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| 1902-2000 [Henry Francis Montgomery Stuart; originally Henry Stuart, afterwards Francis Stuart]; b. Townsville, Australia, of Ulster parents, being the son of Henry Stuart, of Ballyhivistock House, br. Derrykeighan, Co. Antrim, one of two brothers who went to Australia in 1874 (James and Henry, reputedly with £50 each), and Lily Montgomery of Benvardin House nr. Ballybogey [Ballyboggy in Black List]; his father committed suicide in a mental asylum four months after his birth (having ‘drunk himself to death too soon’ to make a fortune sheep-farming in Australia, and ‘shrouded in shame and mystery’ - acc. Black List); the family returning immediately to Ireland at settled at Benvardin, but left on account of dissension between his mother, a Republican, and the Montgomery family [family information]; his uncle James returned in 1912 and acquired Somerset House in Coleraine; Stuart was sent to Rugby College, where he heard of the Easter Rising; spent his boyhood near Drogheda, Co. Meath, and later in Dublin; tutored for University by one G. O. Grimble, who disparaged his poetry but knew Yeats and Russell [“AE”]; attended the latter’s Sunday evenings and there first met Iseult Gonne; became a literary protégé of Yeats, though called ‘dunce’ by him when he married Iseult Gonne; |
| FS encounterd Iseult again at her mother’s Tuesdays in her home on St. Stephen’s Green, and was later enlisted in the MIAL; eloped with Iseult to London; m. under pressure from parents on both sides, 1920, being slightly under 18 years of age, and converting to Catholicism to do so; a first child, Dolores, died of meningitis (occasioning a grief-stricken letter from Iseult to W. B. Yeats); subsequent children were Ion [a sculptor] and Catherine (“Kay”); lived in Maud Gonne’s house and afterwards settled in the Wicklow Hills; engaged in Irish Civil War on Republican side; captured while peripherally involved in an ambush, Aug. 1922, surrendering his Belgian-bought Parabellum unused; interned at Maryborough Prison [Portlaoise] and the Curragh (“Tintown”), Aug. 1922-Nov. 1923, with Joseph Campbell and others; |
| on release FS issued a poetry collection, We Have Kept the Faith (1924; enl. edn. 1992), winning an RIA award for literature at the instigation of W. B. Yeats, along with Stephen McKenna - whose prize was accepted on his behalf by G. K. Chesterton, 1924; lectured on “Nationality and Culture”, March 1924 [printed by Sinn Féin]; launched with Cecil Salkeld a journal, To-Morrow (2 iss. Aug. & Sept. 1924), with Yeats’s encouragement, regarding it as duly subversive; printer refused second issue containing Lennox Robinson’s controversial story “The Madonna of Slieve Dun”; issue printed in Manchester and published from Maud Gonne’s house [in Dublin], and sold at 6d.; issued Mystics and Mysticism (CTS 1929), a pamphlet; |
| moved to “Barravore”, a cottage in Glenmalure that had provided the setting for Synge’s In the Shadow of the Glen; later moved to Laragh Castle (actually a cottage with a castellated facade - and called Dineen Castle in Black List, Section H), 1929, purchased by Maud Gonne, and which he occupied with Iseult for ten years, raising bantams and poultry for a living; issued his first novel, Women and God (1931); followed by Pigeon Irish (1932) and The Coloured Dome (1932), the latter concerning Jose and Carlotta, caught in a gun-battle between Government soldiers and fascist rioters and called by Yeats ‘more personally and beautifully written than any book of our generation’; visited at Laragh by W. B. Yeats, then convalescing in Glendalough, 1932; gave his support to Jim Gralton, the Roscommon socialist deported to America by the Fianna Fáil govt., in a meeting at the Rotunda, 1932; |
| issued Try the Sky (1933), in which two lovers make a mysterious aeroplane called “The Spirit”; wrote Glory, also in 1933 (prod. Arts Club, London, Jan. 1936); wrote a second play, Men Crowd Me Round (Abbey Th., 15 March 1933), dealing with a Republican who betrays his ideals for the love in blunt language that aroused the antagonism of the audience - as Joseph Holloway noted; also Strange Guest (Abbey Th., Dec. 1940); issued Things to Live For (1934), a memoir commissioned by Jonathan Cape; wrote In Search of Love (1935), satire on the film industry, his only comic novel; issued The Angel of Pity (1935), another highly personal novel condemning materialism and the technology of war; issued The White Hare (1936), which translated into German for Tauschnitz; visited at Laragh by Beckett and George Reavey; issued The Bridge (1937); issued Julie (1938); |
| issued The Great Squire (1939); accepted an invitation from the Deutsche Akademie (DAAD) to tour Germany lecturing and reading; offered a lecturing post at Berlin University’s Englische Seminar; with connivance of Maud Gonne, Iseult sheltered a German spy, Hermann Goertz, with whom she fell in love prior to his arrest and internment, 1940; in Germany Stuart undertook anti-British broadcasts to Ireland on Irland Redaktion along with Susan Hilton and John Francis O’Reilly, 1942-1944; with Gertrud (‘Madeleine’) Meissner, arrested by French forces and imprisoned at the end of the war to July 1946; issued The Pillar of Cloud (1948), a novel concerning Dominic and the Polish sisters Lisette and Halka - respectively a consumptive and a survivor of the concentration camps, held in Marheim - in circumstances similar to his own and Madeleine’s; stayed on in Freiburg in conditions of near starvation until 1949; |
| issued Redemption (1949), in which Ezra Arrigho, returned to Ireland from Germany, persuades Romilly, the chaste sister of his friend the mystically-minded priest Fr. Mellowes to marry Kavanagh, murderer of his (Romilly’s) lover Annie, ultimately saving him from despair before execution; the characters Nancy and Aunt Nuala based on Iseult and Maud Gonne; the novel eas condemned as blasphemous by Ethel Mannin in a letter to Stuart; issued The Flowering Cross (1950), in which Louis and Alyse, released from prison, experience spiritual exultation in post-war France; spent two years in Paris, moving to London East End in 1952; briefly worked as night watchman in a Kensington museum; Mannin employed Madeleine as domestic to secure her residence in England; issued Good Friday’s Daughter (1952) and The Chariot (1953); |
| m. Madeleine at death of Iseult, 1954; issued The Pilgrimage (1955), Victors and Vanquished (1958), and The Angels of Providence (1959); returned in 1958 to Ireland and settled in Co. Meath with Madeleine, who died of cancer soon after; began work in 1958 on Black List, Section H (1971), autobiographical novel concerning the career of Luke Ruark in wartime Germany and after in flight from the authorities with Halka, of which he later wrote that it was conceived as ‘an imaginative fiction in which only real people appear, and under their actual names where possible’; completed in 1967, and published by Southern Illinois University Press; wrote Flynn’s Last Dive (Pembroke Th., Croyden, March 1962); Abbey Theatre cancelled a production of his play, Who Fears to Speak ?, commissioned by Tomás Mac Anna and commemorating the death of Terence MacSwiney, October 1970 (played at Liberty Hall, Dec. 1970); |
| continued writing increasingly experimental novels with Memorial (1973), A Hole in the Head (1977), The High Consistory (1981), Faillandia (1985) and A Compendium of Lovers (1990); characterised by Alan Warner as ‘a deeply religious writer’ and promoted strenuously by Anthony Cronin and others; became a fnd. member of Aosdana; FS married the artist Finola Graham in 1987; settled in Dublin in a terrace adjacent to the wall of the Institution for the Criminal Insane, Dundrum; elected Saoi of Aosdána, Summer 1996; later moved to Co. Clare with Finola and her son, but lived separately from them; purportedly expressed anti-semitic sentiments on C4 “Holocaust” documentary presented by Simon Sebag-Montefiore (11 Oct. 1997), making use of the Blakean phrase ‘the invisible worm ... [&c.]’; his Saoi-ship of Aosdana was made the object of a movement to impeach by Máire Mhac an tSaoi - her unsuccessful presentation of the facts being marred by the missing video, and ending with her resignation as a gesture of dissent from the failed motion; |
| d. 2 Feb. 2000, in company of Finola, and removed to her house after death and before the arrival of journalists; a half-page colour portrait of Stuart laid out on his “death bed” taken by Eric Luke ‘shortly after his death’ with a wide wide-angle lens, and printed at half-page size in The Irish Times; there is a portrait head by Marjorie Fitzgibbon in the RDS; an authorised life by Kevin Kiely based on decades of conversation appeared in 2008; the entry in the RIA Dictionary of Irish Biography is by Colm Tóibín. IF DIW DIL KUN FDA OCIL |
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Works| Fiction (chiefly novels) |
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| Contributions to journals [short fiction] |
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| Also, contrib. fiction to Inisfail, 1, 1 (1933) [a story ‘with a twist’.] |
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| Contributions to Journals [poetry] |
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| “North”, a poem signed by H. Stuart, appeared in Klaxon, the short-lived journal edited by A. J. Leventhal (Winter 1923-24), p.11. [Note: prev. reference on this page to a poem “Dear Henry” signed H. Stuart in the same issue - but not to be found in the actual pages: BS 07.09.2010.] |
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| Miscellaneous |
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| Vol, 1, No, 1 (Aug. 1924) | ||
| “The Madonna of Slieve Dun”, by Lennox Robinson, pp.1, 7, 8. “A Red Petticoat”, by Liam O”Flaherty, pp.1, 3, 4, 6. “Leda and the Swan”, by W. B. Yeats, p.2. “Two Poems”. “The Japanese Pine” and “Just Now”, by Charlotte Arthur, p.2. “Be as a Trembling Petal” (poem), by H. Stuart, p.2. “Intrusions” (poem), by F. R. Higgins, p.2. “As I was Among the Captives”: I. “Chesspieces”; II. “Ideal and Reality”; III. “The Cock” (poems), by Joseph Campbell, p.2. Untitled illustration of two lovers and a dog, signed Salkeld, p. 3. “The Principles of Painting”, by Cecil Salkeld, p.3. “To All Artists and Writers”(editorial), by H. Stuart and Cecil Salkeld, p.4. “Why We Live”, by “Sachka”, pp.4, 6. “A Note on Jacob Boehme”, by H. Stuart, p.5. “The Kingdom Slow to Come”, by Maurice Gonne, p.5. “Sonnet” (poem), by O. F. Fleck, p.6. “A Primitive” [review of Liam O’Flaherty’s The Black Soul], by L. K. Emery, p.7. Colour”, by Margaret Barrington, p.8. “Alba” (poem), by R. N. D.Wilson, p.8. |
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| Vol. 1, No. 2 (Sept. 1924) | ||
| “Honore Daumier”, by Arthur Symons, pp.1-2. “The Garden”, by Sachka, pp.1, 6. “Marriage Song” (poem), by Blanaid Salkeld, p.3. Untitled poem, starting “High thro” darkest forest branches”, by Blanaid Salkeld, p.3. “Wet Loveliness” (poem), by F. R. Higgins, p.3. “The Horse-Breaker” (poem), by F. R. Higgins, p.3. Two Poems: “An Etching” and “Gifts”, by Charlotte Arthur, p.3. “An P.” (poem in German), by O. J. Fleck, p.3. “The Sea” (poem), by R. N. D.Wilson, p.3. “In the Hour Before Dawn”, by H. Stuart, p.4. “The Poplar Road”, by Iseult Stuart, pp.4, 6. “Cinema”, a picture signed Salkeld, p.5. “The Principles of Painting” (cont.), by Cecil Salkeld, p.5. “The Tendencies of the Younger Irish Poetry”, by L. K. Emery, p.6. |
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| See F. C. Molloy, ‘Francis Stuart, Yeats, and To-Morrow,” in Yeats Annual, 8 (1991): notes that the young editors felt that ‘mainstream Irish literature was narrow and that no outlets were available for young writers to publish innovative or experimental work; nor was there a forum for the discussion of developments in poetry, painting, and philosophy.’ (p.214; quoted in Bernard McKenna, “Yeats, “Leda,” and the Aesthetics of To-Morrow: “The Immortality of the Soul”’, in New Hibernia Review, 13, 2, Samhradh/Summer 2009, pp.16-35; p.16. See also David Pierce, Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century (Cork UP 2000), p.353. [See title-page - attached.] | ||
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Bibliographical details
Things to Live For: Notes for an Autobiography (London: Jonathan Cape 1935), another edn. (NY: Macmillan Press 1935), 278pp.; [ded. Ion Nicholson]. CONTENTS [Chaps. I-XIX]: Prologue [3]; The Pond [7]; The Crane [11]; The Best Game of All [15]; The White Girl [27]; Fighting [36]; Writing [44]; On the Course [53]; The London Game [68]; The Monk [72]; ‘Interesting People’ [84]; Finding a Way Out [90]; It was Quiet in Vienna [100]; At Home [104]; Meetings and Partings [112]]; In Love [119]; Looking for Paris [128]; A Drink with Paddy Hunt [139]; The Price of Serenity [148]. Part II [I-VIII]: The Gambler [157]; Women and Horses [165]; The Darkest Moments [179]; Interlude with Billy Weller [184]; A Good Day [191]; On a Dog-Track [198]; A Caricature [211]; Night-Flight [218]; Elizabeth [229]; Another Interval with Billy [240]; The Jockey [244]; Day-Dreams at Home [259]; Good-bye [268].Redemption (NY: Devin-Adair 1950) [US Edn.], 247pp.; Contents [Chaps. 1-XIX]: Beast of the Forest; The Cave; Signs in the Moon; The Varied Shapes of Violence; The Bleeding Picture; Flood’s Hotel; Evening Shadows; The Virgin; At the Dog-Races; The Violation; Past and Present; Lunch at Flood’s; Come!; The Unreturned; Kavanagh; The Anointing; The Marriage; The Good Brute; The Smile.
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Criticism
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| See also Joseph McArdle, Irish Rogues and Rascals (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 2007), 215pp. [but see note]. |
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Bibliographical details
W. J. McCormack, comp. & edn., Festschrift for Francis Stuart on His Seventieth Birthday [28 April. 1972] (Dublin: Dolmen 1972), 62pp., engrav. port by Thomas Ryan [ltd. edn. of 1000], second title-page: by Hugh Maxton / W. J. McCormack / Compton Mackenzie; John Jordan; Serge Radine / Olivia Manning / Bertrand D’Astorg / Roger McHugh / Joseph Holloway / Thomas Mac Intyre; portrait by Thomas Ryan RHA; 18 April 1972; with bibliography]. CONTENTS: Hugh Maxton [i.e., WJMcC], ‘The Trial of B- ’ [7], W. J. McCormack, Introduction [9] Compton Mackenzie, ‘Foreword for Try the Sky’, Nov. 1932 [18]; John Jordan, ‘Thing to Live For’ [19]; Serge Radine, ‘Neue Pfade in Der Literature’, review, 1951 [24], Olivia Manning, ‘on Pillar of Cloud’, review, 1948 [26]; Bertrand D’Astorg, ‘Des Ruines, le sacre renaitra ...’, review of Rédemption [28-39]; Roger McHugh, ‘Lux upon Crux’ [on the plays] [39], Joseph Holloway, ‘Irish Theatre’, diary entries for 18 Sept. 1933, 1933 & 1940 [43]; Thomas Mac Intyre, ‘Back to the Wall: A Personal Memoir’ [46-48]; Bibliography [49-54, cont. with bibliographical notice by McCormack, 54-62]; engrav. front. port. by Thomas Ryan RHA.J. H. Natterstad, Francis Stuart [Irish Writers Ser.] (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP 1974), 88pp. Contents: Chronology [9]; 1. Genesis of an Outcast [13]; 2. Images of Eternity [36]; 3. The Dark Night [58]; Select Bibliography [86] - available at Google Books online; accessed 21.12.2011.
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Bill Lazenbatt, ed., ‘Francis Stuart Special Issue’, Writing Ulster, 4 (1996), 186pp. CONTENTS, Editorial, vii; Biography of Francis Stuart, ix; Bill Lazenbatt, ed., ‘A Conversation with Francis Stuart’ [1]; Maurice Harmon, ‘The Achievement of Francis Stuart’ [19]; Dermot Bolger, ‘A Memory of Madeleine’ [39]; Simon Caterson, ‘Stuart, Yeats and the Artists Self’ [41]; Brendan Kennelly, ‘Teacher in the Joy’ [51]; Brendan Kennelly, ‘From the Diary of Christy Downes’ [53]; Anne McCartney, ‘The Significance of the Self in Francis Stuart’s Work’ [55]; Hugo Hamilton, ‘Understanding Francis Stuart’ [69]; Fintan O’Toole, ‘The Survivor’ [77]; Rüdiger Imhof, ‘A Short Bibliography of German editions of the works of Francis Stuart’ [85]; Medbh McGuckian, ‘Poet on Poet: McGuckian reads Stuart’ [87]; Kathleen McCracken, ‘“Talking to one of the Old Masters”: Paul Durcan’s Response to Francis Stuart in Ark of the North’ [95]; Lazenbatt, ‘Francis Stuart’s Outrageous Fortune: A Reading of Arrow of Anguish’ [115]; Lazenbatt, ed., ‘Selections from The Diaries of Francis Stuart’ [127]; Extract from King David Dances : A Novel-in-Progress [157]; POETRY SECTION [167]; BOOK REVIEWS [179]; NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS [185].
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Commentary
See separate file [infra]
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Quotations
See separate file [infra]
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Andrew Carpenter & Peter Fallon, eds., The Writers: A Sense of Place (Dublin: O’Brien Press 1980), contains extract from The High Consistory, a novel, in pp.202-06 [with photo-port.]
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, selects Redemption, pp.943-49; Beckett (Recent Irish Poetry, 1934), ‘Mr Francis Stuart is of course best known as a novelist, but he writes verse’, 247; (631, Ronan Sheehan interview, see bibl.); cited by Denis O’Donoghue as among Irish writers aggravated by politics to the point of turning their aggravation into verse and prose [in ‘We Irish’, Hibernia, 1986], 643; cited by John Wilson Foster as disproving the pre-eminence of the short story, 937; left and prospered artistically [idem] 939; [his] second stage, inaugurated by Black List, Section H ... in subtext, a justification of is war-time activities in Berlin ... activities meant to be less important than the sense of alienation from all respectable causes ... which he deems essential to his status as an artist [do.] 940-41, 942; Biog., 1131-32.
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Bernard Share, ed., Far Green Fields, 1500 Years of Irish Travel Writing (Belfast: Blackstaff 1992); extract from States of Mind (Raven Arts 1984; first pub. Envoy, 1950), gives extract.
Peter Fallon & Seán Golden, eds., Soft Day, A Miscellany of Contemporary Irish Writing (Dublin Wolfhound Press; Notre Dame UP 1980), incls. ‘Jacob’ [fiction]; Grattan Freyer, Modern Irish Writing (1979), contains ‘Homecoming’, extract from Things to Live For, and a poem.
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Books in Print (1994): The Pillar of Cloud (London: Gollancz 1948), rep. Martin Brian & O’Keeffe 1974) [0 85616 300 7]; Redemption (London: Gollancz; NY: Devin-Adair 1949; London: Martin Brian & O’Keeffe 1973) [0 85616 310 4]; Memorial (London: Martin Brian & O’Keeffe 1973); rep. (Dublin: Raven Arts; Gerrards Cross: Colin Smyth [1984, 1992]) [0 906897 87 4; and 0 86140 224 3]; The High Consistory (London: Martin Brian & O’Keeffe 1981) [0 85616 221 3]; Faillandia (Dublin: Raven Arts Press 1985) [1 85186 006 1] [0 85616 470 4]; A Compendium of Lovers (Dublin: Raven Arts Press 1990) [851 186 077 0]; We Have Kept the Faith (Oak Press 1923, enlarged ed. Dublin: Raven Arts 1983), reissued as We Have Kept the Faith, Poems 1918-1992 (New Island Books 1992) [1 05186 101 7 pb]
Belfast Public Library holds The Bridge (1937); The Chariot (1953); Redemption (1949); Things to Live For (1934); see also card catalogue.
University of Ulster Library holds Diaries and Stuart’s personal library of first editions.
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NotesLand of Destiny: A story ‘with a twist’ that Stuart contributed to Inisfail, Vol. I, No. 1 (1933) is noted in by ‘Y’ in his column ‘In Time’s Eye’ (Irish Times column , 29 June 1996).
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Iseult Gonne (1): ‘Iseult was treated more brutally by Francis Stuart than most of us realise [...]’ according to Douglas Archibald, reviewing R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol II: The Arch Poet (2003), in Irish University Review, Spring/Summer 2004, p.207. See further, Eve Patten, reviewing A. N. Jeffares [q. title], in Notes & Queries (Spring 2005): ‘No one, unfortunately, seems to have warned Iseult against her ill-fated marriage to the young writer Francis Stuart. Theirs was a union initiated in misery, with the death from meningitis of their first baby, Dolores. Iseult’s grief-stricken letter to Yeats, written from her home in Wicklow in 1921 and describing the terrible final moments of her child’s life, is hardly bearable. From here on, her days would be dogged by illness, unhappiness, and betrayal, wrecked by her husband’s gambling and debts, and by his effective abandonment of his family. This is the other side to the story told by Stuart himself in his autobiographical novel Black List Section H, and its matter is bleak. “I am tired of crying, I am tired of not sleeping, I am tired of not being able to think well of you”, Iseult wrote despairingly to her wayward spouse. But she refused to be a victim of circumstances. Despite what she described to her now elderly mother as “all the brutish pain and suffering” they had both endured, she maintained a social confidence and a rich spiritual life, dying in 1954 at the age of fiftynine, less than a year after the death of Maud Gonne herself.’ [Proof copy.]
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Iseult Gonne (2): John Montague writes, ‘Francis Stuart records his shock at being told by his bride Iseult Gonne, that she had been deflowered by Uncle Ezra. (But Prof. Moody describes Stuart as “notoriously untrustworthy”. Iseult was the daughter of Maud Gonne, while Dorothy, Pound’s wife to be, was the daughter of Yeats’s mistress Olivia Shakespear, a typical bohemian tangle of that time. [...]’
W. B. Yeats: Ann Saddlemyer writes that when Stuart was awarded a prize for literature by the Royal Irish Academy [RIA - but probably IAL], he was instructed by his mother not to address Yeats as Senator (see Saddlemyer, Becoming George: The Life of Mrs W. B. Yeats, OUP, p.319.) George Yeats was the Secretary.
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St. Teresa [of Avila]: Stuart was devoted to St. Teresa and made a handbound copy of her prayers while interned in the Curragh which is in the possession of Imogen Stuart. Note that W. B. Yeats held copy (or 2?) of The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus ... written by herself [5th edn. 1924] with 5 & 4 inslipped sheets of notes (MS 40,568 / 251 & 252; NLI, Dublin.)
Liam O’Flaherty wrote of Stuart after the war: ‘Francis Stuart has now given up both horse-racing and Jesus. What on earth has he got left as apart from Gertruda whom he brought back from Germany as apologia pro vita sua, in other words a living proof that he had put away his love for Adolf Hitler and turned his face towards Israel.’ (See Kevin Kiely, review of A. A. Kelly, The Letters of Liam O’Flaherty, Wolfhound 1997, 458pp., in Books Ireland [q.d.]
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Anti-semitism: In the course of an interview for the Channel 4 documentary on the Holocaust, presented by Simon Sebag-Montefiore (11 Oct. 1997), Stuart said: “the Jew was always the worm that got into the rose and sickened it” and was rebuked by many of his peers for so doing. At a general assembly of Aosdana in Dublin Castle yesterday members voted overwhelmingly against a motion tabled by Maire Mhac an tSaoi calling for his resignation. Anthony Cronin gave an impassioned defence and was supported by Paul Durcan who claimed that a woman had interviewed Stuart at his home and that Sebag-Montefiore’s questions were edited over the footage. Louis le Brocquy said Aosdana should condemn the dehumanising concept of racism. Hugh Maxton [W. J. McCormack] proposed that the motion be withdrawn due to lack of information. After vote necessitated by the rules Mhac an tSaoi, the sole person to vote for the motion (70 against; 14 abstentions), resigned from Aosdana. Faxes in favour of the motion received from Frank McGuinness and Joseph J. Briscoe of the Jewish Rep. Council of Ireland. (See Mic Moroney, ‘Stormy Aosdana assembly votes against call for Stuart resignation [...]’, in The Irish Times, 27 Nov. 1997; see also under Christabel Bielenberg, supra.)
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Funeral games (The Irish Times, News Sect., Sat. 5 Feb. 2000): remains removed from home of Stuart’s wife Finola Graham shortly before 1.00 p.m.; grand-dg. Laragh reads one of his poems, “Ireland” from We have Kept the Faith ; jigs and reels played by Hothouse Flowers musician Fiachra Ó Braonáin; coffin bearers Ion Stuart (son); Ulick O’Connor; Judge Patrick McCartan; Cmdt. Dermot O’Connor (aide-de-camp of President), Capt. Michael Tiernan (aide-de-camp of Taoiseach); chief celebrant Fr. Michael O’Reilly, PP, Ballyvaughan, who called Stuart ‘a Christian man, a man with a great love of the Psalms and also of the new Testament’; reading from Psalms by Síabhra Durcan (dg. Paul Durcan), and tribute by Durcan; address by Anthony Cronin spoke of Stuart’s return to writing as ‘one of the most astonishing developments’ in his life; Ulick O’Connor spoke of his having endured ‘many stations of the cross, including criticism and detractors. Further states that ‘he died in a suite looking out to sea and with wonderful caring, people around him and adds: ‘He always accepted severe disorder and destruction as part of something he could convert into his work, his poetry and his imagery. He thought it was necessary in order to find the isolated, distant position of the artist.’ Also Present were Elizabeth Clissman (widow of Helmut Clissmann, instrumental in getting him to tour Germany in April 1939); Bob Quinn (film-maker) and Ted Dolan; Anne Haverty (novelist and partner of Tony Cronin), Maeve McCarthy, Michael Kane (artist) and Geoffrey Elborn (his biographer).
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Henry?: Note that Iseult addresses the narrator (presum. H) as Luke when she says, ‘Find a priest and be guided by him [...] Learn humility, and don’t imagine that by indulging in extravagances and going to extremes you’ll solve your problemsm Luke’. (Black List, Section H, Martin, Brian & O’Keeffe 1975, p.132.) Likewise, Stroud addresses O’Flaherty and H as ‘Liam’ and ‘Luke’ (p.195), as O’Flaherty also speaks of H at p.206. When the Stuarts stay with the Yeatses on Merrion Square, Mrs. Yeats pins a note to their door reminding Yeats: “Willie, this is now the Ruark’s room”. (p.141.) The son of their union is called Ian, not Ion (p.157.) Iseult, Maud Gonne, Yeats, and others appear under their actual names. See also remarks on the background of the third-person narrative employed in this novel, under John Montague in Commentary, [supra].
Paul Durcan names Francis Stuart as key to his development, ‘unlocking a network of harmonic connections’ (see Durcan, Cork Examiner interview, 18 June 1989).
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Joseph McArdle, Irish Rogues and Rascals (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 2007), gives an account of Stuart, reiterating Maire mac an TSaoi’s views on Stuart. The table of contents incorporates a hit-list that includes Myler Magrath, Tiger Roche, Paul Singer, Des Traynor, Charles J. Haughey, Francis Shackleton, G. R. Fitzgerald, Robert Erskine Childers, Liam Lawlor and also the putatively Irish-descent rascals John de Lorean, James Lehman.
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Family houses
Ballyhivistock House: Charles George Stuart was as soldier in the Connaught Rangers from 1811 to this disbanding of his regiment after Waterloo; d. 1873 and survived by his wife Maria Christina, with whom ten children of whom James and Henry went to Australia to make their fortunes in sheep-farming, reputedly with £50 each in their pockests; Henry, father of the novelist, d. in Australia in 1902. (See Rose Jane Leslie, The Country Houses, Castles and Mansions of Northern Ireland, Stenlake Publ. Lt., Ayreshire 2011, p.5.)Somerset Hse., nr. the River Bann outside Coleraine, Co. Derry; built for the Richardson family; passed through marriage to the Torrens family by late 1800s; purchased by James Stuart, originally of Ballyhivistock, in 1912, on his return from Australia, having prospered in sheep-farming (br. of Henry Stuart, f. of the novelist); built in the manner of Richard Morrison; ‘submerged by the growth of the Monsanto industrial plant and retail developments on the outskirts of Coleraine’. (See Rose Jane Leslie, The Country Houses [... &c.], 2011, p.50.)
Benvardin House, nr. Dervock [actually in Ballybogey], purchased from the McNaughten family of Bushmills by Hugh Montgomery, founder of Montgomery’s Bank, later the Northern Bank, in 1798; enlarged by adding wings and later an Italianate porch; inherited from his son John by his son Robert Montgomery in 1873; sometime captain in the 5th Dragoon Guards who saw action with the Heavy Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava, Crimea; added service wing, removed glazing bars, and built a cast-iron bridge, still extant; became commercially viable as garden nursery and safari park in 1970s. From this house Lily Montgomery married Henry Stuart, f. of the novelist, and to it she returned for a time after his death in Australia. The USPCA cat & dog pound lies adjacently to the house on the former estate land. (See Rose Jane Leslie, The Country Houses [... &c.], 2011, p.9.)
Abandoned snails: Stuart’s essay The Abandoned Snail Shell (Dublin: Raven Arts Press 1987), takes its title from a poem by David Gascoyne which is quoted in the epigraph (p.[6]). A copy of the book was held in David Gascoyne’s library with some markings on p.[2] - which contains a list of the author’s works - and a sheet of his MS notes loosely inserted in the volume. The book is available at £25 from James Fergusson, 39 Melrose Gardens, London, W6 7RN (UK); email jamesfergusson@btinternet.com.
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