[Alas! Pappa was wrong there: contemporary Northern Ireland proves how wrong. The equivalent of his next paragraph has appeared with monotonous frequency in Irish newspapers during the past decade.]
There has been great trouble in all the internment camps since the truce. Conditions grow worse instead of better and the boys are having a rotten time. In Ballykinlar especially the British have gone out of their way to be nasty. They shot Alderman Tadgh Barry the other day just as he was waving goodbye to some released internees. A sentry pretended to think that Tadgh was trying to escape and shot him dead. There was great grief in Cork and great indignation everywhere. Friday and Saturday saw a very impressive funeral, the cortège coming from Ballykinlar by motor and being received by Volunteers and big crowds on the way down to Dublin.
We had a great day at the National University on Saturday when we installed President de Valera as Chancellor. It was a splendid turn-out with the Chancellor himself of course the most striking figure. He wore a robe of black velvet with rich gold trimmings and looked like both a ruler and a scholar; his tall figure and his thin ascetic face were fittingly set off by his magnificent robes. We gave him a great reception – and no mistaking its significance! What an extraordinary revolutionary change has the National seen! Who would have dreamed, a few short years ago, that an unknown and despised BA would on Saturday have been installed with great pomp and ceremony as Head of the entire university! Time! thou bringest mighty revenges! The IRA furnished a guard of honour and Kathleen, as Captain of the University Company of Cumann na mBan, mustered her sixty-five hefty cailin who made an impressive display. She also read an address in Irish to the Chancellor, who replied in Irish. Except for one speech, all the proceedings were conducted either in Latin or in Irish. The doctors’ gowns with their various colours ‘brightened up the scene’ wonderfully. I was resplendent in a scarlet gown with maroon sleeves and a maroon hood lined with green silk. Next to the Chancellor’s, it was the best robe in the show!
Everybody is looking forward to having you home, including Bob and Whiskers who are purring beside me at the thought. I hope you got the portmanteau and that you will find it big enough for all your books.
Fondest love from your own affectionate
Pappa.
Throughout his time in prison my father had received from Pappa as many letters as were allowable, some covering more than twenty foolscap pages and few less than ten. Each included a detailed account of the latest political developments and an assessment of how Dubliners of every shade of opinion were reacting to them. Pappa also occasionally reminded his son that ‘the average Englishman is a decent enough fellow’ – from which rather unexpected comment one may deduce that my father’s letters (now lost) were betraying that obsessional anti-English bias which he was never to outgrow. Pappa was too kindly to condemn any race completely; therefore his hatred of British rule in Ireland led him to draw a not very convincing distinction between ‘the average decent Englishman and the governing mind – for that is the only mind that finds expression in the country’s corporate institutions – and it is a strange mixture of Saxon dullness and Norman cruelty’. So much for his faith in British democracy.
These letters give a wonderfully vivid picture of contemporary life in Dublin. Repeatedly 18 Garville Avenue was raided, sometimes when the house was empty, and once the British troops helped themselves to £5 10s. 0d. which Pappa had imprudently left in a wallet in his bedroom. He got no satisfaction when he wrote to the CO complaining that the maid and the gardener could not be paid that week unless the money were restored. This was literally true – not a sob-story – and after the gardener had left in a huff there are some wry references to Mamma’s unsuccessful attempts to replace his labours with Pappa’s. Soon after, Maria, the maid, also left to get married and was replaced by ‘Mrs Bruagh’s maid, Agnes, who plays the melodeon beautifully and often entertains us in the drawing-room. She remembers you well: she says you are a nice young gentleman and not a bit proud as you spoke to her kindly one day when she was out with the Bruagh children.’ So much for attitudes towards servants sixty years ago.
The burning of the Customs House and the various reactions of Dubliners to that event are graphically described; Pappa’s own reactions were – as he admitted – very mixed. Then on June 1 he writes:
In Dublin now it is positively dangerous to walk the streets. Not a day passes without four or five ambushes taking place. You are walking down say, Nassau St, when suddenly you hear a terrific explosion followed by a volley of rifle shots; you look round and see people rushing into shops, others lying flat on the ground, others running up the side streets! Trams tear along madly; horses gallop away from the cab-stands, women shriek, bullets whistle round your ears, bomb splinters are flying, wounded people lie about groaning – ‘oh! what a lovely war!’ – and for a quarter of an hour you have a lively time of it. Scenes like this occur every day here in all quarters of the city. A girl was shot dead in Trinity College Park last week during a cricket match; and two men who were sitting on a wall at Clontarf were shot at and died a few hours afterwards. The why or the wherefore of these latter happenings never appears, but all sorts of rumours are flying round – many of them of the most contradictory kind. It is easy enough to see the raison d’être of the ambushes, but the other occurrences are terrifying and mysterious. Twice this week the tram on which I was travelling was held up by the English and all passengers (male) searched. On last Sat. at the corner of Harrington, Camden and Richmond Streets you could see four long lines of trams held up for searching purposes while groups of soldiers occupied the streets and stopped all vehicles – rifles at the ready and bayonets fixed, while officers nervously brandished revolvers and held them under the noses of all and sundry including women and children. The searching would make a cat laugh – I could have had half a dozen revolvers and a few bombs on me without the slightest risk of detection. And all that is achieved by this ferocious display is to delay and irritate everybody, to dislocate traffic and business and to call down curses – not loud but deep – on the stupid military. But the situation is not without its humorous side: it is delightful to listen to the former red-white-and-blue people – the bigoted Unionists – the erstwhile ‘God Save the Kingers’, expressing their views on the present régime. My word! haven’t they changed! To hear them would do the heart of any Sinn Feiner good!
However, normal life continued too, as it does today in Belfast, and most of Pappa’s letters were devoted to descriptions of family outings, new plays, art exhibitions, bridge marathons, poker parties, long hikes in the Dublin and Wicklow mountains, cricket matches, croquet contests on long summer evenings, moonlight bathing parties at Greystones and gossip about friends and neighbours. The family news mainly concerned Conn, my father’s ne’er-do-well younger brother, who when not in jail for political reasons was a constant source of anxiety lest he might end up there for non-political reasons. And there were many speculations about Kathleen’s many admirers – which she should retain for further consideration and which she should discard without delay.
Some news items have a very modern ring: ‘The strike of the Rathmines Council workmen is still on and we are without light and without ‘bin-men’. As for the first we don’t miss it for we have daylight till 11; but not being able to get rid of ashes and house rubbish is a bit of a nuisance. And the fun of the thing is that the dispute about hours is settled and the strike is being continued solely for the wages which were not paid during the time of the strike: workmen now want to be paid even for striking.’
Despite Pappa’s horror of Partition, his references to the North all indicate that even in 1921 the average Dubliner felt it to be an alien place. On May 2 he wrote:
I was in Belfast on April 20 and 21 lecturing on ‘Ancient Irish and Ancient Greek Education’. I had little opportunity to find out anything as I know practically nobody there, but I heard one important item of information from a ‘big business’ source – over 60%
of those employed in the linen trade are out of work, the American trade has almost entirely ceased, there are big stocks on hand which can find no purchasers though they are being offered at prices slightly lower than the present cost of production. The boycott is telling very markedly. Otherwise the town seemed to me just as it was when I last visited it five or six years ago. It seems to have learned nothing and to have forgotten nothing. For instance I saw two lorry-loads of young fellows apparently returning from an excursion – probably factory hands – each lorry had a Union Jack floating over it; the Union Jack floated too over that monstrosity in architecture known as the City Hall. King William on a white horse crossing the Boyne is still their beau ideal and to shout ‘To Hell With the Pope’ and to stone the ‘bloody papishes’ is still the chief duty of a ‘loyal’ Belfast citizen. They still live in the Ireland of 15 years ago and are unaware of the avalanche which is about to descend on them.
Belfast is an uninteresting place – it has only one fine street, the rest being either monotonous replicas of rows of workmen’s cottages or dingy terraces of a would-be suburbia. The energy which I noticed on my last visit was replaced by a good deal of listlessness – owing to the ubiquity of the out-of-works, I suppose. Anyway I was very glad to get back to good old Dublin. I may have to go up again in a week or a fortnight – but I hope not.
Clearly Pappa enjoyed letter-writing. A midsummer day’s solitary walking and trout-fishing in the familiar Wicklow mountains could spark off a thousand-word lyrical description of the landscape, the birds and the ever-changing Irish sky. And a sunny autumn afternoon spent strolling with Mamma around Lucan and the Leixlip demesne inspired at least another thousand words. Until reading these letters I had not fully appreciated how easy it was for Dubliners of that period to enjoy as much of country life as was desired. For a keen hiker, miles of untouched countryside were within walking distance of Rathgar – as was the sea, for a keen swimmer like Pappa.
In the autumn of 1922 my father left for Paris, to begin his studies at the Sorbonne, and he spent the next seven years in France. Money was so scarce that he only rarely returned home; most of his vacations were spent tutoring the two sons of a Russian émigré duke in the South of France. Unfortunately no correspondence has survived from those years – until 1928, when on July 9 Pappa wrote a long letter, liberally scattered with quotations from Julius Caesar and Shakespeare, in response to my father’s decision to become a Benedictine monk. In the end he expresses no opinion but concludes, tantalisingly, ‘I have a hundred things to say but it is just post-time so I shall wait till tomorrow.’ Reading between the lines, however, one discerns disapproval. And there is an unwonted acidity in the last paragraph – ‘Fondest love from your mother. Send her a little note for herself – why have I to suggest this? Does your love for her not prompt it?’
If Pappa at once doubted the genuineness of his son’s vocation he was quite right. The next letter to have survived was written only nine months later, on March 20, 1929, in response to my father’s decision to marry a nineteen-year-old Swedish girl who was studying at the Sorbonne under the eagle eye of an aunt-chaperon. My father appears to have detested this aunt even more than he detested the English – and with good reason. She threatened to call in the police after her niece had spent a day at Versailles – without permission – in the company of a penniless Irishman.
This romance provoked Pappa to write a full-blown Victorian homily:
I must say that my first thoughts and feelings were made up of almost contradictory elements. In the first place there was a sort of disappointment: I had thought that your whole soul was so decidedly fixed on a monastic life that nothing could have diverted you from fulfilling a purpose which you had adopted, apparently, with such deliberation and determination. I had built up a scheme of thoughts for myself founded on that as on a first principle. And then you drop a bombshell – a living one, aetat 19 – into my beautifully constructed building and blow the whole thing to smithereens in a second! But you did it in such an airy and unconcerned fashion that I haven’t the heart to reproach you. Well, perhaps it is the best thing that ever happened. And perhaps it isn’t: time alone can tell. I sincerely hope it is; I earnestly hope that it may bring you deep and lasting happiness. All the fond love of your parents’ hearts goes out to you and we shall have nothing but the warmest welcome for the girl of your choice.
Your mother was not nearly so astonished at the news as I was; and I am sure that in her inmost soul she was delighted at the thought that you were saved from the ever-grasping arms of religious communities!
One thing I am really glad of; and that is that you made the discovery of the possibility of falling in love before you had taken any decisive step towards ordination.
Believe me it is a great thing to be honestly and deeply in love; it lifts the whole soul to a higher level; and if the person loved is a good woman, then it is the noblest passion which can animate the soul of man. Love your sweetheart, then, with all the intensity of your soul – if she is a good girl and returns your love, you cannot love her too much. Pour out your affection without stint; and when she becomes your wife, wrap the whole warmth of your love so closely around her that she can never feel the cold breath of the world no matter how bitterly the winds of adversity may blow. But let your love be intelligent and unselfish. A good wife is the greatest blessing God can bestow on any man – a pearl beyond price; but that pearl must be cherished and safeguarded at all costs. There are two sorts of love – a selfish and an unselfish one. The first seeks to make the beloved minister to one’s own good: the second seeks the good of the beloved before all else.
And now to come down to earth. It is all very well to fall in love – but what about the future? You cannot ask anyone to marry you until you are able to provide a decent life for her – I don’t mean affluence nor even an easy life, nor one devoid of struggle, or even, at times, of anxiety; but a reasonable prospect of the necessary things – a sufficiency of nourishing food, comfortable housing and warm, befitting clothing. I don’t know whether you have come to any understanding with the girl, whether you are engaged or not. You have merely said you intended to marry her soon. To my mind, it is all too sudden and recent for any official engagement. It takes a certain amount of time for the growth and ripening of real love. But, if you are in earnest, you must set about making a living: you must have a definite realisable plan and you must follow it out steadily. What do you propose doing?
Love should purge you of a large element of that selfishness which clings to you. You are too apt to let absorption in your own intellectual concerns cause you to forget the position of those who love you dearly. For instance, you did not trouble to acknowledge the receipt of this month’s allowance. And that’s only one incident. This is not a reproach, but a reminder.
Write soon – and more fully. Your affectionate
Pappa.
What happened next? Did the formidable aunt win? (I cannot imagine my father – however much in love – withstanding such a female for long.) Or, when the novelty had worn off, did the nineteen-year-old bombshell lose interest in her Irish suitor – so shy, impractical and inexperienced in the arts of love? Or did my father take fright, upon reading Pappa’s homily, and decide that the responsibilities of marriage would prove too taxing? Whatever happened, he was home for Christmas that year – unmarried and unemployed – and he never returned to France. In January 1930 he began a six-month Library Diploma course at University College Dublin, in April he met my mother again (they had last met three years previously and had known each other as children), in July he was appointed County Librarian for Waterford and in August he and my mother announced their engagement.
At that time Ireland’s Civil War was not long over and the families of Dublin were still angrily arrayed on either side of an ugly barrier. How ugly may be gauged by a remark made on July 29, 1927, when my father’s brother Conn wrote from Ontario: ‘Congratulations on getting your finals. I am quite enjoy
ing the experience of sailing on the Great Lakes. I saw in the papers here that Kevin O’Higgins has been shot dead – damn near time – the sooner they shoot a few more like him the better. The Canadian papers described him as a martyr but they had to admit he was the best hated man in Ireland.’ Kevin O’Higgins was one of the finest Irishmen of his generation – but he was a Free Stater, and the Murphys were Republicans.
My parents’ engagement therefore represented a considerable mésalliance, between the son of a rabidly Republican family and the daughter of a mildly Unionist family. But to give my paternal grandparents their due, they saw the point of the marriage within moments of being introduced to my mother. By then she – being totally apolitical – had cheerfully adopted a diluted form of Republicanism to meet the situation.
In general, however, the two families were never more than distantly polite. To my father’s family, my mother’s relations were not only politically corrupt but barbarously unlearned, hard-drinking, irreligious, foppish and extravagant. To my mother’s family, my father’s relations were not only politically irresponsible but feckless, bigoted, prudish and riddled with intellectual pretensions that never came to anything. Happily these prejudices left me unaffected. I grew up fond of both families, unquestioningly accepting their covert mutual hostility as a fact of Irish life.
*Pappa had been in Rome as Ambassador to the Vatican from the Government of the Irish Republic.
3
In November 1936 my father at last found a house to rent at a price we could afford. It was on the South Mall, Lismore’s most respectable street, but the dwelling itself was so irreparably decrepit that no modern squatter would stay there overnight. Short of a leaking roof, it suffered from every defect buildings are heir to and, for the next twenty-one years, it decayed – usually quietly, but occasionally dramatically – about our ears. Dating from the 1820s, it was two-storeyed, semi-detached and covered in Virginia creeper. The fanlight and wooden porch were attractive, a pair of romantic stone urns graced the front garden and overgrown fuchsia-bushes billowed on either side of the hall door. The well-proportioned rooms had good marble mantelpieces and mock-Adam ceilings and the wide hall was tiled in cream and dull red – pleasant, old-fashioned, indestructible tiles. However, some past tenant with execrable taste had left the whole place superficially hideous. The hall was painted a dead laurel green, only relieved by irregular patches of yellow-grey mildew where the plaster had fallen off. (For years I was fascinated by those patches, seeing them as maps of undiscovered countries.) The staircase was covered with cracked red and blue linoleum which ill-matched the magnificent mahogany banisters. Upstairs were five rooms: three large bedrooms, a boxroom which became my playroom and another large room, complete with fireplace, which at some remote period had been converted into a bathroom. The bath stood on four gigantic iron lion’s paws and resembled a modern child’s swimming-pool. It was patriotically stained green and orange and had a shower-device, of considerable antiquarian interest, near the ceiling. This had become viciously perverted and it sprayed, with tremendous force, only onto the opposite wall. When my father had forgotten to warn three successive guests he put up a notice saying ‘Please do not touch’. The lavatory also had its notice, to explain that the chain needed three morse-like pulls: long-short-long. The wash-basin could almost have been used as a bath and was without a plug: apparently none to fit it had been manufactured since the turn of the century. Had my father exerted himself he could, at the cost of a few pence, have remedied this and many other defects. But the idea of personally improvising a washbasin plug – or anything else – would never have entered his mind and he judged our numerous discomforts too trivial to warrant expensive expert attention.
Wheels Within Wheels Page 4