3.The Bell, April 1954.
4.IP, 26 June 1943.
5.GF, 125.
6.RTV Guide, 11 June 1965.
7.IFJ, 22 November 1958.
8.Family Commonplace Book, KA.
9.IFJ, 23 October 1958.
10.Celia K, ‘Patrick Kavanagh: a Memoir’, LF, 13.
11.Larry Meegan (ed.), The Inniskeen Story, 71.
12.Celia K, loc. cit. 15.
13.IFJ, 24 January 1959.
14.Family Commonplace Book, KA.
15.James K’s membership card in KA.
16.Celia K, loc. cit. 14.
17.Dundalk Democrat, 5 July 1924.
18.Celia K, loc. cit. 15.
19.See Note 24, Chapter 4.
20.IFJ, 2 August 1958.
21.Celia K. loc. cit. 15, 19 and ‘Memoir of Peter Kavanagh’.
22.Dundalk, A Tradition in Industry, Ogra Dun Dealgan, 1986, 89–100.
23.PK in conversation with Brendan Kennelly.
24.Dundalk Examiner.
Chapter 4
1.‘School Book Poetry’, KW, 10 May 1952.
2.‘Return in Harvest’, The Bell, April 1954.
3.Celia K, ‘Patrick Kavanagh: A Memoir’, LF, 14.
4.IFJ, 12 September 1959.
5.IFJ, 1 April 1961.
6.Family Commonplace Book, KA.
7.PK to Paddy Brennan, KA.
8.Celia K, loc. cit.
9.KW, 10 May 1952.
10.Adelaide Procter, ‘The Night’ and O. W. Holmes, ‘Under Violets’ from Rev. T. A. Finlay, The Advanced Book, School and College Series, quoted in TF, 157, 165.
11.IT, 1 April 1940.
12.KW, 10 May 1952.
13.Poetry Book Society Bulletin, June 1960.
14 Family Commonplace Book, KA.
15.RTV Guide, 14 January 1966.
16.PK’s mischievous remark to Austin Clarke, when declining a loan of Four Quartets in the late 1940s, that he read only the Messenger, has been solemnly passed on as an accurate description of Kavanagh’s reading at the time.
17.IP, 7 January 1943.
18.RTV Guide, 14 January 1966.
19.Larry Meegan (ed.), The Inniskeen Story, 60–61.
20.‘A Poet’s Country’, The Word, August 1962.
21.IFJ, 30 May 1959.
22.From a selection of PK’s earliest poems in KA.
23.Poetry Book Society Bulletin, June 1960.
24.‘The Bloater’, KA. These poems, each of them named after a patient, sum up the writer’s opinion of him good-naturedly in rhyme. The collection was entitled ‘The Bloater’, perhaps likening himself as a discharged patient to a cured herring.
25.The Bell, April 1954.
26.Irish Statesman, 24 October 1925; 21 December 1929.
27.IP, 12 October 1942.
Chapter 5
Based in part on conversations with Anthony Cronin, Eusebius Hanratty and Joan Ryan and on Peter McKenzie’s recorded interviews with Peggy Rushton (née Gough).
1.Daniel Corkery, Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature, Mercier Press, Cork 1966, 15.
2.S, 28 May 1943.
3.Corkery, op. cit. Chapter 1.
4.Mary Kavanagh’s nursing certificates and Lucy Kavanagh’s teaching certificates, courtesy of Maureen Lynch.
5.From interview with Joan Ryan. Also in GF, 99. When Martin Green came to Dublin to have the contract for Collected Poems signed, PK asked him if he had ‘the dockets’.
6.KW, 10 May 1952.
7.IT, 15 April 1939.
8.RTV Guide, 5 January 1965.
9.Based on information supplied by Eusebius Hanratty. See Note 39 below.
10.Ms. 3214, NL.
11.‘Sex and Christianity’, KW, 24 May 1952.
12.ibid.
13 Kavanagh’s football career based on E, August 1950; IFJ, 26 July 1958; Ms. 3218, NL; The Inniskeen Story, 76–7, 93–6, 150; and reports in the Dundalk Democrat and the Dundalk Examiner.
14.RTV Guide, 22 July 1966.
15.IFJ, 1 November 1958; 14 November 1959.
16.PK to Celia K, 30 May 1934; LF, 31.
17.W. R. Rodgers, Irish Literary Portraits, 200.
18.Seumas O’Sullivan correspondence, Ms. 4635, TCD.
19.RTV Guide, 6 May 1966.
20.Based on Henry Summerfield, That Myriad-Minded Man, Æ.
21.ibid. 263.
22.Rodgers, op. cit. 200 (‘country gobdough’ in BBC-speak).
23.Frank O’Connor, My Father’s Son, 30.
24.Summerfield, op. cit. 263. Mrs Russell died at home on 2 February 1932.
25.GF, 300.
26.O’Connor, op. cit. 31.
27.S, 4 October 1946.
28.IP, 1 February 1943.
29.Richard J. Finneran, George Mills Harper, William M. Murphy, (eds), Letters to W. B. Yeats, Vol. 2, 533.
30.Rodgers, op. cit. 200–201.
31.Finneran, Harper, Murphy, op. cit. 533, 547–8.
32.RTV Guide, 17 July 1964.
33.PK to Celia K, 14 September 1933; LF, 27.
34.Partly based on obituary in S, 1 July 1949.
35.PK to Celia K, Christmas 1933, LF, 29.
36.Information on P. V. Carroll partly based on Paul A. Doyle, Paul Vincent Carroll.
37.From conversation with Anthony Cronin.
38.Undated Ms. in KA; both style and content suggest that it pre-dates GF.
39.Information about Val Hanratty and about the name Eusebius, courtesy of Val’s younger brother, Eusebius Hanratty.
40.Preface to W. Steuart Trench, Realities of Irish Life, MacGibbon and Kee, 1966.
41.Val Hanratty’s poem, courtesy of Eusebius Hanratty.
42.PK to Celia K, 22 March 1934, LF, 30.
43.Ms. 3215, NL.
44.PK to Celia K, 1934–1936, LF, 31–8.
45.ibid. and Ms. 3213–4, NL.
46.Ms. poems, LML.
47.Ms. 9579, NL.
48 Ms. poems, LML.
49.Peggy Rushton (née Gough) in interview with Peter McKenzie.
50.Untitled poem, Kav/B/7, KA.
51.SP and MGC.
52.IP, 25 January 1943.
53.Frank O’Connor, ‘Awkward but Alive’, The Spectator, 31 July 1964.
54.All Macmillan correspondence in this chapter, Macmillan Archive, BL.
55.Lovat Dickson, The House of Words, Macmillan, London 1963, 210, 215.
56.Conversation with Eusebius Hanratty.
57.Ireland Today, November 1936; Irish Book Lover, March/April 1937; MacManus in II, 6 October 1936.
Chapter 6
1.All references to O’Sullivan correspondence in this chapter are based on Ms. 4635, TCD.
2.Ireland Today, October 1936.
3.The Green Fool Notebook, KA, a pocket diary for 1937.
4.GF, 316.
5.BA, 50.
6.PK to Browne and Nolan, cited in Peggy Rushton (née Gough) papers, courtesy of Peter McKenzie.
7.GF, 304.
8.PK to Celia K, 15 June 1937, LF, 39.
9.PK to F. R. Higgins, 20 May 1937, NL.
10.This early version, entitled ‘Shanco Dubh’, is substantially different, especially from the second stanza onwards:
My hills have never seen the sun rising,
Eternally they look north towards Armagh.
Lot’s wife would not be salt if she had been
Incurious as my black hills that are happy
When dawn whitens Glassdrummond chapel.
My hills hoard the bright shillings of March
Till the sun searches the last pocket.
They are my Alps and I have climbed the Matterhorn
With a sheaf of hay for the cattle
Many a time.
My hills have never seen the sun rising,
With the faith of an illiterate peasant they await
The Final Resurrection when all hills
Will face the East.
The sleety winds fondle the rushy beards of Shanco Dubh,
While the
cattle-smugglers sheltering in Fetherna Bush
Look up and say:
‘Who owns them hungry hills
That the water-hen and snipe must have forsaken?
A poet, then by heavens he must be lean.’
I hear, and is my faith not somewhat shaken!
11.Based in part on John Heath-Stubbs, Hindsights, An Autobiography, London 1993, 263–7.
12.PK to Celia K, 15 June 1937, LF, 39.
13.‘On the Centenary of the Birth of M. P. Sheil’, Peter Kavanagh, Complete Poems, New York 1972, 348.
14.Based in part on Monica Blackett, The Mark of the Maker, A Portrait of Helen Waddell; Dame Felicitas Corrigan, Helen Waddell, A Biography; and on letters to me from Jennifer Fitzgerald, English Dept, QUB.
15.Address used in PK’s correspondence from June to 7 October 1937.
16.PK to Celia K, 15 June 1937, LF, 39.
17.S, 31 May 1946.
18.Celia K, ‘Patrick Kavanagh: A Memoir’, LF, 22.
19.S, 17 January 1947.
20.The Green Fool Notebook, KA.
21.John Wilson Foster, Fictions of the Irish Literary Revival, 323.
22.SP.
23.RTV Guide, 7 August 1964 and SK, 60.
24.The Green Fool Notebook, KA.
25 John Cronin, Irish Fiction, 1900–1940, Belfast 1992, 107.
26.IFJ, 10 September 1960.
27.Ms. 3213/4, NL. This holograph fair copy, written with a fountain pen, is the Ms. submitted to Constable and Michael Joseph.
28.Patrick Kavanagh, Notebook of Jottings, c.1925–1930, Ms. 3218, NL.
29.Notations on Ms. 3213/4, NL.
30.IT, 14 February 1938.
31 Note on the Ms. of The Seed and the Soil, Ms. 9579, NL.
32.PK to Charles Abbott, 20 January 1938; 15 September 1939; and Mss. of poems, LML. In letter of 15 September 1939, PK says he has just been in Spain; in the absence of any corroborating evidence, I am discounting this.
33.PK to Gawsworth, 27 October 1937, HRHRC.
34.Based on Richard Joseph, Michael Joseph: A Master of Words.
35.PK to Gawsworth, 18 November 1937, HRHRC.
36.GF contract is in KA.
37.Ms. 3213/4, NL.
38.Richard Joseph, op. cit. 141; Ms. 3213/4, NL, is untitled.
Chapter 7
1.The Christian Brothers’ National School, Westland Row, Dublin 2.
2.PK to Gawsworth, 27 October 1937 to 19 May 1938, HRHRC.
3.All references to Macmillan correspondence in this chapter from Ms.1087, RUL.
4.David Krause (ed.), The Letters of Sean O’Casey, Vol. 1, 684. Other references to O’Casey in this chapter are based on Garry O’Connor, Sean O’Casey, A Life, Chapter 16, and O’Casey correspondence to, from and about Kavanagh in David Krause (ed.), The Letters of Sean O’Casey, Vol. 11, 10, 20, 85, 229, 500, 516, 867.
5.PK to Gawsworth, 19 May 1938, HRHRC.
6.Ms. 9579, NL.
7.SP.
8.S. O’Faoláin to F. O’Connor, undated, MML.
9.Ms. 1161, RUL.
10.Both Ms. collections are in HRHRC.
11.Ms. 3215, NL.
12.The Green Fool Notebook, KA. I can find no record of the broadcast on County Down and presume that it did not take place.
13.J. B. Lyons, Oliver St. John Gogarty, the man of many talents, 232–3.
14.Based on Ulick O’Connor, Oliver St. John Gogarty, 276–85 and Lyons, op. cit. 232–3.
15.Reported in IT, 22 March 1939.
16.Richard Joseph, op. cit. 142.
17.J. Howard Woolmer, a Pennsylvania bookseller, reports finding a copy of the Michael Joseph edition of The Green Fool in which page 300 had been replaced. (Time Literary Supplement, 3 January 2003 and e-mails to me of 11 and 18 January 2003). This indicates that the book was reissued in London, after all.
18.The late Gerry Raftery of Inniskeen cut out the relevant sections from the newspaper every week at the time of publication.
19.The post of Talks Officer is discussed by Maurice Gorham, Forty Years of Irish Broadcasting, Dublin 1967, 111–12 and 147.
20.PK to Peter K, August 1939, KA; SK, 63–6; Macmillan correspondence, RUL.
21.Nigel Fisher, Harold Macmillan, 1; Richard Davenport, The Macmillans, London, 1992, 142.
Chapter 8
Based in part on conversations with the late Dr Patrick Henchy, Vivien Igoe, Benedict Kiely, Niall Lawlor, Andrew O’Connor, Maeve Ryan (née Mulcahy), Eoin Ryan, and on Peter McKenzie’s recorded interviews with Peggy Rushton (née Gough).
1.PK to Macmillan, 6 December 1939, RUL. All Macmillan correspondence in this chapter from the Macmillan Papers in this library.
2.IFJ, 8 September 1962.
3.Undated letters from O’Connor to his wife Evelyn Speaight Bowen in MML. (Maeve is presented as ‘the Mulcahy kid’.)
4.SK, 70.
5.Postcard to me from George Coughlan, 16 February 1998.
6.IT, 10 January 1942.
7.Robert Hogan and Michael J. O’Neill (eds), Joseph Holloway’s Irish Theatre, 52.
8.Description of Palace Bar based on Tony Gray, Mr Smyllie, Sir, 71–3; 57.
9.Surviving stanzas of this poem courtesy of Peter McKenzie.
10.SP.
11.Hogan and O’Neill, op. cit. 44.
12.PK’s obituary of Arthur Darley, S, 7 January 1949, refers to ‘those wonderful Sunday Evenings’.
13.Based on Aidan O’Hara, I’ll live till I die, The Story of Delia Murphy.
14.Advisory Committee Report quoted in IT, 5 January 1940.
15.Celia K, ‘A Memoir of Peter K’.
16.SK, 84.
17.Letter dated 9 August 1940 in KA.
18.II, 30 July 1940.
19.Based on John Cooney, John Charles McQuaid and John Feeney, John Charles McQuaid, the Man and the Mask. McQuaid’s elevation to the archbishopric was announced on 11 November. He was renowned for his almsgiving to people who applied to him personally (Feeney, 82).
20.IP, 21 May 1943.
21.Undated 1939 letter from O’Connor to Evelyn Speaight Bowen, MML.
22.Letter to me from Frank Prenton-Jones, 28 February 1998. There is an interesting discussion of this episode in Anthony Cronin, No Laughing Matter, 108–10.
23.IT, 6 February 1941.
24 ‘Christmas 1939’, Capuchin Annual 1939.
25.Lionel Fleming, Head or Harp?, 138.
26.This has passed into folklore. Vivien Igoe in her very useful Literary Guide to Dublin, London 1996, has identified the gate as that of 35 Haddington Road; however, it is very small and the gate of 122 Morehampton Road seems more likely.
27.BA, 61.
28.Information courtesy of Brian Crowley.
29.Irish Writing, November 1947.
Chapter 9
Based in part on a conversation with Maeve Ryan (née Mulcahy).
1.James Matthews, Voices, A Life of Frank O’Connor, 149–81.
2.Based on Maurice Harmon, Sean O’Faolain, a Life, 121–3.
3.Based on Seán O’Faoláin to Frank O’Connor, 1939–1948 in MML.
4.As in Stony Grey Soil typescript in KA.
5.PK to Frank O’Connor, 1940–1941 in MML. He sometimes addresses him as Michael, sometimes as Frank.
6.O’Faoláin’s comments on Kavanagh’s poetry in this chapter are based on his letters to O’Connor in MML.
7.Frank O’Connor to Seán/Jack Hendrick, JIL, Vol. IV, No. 1, January 1975, 52–3.
8.Macmillan Papers, RUL.
9.PK to Frank O’Connor, 15 August 1940, MML.
10.All George Yeats’s views on Kavanagh’s poetry are based on her letters to Frank O’Connor, 1941–44 in MML.
11.An Irish Journey, London 1940, 288.
12.SK, 66.
13.PK to Peter K, 10 February 1964, KA; LF, 255.
14.Matthews, op. cit. 158.
15.S, 17 October 1947.
16.Horizon, January 1942.
17.Methuen to Michael O’Donovan (Frank O’Connor) 13 Ap
ril 1942, enclosing copy of a letter sent to John Betjeman of same date, which includes extracts from Reader’s Report on Stony Grey Soil, MML.
18.J. A. White of Methuen to PK, 1 June 1942.
19.Ts of ‘Why Sorrow?’ in KA.
20.In the Bell file from June 1941; published in The Listener, 11 December 1941.
21.Two stanzas untitled in S, 5 October 1945; 11 stanzas entitled ‘Through the Open Door . . . ’ in Irish Writing, October 1946.
22.KW, 24 May 1952.
Chapter 10
Based in part on conversatons with Richard Murphy, Eoin and Joan Ryan and on Peter McKenzie’s recorded interviews with Peggy Rushton (née Gough). Copies of Kavanagh’s letters to Treasa Maguire were given to me by her son Richard Murphy.
1.References to Betjeman in this chapter are partly based on Patrick Taylor-Martin, John Betjeman: his life and work; Candida Lycett Green (ed.), John Betjeman, Letters, Vol. 1, 1926–1951, 267–75, unless otherwise stated.
2.Betjeman’s views on S from John Ryan, Remembering How We Stood, 93–4, which quotes from 1941 dispatches, released by the Public Record Office, London, in November 1972.
3.ibid. 94.
4.IP, 15 June 1943.
5.Macmillan Papers, RUL.
6.Frank O’Connor to Seán/Jack Hendrick, May 1944, JIL, Vol. IV, No. 1, January 1975, 57
7.Frank O’Connor, A Backward Look, 224.
8.He read Dubliners for the first time in 1937
9.Since The Irish Countryman was published by Macmillan, it would have been readily accessible to O’Connor, O’Donnell and O’Faoláin.
10.Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger, Ireland 1845–1849, London 1962. I have been unable to find any application of this phrase to the Famine that pre-dates Woodham-Smith’s book.
11.S, 30 April 1943.
12.Peadar O’Donnell, ‘Migration and Its Alternatives’, Irish Digest, January 1942.
13.e.g. in Veronica Jane O’Mara (ed.), PS. . . Patrick Swift, 11.
14.IT, 15 August 1942.
15.Clive Fisher, Cyril Connolly, 216.
16.Candida Lycett Green, op. cit. 300, JB to Cyril Connolly, 11 December 1941.
17.IT, 21 February 1942.
18.‘Awkward but Alive’, The Spectator, 31 July 1964.
19.Discussion of Irish censorship in this chapter is based on Michael Adams, Censorship, The Irish Experience.
20.Frank O’Connor to Seán Hendrick, March 1942, JIL, Vol. IV, No. 1, January 1975, 53.
21.Letters from Seán O’Faoláin to Frank O’Connor, MML.
22.The Spectator, 31 July 1964.
23.References to George Yeats on GH from her letters to Frank O’Connor in MML.
24.Frank O’Connor to Seán Hendrick, March 1942, JIL, 53.
Patrick Kavanagh, a Biography Page 68
