On the Fringe of Letters

On the Fringe of LettersAuthor(s): John O'MearaSource: Irish University Review, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Autumn - Winter, 1997), pp. 310-324Published by: Edinburgh University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25484738 .

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John O'Meara

On the Fringe of Letters

When one moved out from the walls of University College in the late

forties, there was all of Dublin to embrace one. The city then seemed

fairly small and elegant ? in spots

? and very welcoming, if not very

energetic. It was the seat of government and had a rather large colourful

diplomatic corps. People were friendly, and there was not too much wealth around. Dublin, settled on its river and the sea, with its hinterland

of accessible mountains and rich grassy plains, was within easy reach of

the great European centres of civilisation on the one hand, and the lovely and enchanting beauty of Kerry, Connemara and Donegal on the other.

One met literary people casually ? Frank O'Connor and Donagh

MacDonagh were near neighbours of mine ? but also more formally in

people's houses. I met Sean O'Faolain fairly often this way, firstly because

I wanted to get some advice from him on my Young Augustine, the title

of which bore resemblance to his The Young Mr. Newman; and later

because he wanted to get information from me on Plotinus and Neo

platonism. It is striking that so many Irishmen over the centuries have had an

interest in this intellectually impassioned philosopher and his writings. Yeats is an important and recent case: him I used to see on Sunday

mornings around 1937, being pushed in his wheel-chair along the

footpath outside his home in Rathfarnham. "I have looked upon the

face of Agamemnon" ? as Schliemann exclaimed when he found a gold

mask in the excavation of Troy. After Yeats's death I bought for a Jesuit

library some of his fine volumes of Classical texts and secondary literature

in Greene's bookshop in Clare Street. I do not remember if Stephen MacKenna's translation of Plotinus On Beauty (1.6.), which Yeats used

extensively in his discourses to duchesses in London, was among them.

I ventured myself, in a season of illness, to write a very Neoplatonic short story called after MacKenna "The Blandishments of the Loves".

This was translated by Elizabeth Schnack, who had translated Frank

O'Connor and the rest, and published in Germany and, later, in Austria. I became somewhat more involved with Irish letters when I was asked

to serve on the jury that decided who should be the recipient of the AE

Award. Brendan Kennelly was the happy recipient. Nevertheless I was

greatly impressed by Seamus Heaney's Death of a Naturalist at the time.

I discussed it at length with a student of mine, Bruce Bradley SJ, now

Rector of Clongowes, who can vouch for our enthusiasm. If I am asked some quarter of a century later what appealed to me in his poetry, I

remember especially the open and intimate acceptance of the lowliest

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ON THE FRINGE OF LETTERS

objects of nature. A case in point is the last poem in the book: "Personal

Helicon". Of a well he writes:

I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

* * *

A white face hovered over the bottom

* * *

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime, To stare big-eyed Narcissus, into some

spring Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme

To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

Seamus Heaney has reached greater heights since he has come into

his own; but there is vivid painting here and a sharp descent into nature,

pungent to our senses. The poem is dedicated to Michael Longley, whose

recent poem on Priam and reconciliation ? so relevant, so stark about

what our duty is now in this country ? I very much admire. There is

always room for the use of mythology or simple legends of the past, as Heaney has shown, for example, in his poem on St Kevin and

the blackbird (the story is recounted quite charmingly in Giraldus

Cambrensis). Be as profound as you may: simple things too can have

deep resonance for humanity. One writer, who is not very well-known, but whose reputation could

grow in the future, with whom I had a special and close relationship, was Michael Farrell, the author of Thy Tears Might Cease. (His name is

not to be confused with the pseudonym used by Molly Keane.) Readers

of the introduction by Monk Gibbon to that book can read of my having been one of the author's closest friends. Historians of literature may wish to know something additional to what is given in Gibbon's intro

duction.

Michael Farrell was a small spare man with a pale face, black

moustache, bright black eyes and a good head of strong black hair. He was highly sensitive, imaginative and emotional. He carried with him a love of his native Carlow, some love of his first boarding school,

Knockbeg, and an unpleasant recollection of Blackrock College, Dublin.

He began medical studies at University College Dublin, but soon was

involved, in a minor way, in the war with the Black and Tans; and later

in a heady romance that gave him many happy days tramping with the

loved one through Europe. If I understood him aright, the girl helped him to get a job as Marine Superintendent of Customs in the Belgian

Congo, whither she was content that he should go ? without her. He

used to describe with great vividness dinners served with much unto

wardness under mosquito nets, on the one hand, and the manifestations

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IRISH UNIVERSITY REVIEW

of the romantic frustrations suffered by a tall Cambridge colleague who

shared house with him, on the other. Eventually he managed, by some

uncharacteristic astuteness, to get possession of a boat and its cargo which

he sold well, and with the proceeds returned to Dublin to start medicine

again, this time in Trinity College. Preoccupation with a College maga zine, and an inability to tear himself away from one part of his course to

do sufficient work on the others, ended in his writing elaborate answers

to some of the examination questions and nothing at all on others.

Moreover he couldn't see anything in a microscope. He abandoned

medicine.

In due course, about 1930, he married Frances, daughter of an artist, Mrs Kennedy Cahill. She with her mother ran a hand-weaving shop in

Dublin. Francie was a divorcee and for this reason, and probably because

of his self-acknowledged tendency to show-off (which was often no more

than the working of lively and undisciplined imagination), Michael lost

many Catholic friends and contact with his own family ? at a time when

narrow-mindedness of incredible proportions prevailed. By about 1932

the couple lived in great simplicity at Kilmacanogue on the slopes of the

Sugar Loaf mountain with Sean O'Faolain as a near neighbour. While

Thy Tears Might Cease may well have been begun before then, I got the

impression from Michael that it was at this period that most of it was

written. And there was a lot of it. In 1937 O'Faolain brought a suitcase

filled with its pages to Cape in London, who made an encouraging noise, but demanded that the book should be cut mercilessly.

After the war, however, his wife's weaving business, known as the

Crock of Gold, took off strongly, and soon they f ound themselves installed

in a lovely Queen Anne house on twelve acres near Blackrock, where he

entertained a rather restricted number of 'literary' friends such as Geoffry

Phipps and Denis Johnston. The fare was highly praised by the 'Master'

and liqueurs were carefully dispensed with much commendation?from

miniature bottles. The weaving establishment was accommodated in the

stables of the house, and the girls employed worked both at weaving and dyeing in the pastel shades that were used by the Crock of Gold, and also serving in the residence. Michael soon assumed the role of

manager and came to work less and less on his novel. But he never forgot it. Evening after evening, when one of the girls had knelt before him to

put on the 'Master's' slippers (a ceremony that exasperated his egalitarian friends), he would recite whole passages of it and draw attention to their

extraordinary beauty. And then he would himself gasp at their exposure of his self-indulgent soul. But, he insisted, the novel was undoubtedly a

masterpiece, his life's work. None of this was lost on his doggedly loyal wife. She ignored his occasional boasting before her of his affaires: she

must have thought that these too were a matter of showing-off. While

he played the grand seigneur, enjoying journeys abroad and especially a

312




trip to America on the Isle de France where, as he described it, flunkeys abounded to render due service to this boulevardier, she persuaded him

to put his novel together. She bound it in pale yellow buckram in five

volumes with gold lettering ? and still there was some left over. At this

stage he had become doubtful of the value of the novel in comparison with the tangible fruits of the Crock of Gold. Yet it was a yearning of his whole being to be a significant author and especially to have this

acknowledged. He stresses in his novel that the hero (that is, himself) is an orphan, superior to the other members of his Catholic shop-keeping household, because he was the offspring of a "county" Protestant family too. But Michael was no fool, and I believe that he recognised at heart an

illusion of this kind within himself, and that as time went on he had more and more misgivings about exposing it to the world, now especially when through the Crock of Gold he was already "someone". Still he

could not disown his conceit, no more than he could disown himself. Francie persisted. Two things she wanted for Michael: to have what

he proclaimed his life's work published, and to die a Catholic. These were strong emotional needs for Michael. In marrying a Protestant

divorcee he ceased formally to be a Catholic, which was no hardship for

him in a practical way But he more and more admired the security of

the (pre-Vatican II) Catholic Church and constantly proclaimed the need

for her old values in a disintegrating world. His emotional attachment

to her, rooted in his childhood, was ever present. Francie was willing to do anything whatever ? no matter at what expense to herself ? to

bring about reconciliation, but Michael would hear of nothing in which

Francie's honour would be slighted. Nevertheless Francie asked me, when the time should come, to have a priest to visit him.

Francie also kept demanding that I should read the novel. I tried many times to avoid this, for I knew well enough from many descriptions and

recitations, and from Michael's own mind, what its character was likely to be. In the end I had to agree. Michael came to see me and we ? or

rather he ? spoke of it all night long until seven o'clock in the morning.

I was particularly aware of the need not to wound him, but he kept

coming back again and again to the aspect of the novel that was most

vulnerable. Monk Gibbon writes in his introduction: "One half of him

(the author) loved Martin Matthew Reilly with the sentimental affection

of a highly indulgent parent; the other half may have seen him, from

time to time, as a hateful little chap, critical, conceited and an abominable

prig." This naturally was one of the times. I could not in conscience

altogether conceal from him that I shared his own expressed strong

misgivings on this point. It was useless to dwell on the undoubted

qualities of the work: this aspect and this aspect only agonised him. The

book was really about himself, and he had had experience of how some

had reacted to him in the past. It seemed to him impossible either to

313




remove these unattractive qualities from the hero without disembowel

ling the work or, on the other hand, publish it and expose himself to ridicule. A more detached and pragmatic writer would have seen ways of toning down the character of the hero; but Michael was not pragmatic and had a profound sense of integrity. I was unable to relieve him in his

agony.

Soon after, while he was in hospital, Francie let Monk Gibbon see the five volumes, and in due course Michael was persuaded to allow Gibbon to have it considered by a publisher. It was accepted by Hutchinson

subject to drastic cutting. As Michael was unable or unwilling to do this

himself, it had to be done by another, by Gibbon. By now Michael was

suffering from arterio-sclerosis. I visited him regularly during his last two distressing years. Then early on one Sunday morning in June 19621

was summoned by Francie to come: Michael had died quietly during the night. When I arrived I found that she already had had him laid out

in a brown Franciscan habit with a sword-pierced bleeding heart

adorning its chest. I removed the detachable panel on which this heart was displayed. But Michael, as he certainly would have wished, was

buried from the church with Requiem Mass said over him. Loyalty to

Francie at that stage was no longer in his hands.

Thy Tears Might Cease was published in November 1963 and became a

best-seller, translated into many languages. It was compared ?

perhaps too lightly, but not locally

? to the novels of Pasternak and Lampedusa. An account of Michael's family circumstances ? of far more than usual

importance in this self-absorbed book ? is to be found in The Nationalist

and Leinster Times (the local Carlow newspaper) for 27 December 1968.

A masterly review of it by his friend, Sean O'Faolain, appeared in the

Guardian of 22 November 1963.1 doubt if Michael Farrell's novel will be

altogether forgotten, even if for the moment it seems too sentimental

and Victorian to our contemporaries. The author's self-indulgence is its

serious flaw.

In the early days of television in Ireland professors in Dublin were in

some demand: after all, it was supposed by some that they were informed

or colourfully eccentric. They were invited to discuss problems of no

consequence ? but sometimes with literary overtones ?

resplendent in dinner-jackets and seated around a low coffee table. Only the port

was missing. They were shortly discovered to have a low tam-rating. Some of us were kept on programmes intended to inform our fellow

citizens about the European community, which we were preparing to

join. As I had been a member of the European Movement from the

beginning, and was President of one European association in Ireland

and Governor for Ireland of another, I was sometimes invited to

participate. I have no doubt but that the programmes, each of which

gave a bird's-eye view of the countries involved, served their purpose

314




fairly well; but it was not until I took part in Les Dossiers de L'Ecran in

Paris, when the nine and a half million potential viewers in France

justified the then (1969) charge of ?6,000 for thirty seconds advertising, that I discovered what 'fame' really means. "Ces Irlandais ... ont une

truculence" proclaimed France-Soir, read by over a million, "une rire, une fantaisie qui les rendent infiniment sympathiques." There were, I

hasten to add, five of us taking part. For days afterwards in Paris people

nudged one another to point me out in the metro (c'est lui. C'est I'Irlandais) or introduced themselves whenever one became stationary for a few

minutes. But the moment evaporated and fame has passed by!

Publishing, a vehicle for letters, can, perhaps, be considered as on

their 'fringe'. I had over the years quite a few contacts with publishing circles in Dublin, partly because I thought that there was too little

published in Dublin, too much of that little was of a low standard from

every aspect, and all was unduly inhibited by the simpler interpretation of the teachings of the Catholic Church. As a university man I felt I should

do my bit in this area.

My interest in book design and lay-out was much stimulated by The

Chester Beatty Papyri, No. 1 privately printed by John Johnson at the

Oxford University Press, published by Emery Walker, London, and

presented to me by Beatty himself. 1 mostly recall him savouring Books

of Hours in the valuable Library that he left to Dublin; or viewing some

of his Impressionist paintings placed against the wall, or 'exhibited' on

a settee in his modest semi-detached home in Ailesbury Road. Even in summer he wore a heavy black overcoat, and had to have recourse from

time to time to our set of old-fashioned ventouses, in which he had much

confidence for the relief of congestion. He had an impeccable standard in collecting and publication. Another stimulus toward publication,

especially towards the end of the sixties, was John Galvin, a colourful and scarcely credible character, who had large interests of various kinds

in Australia, the Far East and California, but lived in Dublin for many

years. He had acquired much valuable documentation on the early settlement of the West Coast of America (buying some of it by the cubic

foot); and had a programme of editing a selection of this himself in

volumes, designed and printed by Lawton Kennedy, and published by John Howell in San Francisco. Some of these were published free of

copyright. They are in every way of a very high standard of design and

production. A readier influence was Liam Miller who established the Dolmen Press

in Dublin. From its early years I did what I could to promote his interests,

notably in having him invited to be a consultant for the Irish University Press, to which we shall come shortly. He produced one very beautiful

book, and one only a little less beautiful, in which I was involved. The

former is my translation of the enchanting Voyage of St. Brendan. He used

315




as illustrations some woodcuts done in Augsburg by Anton Sorg in 1476. The book is set in Pilgrim type, with Uncial initials by Victor Hammer, on Van Gelder mould-made Unicorn paper. Fifty of the limited edition of seven hundred and fifty copies have the engravings hand-painted in

'Medieval' colours by Anne Yeats and are bound in leather with a case.

It is one of the great satisfactions of my life to be associated with such a

beautiful story and such a beautiful book. The dedication to my French

wife reads: Odiliae Peregrinanti, with as subscription a favourite line of

hers from Joachim du Bellay: "Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un

beau voyage". My translation of the Voyage has also been used to accom

pany some very modern images of the voyage done by the Florentine

Daniel De Angeli (Four Courts, 1994). The second is a translation of the first recension of Giraldus Cam

brensis's Topography of Ireland. This translation had appeared originally from another publisher and is also used, in its Dolmen edition, by

Penguin Classics, of which series the editor was an old friend, Betty Radice. It reproduces a twelfth-century map of Europe and some modest

line-drawings taken from the very spirited coloured originals in MS 700

of the National Library of Ireland. Giraldus's account of Ireland at the

end of the twelfth century is important, relatively comprehensive, and

quite hilarious. The text is lively and mischievous. Unfortunately Giraldus's book has some responsibility for a pejorative view of the Irish

which has not even yet wholly disappeared in England. Fine printing itself, however, does little to stimulate letters. I was

receptive, therefore, when Gerry Noel invited me to be a director (unsub

scribing and unpaid) of a press which he was establishing in Dublin.

The Hon Gerry Noel, having left the Venerable Bede seminary in Rome, had decided that publishing in Ireland was the next best thing to being a priest. He had some pleasant

? but unfortunate ? experiences in his

first attempts to get in on this here. Then he had decided to set up the

Campion Press, although the name of Edmund Campion is far from being

highly honoured in Ireland. As he had no books to publish, he suggested that my wife Odile and myself should make a summary of the various

documents that had just (about 1957) been made public for the first time

by the Church authorities, concerning the revelations at Lourdes at the

time of their happening. Ordeal at Lourdes (quickly dubbed Odile at

Lourdes) was a little too detached for popular Catholic taste here. The

volume quickly became unavailable. Meanwhile Gerry decided to return

to England, which put an end to my interest in the Campion Press.

When, therefore, an American publisher of avant-garde Catholic books

invited me at the suggestion of some theologians in Maynooth, to become

honorary chairman of a company in Dublin associated with his firm,

Helicon, in Baltimore, Maryland, I was interested. The publisher was

David MacManus, a larger than life character who had fallen under the

316




spell of Jean Danielou, Yves Congar and other progressive Catholic intellectuals while he was a student in Paris in the years immediately

preceding the Vatican Council. In Paris he had also met and married a

member of the family that owned the very important printing firm of

Schwann, Dusseldorf, which also had two religious publishing houses, Patmos and Griinwald. She too was studying in Paris ? the cello, under

Pierre Fournier. MacManus decided to change Catholic publishing in

the United States ? but, unfortunately, like the American eagle, as

depicted by Max Beerbohm, incited by Walt Whitman to soar, the Catholic

public there did not want the change and did not buy Helicon's books in sufficient numbers. Perhaps there would be a market in the British

Isles for them? David knew an employee-publisher in Dublin who

wanted to be manager of a company on his own. Put the two elements

together and perhaps all will be well? There was even less interest in

Helicon in the British Isles than in the USA, and the publisher soon

became ill and after some time died. Luckily we had been able to attract

the interest of the then prospering company of Hely Thorn, from whom Helicon acquired for nothing the loss-making publication of Thorn's

Directory of Dublin. But Hely Thorn and Helicon were soon taken over

by Jefferson Smurfit, a very large company where Helicon retains a small

identity. One element had survived the wreck of Helicon, Thorn's Directory,

famous in Irish literary, including Joycean, research. Helicon had sold it

and was thus enabled to pay its debts. The purchaser was John Wootton, who had connections in South Africa, and who now began to publish with great energy a series of Directories from Merrion Square, Dublin.

Cahill's printing company, to which Helicon had paid its debts, had just

passed into the ownership of the new Irish University Press, which then

invited me to act as an academic adviser. I had some difficulty in agreeing, because the company did not seem to have consulted any university in

Ireland before it announced its title, but especially because it had without our knowledge printed my name with others of my colleagues as

supporting it. But as the Press proposed to publish precisely in the area

in which I wanted most to be involved, the academic and haute vulgar isation, and opportunities of this kind are rare in Ireland, and they

evidently had plenty of resources and (in part) trained personnel, I made

my protest but determined to see what I could do.

Something has to be said about the Irish University Press which had a rise and fall at the turn of the seventies, meteoric even in the area of

international publishing, but which did affect for the better the quantity and quality of publishing in Ireland. Its story may also be of some interest

and is not generally known.

When the important publishing firm of Thomas Nelson and Sons was

being bought in the sixties, one of the persons involved in the taking

317




over was James Hamilton Grieve MacMahon. He observed that some

?2,000,000 was being paid to Ronald Nelson. MacMahon was willing to

advise Nelson on how to invest the money, to the use of which, through the formation of certain companies, he himself also had some access. He

also took note that businesses in the Shannon Industrial Estate were

offered industrial premises at a rent, grants for machinery, training grants for operatives, and freedom from tax on profits on exports for many

years. On such security banks in Ireland were encouraged to lend

considerable sums to establish industries that would create exports and

employment. MacMahon decided in the second half of the sixties that

he would become a large-scale publisher?but the problem was of what?

It was soon suggested to him that he should publish sets of 1,000 folio

volumes of specified selections from the nineteenth-century Parliamen

tary Papers (the "Blue Books"), reports of Select Committees of the British

Parliament on all kinds of issues arising for it over its wide empire in the

nineteenth century. This was a veritable mine of sociological and other

information almost unavailable to the rapidly increasing and then well

funded university and research libraries, especially in the increasingly

popular area of sociology, and especially in North America. It seemed a

good idea. In addition the Press could engage in the then booming business of reprinting academic and other important books which, on

account of war and for other reasons, had also become unavailable.

Finally it could publish original books of an academic or serious character.

Academic advisers would be useful here and this is where I was invited

to help. MacMahon had taken options on the most modern printing

technology and induced the best printers and colour-printers available

in these islands to come to Dublin or Shannon. An office was opened in

Russell Square in London, but the Press was effectively run from Dublin

by a dedicated and super-efficient manager (Martin MacManus), and an inspired and engaging editor, Captain Tadhg McGlinchy Gradually the folio volumes began to appear, bound in green morocco, very

handsome and most useful, if also not beyond criticism. Indexes were

promised as part of the thousand volume set, which cost $60,000. About

this time a large reprinting company (Pergamon) was sold for what was

then considered to be a phenomenal sum. Soon the word got around

that MacMahon was chiefly interested in creating equity and hoped to

sell the Irish University Press as a going concern for something like

sixteen million pounds. The statistics of book publishing began to show

the IUP as currently the most productive in these islands.

Meanwhile Ronald Nelson married an Englishwoman with a strong interest in horses. They set up a stud-farm beside a beautiful house on

the Blackwater a few miles outside Mallow. Soon the Nelsons began to

show a strong interest in getting the investment of their money more

directly into Nelson hands. Their solicitor Christo Gore-Grimes, a

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delightful and determined man, gradually succeeded in getting the IUP

into the control of the Nelsons and MacMahon off the Board.

And now there was a new turn to the story. MacMahon, hoping to

retrieve his position, persuaded William Stern, a property investor in

London, who had been taken up as a boy refugee after the war and

educated in Harvard, to buy the Press, which he would then run for

him. The deal was arranged and the Nelsons got back a portion of their

money; but they remained on the Board until all should be recovered.

The Board, however, made it clear to Stern that it would not take

MacMahon back. Stern worked hard for the Press, and was most

generous in keeping on employees in a difficult financial situation. He

unfortunately made serious mistakes in the London property market, which was falling: while others were selling, he was borrowing ever

more to build up his property empire. But the day came when he was

declared a bankrupt for two hundred and fifty million pounds ? the

biggest bankrupt England had seen to that date. Although the Press had

in fact been paying off the banks significantly and was otherwise,

especially from an academic point of view, making progress, a new

American manager in an American bank in Dublin put in a Receiver.

That was the end of an exciting adventure. Some fine books, reprints and originals, had been published. Among these were the Tain in Thomas

Kinsella's translation and with Louis le Brocquy's plates, designed and

co-published by Dolmen. But perhaps the chief good result of the affair was the experience in publishing given to a fairly large number of

Irishmen.

Also in the sixties a very famous German publisher, Weidmann, founded in Leipzig in 1680, decided to transfer its main office to Caragh Lake near Killarney, in Co. Kerry. Generations of inter-marrying

publishers and professors had made Weidmann distinguished and

prosperous. It had been run by the Reimer family since 1822, surviving the great wars until in 1953 Tom Reimer succeeded his father Hans. It

had published all the great Greek and Latin Classics by the great German

professors of Classics ? the greatest of whom in our time was

Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. But it had been recently moving into modern

fields. During the last war it had transferred all its valuable stock on to a

boat on the river Spree ?

hoping to avoid the devastating bombing of

Berlin. The gamble did not pay off. All stock was destroyed. Tom Reimer, the heir apparent, was reduced to making a living selling ties from a

bicycle. One can only surmise as to why Tom Reimer, when he succeeded his

father in 1953, left Germany and transferred the business to Switzerland

and Ireland. There was an immense and urgent need throughout the

world to reprint standard works of first quality. But Weidmann had lost

its stock of such books and few could be found in German institutions.

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However, by getting copies of the books from Swiss universities, one

could print them elsewhere ? in Ireland for example, through Hely Thorn. The Swiss universities were delighted to supply their copies, since

Reimer undertook to rebind to their satisfaction all the copies they sent

him (many of which needed expensive binding in any case), and supplied them with a specified number of copies of the new impression. They could not, however, give the copies to be printed directly to the publisher

? they had to be ordered by a professor of Classics, in the case of Classical

books. Hely Thorn, with which, as has been said, I had an association

through Helicon, asked if I would oblige this formality and so provide

employment here. As the matter was a pure formality suggested by the

Swiss universities, I agreed. I was supplied for some time, then, with a

succession of requests, directed to various Swiss university librarians,

asking that specified books in their holdings should be sent to Reimer in

Ireland. I was requested to sign for them, whereupon the books were

sent and in due course returned to the Swiss rebound, with the new

copies. The only gain to me was a copy of any reprint that I requested. The arrangement went on for a number of years with moderate success.

In this way Reimer was able to re-establish his family's publishing house. In the meantime he lived in a lovely house (in which Trollope had lived for a while) on Caragh Lake. His secretary was a charming

member of a titled German family, some members of which were highly

placed in the Weimar Republic. Reimer, as a student, had done the rounds

of Leipzig, Munich, Berlin, Vienna, Reading and Oxford universities, from the last of which he appears to have taken his personal style

? he wore a blazer and drove an E-type Jaguar. He was something of a vieux

garqon, but difficult to work with. Not content with his first set of

solicitors, he asked me to recommend another, which I did: but they too were found unsatisfactory. He took no professional advice whatever in

his business, and perpetrated some serious mistakes. His end came

suddenly, for he and his secretary were gassed in an apartment in Majorca ? as indeed were some other holiday-makers there because of defective

gas fittings. His separated wife had continued to work for Weidmann in

Switzerland. She sold up everything including the house in Kerry I was very surprised to discover that he had appointed me an executor

in Ireland: neither he nor the solicitor that I had recommended to him

had consulted or informed me in advance, and indeed he was hardly more than an acquaintance of mine. Another publishing venture in

Ireland was over.

Perhaps I may be allowed to conclude this slight incursion into letters

by giving (with brief setting of context) a few letters on literary matters

received from Irish writers mentioned earlier. Although I give them in

the chronological order of their writing, this in no way indicates the

years in which I first met them. They may be of interest to researchers.

320




They are from Austin Clarke, Denis Johnston, and Sean O'Faolain.

I first met Austin Clarke in the house of Mervyn Wall in Glenageary. As I had been reading Yeats to see what justification there could be for

the interest among Yeats scholars in the question of his acquaintance with Plotinus and Neoplatonism, I asked Clarke what he thought on the

subject. I was well aware that his enthusiasm for Yeats was restrained.

He asked me to send him an off-print of an article I had written on William

Larminie and also a lecture I was to give: one involved Neoplatonism and the other the Lesbia-struck Latin poet, Catallus. Here is his reaction

to them:1

Bridge House, Templeogue.

18th January, 1954.

Dear Professor O'Meara,

Thank you for the off-print of your article, which I read with much interest. I had no idea, for instance, that the Folklore Commis

sion had some of Larminie's MSS. I am sorry that I did not know about your article as I would like to have referred to it in that broadcast.

As regards the lecture on Yeats and Catullus: I don't think I am

quite the right person to give an opinion on it as I have very definite views on Yeats and find it hard to be objective. For instance, I disagree

with all the critics who use the Autobiographies as reliable evidence for I think that Yeats wrote them deliberately for a younger and

cynical post-war generation in England, and was anxious to lay as

little stress as possible upon his own romantic past. With this proviso,

however, let me be as frank as you want me to be.

I cannot see any resemblance between the passionate urgency of

Catullus and the remote reverential mood of Yeats in his early poetry, that mood, in which the Lady became a symbol of eternal beauty. I think it is obvious that Yeats was following the romantic tradition of Rossetti and had studied the later's [sic] translation of La Vita

Nuova. As to the love-hate mood ? I don't find this in Yeats. He was

writing after the event in a mood of recollection ?

the general disillusion of a middle-aged man; no doubt he is bitter and critical, but I do not think there is one word of real hate in any of his poems about Maud Gonne. As to general resemblances

? the traditional

lyric is, after all, steeped in classical influences, and themes on the

brevity of existence, etc. are stock ones. You may be right regarding the particular references ? I have not sufficient knowledge of the

subject to criticise these. Yeats acquired much of his knowledge by personal contact with scholars and experts and picked up many useful hints. You mention Symons and later there was Ezra Pound, etc. Later again, Oliver Gogarty may have given him interesting bits of knowledge. For instance, Jeffares or Yeats himself mentions that the well-known Leda sonnet was suggested by the picture or copy

modestly placed over a doorway in the National Gallery, London, and the poet certainly

saw it when he was young. But Gogarty was

very keen on the subject, had written a long humorous poem about

1. Published by kind permission of Dr Dardis Clarke, 21 Pleasants Street, Dublin 8.

321




it, and his conversation probably stimulated W.B.Y. I need hardly

say that Yeats had forgotten whatever Latin he learned at school and I doubt if he could even read more than a few sentences in

French. As to Plotinus, his interest was stimulated by the fact that

Stephen MacKenna was making

a translation at the time in Dublin.

However, apart from all this, I think the lecture is too specialised for a broadcast ? at any rate from Radio Eireann, and as to

periodicals, we have very few suitable ones here.

Yours sincerely, Austin Clarke

Denis Johnston I met at Michael Farrell's house in Blackrock. I had sent to him some comments on his In Search of Swift.

Mount Holyoke College South Hadley,

Massachusetts

Department of English 14th November 1959

Dear Dr. O'Meara,

I am most grateful for your kind comments on my book, and for

the most interesting observations that you have made upon two

points. It is very useful to have such scholarly assistance in the elucidation of points that are quite outside one's own

particular field, and my only regret is that I did not bring this question of accurate Latin translation to you while the book was still in proof.

On the second point, my own Latin dictionary, quoting its use by Livy and Cicero, translates the expression 'pro virili parte'

as 'to the

utmost of one's ability' ? which I took to be Swift's intention. And

I note that you refer to the same phrase. As he leaves out the word

'parte', I have often heard doubts expressed by others, better

schooled in the Classics than myself, that his use of the word Virili', so denuded of its additional word, was somewhat ambigious [sic], and this belief is at the back of my remarks in the book. But I am

most grateful to learn that this is not the case, and if ever there is

another edition of the book, I shall certainly make this correction,

and hope that you will be good enough to allow me to acknowledge your help in the matter ? as also in connection with the future tense

of 'able'.

The first point, however, is not quite so simple,

as in quoting the

Senior Lecturer's Book I was faced with an insoluable [sic] difficulty that could only be met by reproducing the entry in facsimile. The

words '1682', 'films', 'Natus', 'Natus', 'Educatus' and Tutor', do

not come as I have them, in the body of the particular entry, but are at the head of a series of columns that can be read all the way down the page. Without putting in the column headings, the entry itself

would convey nothing. In fact, it reads like this:

1682 Vicesimo quarto

dieAprilis Slius Natus Natus Educatus Tutor annos in sub ferula St. Ge

Eodem die Jonathan Swift Jonathan Quartuo- Comitatu Mr. Ridar Ashe Pensionarius Jonathan decim Dublinensis

Swift

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I suppose I should have insisted on its reproduction in precisely this form, but I let it go, and inserted the column headings as I did, in order to make the entry intelligible. One sees now what

misinterpretations short-cuts of this kind can cause!

My point, however, is that there is no question in the book as to what these headings refer to. 'Educatus' does not refer to 'in

Comitatus Dublinensis' but the second 'Natus' does. There is also

the further interesting point, that the printer has irritatingly left out in my transcript, that the Christian name of Swift's father was first

written in as Jonathan, and then crossed out again ? as if there was

some doubt as to the father's name in the original, which doubt was

subsequently ignored by the copyist, who wrote in 'Jonathan' again. This is why I have been annoyed by the fact that Trinity College cannot dig out of its Muniment Room the original ledger of which the present Senior Lecturer's Book is merely a late 18th Century copy. (It was I who had to point out to them that it was only a copy.)

So I think that I am right on your first point. Where I actually am in doubt as to the significance of the birthplace as given in this book, is in regard to a rather more subtle point. The fact that the thing is a

copy, and that the entries in the second 'Natus' column both above

and below Swift's entry are also 'in Comitatu Dublinensis' might account for Swift's birthplace being described in error in the same

words. I can imagine the scribe, engaged in copying out about fifty years of entries, continuing in his boredom to write down 'in Comitatu Dublinensis' in line after line, without noticing that in this

particular case the original, from which he was

copying, was not so

worded. I dont think that it is very likely, but it is possible; and it is an enigma that can never be answered in the absence of the original.

May I conclude by saying that I am really most appreciative of

your interest in the book, and am sincerely grateful for your kindness

in writing to me. If anything further occurs to you in connection

with the above, or with the book in general, I hope that you will write to me again.

Most sincerely, Denis Johnston

Of course, even if Swift was well aware that the meaning of pro virili

would normally be taken to mean the same as pro virili parte, indicating "to the utmost of one's ability", he might well have used the shorter

version rather than the longer, for other reasons and to suggest a sexual

connotation.

The second letter, undated, from Johnston, accompanied what was

later published as The Brazen Horn and asked for suggestions. Johnston was struggling to say something profound and mystical,

but at the stage indicated by the letter this was clumsy, obscure and

deficient in various ways. The final letter is from Sean O'Faolain. It is undated, but I have

recorded that it was written in March 1987, when I was playing with the

idea of writing the memoir to be called The Singing Masters. O'Faolain

323




had written Vive Moi years before; I wanted to know his views on the

difficult genre of autobiography:

17 Rosmeen Park Dunlaoire

Thursday [March 1987]

... One does not when writing autobiography, visualise a reader, or

at most only an ideal reader?i.e. one who is no more particularised

than a character in a play

or a novel, and above all a sympathetic

one; though I should really have some word that might convey a multiform character

? say a confessor accustomed to purveyors of

innocent half-truths or pathetic evasions? I don't believe Rabelais

died saying Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-etre. He lived looking for its destruction, as you scholars do from start to finish ...

Of course O'Faolain's remarks on scholarship are playful and ironic, addressed as they were to one who knew his attitudes well and so would

not be deceived. He was frustrated however, by his inability to "lay his

hands", so to speak, on Plotinus and Neoplatonism, for the very good reason that, apart from MacKenna's inspired but not wholly reliable

translation, modern scholarship had not yet done its duty to them.

Padraic Colum had already told me of how moved he was by what he

gleaned of Neoplatonism from my Young Augustine (which treated of

the influence of the Neoplatonists on Augustine's conversion): the mystic in him wanted more. Since the times of Yeats, Colum and O'Faolain,

both a reliable Greek text and an English translation have become

available, and there is now much secondary work on Neoplatonism ?

some of it done by scholars connected with Ireland. And the interest in

Neoplatonic themes endures ? as is to be seen, for example, in Thomas

Kinsella's Out of Ireland. I have myself been curious about the appeal of

Neoplatonism for the Irish throughout the centuries, and notably since

the very Neoplatonist Irish Scholar, John Scottus Eriugena in the ninth

century. And so I ventured a ballon d'essai on this rather recondite topic under the title (taken from Berkeley) of "Impassioned Intellectualism"

in the Trinity College periodical the Long Room (1992). This may give a

little help on the background to Ireland's interest in a topic central, as

some believe, to the question of its imagination.

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