbey Theatre. I’ll have to go up every two weeks. Duty is a terrible taskmaster. I don’t know what will happen to my own work, but maybe it will improve under the strain – only time will tell.
Now you have all the news. All the best, thank you for your kindness and your company, and we are so happy that you enjoyed your visit to us and to Europe.
Affectionately,
Walter
My father went to the Abbey every fortnight to attend board meetings. It was just the first stage of the plan to eventually have my father replace Ernest Blythe. To do this, the government and the shareholders came up with an ingenious scheme. They appointed my father as Artistic Advisor/Assistant Manager, so that within a relatively short period, my father would have taken over the running of the theatre altogether. The letter offering my father the appointment was sent on 27 November 1965:
Dear Walter,
The Board has considered your proposed appointment as Assistant Manager and Artistic Advisor and now offers you the appointment on the following basis. The appointment is made in the hope that you will succeed the present Manager. The decision on that will be made within a year but not later than 31 December 1966.
The salary for the post was £1,350, which, when added to the £100 paid for reading scripts, brought the salary up to £1,450.00. In the rest of the letter, Ernest Blythe spelled out exactly what my father would be doing in his new job. I think that my father would, if he followed his heart, have said no to the job but he felt under obligation to the Abbey Theatre as a national institution and to the actors with whom he had become so friendly over the years. He also thought that he might be able to do something valuable for theatre in Ireland.
Some of his worries about the future come out in a letter to Rita Joyce, written on 14 December 1965:
Dear Rita,
We got your parcel this morning as we were on our way to leave Ultan to the train. He is going to Dublin for his 12th interview looking for a job which he hasn’t got yet. He is very keen on working in Ireland but there’s little hope as the appointments are so limited. So in the New Year he is off to London. [I was going to an interview for a job as a biologist with the Inland Fisheries Trust. I knew that I hadn’t got that job after the interview, so I went to the offices of the ‘Irish Press’ and they granted me an interview – as a result of which I was offered a job as a trainee journalist with the newspaper.]
I don’t know how we can repay your thoughtfulness. All I can think of is to send you a copy of ‘Island of the Great Yellow Ox’, it’s not being published until next March, but I wangled a copy from the publishers. Your gifts are wonderful but we love the copies of the photographs. They are really terrific and bring back memories of all the happy trips we took and the fun we had.
At the moment we are in a bit of a mess. I have accepted a job in the Abbey Theatre as Artistic Director and Assistant Manager with the view of taking over when the old man there departs. This means that we have to find a place in Dublin to live by next March. We still haven’t sold this place and the cottage in Menlo is started. We will continue with it and hope to be able to retreat to it in odd times when the theatrical life becomes too much …
I’m trying to finish a book before I become involved in the Abbey but artists setting deadlines is bad business. Still you never know, it will force me to finish. We all have an ideal existence in mind. Mine would be a gently ageing bachelor in a small country cottage, kitchen, bedroom, pig, cow, 3 chickens, 2 acres of land and a spot of fishing, and just literate enough to be able to read, not literate enough to be able to write. My idea wouldn’t work anyhow, I would have to have Peggy around somewhere.
Again, many thanks,
We think of you often and your families,
Most affectionately,
Walter
The book he refers to was the novel, Brown Lord of the Mountain. He began writing on 25 August 1965 and he completed it by 2 February 1966. Once again, my father’s letters to his cousin provide us with a pen picture of what was happening to the family in February 1966. This letter, dated 12 February 1966, was sent from Gort na Ganiv as usual:
Dear Rita,
We were all so pleased to hear from you. I was very pleased that you liked the ‘Yellow Ox’ and that you used the poor niece as a guinea pig. The book is due to be published over here on February 22nd. I don’t know when the US edition is due.
We had rather a hectic time for the past few months. Ultan was due to go to England after Christmas. He attended four interviews in Dublin during December and he was promised a job from one of the Fisheries Boards at the end of January. At the last moment he went and sought an interview with the ‘Irish Press’, a daily newspaper and got taken on as a trainee journalist. Most menial – running up and down with copy and making tea for the news editors – but he’s taking it well. Now that he has chosen a profession, we all belatedly realise that it must have been in the blood – with his grandfather founding a newspaper and his mother editing me. He seems to love it and despite poor wages, etc., he’s determined to carry on. For ourselves we are going to live in a flat in Dublin from February 25th next – the address will be 37 Marlboro Road, Donnybrook, Dublin 4.
What a change from Gort na Ganiv! However, I’m taking over in the Abbey then as Artistic Advisor and Assistant Manager. If I feel after 9 months that I can do some good there and advance the cause of it, I will s
tay. If not I will quit and get back to Menlo. But I’m afraid that there won’t be an easy way out like that.
In the meantime I had to try and write a book with all this confusion. I finally finished it and sent it off. Only God knows what it is like. I can only hope for the best. I don’t know what will happen to the writing from now on. This is also in the future and is a secret of the future. The Abbey for quite a while is going to take up a lot of my time.
We haven’t sold Gort na Ganiv yet. Now that we are leaving it behind, I hope it will be sold soon so that we can make the break complete.
I think that’s all the news for the moment. It’s a rather odd coincidence that the four of us will be living in Dublin at the same time.
Many thanks for your letter. Write again when you have a minute.
Yours affectionately,
Walter
I began work with the Irish Press, early in January 1966. They had a very good system whereby every new entrant coming into the newspaper group worked as a copy-boy so that they learned on the job. They kept you at this level until a vacancy occurred for a junior journalist. For me that took eight months. I was appointed a junior sub-editor with the Sunday Press in August 1966. During that period, my father took on the heavy burden of being Artistic Advisor/Assistant Manger in the Abbey Theatre.