Dublin in the Doldrums

Now that Brendan Behan is dead,I suppose there will be the same rush of reminiscences and recollections that there were about Dylan Thomas. Both those wild Celts seemed to have had the same innate gift of words, and their bent for self-destruction ran the same course. Once, in one of his periodic dryings-out in a Dublin hospital, Brendan was approached by a well-meaning priest. But as soon as he spied the clerical collar he “lept” from his bed, wrapped a sheet round himself and bolted down the corridor shouting: “The druids are after me!” I expect I shall hear that story with variations a dozen times in the next year or so.

I met Brendan Behan in 1947, shortly after he had been released from a British jail, at the office—if you could call it that—of the sole Irish literary monthly, the Bell. Pedar O’Donnell was the editor then, having taken over from the Bell’s founder, Sean O’Faolain. It was said—with inaccurate malice—that Pedar was the richest Communist in Ireland. As a leftist he occupied a curiously contradictory position, for he had fought with the International Brigade in Spain, but on the other hand he had been a commandant in the Easter Rebellion. The second canceled out the first, leaving him officially unpopular but unassailable. Pedar was indeed a fellow traveler, though at heart a bourgeois deviationist. At the time I knew him, when no one else could manage it, least of all with an Irish passport, he had just come back from a trip to Poland. While there he had talked to everyone, among others to a group of Catholic dissidents. They in private bitter language had denounced the Communist government and everything about it. When they had finished, he told them he disagreed with them completely and condemned their point of view. But he added that everything they had told him he would keep secret as a matter of honor. A real Communist would have betrayed them at once to the secret police. Pedar was a minor character in the city of ghosts that postwar Dublin had become, where the great had passed and everything had happened long ago. The Abbey, where Yeats had strode down the steps like a stylized lion shaking his white mane, was given over to provincial charades scarcely worthy of amateurs. The Arts Club that he had founded had become a gaggle of bridge players. Ely Place, where Moore used to walk along and rattle his stick against the iron palings to annoy Sir Thornely Stoker, was as ghostly as the gray tower in Sandy-cove, where on that bright morning 43 years before, Buck Mulligan, shaving cup in hand, had stood in the glittering sunshine to watch the mailboat leaving Kingston Pier. Place and tower had become as dim as Swift’s deanery. Dublin’s giants had all died or fled. Yeats, Moore, Joyce, A. E. were gone. Stephens and O’Casey lived in. England, Gogarty had left for America.

FR

About the Author

Francis Russell

Featured Tags

Now that Brendan Behan is dead,I suppose there will be the same rush of reminiscences and recollections that there were about Dylan Thomas. Both those wild Celts seemed to have had the same innate gift of words, and their bent for self-destruction ran the same course. Once, in one of his periodic dryings-out in a Dublin hospital, Brendan was approached by a well-meaning priest. But as soon as he spied the clerical collar he “lept” from his bed, wrapped a sheet round himself and bolted down the corridor shouting: “The druids are after me!” I expect I shall hear that story with variations a dozen times in the next year or so.

I met Brendan Behan in 1947, shortly after he had been released from a British jail, at the office—if you could call it that—of the sole Irish literary monthly, the Bell. Pedar O’Donnell was the editor then, having taken over from the Bell’s founder, Sean O’Faolain. It was said—with inaccurate malice—that Pedar was the richest Communist in Ireland. As a leftist he occupied a curiously contradictory position, for he had fought with the International Brigade in Spain, but on the other hand he had been a commandant in the Easter Rebellion. The second canceled out the first, leaving him officially unpopular but unassailable. Pedar was indeed a fellow traveler, though at heart a bourgeois deviationist. At the time I knew him, when no one else could manage it, least of all with an Irish passport, he had just come back from a trip to Poland. While there he had talked to everyone, among others to a group of Catholic dissidents. They in private bitter language had denounced the Communist government and everything about it. When they had finished, he told them he disagreed with them completely and condemned their point of view. But he added that everything they had told him he would keep secret as a matter of honor. A real Communist would have betrayed them at once to the secret police. Pedar was a minor character in the city of ghosts that postwar Dublin had become, where the great had passed and everything had happened long ago. The Abbey, where Yeats had strode down the steps like a stylized lion shaking his white mane, was given over to provincial charades scarcely worthy of amateurs. The Arts Club that he had founded had become a gaggle of bridge players. Ely Place, where Moore used to walk along and rattle his stick against the iron palings to annoy Sir Thornely Stoker, was as ghostly as the gray tower in Sandy-cove, where on that bright morning 43 years before, Buck Mulligan, shaving cup in hand, had stood in the glittering sunshine to watch the mailboat leaving Kingston Pier. Place and tower had become as dim as Swift’s deanery. Dublin’s giants had all died or fled. Yeats, Moore, Joyce, A. E. were gone. Stephens and O’Casey lived in. England, Gogarty had left for America.