Éire-Ireland, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Winter 1971): Reading Notes

Joseph James St. Mark, ed., ‘Wolfe Tone Letter: 1795’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.15-16 [letter to Pierre Auguste Adet., French ambassador in Philadelphia].

Notes that many of Tone's papers for 1793-95 period are lost, and that Tone used various pseudonyms: “Jone”, “Smith” and “Brown” in his correspondence, in an effort to evade British spies. (p.15)

John O'Donovan, ‘The Irish Judiciary in the 18th- and 19th-Centuries’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.17-22.
Notes that James Stephens having evaded capture by police in 1848, went to Paris and went later to the U.S. as a professional agitator.(p.17)

Notes that Robert Emmet was tracked and arrested by a fellow Dubliner who was an enthusiast for the Gaelic language and whose collection of Irish antiquities now rests in the National Museum. (p.18) Notes also that Emmet's barrister betrayed Emmet's defence to the government prosecutor, as he had secrets of the United Irishmen.

John O'Donovan, ‘The Irish Judiciary in the 18th- and 19th-Centuries’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.17-22.
Remarks that it has been hinted that Arthur Wolfe, Viscount Kilwarden was the illegitimate father of Wolfe Tone (cited p.21).

‘Goodnatured boobies like Robert Day and Arthur Wolfe Viscount Kilwarden (who it has been hinted was the illegitimate father of Wolfe Tone) enjoyed a certain popularity and public esteem. Kilwarden's measure as Chief Justice of the King's Bench may be taken from his handling of a case of alleged rape in the archbishop's summer palace at Tallaght. He has his own summer residence a couple of miles down the road from the palace and he spent an extraordinary amount of time during the case chatting up the plaintiff about fields and cottages in the neighbourhood, just like any village gossip. It was left to his venera-(p.21)ble puisne, who was sitting with him, to ask the plaintiff relevant questions about the how and when, and in particular about why she had stayed in a room with the rapist for a few days without making any attempt to draw the attention of the people who were passing by the door. When the puisne had satisfied himself on these points Kilwarden led the plaintiff back to the chat about the fields and the cottages.’ (p.22).

Pádraig Ó Maidín, ‘Pages from an Irishman's Diary: This Period Then’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.23-28.
pp.23-24 contain discussion of The Book of Lismore [relevant to Eugene O’Curry; Whitley Stokes; E. C. Quiggen; Standish Hayes O’Grady; Douglas Hyde; Saint Brendan; James Macpherson].

Ronald G. Rollins, ‘Pervasive Patterns in The Silver Tassie’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.29-37.
Seán O’Casey went to London in 1926, and was greatly helped there by James B. Fagan who introduced him to critics James Agate and Beverley Nichols and playwright Arthur Pinero; made honourary member of Garrick Club. (p.30)

His wife Eileen disclosed that O’Casey habitually hummed when he worked. (p.30)

O’Casey heard song “The Silver Tassie” sung by a London coal vendor, and resolved to give its title to his next play; quotes song ‘Gae fetch to me a pint o' wine, / An' fill it in a silver tossie; / That I may drink before I gae / A service tae my bonnie lossie.’ (quoted from O’Casey, Rose and Crown, 1956, p.31; Rollins, p.30).

Cites David Krause, Seán O’Casey: The Man and His Work (London: MacGibbon & Kee 1960); Robert Hogan, The Experiments of Seán O’Casey (NY: St. Martin's Press 1960); Winifred Smith, ‘The Dying God in Modern Theatre’, The Review of Religion, 5 (March 1941), pp.267-75; Anna Irene Miller, The Independent Theatre in Europe: 1887 to the Present (NY: B. Blom [1966]); Maureen Malone, The Plays of Sean O’Casey (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP 1969).

Pádraig Ó Maidín, ‘Pages from an Irishman's Diary: This Period Then’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.23-28
pp.23-24 contain discussion of The Book of Lismore [relevant to Eugene O’Curry; Whitley Stokes; E. C. Quiggen; Standish Hayes O’Grady; Douglas Hyde; James Macpherson].

Patricia Ann McFate, ‘AE's Portraits of the Artists: A Study of The Avatars’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.38-48
‘In The Avatars, many ideas, images, and beliefs are drawn from AE's other writings. Conaire's speeches on the Iron Age; Paul's visions, his desire to escape the city, and his paintings; the visitation of the god to Aodh's bedside; Felim Carew's theory of “spiritual gravitation” and his desire to look for the divine spirit in men; even Aoife's speeches are drawn from remarks to be found in The Candle of Vision, Imaginations and Reveries, and various other works. // However, although the characters owe some of their personal aspects or abilities to AE, they have very distinct ties with the author's friends and associates. If we begin by identifying AE as the main character, Paul, then Paul's older friend, Conaire, with whom he shares his visions of a coming heroic age is clearly a composite of Standish O’Grady, acknowledged by AE and others as the father of the Literary Revival, and AE's spiritual guide, James Pryse.’ (p.40)

Patrick Holland, ‘Yeats and the Musician's Art in “Last Poems”’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.49-64.
Cites George Whalley, ‘Yeats and Broadcasting’, in Allan Wade, ed., A Bibliography of the Writings of W. B. Yeats (London: Hart-Davis 1951), pp.467-77.

K. P. S. Jochum, ‘Maud Gonne on Synge’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.65-70 [English translation of article on Synge by Gonne, first published in French as ‘A propos de J. M. Synge, Les entretiens idéalistes 15 (Jan. 1914), pp.31-33.].

‘The Irish literary movement has finally caught the interest of the French public; Henry Davray, Augustin Harmon, Maurice Bourgeois, and Jean Mayle published studies on Ireland and translated works of Irish writers. Several years ago, W. B. Yeats had already acquired some recognition in France. Bernard Shaw, as an English writer, had found the admiration of the French literary world. One also knew, to a vertain extent, the novelist George Moore. There have been attempts to introduce the dramatist John Millington Synge. // I have attended the first performance of Maurice Bourgeois's translation of Synge's play. The Playboy of the Western World, given by L'Oeuvre at the Théâtre Antoine. Mr. Bourgeois has translated a practically untranslatable play with astonishing fidelity, and that is indeed a remarkable tour de force. // Nevertheless, I regret very much that the first Irish play performed in France has been The Playboy of the Western World. This play is, after all, greatly inferior in quality to others of the same author, whose dramatic work, moreover, seems to me quite inferior to that of W. B. Yeats. The Playboy of the Western World probably has certain qualities of savage power, but it cannot, in any sense, be regarded as representa-(p.65)tive of the life of Irish peasants; it is only a vulgar caricature in which one of our national vices is ridiculed, the solidarity of race which induces all Irishmen to give asylum to every fugitive from the army or the English police. [...] There is certainly something more to the play than this scandalous theme; there is a soul's awakening towards love, [...] But the very concept of the play is a flagrant injustice, the failure to understand the national character of our peasants’ (p.66) Jochum adds ‘Something should be said about Maud Gonne's estimation of Synge (as far as we know it) after she met him for the first time and before she wrote this note. Synge does not figure prominently in her autobiography, A Servant of the Queen; in fact, he is mentioned only once. She says that she persuaded “le Comte d’Arbois de Joubanville” [sic] to take Synge as his assistant. Synge's biographers doubt whether this was really the case; they note instead that in 1897 Maud Gonne and Synge were both members of the Irish League, founded in Paris, and that on April 6th of that year Synge resigned from the League because he wanted “to work in [his] own was for the cause of Ireland.” W. B. Yeats, friend of both Maud Gonne and Synge, has another version of the story: “I saw much of Synge, and brought him to Maud Gonne's under whose persuasion, perhaps, he joined the ‘Young Ireland Society of Paris,’ the name we gave to the half a dozen Parisian Irish, but resigned after a few months because ‘it wanted to stir up Continental nations against England, and England will never give us freedom until she feels safe,’ the only political sentence I ever heard him speak’. Nevertheless, no ill feelings seem to have existed between Maud Gonne and Synge at this time’. (p.67)

Maud Gonne walked out of the first performance of In the Shadow of the Glen, 8th Oct. 1903.

Cites Maud Gonne MacBride, ‘A National Theatre’, United Irishman (24 Oct. 1903), [q.p.]; Barrett H. Clarke, ‘The Playboy in Paris’, Colonnade 11 (Jan. 1916), cp.23; Robert de Flers, Figaro (14 Dec. 1913), p.4 [review of French performance of Playboy].

French translation of The Playboy of the Western World by Maurice Bourgeois first performed, to mixed reception, at Théâtre Antoine on 13 December 1913 by Lugné-Poe's ‘Théâtre subventionné de l'Oeuvre’, and is published [with preface and notes] in Grande Revue 82 (25 Nov. 1913), pp.228-47 & (10 Dec. 1913), pp.463-502.

David H. Greene, ‘J. M. Synge: A Centenary Appraisal’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.71-86.
Quotes Synge's statement that ‘the deeds of a man's lifetime are impersonal and concrete, might have been done by anyone, while art is the expression of the abstract beauty of the person’. (p.71)

Molly Allgood's letters to Synge were returned to her after his death and have not survived.

Pencil sketch of Synge by J. B. Yeats “Synge at Rehearsal”.

Dr. Oliver St. John Gogarty met Synge on a Dublin street in August 1907 and, seeing enlarged glands on his neck, recognised that Synge was suffering from Hodgkins disease, a diagnosis which he did not share with Synge. (p.74)

James Newcomer, ‘A Tour in Connemara’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.95-103.
Retraces Maria Edgeworth's tour of Connemara, including her visit to Oliver St. John Gogarty's home, Renvyle House, (pp.101-03), and the Marquis of Sligo's home, Westport House (pp.103-04).

Frederick S. Kiley, ‘Baedeker for Beckett’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.104-09.
‘Beckett’s mode is essentially comic, principally because the tragic hardly qualifies as a natural response to an insight into the dementia that stares out vacantly from the core of the human fact on earth. he even labels the species of laugh that man’s Sisyphean torment evokes - the dianoetic laugh’. (p.105)

Samuel Levenson, ‘James Connolly, Unquiet Spirit’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.110-17.
National Library of Ireland holds collection of papers by and relating to Connolly, deposited with them by life-long friend William O’Brien, also Connolly's successor as general secretary of the Irish Transport Worker’s Union.

Notes that Connolly was born in Edinburgh, his father working there as a garbage collector. Forced to leave school at age 10, Connolly worked in a tile shop, a bakery and a printing shop before becoming “too old” for such employment at age 14, whereupon he joined the British army. First saw Ireland as a member of the Second Battalion of the Royal Scots Regiment, stationed for two years at Cork, then 30 miles from Dublin, then in Dublin itself. In Dublin he met Lillie Reynolds, a domestic worker and an Anglican, and deserted, aged 21, to marry her. Settled in Irish slums of Edinburgh, working first as garbage collector, then opening a shoe repair shop to support an increasing family. Left Scotland for Ireland, 1896, spending seven years there working to establish an Irish Socialist Republican Party. Participated (with ISRP and Maud Gonne) in demonstrations against the 60th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s reign, and also the Boer War. Founded Workers’ Republic, the first of many radical publications, and ran for public office, prompting his opponents to pay for votes and threaten electorate with raisied rents should he be elected. (p.112-113) Went to America in 1903 following disputes with his political comrades, writing bitterly, ‘Men have been driven out of Ireland by the British Government, and by the landlords, but I am the first to be driven out by the Socialists’. (p.114) Did not settle well, disliking the climate and much about American culture. Engaged in lengthy feud with De Leon (sometimes called the ‘‘Marxist Pope’’), and had difficulty finding steady employment. Worked in Troy, NY, as insurance salesman for Metropolitan Life, as a machinist in a Singer sewing machine plant in New Jersey and as a paid organiser for the Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist Party. Established group of American Socialists of Irish origin and edited its publication, The Harp, later transferring its publication to Dublin. Returned to Dublin carrying texts for Labour in Irish History and Labour, Nationality and Religion. Became Belfast organiser of Irish Transport and General Worker’s Union, 1911, and helped found Irish Labour Party, 1912. Worked to combat the great Dublin Lockout, 1913, and stayed to rebuild the union when Jim Larkin left for America. Never spoke publicly against Larkin, despite their differences. (pp.115-16) Built Irish Citizen Army in response to postponement of Home Rule bill.

Quotes Joseph Holloway's description of Connolly as ‘a stout-built block of a fellow in a bowler hat. ... There was a good deal of the Irish-American about him, and he looked a determined bit of goods.’ (p.116)

Quotes Miss Louie Bennett, who meeting him shortly before the Rising found him ‘‘‘utterly lacking in geniality ... dour and hard ... capable of deadly and merciless hatred’’, although she admitted that he was one of the best speakers on behalf of women's sufferage and women's rights that she had ever heard.’ (p.116)

Cites Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s recollection of ‘the pathetic picture that short, stocky, poorly clad, squint-eyed Connolly made as he stood outside Cooper Union in New York City selling copies of The Harp.’ (p.116)

Desmond Rushe, ‘Season at the Gate’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.120-22.
Reviews Micheál MacLiammóir at The Gate Theatre in It’s Later Than You Think, the English translation of Ornifle, by Anouilh ‘[T]he exceptionally meaty part of an aging but insatiable sex sophisticate. MacLiammóir undertook the role with courage and played it with subtlety until he was forced off the stage on the orders of his doctor. [...] It was too much for MacLiammóir who is, after all, now past his 72nd birthday and who had been, prior to Ornifle, hospitalized for a considerable time’. (p.121)

‘Micheál MacLiammóir returned with his classic The Importance of Being Oscar for a week, and played to overflow audiences, mostly young. Nothing remains to be said about this recital; it has become legendary’. (p.121)

Hilton Edwards directed Shaw’s Heartbreak House at the Gate, 1971, also taking the role of Captain Shotover. MacLiammóir in charge of costumes.(p.121)