Thanks to the lovely group of people who assembled in Ardmore yesterday to hear me talking about Molly Keane’s novels. I wore a black tie, not for Molly Keane but for Michael O’Reilly, one of the biggest souls and greatest characters of Ardmore, Co. Waterford, whose requiem Mass is celebrated in Ardmore today. He will be sadly missed by many of the faithful followers of Molly Keane House.

My own talk lasted 90 minutes or more, too long for a public talk, but I wanted to remind people of Mrs. Keane’s method and habits and intentions as a fiction writer, using for illustration her early novels, THE KNIGHT OF CHEERFUL COUNTENANCE (Mills and Boon 1926) and TAKING CHANCES (Elkin Mathews, London/Lippincot Co.,N.Y. 1929) and the late masterpieces GOOD BEHAVIOUR (Andre Deutsch, London/Knopf, N.Y, 1981) and LOVING AND GIVING (Andre Deutsch, 1988/ E.P. Dutton, N.Y, published as QUEEN LEAR in 1989). If you haven’t read these novels and if you want to bring joy and fractious Irish companionship into your life this coming winter, for God’s sake, read these books and learn how fiction is written and how character is created. Don’t take my word for it, but listen to Hilary Mantel who informed the BBC that she read GOOD BEHAVIOUR at least once a year as a reminder of how a work of fiction should be structured.

THE KNIGHT OF CHEERFUL COUNTENANCE was published when Mrs. Keane was 22, but written between the age of 17 and 19, therefore between 1921 and 1923. It’s a superb achievement for someone so young, surely the first narrative of the Anglo-Irish in the new Irish Free State. Railway stations are important beginning spaces in both early novels: the first novel begins “The local train from Scaralin clattered haltingly into its terminus, Bungarvin - which, like most Irish towns, was mainly notable for its dirt, its idlers, and perhaps the number of RIC who had met their deaths in its licensed premises and neighbourhood.’ The inciting incident, or incitement to action, of TAKING CHANCES, is also at the railway station: ‘Perilla Mary Fuller, accompanied by a very much waisted, very morose little terrier - by name Mrs. Squiffy - stood among her mountains of luggage on the cold, deserted platform of Rennis station. High above the ugliness of steel girders and iron footbridges there shone a star, set slanting and beautiful in the smooth, grey pearl of the evening sky. The poster, who now appeared at the door of the signal-box and approached Mary, was not of a poetic turn of mind, otherwise he might have perceived the close affinity of loveliness between the girl, her white beauty wrapped in soft, grey fur, and the serene star. As it was, he approached shyly and said to her: “The train for Sorristown ’ll not be in for an hour yet. Will ye come in to the fire an’ heat yerself, Miss? ..”

GOOD BEHAVIOUR is structured differently, totally different. By now the mature Mrs. Keane had learned so much from three decades of theatre work, from the creation of several plays with John Perry and John Gielgud, that her method is now dramatic and immediate. The narrative is inverted, turned back on itself so that we begin the novel at its end, at the end of a set of powerful, life-altering encounters with character: ‘Rose smelt the air, considering what she smelt: a miasma of unspoken criticism and disparagement fogged the distance between us. I knew she ached to censure my cooking, but through the years I have subdued her.’ The narrator is Aroon St. Charles, an Anglo-Irish demon of an employer and the novel is the story of how she became such a woman. In the early typescript of the novel, Mrs. Keane had changed that word from ‘thinking’ to ‘considering’ The change is brilliant, and a reminder of Mrs. Keane’s meticulous method. ‘thinking’ gives too much agency to Rose whereas any fool can ‘consider’ things. The narrative, and narrator, hurtles forward, or back-ward. It is on p10, Chapter Two, that the traditional narrative begins: ‘When Hubert and I were children ... .’

LOVING AND GIVING was Mrs. Keane’s last novel, a book written in six parts, six essays like six episodes of a TV drama. Part One is the story of Nicandra’s childhood, the story of how she became too giving, too willing to part with things to please others. It’s her fatal flaw and it will her terrible unhappiness. Part Six is really 40 pages of distraught endings, it is merciless writing where Mrs. Keane really puts her characters of through a grinder of misfortunes. The full consequence of Nicandra’s weakness in the face of her friend Lalage Lawless’s effect on her husband, is delineated in a heart-breaking manner. But the fulcrum of the entire book is, I’m sure, on page 124; ‘in a silence full of his broken intention, she caught the look, passing helplessly between him and Lalage - a look that joined her love and her friend as clearly as if she had found them in bed,’ What Nicandra does about this situation provides all the drama of the second half of the book. It is written with ferocious, unsentimental power. It really is the author’s masterpiece.There are so many aspects of these four novels that one could write about; the class conflict is crucial in all of them, not just between Protestant land-owner and Catholic tenant, but between grades of Protestant society, those who are U and non-U.

The tension between Major Hillingdon and Dennys St. Lawrence, the horse-coping-doctor’s son or between the entire nobility and very rich businessman Robert, the clergyman’s son, is no less penetrating and fierce than the tension between Aroon and Rose or between Major Rowley Fountain of Castle Fountain and the Catholic farmer family of the seduced and pregnant Lizzie Conroy. Mrs. Keane saw it all, knew it all, and wrote it all down, mercilessly. But one of the great joys of her fiction is the descriptive passages, passages of great poetry, on flowers, horses, dogs, clothes, butlers, gardeners, horse-women, Hunt balls, interiors, the changing seasons, the architecture of large mansions, the art works, the decoration and the food. An entire world preserved in what was a fiction project of a lifetime. You could write a book on the dogs alone: ‘Down on the dark green lawn, so far below, the Demon and Mrs. Squiffy were taking their first morning walk; Mrs. Squiffy hating it sourly, stood still with little shivers and walked forward with delicate steps. The Demon, foolishly elated even thus early, galloped round in purposeless circles, ready for anything. The paths of his foolish goings and comings showed darker where the mist was brushed off the grass.’ (TAKING CHANCES, p151).