James Cousins (1873-1956)

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Commentary

John Wilson Foster, ‘The Islandman: The Teller and the Tale’, in Between Shadows: Modern Irish Writing and Culture (Dublin: IAP 2009): ‘[...] the Ulster playwright and theosophist James Cousins, and his wife Gretta, were staying in Ventry in the August of that year (dated variously as 1908 and 1909 by the Cousins - it was in fact 1909). Cousins was later edged out of the Irish Dramatic Revival by Yeats and he and his wife emigrated in 1915 to India where they stayed until their deaths. In 1950 they published in Madras a joint autobiography of alternating chapters, We Two Together, which includes a chpater by Cousins that recalls in detail the drowning of Eileen Nicholls. Miss Nicholls was staying in the same lodgings as Cousins, who [25] had known of her as a considerable figure in the Gaelic League. She had headed to the Blaskets, like Synge before her, to get as far away as possible from English civilization and the English tongue. Synge was the last visitor to occupy the bed above Thady Kevane’s shop in Ventry that Cousins now occupied, waiting for his wife to arrive. Miss Nicholls then left for Great Blasket, shouting Beannact libh [leat in Cousins’s account] to the Cousinses. This is the farewell that Miss Ivors shouts to the gathering in James Joyce’s story “The Dead” and in Cousins’s telling, Miss Nicholls resembles Miss Ivors (Joyce’s rendering of one of the Sheehy sisters). Gretta Cousins from Roscommon - whose Christian name Joyce probably borrowed for his character Gretta Conroy in ‘the Dead’ - had arrived and improvised a suffragette meeting outside the church where Miss Nicholls had that day attended mass as a “pious Catholic” (Cousin’s phrase) but had nevertheless scandalized the local mass-goers by seating herself on the men’s side of the church.

[J. W. Foster, Between Shadows ... (2009); cont.:] The next day the tragedy occurs as the Cousinses are being rowed to the island to visit Miss Nicholls by arrangement. Cousins recalls: “With one of those conspiracies of fate that are called coincidences, a neighbouring priest had come on a casual visit to the island, and had given great service to the locating of the body of Miss Nicolls [sic] and performing such rites of the Church as were possible under the circumstances.”’ There is a wake for Miss Nicholls in the home of the King. The priest leaves with wires for the press from Cousins. A wake for the boy is held in the O Crohan home, but Tomás O Crohan is unidentified by Cousins and clearly unknown to him.’ [Foster here cites the portents which the Cousins record as having anticipated Miss Nicholl’s death in the view of locals.] ‘The mysticism of the Literary Revival, the suffragette movement, the folk belief in the spirit world, patriotic Irish Catholicism, the Gaelic League and cultural nationalism: all converge in one day’s event on Great Blasket and Tomas O Crohan might appear to us as its silent president. This is not to speak of the symbolism of a fruitless attempt by a cultural nationalist to save an islander, and an islander to save a cultural nationalist, and the loss of both.’ (pp.25-26.) In a footnote, Foster records his meeting with the author of a bilingual book on Miss Nicholl (Micheal Ó Dubhshlaine, Oigbhean Uasal o Phriomhchathair Eireann, Conradh na Gaeilge, 1992) and another (A Dark Day on the Blaskets: The Drowning of Domhnall Ó Criomthain and Eibhlín Nic Niocaill on the Blasket Islands, 2003). In the latter she is called Eveleen Nicolls. (n.16; p.29.)

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References
D. J. O’Donoghue, The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical Dictionary (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co 1912); Ben Madigan and Other Poems (Belfast 1894); The Legend of the Blemished King (Dublin 1897), The Voice of One (London 1900); The Quest (Dublin 1907), poems, The Bell Branch, poems (1908), and The Awakening and Other Sonnets (Dublin 1908). NOTE, [Cathach Bks. 12, lists The Quest (Dublin 1906).]

Brian Cleeve & Anne Brady, A Dictionary of Irish Writers (Dublin: Lilliput 1985); died in India having gone as English teacher in 1913, after teaching at Harcourt Street High. Autobiog with Margaret E. Cousins, We Two Together (1950); also Collected Poems 1894-1940 (Madras 1950). Dublin Book of Irish Verse, ‘The Coming of Niamh’; ‘The Bell-branch’; ‘Behind the Pough’; ‘The Awakening’.

Seamus Deane, ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry 1991), has variant: TWilliam J. Feeney, ed., he Sleep of the King, and The Sword of Dermot, ed. , Vol. 3 [Irish Drama Series] (Chicago 1973) [chk.]

Brian M Walker, et al., eds, Faces of Ireland (Belfast: Appletree Press 1992), pp.36-37, contains short passage from The Racing Lug, from Robert Hogan and James Kilroy, eds., Lost Plays of the Irish Renaissance (Calif.: Dixon 1970, pp.42-43). Note ref. to Collected Poems, 1950 [sic.]

Belfast Public Library holds poetry collections, Above the Rainbow; The Awakening; The Bell-branch; Ben Madighan; Etain the Beloved; The Hound of Uladh, play; The King’s Wife, play; Legend of the Blemished King; The Quest; Straight and Crooked; Tibetan Banner; The Voice of One; A Wandering Harp, selected poems (1932); Wisdom of the West (1912).

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Notes
A. N. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats, A New Biography (London: Hutchinson 1988), Yeats blocked two plays by James Cousins, Solf, and The Sword of Dermot, regarding them as having no originality; in June a reading committee was formed, but split when Cousins offered Sold again. (Jeffares, 1988, p.138).

Cf. Noyes?: Characterised by Terence Brown as ‘an Irish Alfred Noyes, whose occasional attraction is a pleasing painterly exoticism, mediated in rhythms of mellifluous banality.’ (Northern Voices, 1975, p.67). Bibl. includes Denson, and the first edns., Etain the Beloved and Other Poems (Dublin: Maunsel & Co. 1912); The Quest (Dublin: Maunsel & Co. 1906); The Bell Branch (Dublin: Maunsel & Co. 1908).

James Joyce (I): Richard Ellmann writes, ‘He [Joyce] accepted the invitation of Gretta Cousins, the wife of the Theosophical poetaster James Cousins, to come and use her piano in the mornings but preferred to hire one.’ (James Joyce [1959], 1965 Edn., p.157).

James Joyce (2): ‘On June 15 the Mckernans, with whom he had his room, encouraged him to leave until he could pay his rent, and he went to his friends James and Gretta Cousins and asked them to take him in. They hospitably turned over the spare room in their tiny house on the seas’s edge at Ballsbridge. After dinner on June 15 the Espositos came to call [...]’ (Ibid.., p.161.)

James Joyce (3): For Joyce, Cousins was synonymous with amateur writer. When, in Rome, his literary ambitions began to fall away from him, he wrote: ‘I have come to the conclusion that it is about time I made up my mind whether I am to become a wrier or a patient Cousins. I foresee that I shall have to do other work as well but to continue as I am at present would certainly mean my mental extinction. [...]’ (Letter to Stanislaus, Feb. 1907; quoted in Richard Ellmann, op. cit., p.249, ftn.)

James Joyce (4):The ‘table-book of Cousins’ in Joyce’s Gas from a Burner is probably James Cousin’s Etain the Beloved and Other Poems (Maunsel 1912).

Tomás Ó Criomthain [Thomas O’Crohan]: The Cousins gave a detailed account of the drowning of Eileen [sic] Nicholls and O Crohan’s son in We Two Together (1950), arising from their coincidental presence in Ventry during August in 1909 when it occurred [see further under Tomás Ó Criomthain, infra].

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