‘Readin’ , ‘Ritin’ ‘n’ Exposin’ me Shortcomin’s’ by Donal Kennedy

My maternal grandfather, who died about 1910, was a master bookbinder and he collected and he re-bound books, many of which were the first in their field, many dating from the 18th Century and some from the 17th. For example –

I’d like to report that I’d devoured these works before I was ten years old, plus an account, in Latin, of the Council of Trent published in 1648. I can, however truthfully report that that work bears signs of being nibbled by a mouse, (presumably of the Reformed Church?) which couldn’t quite stomach it.

To complement such old works there was a bookcase dating from the 1930s custom-made for Pelican and

Penguin paperbacks bought by my father when they first appeared..As they were not illustrated I didn’t take  much notice of them as a child but now realise many of them were influential in their time and since, and, as they were usually first editions, they would, if available today, fetch serious filthy lucre.

In addition, my father would haunt the second-hand bookstalls in Dublin and acquired an eclectic collection very cheaply. His  Tipperary father had met my grandmother when asked to teach her French in Kilkenny and  my father and his siblings were taught to  speak and read the language though they rarely, if ever, visited France. So we had numerous works in French in the house though I never became acquainted with the language or the letters.

 Whilst in Kilkenny, in about 1901 Grandfather introduced Thomas MacDonagh to the Gaelic League and

 kindled the younger (by 12 years) man his interest in Irish. They had been next-door neighbours in Cloughjordan and Thomas Kennedy, farmer, shopkeeper and publican, was godfather to John MacDonagh (born 1880) opera-singer and film pioneer (The Colleen Bawn) and revolutionary. Thomas MacDonagh, two years older than John was godfather to my Aunt Eileen (born 1895). In 1909 my grandfather, Patrick Kennedy, became first President of the Association of Secondary Teachers (Ireland) and Thomas MacDonagh its first Secretary.

 My grandmother Kennedy used send parcels of books from her attic to my siblings and myself for Christmas and birthdays. As her first child was born in 1895 and her last one in 1915 they mainly originated in from the 1890s to the 1930s during which there had been vast changes. In addition we had newer books from our own times.

 We got the Irish Press most days and often the Irish Independent. The Sunday Independent, and from its

 inception in 1949, the Sunday Press. We often had the Evening Herald and the (Dublin) Evening Mail.

 The latter was a paper I always loved, not least for the strip-cartoon Jiggs and Maggie, which I think

 was set in the smart side of Manhattan.It had been a Unionist paper, though not an offensive one, so

 far as I can gather. I never saw THE IRISH TIMES in our house, nor did many Catholics or nationally

 self-respecting people subscribe to it. I first started reading it after 1963 when Douglas Gageby, its

 first Editor to give allegiance to Ireland, was in its Chair.

We never bought English newspapers but we listened to the BBC regularly. Radio Eireann, like Radio

Luxembourg ,only came on in the evenings until the early 1950s except on Sundays, so we were not

unfamiliar with British news and views. The BBC’s Radio Newsreel at 7.15 PM was, so far as I can

remember, less weighted with government propaganda than the usual bulletins.

When Fianna Fail returned to power in 1957 (after a rare period in opposition) I remember Eamon

de Valera being described as a “Freedom-Fighter” a new term coined, I believe for anti-Communist

Hungarians by TIME Magazine.

I had my first letter published, at the age of 32, in THE IRISH POST in November 1974, immediately

after the Birmingham bombing. As every humbug in these islands and beyond had been condemning

the IRA and republicans going back to Wolfe Tone for some years, I kept clear of commenting on

the bombing but commented on what I considered some foolish suggestion.

My opinions had been formed to a certain extent by writers who turned somersaults following the

events in the North of Ireland from 1969 on, and I felt no compulsion to imitate them. So my

letters were over-long and I wielded my pen like a shillelagh. But, with some help from the

IRISH POST’s  Editor, Brendan MacLua, I gradually learned to channel my thoughts more

effectively.

In 1979 I read, in THE OBSERVER, a piece by Conor Cruise O’Brien, of whom I had been an

awed admirer. I remembered when he had taken a libel action against the Daily Telegraph but

he evolved into someone who would have been at home there.

So I wrote a letter to THE IRISH DEMOCRAT, only two copies of which I had read in my fifteen

years in London.

I got a very kindly and elegantly written letter from Desmond Greaves, its editor, and an invitation

to meet him. He told me that I had obviously read a lot but should not put everything in the one

letter, that my piece was full of allusions and that I should try to construct an article like a symphony.

Not exactly my  metier.

I had been an avid reader of Bernard Levin’s column in THE TIMES and although I was rarely an admirer

of the content  I was mimicking his style, which assumed that his readers understood all his allusions,

classical, philosophical, historical, musical and artistic. A bad model to adopt, even had I been as

erudite as Levin, which I clearly wasn’t.

Greaves suggested I imagine a reader who would sooner read the racing pages than about politics.

He told me that Jonathan Swift would read the drafts of his pamphlets to his cookand that if she didn’t

understand them on first hearing them, he would work on them until they were clear to her.

I never got round to reading much of Swift, though my writing has improved. I fear I still have traces

of the faults identified by Desmond Greaves, who with Brendan MacLua belongs with laocra na

hEireann i dTir na nOg or ar dheis De. Ni feicfar a leithead aris.

Anyhow, like the pianist in the Montana mining town, I’m doing my best. So, please don’t shoot.