The sieges of Limerick

‘This day also the French forces departed for Galway to the great satisfaction not only of the inhabitants, but of all the garrison that remained in town. They remained some time at Galway till ships came to carry them into France, thinking it impossible Limerick should hold out a siege, offering to lay wagers it would be taken in three days.’ This is John Stevens, who died three centuries ago today, writing in a diary about his time as a soldier in Ireland fighting for the Jacobite cause. Although he went on to settle in London and work for many years as a translator from Spanish and Portuguese, his diary remains an important primary source about the Jacobite war in Ireland and the siege of Limerick in 1690.

Stevens was born in London, in 1662 or thereabouts, the son of a page to Queen Catherine of Braganza. His mother may have been Spanish. He began a military career, and accompanied the second Earl of Clarendon to Dublin as one of his gentlemen-at-large when Clarendon was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1685. Two years later Stevens was appointed collector of excise at Welshpool, for an area covering mid-Wales and the borders. As a Catholic and supporter of James II, he fled to France after the Glorious Revolution, and then travelled with the Jacobites to Ireland. In Dublin, though penniless, he eventually obtained a lieutenant’s commission in the regiment of Henry Fitzjames, Lord Grand Prior and an illegitimate son of James II, and served in the ensuing Jacobite war in Ireland.

By 1695, Stevens was back in London, where he settled down to write and make a living translating Portuguese and Spanish texts. Over the next 30 years or so he published over 20 translations, including a revision of Shelton’s version of Don Quixote. He also published a translation and abridgement of William Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum, a history of English religious houses, followed by two supplementary volumes. From 1712 to 1715, he was editor of the British Mercury. He died on 27 October 1726. Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, the out-of-copyright Dictionary of National Biography, or the modern Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (which requires log-in).

Stevens’s journal was not published until 1912, when Clarendon Press brought out The Journal of John Stevens, containing a brief account of the war in Ireland 1689-1691. The book’s editor, Rev. Robert H. Murray, explains the diary’s history and its previous use by historians in his long introduction. He also notes that the manuscript he consulted (now held by the British Library) was not itself the original journal, kept day by day, but a version written up afterwards from daily notes. And although the diary is ‘barren of some personal details’, Murray adds, ‘it is a very human document indeed.’ It is plain, he says, that a scholar like the author did not relish his life as a soldier: ‘He is conscious of the mistakes of his generals, of the loss of promotion, of the lack of pay, of the blisters on his feet, and of the hunger in his stomach.’

Stevens’s journal is considered a major primary source of information about the Jacobite war in Ireland, and, in particular, about the siege of Limerick in 1690. The surviving text breaks off during his account of the battle of Aughrim in July 1691, before the second siege. See, for example, And So Began the Irish Nation by Brendan Bradshaw; Jacobite Ireland, 1685-91 by J. G. Simms; The Williamite Wars in Ireland by John Childs; or Conquest and Resistance: War in Seventeenth-Century Ireland by Pádraig Lenihan. The journal itself is freely available online at Internet Archive or the CELT website hosted by University College Cork. Here are several extracts.

2 July 1690
‘At break of day those few drums there were beat as formally as if we had been a considerable body, but it was only mere form and we scarce the shadows of regiments, the bodies being dispersed and gone. What was left in dismal manner marched as far as Dublin, where when each commanding officer came to view his strength, shame of marching in such case through the city we not long before had filled with expectation of our actions and hopes of gathering part of the scattered herd caused us to halt in the fields without the town. The colours of each regiment being fixed on eminences that all stragglers might know whither to repair, in the space of near three hours each regiment had gathered a small number, the Grand Prior’s as one of the most considerable being then 100 strong. Thus we marched through the skirts of the city, passing over the river at the Bloody Bridge, which is the farthest off in the suburbs, being now only the remains of four regiments, the others being either quite dispersed or gone other ways, we halted again in a field at Kilmainham, a hamlet adjoining to the city. The general opinion was that we were to encamp in the park till such time as our men came up, and what forces had not been in the rout as also the militia should join us, and then either maintain the city, or, if it were judged expedient, give the enemy battle, which gave occasion to some of our small number to steal away into town thinking they might soon be back with us. But about noon we were all undeceived, the other three regiments having orders to march, and ours only left there without any or knowing whence to expect them. Being thus left by all our lieutenant-colonel marched us away, which we did not hold above a quarter of an hour when we were reduced to only twenty men with the colours. On the road we overtook the Lord Kilmallock’s Regiment, which was untouched, being quartered in Dublin when the defeat at the Boyne. The whole day was a continual series of false alarms, the greatest reached us within two miles of the Naas, where Kilmallock’s officers attempting to draw up their men to line the hedges, the confusion and terror of the soldiers who had never seen the enemy was such they were forced in all haste to march away, It was ridiculous to see the brother of the traitor O’Donnell who had the name of lieutenant-colonel reformed in our regiment, pretend to take authority upon him here, and order us to line the hedges, when at that time our whole strength was but six musketeers, eight pikes, four ensigns, and one lieutenant besides myself, to this was that but the day before hopeful regiment reduced, and yet not one of the number killed, unless they perished who were left drunk when we fled which were four or five. For our comfort no enemy was within twenty miles of us, but fear never thinks itself out of danger. We followed Kilmallock’s men with such speed it had been hard for an enemy to overtake us, and that regiment though till then untouched was in such a consternation that when they came to the Naas they were not 100 strong. Here being quite spent with marching two days without rest or food I used my utmost endeavours to persuade O’Donnell, who as I said pretended to act as lieutenant-colonel, to take up quarters for the few men that were left, to refresh them that night, and be the better able to march next morning, but all in vain. The general infection had seized him and he fancied each minute he stayed was to him time lost and an opportunity given to the enemy to gain ground upon us. Therefore following the dictates of his fear he hasted away commanding all to follow him, but necessity pressing more than his usurped authority, I stayed a while in the town with an ensign who had a lame horse, and having refreshed ourselves with bread and drink which was all the town afforded, we followed both on the same lame creature five miles to Kilcullen Bridge, where we could hear no news of our men, though they lay there that night. So inconsiderable was a regiment grown that it could not be heard of in a town where there are not above twenty or thirty houses and but three good ones. Here we took up for the remaining part of the night in a waste house, and rested the best we could till break of day.’

28 July 1690
‘We continued here. Brigadier Sarsfield marched away with the horse under his command who had quartered in the neighbourhood. At our setting out of Limerick there marched also four pieces of cannon and a body of horse and dragoons, all which took the way of Loughrea for the conveniency of the road which is hard and fit for draught, whereas the way the foot took (as I said before) was unfit for heavy carriages, but being the shorter was judged best for the foot, both for their ease and that they might the sooner relieve Athlone, which was thought to be pressed and in danger and by their coming might be strengthened the better to expect farther relief. But upon the news of the enemies quitting the siege, the foot marched back the easiest though the longest way, and where they could have quarters to refresh them.’

2 August 1690
‘Most of our horse and dragoons, some on the one side of the river some on the other, marched towards Athlone. This day also the French forces departed for Galway to the great satisfaction not only of the inhabitants, but of all the garrison that remained in town. They remained some time at Galway till ships came to carry them into France, thinking it impossible Limerick should hold out a siege, offering to lay wagers it would be taken in three days. Immediately upon their departure His Grace the Duke of Tyrconnel ordered it to be proclaimed that no person should presume to ask above thirty shillings for a pistole, thirty-eight shillings for a guinea and seven and sixpence for a crown in silver, pistoles before being sold for five pounds in brass and silver crowns for thirty or forty shillings. Nay this day the French marched out some of them gave a crown for each silver three-halfpenny piece.’

29 August 1690
‘The enemy’s cannon played as before and enlarged the breach to above forty paces. At the bridge one shot cut both the chains of the drawbridge and did some other damage but not of much moment, because the enemy’s battery had not a full view of it, and their shot came slanting towards one end, yet the passage was very dangerous. The Grand Prior’s detachments were all relieved this afternoon except that where I commanded, which continued in the same place till night, when being relieved we only marched into the street, and having joined the rest of the regiment to the trenches on the south-west side of the town, where we continued all night expecting an attack. The night was extreme cold, dark and rainy and we almost spent for want of rest. For my own particular as appears by this relation I had had none at all for three nights before this and but very little during the whole siege, nor indeed was it possible to have much being upon duty every other day and continually alarmed when we expected to rest. Our cannon and small shot fired the whole night round the walls, and much railing was betwixt our men and the enemies, for we were so closed up on all sides that though the night was stormy we could easily hear one another.’

This article is a revised version of one first published on 27 October 2016.

A very great curiosity

‘Rode from Mr. Lesly’s to view the Giant’s Causeway. It is certainly a very great curiosity, as an object for speculation, upon the manner of its formation; whether it owes its origin to fire, and is a species of lava, or to chrystalization, or to whatever cause, is a point that has employed the attention of men much more able to decide upon it than I am.’ This is Arthur Young - who went on to become an early contributor to agricultural economy - writing in his diary exactly 250 years ago today. 

Young was born in 1741 in Whitehall, London, the younger son of the Revd Arthur Young, rector of Bradfield Combust, Suffolk, and chaplain to Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the House of Commons. His mother, Anna Lucretia de Coussmaker, came from a Huguenot family. Educated privately, Young received no formal university education but developed an early fascination with farming, estate management and economic improvement. After his father’s death he inherited a small Suffolk estate, where a succession of ambitious but often unsuccessful agricultural experiments convinced him that careful observation and the exchange of practical knowledge were more valuable than theory alone.

From the 1760s, Young established himself as Britain’s leading agricultural writer. He published influential works including A Six Weeks Tour through the Southern Counties of England (1768), A Six Months Tour through the North of England (1770) and The Farmer’s Tour through the East of England (1771), combining detailed observations on farming methods with comments on land ownership, rural society and local economies. In 1784 he founded the Annals of Agriculture, which rapidly became the principal periodical devoted to agricultural improvement in Britain. His reputation brought him into contact with many of the leading scientific, political and landed figures of the age, while his extensive travels made him one of the best-informed observers of the British countryside.

Young’s interests extended beyond agriculture to economics, politics and social reform. Between 1787 and 1789 he travelled widely in France, recording the conditions that immediately preceded the French Revolution in the celebrated Travels in France. In 1793 he was appointed secretary to the newly established Board of Agriculture, a post he held for the remainder of his working life and through which he helped promote agricultural innovation across Britain. Increasing blindness restricted his activities during his later years, but he continued writing and advising until his death in 1820. He was buried at Bradfield Combust in Suffolk. Wikipedia has further information.

Young’s importance as a diarist lies in the remarkable body of journals and notebooks that underpinned his published tours. Although written to support books rather than for private introspection, his daily records capture the rhythms of late eighteenth-century travel with unusual precision. They preserve conversations with farmers, landlords, labourers and politicians, together with observations on crops, livestock, roads, markets, industry, prices and social conditions. Their combination of factual detail and immediate impressions makes them indispensable primary sources for historians of agriculture, rural life and the wider economic history of Britain and Europe.

Young’s Irish journal occupies a distinctive place within this corpus. He toured Ireland between 1776 and 1779, travelling thousands of miles through every province to examine farming practices, land tenure, manufacturing and the condition of the rural population. His observations were published in 1780 as A Tour in Ireland, one of the most detailed contemporary accounts of eighteenth-century Ireland. The journal on which the work was based led to several new editions - including Arthur Young’s Tour of Ireland (George Bell & sons, 1892) which is freely available at Internet Archive - and to modern scholarly editions. Here is Young writing about his day exactly a quarter of a century ago

4 August 1776

‘Accompanied Mr. Lesly to his brother’s at ——, within 3 miles of the Giant’s Causeway, where I had the pleasure of learning several particulars concerning the country upon the coast. They measure by the Cunningham-acre, and rents are on an average 12s. Along the coast there is a tract of clay at from 14s. to 20s. The courses of crops; 1. Potatoes. 2. Barley. 3. Oats. 4. Oats. Potatoes. 2. Barley. 3. Flax. 4. Oats. 5. Oats, and then lay out for 2 years.

Much of the country is in the rundale and likewise in the change-dale system. The little farmers are all weavers, who weave 10 or 1200 linen, and spin great quantities of yarn for the Derry market. Oatmeal and potatoes are the general food of the lower people, who reckon that one barrel of potatoes, to live on, is equal to 2 bushels of meal. One barrel will last a family of six eight days, and costs on an average 3s. 6d. or 4s. Oatmeal 1s. 2d. to 3s. 6d. the 20 lb. but 1½d. per lb. on an average. One bushel of oats yields 18 lb. of meal. The oats are dried at home with turf on kilns, which cost from £3 to £5; they are then sent to a mill to be shelled, in which operation they lose half; after which they are ground; the landlord appoints the mill, and they pay 22d. for it.

The average crop of potatoes is 300 bushels on the Cunningham acre, which is 259 to the English. [. . .]

They are, however, sometimes so low that, instead of profit, the account is a losing one; last year they were 4d. a bushel, and in Coleraine 3d. Oats are now 1s. a bushel; several thousand bushels have been exported from Coleraine to London at that price.

There is a considerable salmon fishery on the coast; the fish are cured in puncheons with common salt, and then in tierces of 42 gallons each, 6 of which make a ton; and it sells at present at £17 a ton, but never before more than £16; average for 10 years £14. This rise of price is attributed to the American supply of the Mediterranean with fish being cut off.

Rode from Mr. Lesly’s to view the Giant’s Causeway. It is certainly a very great curiosity, as an object for speculation, upon the manner of its formation; whether it owes its origin to fire, and is a species of lava, or to chrystalization, or to whatever cause, is a point that has employed the attention of men much more able to decide upon it than I am; and has been so often treated, that nothing I could say could be new. When two bits of these basaltes are rubbed together quick, they emit a considerable scent like burnt leather. Neither the scenery of the Causeway, nor of the adjacent mountains, is very magnificent, though the cliffs are bold; but for a considerable distance there is a strong disposition in the rocks to run into pentagonal cylinders, and even at —— Bridge, by Mr. Lesly’s, is a rock in which the same disposition is plainly visible. I believe the Causeway would have struck me more if I had not seen the prints of Staffa. Returned to Lesly Hill

There the Right Hon. Mr. Jackson assisted me with the greatest politeness in procuring the intelligence I wished about the salmon fishery, which is the greatest in the kingdom; and viewed both fisheries above and below the town, very pleasantly situated on the river Ban. The salmon spawn in all the rivers that run into the Ban about the beginning of August and, as soon as they have done, swim to the sea, where they stay till January, when they begin to return to the fresh water, and continue doing it till August, in which voyage they are taken; the nets are set the middle of January, but by Act of Parliament no nets nor weirs can be kept down after the 12th of August. All the fisheries on the river Ban let at £6000 a year. From the sea to the rock above Coleraine, where the weirs are built, belongs to the London Companies; the greatest part of the rest to Lord Donnegal. The eel fisheries let at £1000 a year; and the salmon fisheries at Coleraine, £1000. The eels make periodical voyages, as the salmon, but instead of spawning in the fresh water, they go to the sea to spawn, and the young fry return against the stream; to enable them to do which with greater ease at the leap, straw ropes are hung in the water for them; when they return to sea, they are taken: many of them weigh 9 or 10 lb. The young salmon are called grawls, and grow at a rate which I should suppose scarce any fish commonly known equals; for within the year some of them will come to 16 and 18 lb. but in general 10 or 12 lb. such as escape the first year’s fishery are salmon; and at 2 years old will generally weigh 20 to 25 lb. This year’s fishery has proved the greatest that ever was known, and they had the largest hawl, taking 1452 salmon at one drag of one net. In the year 1758 they had 882, which was the next greatest hawl. I had the pleasure of seeing 370 drawn in at once. They have this year taken 400 ton of fish; 200 sold fresh at 1d. and 1½d. a lb. and 200 salted, at £18 and £20 per ton, which are sent to London, Spain, and Italy. The fishery employs 80 men, and the expences in general calculated to equal the rent.

The linen manufacture is very general about Coleraine, coarse ten hundred linen. It is carried to Dublin in cars 110 miles, at 5s. per cwt. in summer, and 7s. 6d. in winter. Rents in Derry 10s. 6d. the Irish acre; and farms from 6 to 15 acres. The emigrations from this neighbourhood were in general of idle, loose, disorderly people. It is at present, I was informed, too populous; and if the emigrations are not renewed, the ill effects will be severely felt. The whole county of Derry belongs to the London Companies and the Bishop, except some trifling properties. There is a little trade at Coleraine in hides, butter, and fish, and some meal is imported, which sounds strange after hearing that so many oats had been exported.

Mr. Jackson has made great improvements to his house, which is situated in a very pretty domain of 85 acres on the banks of the river, and all the timber he has used is out of his bog; he gets very large oak and fir trees: they are found 20 feet deep, and all lie exactly east and west.’

The Galtee Boy

The Galtee Boy, the Irish republican activist John Sarsfield Casey, was born 180 years ago today. Imprisoned and then deported for his crimes against the state, he benefitted from an amnesty, allowing him to return to his beloved Ireland, where he helped campaign for the rights of tenants in the Galtee Mountains area. He left behind a memoir about his time in jail, and also a diary of his sea journey to Australia.

Casey was born on 2 March 1846 (according to the Cork City Gaol website) in Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland, into a family of shopkeepers. As a youngster, he became involved in the Irish Republican Brotherhood (the Fenians). Calling himself The Galtee Boy, he wrote letters to the Fenian newspaper, The Irish People, describing the round-up of Cork Fenians in 1865, their trials and their experiences in prison. His exposure of tenant conditions in the Galtee Mountains led to a libel case and helped inspire the Land League. Eventually he too was arrested, tried, and sentenced, and in 1867 was deported with other Fenian prisoners to Australia.

In May 1869, Casey was granted a free pardon and sailed for Ireland arriving in February 1870, with nine other released Fenians. Immediately, he threw himself again into the Irish struggle, writing articles on conditions in Australia, and becoming noted for his work on behalf of the tenants of the Galtee countryside. Later in life, he became a Coroner for County Limerick, a position he held until his death in 1896. A little further information is available at the Dictionary of Irish Biography.

In 2005, University College Dublin Press published, for the first time, a memoir written by Casey soon after his return to Ireland, called The Galtee Boy - A Fenian Prison Narrative. It is said to be the ‘most extensive surviving account of Cork Fenianism by a participant’. But another document written by Casey has also survived - a detailed diary he kept during his voyage to Australia. Extracts from this were published in Diaries of Ireland - An Anthology 1590-1987 by Melosina Lenox-Conyngham (Lilliput Press, Dublin, 1998) - a few pages can be read at Amazon.

Lenox-Conyngham’s source was a slim edition of the full text of the diary transcribed/edited by a relative of Casey’s, Martin Kevin Cusack, and published a decade earlier by Dorrance & Co, in the US. This was entitled Journal of a Voyage from Portland to Fremantle on board the Convict Ship “Hougoumont” Cap Cozens Commander October 12th 1867 By John S. Casey, Mitchelstown, Ireland. 

In his introduction, Cusack explains why he wanted to publish the text: ‘It had been my hope for many years to somehow help bring about the opening of this Journal and thereby allow the strength of character, the dedication to freedom, the literary talents, and the enduring faith of John Sarsfield Casey to shine forth as an inspiration to all of us. As a descendant relative of The Galtee Boy, I am proud to identify with his determined, life-long pursuit of liberty. He was a first cousin of my grandmother, Ellen Casey Cusack.’

He goes on to provide further background: ‘It is worth noting that the Journal is regarded as being of great historical interest by scholars and serious students of Irish and Australian history. The Casey Journal has been preserved in the family for 120 years. In May of 1969 it was among the papers of Dan Casey of Mitchelstown, last son of The Galtee Boy. Around the time of Dan Casey’s death, the manuscript was inadvertently delivered into the hands of the Cork County Library. Upon discovering this, a friend of the Casey family, believing he was acting in the family’s best interest, insisted upon its immediate return. It was returned promptly but in those few hours of possession, the Librarian made photocopies of it. The official stamp of the Cork County Library can be seen on the last page before the back cover. It is believed the copying was done without the knowledge of the immediate family and it remained unknown to the rest of us in the family until early in 1987.’

Here are several extracts from Cusack’s book (though, for clarity, I have added a few fullstops and dashes in places where extra spaces in the published text appear to signal a separation of phrases).

11 October 1867
‘Wrote letter - miserable arrangements on board in respect to closets &c - Whilst in port nothing of importance has occured - Rumour that we are to sail on to day (Friday) anchor raised & everything in readiness for sailing’

12 October 1867
‘Sails set - Blue Peter hoisted - 2 PM set sail fair wind. Take a farewell glance at Portland as we sail within one mile of its rock bound coast - Emotions of the pleasant kind. Towed out by the gun-boat “Earnest” - deck crowded with anxious faces eagerly pointing out objects of interest to one another - Pass the evening in playing Chess &c’

13 October 1867
‘Ship rolling very much - feel a little “squeamish” On deck nothing visible but sky and water save a few solitary sea-birds that kept eternally skimming over the crested waves - Had several Interviews with Hr Deleany RCC. Begs of me to serve Mass for him - I consent - Mass on board - I serve with difficulty in consequence of being seasick - Majority of hands troops &c on board Catholics - Mass in main hatchway - wind strong speed 6 knots - still towed out by “Earnest” Eat very little to day - 2 OC exceedingly sick - get some ease by lying in bunk - None sick but myself “spued” off everything I eat - Water distilled & measured out 3/4 pint per man per diem - find I cannot read. Ordered below for night at 4.30. Amuse ourselves every night with a concert.’

25 October 1867
‘Morning cloudy with a slight mist - Convoy still in sight 8 OC. A slight fall of rain till 8.30. Clouds clear off & leave the sun shining brilliantly - Ship’s yards truly square for 1st time - Cannot remain on forecastle for any time - Speed 8 knots under full canvas - 2 OC Air mild and balmy like a glorious summers day in Ireland - Home thoughts crowd upon me of pleasant days spent in the green meadow inhaling the fragrant odour of the newly mowed hay or of pleasant hours spent in company of la bella Maria in Kingstons demesne beside the tinkling stream. Passengers relieving monotony of voyage by various games such as Chess Dominoes Drafts Dice Cards &c. Evening enlivened by music (The Banjo) on deck accompanied with singing & dancing alternately reminds of Scotts lines on Don Roderick: “And to the tinkling of the soft guitar; Sweet stooped the ‘western sun’ bright rose the evening star”. ’

26 October 1867
‘Morning calm breeze light speed, 4 knots 12 OC. Breeze increasing - speed 8 knots - 2 Sail in sight - one of them “our Convoy”. A prisoner received 48 lashes from boatswain to day without wincing for beating another prisoner most inhumanly - At conclusion cheered by his Comerades - got cross irons on his feet - Evening looking gloomy - dark sombre clouds flitting across sky - Sunset very stormy looking - fear a rough night wind increasing sailors furling royals &c. 4.30 All hands below - usual amusements.’

27 October 1867
‘Awoke last night at 11 OC by dreadful noise on deck. Ship pitching - all hands “piped” up - great confusion below for 5 or 7 minutes. Ship tossed about like a cork - Terror increases by Sailors refusing to go aloft - fear a watery grave - cry on deck of breakers ahead - orders given to “bout” ship - sheet lightning flashing in all directions - one of the sails fluttering to the wind another minute & it is carried away - Blowing with terrific violence - ship labouring fearfully & timbers creaking mournfully. Officers mount aloft - Ship stands still for a minute & immediately receives several tremendous dashes of waves which almost capsizes her - sea roaring dreadfully & dashing in over gunwale - wind howling dismally through the rigging - 12 OC - Not much calmer all damage apparently over - Some sailors return to their duty & are working away to the jolly chorus of: Heave haul away, Haul away my dandies.’

4 December 1867
‘Blowing exceedingly hard all night. Speed 12 knots. Not better. Stomach bad - raining very hard all night. All hands obliged to remain below all day - Morning calm, 3 knots - 10 of our lads reported - rope 1 pepper box - 8 deprived of wine for week. Sails hanging motionless.’

5 December 1867
‘Morning dark heavy & inclined for rain - a dead calm - very disagreeable on deck - a thick mist falling. Sailing under a cloud of canvas yet scarcely making any progress.’

6 December 1867
‘Morning cloudy - raining all day - all hands obliged to remain below which is dark damp like hell - the most disagreeable day I ever spent almost becalmed.’

7 December 1867
‘Morning cloudy - raining at intervals with Dr off hospital diet - half starved on it - wind coming in fitful gusts - extremely cold all day &  last night - On look out for flying Dutchman - amusing to see passengers with terror depicted on their countenances at idea of meeting him - Sea very rough - Day has a very strange & ominous aspect. The surface of the ocean & glassy & scarcely a breath of air disturbed the solemn stillness that prevailed. The ship lay motionless yielding only to that never ceasing swell that heaves the bosom of the broad Atlantic - the sails reposed uselessly against the masts or flapped to and fro in dead compliance with the breathing sea. The sky vas of a dull grey leaden hue - no clouds could be seen but the XXX XXX vault of heaven was wrapped in one dark impenetrable veil whose dreariness was made much more dreary by reflection in the waters beneath. This universal stillness reigned during the morning broken only by the shriek of the sea bird as it skimmed over the surface of the waters. About mid-day the rain poured down in torrents such as they only who have witnessed can conceive - This lasted for two or three hours yet the sea remained a perfect calm - the air cold thick and still. When the rain ceased all was silent as the grave - 6 OC. Ignorant of danger we sat down to our customary amusements which were only interrupted by an XXXXXXX ocassional wish to have a breeze spring up - At 6 OC Sails were shortened & everything on deck and aloft made ready for a wild night. At 7 OC the ship was sailing under closely reefed topsails & Mr J Flood who came down informed us that the hatchways were nailed down - At 8 OC we retired to rest but scarcely had two hours elapsed before a dull roaring sound was heard in the distance growing louder and louder as it approached until it seemed to burst over us. In a few minutes the sea dashed into fury & the ship speeding through on a gale of terrific violence - Sleep was impossible - The noise on deck.’

6 January 1868
‘Glorious morning promising another broiling day - Still a dead calm - ship scarcely moving - went about 5 knots per hour during the night. Spanish vessel still in sight about 5 miles to NE of us. Mass on board. Dread that this calm will continue for some time - 12 OC - Not a ripple on the surface of the waters shining like a plate of fretted gold. How slowly creep the hours in those calms especially as we are so near our destination. Nothing to read - nothing to discuss - nothing to while away an hour with except to sit in a state of dreamy thoughtfulness watching the sea birds skimming over the surface of the water - your thoughts wandering back to the green hills the shady groves & the pleasant valleys of “That beautiful land far away; That isle of the blue sea carressed; Where the fields are so green & the mountains so grey; In this isle far away in the West”.

Such a life is intolerable. 4 OC - Supper - Cry on deck of - A Shark A Shark - all hands rush on deck in a state of great excitement and in an instant bulwarks & forecastle are crowded. I too rush up and from the forecastle obtain a glimpse of the huge monster as he slowly glides through the blue waters beneath his green eyes gleaming with a fierce and ominous expression and his body assuming the most gorgeous colours - the principal being a bright emerald green. Two immense fins project beneath the jaws. A bait is thrown out attached to a strong iron hook - in an instant he perceives it & slowly and noiselessly glides towards it. When within two feet of it he turns on his back XXX opens his voracious jaws - exhibiting to the spectators two rows of sharp saw like teeth.’

9 January 1868
‘Blowing hard all night, sailing under scarcely fifty yards of canvas. All hands on deck and hard at work during the night. 6 OC Strong breeze glorious morning. Sky clear - speed 10 knots - On look out for land since 4 OC - 7.45 Land Ahead - on our lee bow a long low range visible surmounted by a lighthouse - Rottenest Island [. . .] The misty outline of the coast is more defined to the R of Island. The mainland appears low & sandy - the range surmounted by “Bush”. The pilot boat appears in the distance - 7 men in her - Fremantle now visible after dinner - a few merchant vessels in roads - prospect cheerless in the extreme - A sober sadness now assails me at idea of being separated from many of my comerades. Look in vain for the emerald green hills dotted with sheep - the waving meadows - the yellow corn fields bowing beneath the golden ear, the broad transparent river meandering through the deep garment of fairest green and the darkly shadowed mountains in the background which gladdened the sight on nearing the shores of Holy Ireland - There all is grand - Here all is dreary desolate & cheerless. How many of the stout hearts now beating are destined to lay their bones in this land. How many will again tread the fair hills of Holy Ireland. Oh! for a dip into the gloomy dark future!’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 25 March 2016.

The weather in Ireland

‘The rain here is absolute, magnificent, and frightening. To call this rain bad weather is as inappropriate as to call scorching sunshine fine weather. You can call this rain bad weather, but it is not. It is simply weather, and weather means rough weather.’ This is from Irish Journal by Heinrich Böll, a German Nobel prize-winning author who died 40 years ago today. Although it is called a ‘journal’ and does occasionally read like one, there are no dated entries, and the text is more reminiscent of a travelogue or memoir than a diary.

Böll was born in 1917, in Cologne, Germany, into a working-class Catholic family. He was the eldest of four children, and his early life was shaped by the strong religious values of his household and the economic hardships of the interwar period. Böll attended the University of Cologne, where he initially studied German, history, and philosophy, but his studies were interrupted by World War II. Drafted into the German army, he served on the Western Front, an experience that profoundly shaped his pacifist beliefs and critical stance toward militarism. After the war, these experiences deeply influenced his literary themes of guilt, loss, and the human cost of conflict.

After the war, Böll returned to complete his studies, earning his degree before embarking on a successful literary career marked by a strong social conscience and a focus on the moral complexities faced by individuals in postwar Germany. He married Annemarie Cech, a journalist, in 1942, and together they had four children. Böll’s early career was distinguished by poignant short stories and novels that tackled the realities of war, guilt, and the rebuilding of German society. His most notable works include Billiards at Half-Past Nine (1959), The Clown (1963), and Group Portrait with Lady (1971), which earned international acclaim and cemented his reputation as a leading voice of the postwar generation.

Throughout his life, Böll remained an influential literary and cultural figure, vocally advocating for democracy, human rights, and social justice. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1972 for his uncompromising and compassionate writings that captured the spirit and struggles of his time. He died on 16 July 1985, in Langenbroich, West Germany, leaving behind a profound legacy as one of Germany’s most important and respected postwar authors. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the Nobel Prize website.

Böll was not a diarist in the traditional sense, however he was a prolific letter writer and essayist, and he did keep notebooks with story ideas, sketches, and fragments. He also produced one book that, in title at least, has the trappings of a diary: Irisches Tagebuch (Tagebuch is usually translated as ‘diary’) published in 1957 by Kiepenheuer & Witsch. This was translated into English by Leila Vennewitz and published by Peter Owen in 1958 as Irish Journal. Despite the title, the book is more of a poetic, essayistic travelogue - part reportage, part fiction, part meditation on poverty, Catholicism, and human resilience. A modern edition published Northwestern University Press in 1998 can be sampled at Googlebooks.

Here are the opening paragraphs from chapters 1, 3 and 9.

‘Arrival

As soon as I boarded the steamer I could see, hear, and smell that I had crossed a frontier. I had seen one of England’s gentle, lovely sides: Kent, almost bucolic - I had barely skimmed the topographical marvel that is London - then seen one of England’s gloomier sides, Liverpool - but here on the steamer there was no more England: here there was already a smell of peat, the sound of throaty Celtic from between decks and the bar, here Europe’s social order was already assuming new forms: poverty was no longer “no disgrace,” it was neither honor nor disgrace: it was - as an element of social awareness - as irrelevant as wealth; trouser creases had lost their sharp edge, and the safety pin, that ancient Celtic clasp, had come into its own again. Where the button had looked like a full stop, put there by the tailor, the safety pin had been hung on like a comma; a sign of improvisation, it draped the material in folds, where the button had prevented this. I also saw it used to attach price tickets, lengthen suspenders, replace cufflinks, finally used as a weapon by a small boy to pierce a man’s trouser seat: the boy was surprised, frightened because the man did not react in any way; the boy carefully tapped the man with his forefinger to see if he was still alive: he was still alive, and patted the boy laughingly on the shoulder.’

‘Pray for the Soul of Michael O’Neill

At Swift’s tomb my heart had caught a chill, so clean was St. Patrick’s Cathedral, so empty of people and so full of patriotic marble figures, so deep under the cold stone did the desperate Dean seem to lie, Stella beside him: two square brass plates, burnished as if by the hand of a German housewife: the larger one for Swift, the smaller for Stella; I wished I had some thistles, hard, big, long-stemmed, a few clover leaves, and some thornless, gentle blossoms, jasmine perhaps or honeysuckle; that would have been the right thing to offer these two, but my hands were as empty as the church, just as cold and just as clean. Regimental banners hung side by side, half-lowered: did they really smell of gunpowder? They looked as if they did, but the only smell was of mold, as in every church where for centuries no incense has been burned; I felt as though I were being bombarded with needles of ice; I fled, and it was only in the entrance that I saw there was someone in the church after all: the cleaning woman; she was washing down the porch with lye, cleaning what was already clean enough.’

‘Thoughts on Irish Rain

The rain here is absolute, magnificent, and frightening. To call this rain bad weather is as inappropriate as to call scorching sunshine fine weather. You can call this rain bad weather, but it is not. It is simply weather, and weather means rough weather. It reminds us forcibly that its element is water, falling water. And water is hard. During the war I once watched a burning aircraft going down on the Atlantic coast; the pilot landed it on the beach and fled from the exploding machine. Later I asked him why he hadn’t landed the burning plane on the water, and he replied: “Because water is harder than sand.” I never believed him, but now I understood: water is hard. And how much water can collect over three thousand miles of ocean, water that rejoices in at last reaching people, houses, terra firma, after having fallen only into water, only into itself. How can rain enjoy always falling into water?’

Up the Republic!

‘Ireland is a hot desert of sand into which blood is poured. Seven centuries of pouring. It still thirsts for more - & the more disappears. When will it have drunk its fill of blood? When will the bloody manuring bear fruit?’ This is from a diary kept secretly by the Irish poet Joseph Campbell throughout his 18 months internment in 1922-1923 at the hands of the newly formed Irish Free State. Campbell, who was Belfast-born but became a staunch republican and was opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty, died 80 years ago this month.

Campbell was born in Belfast, in 1879, into a Catholic and Irish nationalist family from County Down. He was educated at St Malachy’s College, Belfast. Working for his father, a builder, led him to having some kind of nervous collapse, followed by a slow recovery. He taught for a while, and, partly through a cousin who was a poet, became interested in the Irish language and folk music. He travelled to Dublin in 1902, meeting leading nationalist figures. By 1904, he had written the ballad My Lagan Love, the most successful of his early poems, and helped set up the Ulster Literary Theatre. He moved to London in 1906, where he continued to teach and was involved in Irish literary activities.

In 1910, Campbell married Nancy Maude, and they returned to Ireland, to live in Dublin, then Wicklow. They had five children. His play Judgement was performed in the Abbey Theatre in 1912. He began to act as publicist and recruiter for the Irish Volunteers; and he was engaged in rescue-work during the 1916 Easter Rising. In 1921, he became a Sinn Féin Councillor, and was opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The following year he was interned, by the newly established Irish Free State, for 18 months.

After his release, Campbell was much disillusioned, and his marriage had broken down, so he decided to move to the US, where he settled in New York. There, he founded a School of Irish Studies, and he re-established The Irish Review: he is generally credited with pioneering Irish studies in the US. He returned to Ireland and Wicklow in 1939; and he died in June 1944. Further information is available from the Dictionary of Ulster Biography, Ricorso.net, or Wikipedia.

According to Irish Archives Resource, Campbell left behind several diaries. However, the only one to have been made public, as far as I know, is the one he wrote on scraps of paper secretly during his internment. This was edited by Eiléan Ní Chuileanain and published by Cork University Press in 2001 as As I was Among the Captives: Joseph Campbell’s Prison Diary 1922-1923.

Cork University Press says Campbell’s voluminous diaries provide much more than a chronicle of events and experiences: ‘Being the work of a skilled writer and acute observer, they offer revealing cameos of his republican colleagues, vivid notes of personal conversations, and imaginative reflections on the psychological effects of incarceration. Sympathetically edited by another distinguished poet and scholar, this selection from his diaries will fascinate all students of the Irish Civil War.’

6 June 1922
‘I am a prisoner in the Royal Hotel, Main St., Bray. Arrested by Free State Army on information of an ex-soldier in street. Rotten accommodation and no food so far. The O. C. is a grocer’s assistant in Clery’s shop in Main St. Treats me like a dog. No charge formulated yet. I am one of six other prisoners - one of them Frank Crowley of Shankhill. Up the Republic!’

7 December 1922
‘The architects of the ‘Free’ State - Collins & Griffith - by a miraculous interposition of providence have gone. So surely as I write this will the Free State go itself. Dishonour is a bad foundation to build on.

If I ever felt unconvinced the Mountjoy was Hell, I am convinced today. Such a pandemonium of metallic sound in the Circle! Old pipes, bars, scrap of all kinds from one of the Wings is being removed. Oh! God keep me sane in mind through it all - the Powers of Darkness gird me round about.

As I was washing mugs at A2 Lavatory before going to bed (10 p.m.) was told that Sean Hales & Padraic O Maille had been fired at as they were getting on a hack car outside Exchange Hotel. First killed, second wounded.

“How do you mean?” “H-how? Not so much of my dear F-frank. H-h-hump off out of my cell!” Blue-black shiny hair. Pugnacious face. Queer dry ironic humour. Chess. Cards. Savonarola.’

8 December 1922
‘As I came in darkness had fallen. Guards jangling their keys in the gloom. No lights (or few - 3 or 4 - in compound.) Prisoners moving about like figures in a Cyclops’ forge (Vulcan’s stithy) - with flaring pieces of paper to light the gas in their cells. (Or like workers in a bottle factory.) The sight gave me a curious aesthetic ‘lift’ - suggested Wagner’s music, somehow. Confused babel of voices - prisoners at doors waiting for tea - tin mugs being rattled together. Clarke’s voice bawling (as if being strangled!) in A1. Oh, God save Ireland from further horrors! We have supped full enough.’

9 December 1922
‘Ireland is a hot desert of sand into which blood is poured. Seven centuries of pouring. It still thirsts for more - & the more disappears. When will it have drunk its fill of blood? When will the bloody manuring bear fruit?’

19 October 1923
‘Night of high wind - but slept well. Did not eat breakfast of Hovis bread and cheese I had set on plate under my bed over night. Meant to breakfast at 5 a.m. - HUNGER-STRIKE begins at 6 a.m. for unconditional release. P. A.’s knocking and running stones along corrugations (they know, as notice of strike was sent to Governor by our O/C before lock-up the previous evening).’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 2 June 2014.

House blown up

‘Went to Capitol early and was met by a reporter who told me that my beautiful house at Foxrock had been destroyed by the Republicans. Servants turned out & house blown up was all the news!!’ This is from the diaries of Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett, an Anglo-Irish politician and pioneer of agricultural cooperatives, who died 90 years ago today. His work took him abroad often, and he was in the US when the IRA destroyed his country house (along with many others). ‘Nevertheless,’ his diary for that day continues, ‘delivered a longish speech to the Wisconsin farmers at the College of Agriculture . . .’ Plunkett left behind over 50 volumes of daily diaries, all of which are available online, thanks to the National Library of Ireland, as digital photographs of every page, and transcripts. 

Plunkett was born in 1854, the third son of Admiral Edward Plunkett, 16th Baron of Dunsany, County Meath in Ireland. He was educated at Eton College and University College, Oxford, of which he became an honorary fellow in 1909. Still in his mid-20s, he went to become a cattle rancher in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, where he remained for 10 years. He returned to Ireland in 1889 and devoted himself to the agricultural cooperative movement, first organising creameries and then, in 1894, the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, a forerunner of similar societies elsewhere in the UK. A moderate Unionist member of Parliament for South County Dublin from 1892 to 1900, he became vice president (until 1907) of the new Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, which he had been instrumental in creating.

Plunkett fought strongly for an independent Ireland as chairman of the Irish Convention and, in 1919, as founder of the Irish Dominion League and of the Plunkett Foundation for Cooperative Studies. Between 1918 and 1922, the cooperative movement was targeted by the Black and Tans and other British government forces, as the creameries were alleged to be centres of sedition. Factories were wrecked and burned, stock was destroyed, and trade was interrupted. Plunkett's protests were unheeded and demands for compensation were rejected. In 1922, after the Anglo-Irish Treaty was implemented, Plunkett was nominated to the first Seanad Éireann, the upper chamber of the parliament of the new Irish state. During a visit to the US in 1923, his large house was one of many destroyed by the IRA. Subsequently, he moved to live in Weybridge, England. 

Plunkett, who never married, was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1902 and Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1903. He continued to promote and spread his ideas for agricultural cooperatives, advising politicians at home and abroad. He died on 26 March 1932. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, Dictionary of Irish Biography, and Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Plunkett was a committed diarist, making entries nearly every day for over 50 years. Although full of the details of his daily work they are surprisingly interesting and broad-ranging. The National Library of Ireland holds 52 volumes, starting in 1881 and continuing through until the last year of his life. Every page of every volume is available to view through the Library’s website (though this can be a little confusing to navigate). Also, transcripts for every one of the annual diaries are available online as transcribed, annotated and indexed by Kate Targett, a Fellow of the Plunkett Foundation. That said there seems to be no links to these transcripts from any part of the Library’s website, but they can be accessed individually using this URL, and then changing the year (i.e. by replacing 1881 with 1882 etc.)

http://www.nli.ie/pdfs/diaries_of_sir_horace_curzon_plunkett/1881_diary_of_sir_horace_curzon_plunkett.pdf

Here are several extracts taken from those transcripts, including one which refers to the destruction of his house, and another in which he describes listening to his mother’s diaries - his mother being the ‘most intimate friend of Florence Nightingale’.

10 September 1900
‘Got up at 5.30 A.M. took a cup of tea & worked at my speech for the night – my first reply to the attack of the Ardilaunites. Then all day I worked & at night I made the best speech I ever made. I think it will have increased my influence & my power for good. There was opposition in plenty at the meeting but that only brought me out. They have no case.

During the morning the memorial requesting me to withdraw was presented by Prof’r. Dowden, Nutting & Ball (the last is to oppose me). It was signed by 750 so they said by affidavit. But I am not to have the signatures.’

9 December 1900
‘Carey snored like a blast furnace & kept me awake most of the night. Started at 8 AM for a bitterly cold 3 hour (15 miles!) drive to Lookout Station across the Laramie plains. There got into a warm sleeper for Omaha. En route to Cheyenne saw the new grade of the U.P.R’y which gets round Sherman summit. The wisdom of this was illustrated by our train breaking in two climbing up the hill. At Cheyenne dropped Carey & picked up Windsor.’

15 May 1906
‘The Council of Agriculture met. The air was electric. I plunged into the constitutional question to be submitted to the Committee of Inquiry & laid down propositions which if accepted would have secured the status quo for the Department. If rejected would have produced the worst kind of Devolution – that is, delegation of business to politicians. The Council did neither. Its sense was on my side, its fears were against me! Moral cowardice illustrated & emphasised. I was well but timidly received. The Council was invited in the evening to Glasnevin & enjoyed the visit. Moore & Prof’r. Campbell did well.’

30 July 1906
‘Irish office, Treasury, J[oh]n Sinclair, Tommy, Caroe, & Conny & Raymond took the whole day.

Consulted Haig the Vegetarian. Chief points were, Reduce tea gradually. Morning worst time for tea. His patients got the early morning brightness without it. Breads better not brown - Hovis anathema. Nuts a complete food, walnuts, hazel, pine kernel. Best almonds but less digestible - roast them but don’t use salt - provokes cancer. Cheeses Caerphilly, Gruyere. Cheaper sorts best because less fat. 3 lemons in quart of milk in 2 hours produces 6 oz curd. Eat like Devonshire cream. Fish whiting or haddock boiled the best. Pruritis will certainly disappear with vegetarian diet & certainly not without. Avoid acids with starchy foods.’

22 April 1922
‘An emergency meeting of the Council of the Chamber of Commerce to decide what (if any) action should be taken to protest against the militarism threatening the country’s very existence as a self supporting one. On Monday a general strike, ordained by the Sovietists, as a protest against militarism looks to the bourgeoisie a remedy worse than the disease. On Wed[nesda]y the Dail is to meet and decide whether, & if yes where, an election is to be held. I found the Council discussing platitudinous resolutions to be debated by the whole Chamber 10 days hence, the earliest consistently with the rules. I proposed scrapping the rules and holding the meeting Tuesday. I spoke with some warmth (& effect) & carried my point. But I shall have to speak! & may have my house burned.’

5 August 1922
‘Packed off the Fingalls in a taxi, which hauled my “broken down” car into the Dublin garage. Went to see Commandant Staines in the H.Q. in Henry St. He was away. His deputy Welsh [sic] received me with friendliness and I told him of the car incident. Also that the charwoman, who comes in on Sat[urda]y morning, had brought the report that my house was to be burned tonight. Urged again the occupation of Foxrock & Carrickmines stations. Lunched at Kildare St Club where Robinson told me he had been visited & asked for his car with a revolver pointed at his forehead. He put his hand in his (empty) pocket & refused to give the car. The raiders thereupon said they did not want it!

J. Clerc Sheridan came for week-end. He is an Irishman from South Africa & bears a letter from Smuts advising Irishmen to listen to his words of wisdom on Dominionism. He seems very nice & well informed.’

30 January 1923
‘Went to Capitol early and was met by a reporter who told me that my beautiful house at Foxrock had been destroyed by the Republicans. Servants turned out & house blown up was all the news!!

Nevertheless delivered a longish speech to the Wisconsin farmers at the College of Agriculture & then spoke at the Capitol (as chief speaker) at the dedication of a hideous tablet to Charles McCarthy. On both occasions I was very well received. They didn’t know of my misfortune and I don’t know how it will affect my influence in Irish America.’

1 April 1923
‘A really good sleep this Easter Sunday night ended the worst suffering of my life. Whatever they say about the wonderful progress in the technique of this operation, it has not been rendered easy to be borne. But my previous bladder opening and the nearby operation for the X-ray burn had doubtless made me unduly sensitive. As bad luck would have it, a carbuncle developed inside the wound. However all is going well and this week I may well be moved to this Nursing Home’s (4 Dorset Sq N.W.1) branch at Brighton.

Gerald Heard - I have hardly seen any callers - has been wonderfully kind. He is a treasure. He is reading to me my mother’s diaries from her marriage on. It is a wonderful picture (so far) of Sherborne & Dunsany life. She was the most intimate friend of Florence Nightingale many of whose letters are inserted though many, many more were burned! She also had an intimacy with Princess Sophia (daughter of George III) after whom my eldest sister “Mary Elizabeth Sophia” was called. Unhappily the diaries are about one half religion of the dreariest imaginable kind.’

9 April 1929
‘To town to talk to Gerald about a permanent secretary. Never have I realised so clearly that it is not good for man to live or be alone. I must have a companion or come to town & be done for in a service flat. Gerald thinks the man with the necessary qualifications may exist but can’t be found. I admit it will be sheer luck if I do find him. A man who has no life of his own to live would be in all probability useless to me. If he had his own life to live he could not fulfil my conditions. The only chance is to find some one whose life has been accidentally interrupted as mine has by senescence. A widower, or one who has prematurely lost his job through ill health would be my best “strike”.’

Bill Naughton’s closed trunks

Today marks the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the birth of the playwright Bill Naughton, best known for writing Alfie, later turned into an archetypal 60s film with Michael Caine. He was one of the first post-war writers to bring to the page and stage an authenticity in describing working-class life in the north of England. Although he was a committed diarist and left behind five trunkfuls of diaries (now in the archive of the Bolton Library and Museum Service), they have remained closed to public scrutiny and - unfortunately - seem likely to remain so for another decade.

Naughton was born into a poor Irish Catholic family in County Mayo on 12 June 1910, but moved with his family to Bolton, England, in 1914. He attended a local school until the age of 14, and then worked as a weaver and coal-bagger. In 1930, he married Anne Wilcock, a cotton mill worker, with whom he had three children (one of whom died in infancy). During the war, in London, he was a conscientious objector and worked as a civil defence lorry-driver. Having long struggled to get into print, he had his first short story published in the London Evening News in 1943. Two years later, his semi-autobiographical A Roof Over Your Head was successful enough to give him confidence to write full-time. Throughout the 1950s, he produced a steady stream of short stories for magazines and published collections, such as Late Night on Watling Street (1959), and plays for BBC Radio.

In the 1960s, Naughton made a name for himself as a playwright - often developing his radio plays for the stage - with his trilogy about working class life in the the North of England: All in Good Time (1963), Alfie (1963) and Spring and Port Wine (1964). In 1968, he moved to the Isle of Man with his second wife, the Austrian Ernestine (Erna) Pirolt. There he continued to write plays and fiction, as well as an autobiographical trilogy of books: On the Pig’s Back (1987), Saintly Billy (1988) and Neither Use Nor Ornament (1995). Several of his plays were turned into successful films, not least Alfie (1966) with Michael Caine playing the lead part. He was a recipient of the Screenwriters award 1967 and 1968 and the Prix Italia for Radio Play 1974. He died in 1992.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says this: ‘[Naughton’s] overall contribution to the cultural ferment of the 1950s and 1960s has still to be properly assessed. Undoubtedly he was one of the first post-war writers to recreate, for the world, the authenticity of working-class life in the north of England. But his range was wider, as his London work, his contributions to popular television series (such as Nathaniel Titlark, Starr and Company, Yorky), his children's stories, and his more experimental, Pinteresque drama The Mystery show.’ Further (rather scant) information is available online from Wikipedia, Bolton Library and Museum Service, and Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Naughton was, from the age of 28, a committed diarist. However, none of his diary material has ever surfaced, not as published works or even as source material for biographies - there have been no biographies. (Naughton’s Voices from a Journal published by Lilliput Press in 2000 is described as ‘a writer’s journal, documenting friendships, encounters and observations during the ‘60s and ‘70s’, but it does not contain dated diary extracts and is more accurately described as a memoir.)

Naughton’s ‘huge collection of diaries’ is held by Bolton Library and Museum Services. On its website, it says he wrote the diaries ‘in secret’ and described the ‘labour’ of it as his ‘real work . . . which would one day show itself to be the key to all his other writing.’ It also notes that the diaries are closed to public inspection until 2015. However, Dave Burnham, on his fan site, says Naughton’s ‘hundreds of little black books, literally millions of words’ are closed until 2030.

This absurd diary

‘I am always depressed and left with [a] sense of worthlessness at the beautifully applied energy of these people [his German friends], the exactness of documentation, completeness of equipment ... and authenticity of vocation. In comparison I am utterly alone (no group even of my own kind) and without purpose alone and pathologically indolent and limp and opinionless and consternated. The little trouble I give myself, this absurd diary with its lists of pictures, serves no purpose, is only the act of an obsessional neurotic. Counting pennies would do as well.’ This is Samuel Beckett, literary giant of the 20th century, who died 30 years ago today. The extract comes from a diary he kept while on a six month sojourn in Germany. But, clearly, he wasn’t much enamoured with the idea of keeping a diary, and, as far is known, he would never do so again.

Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906. His father was a quantity surveyor, and he had one older brother; the family was Anglo-Irish protestant. He went to Earlsfort House School in Dublin, then to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, before studying languages at Trinity College, Dublin, from 1923. He excelled at cricket and even played games at county level. He was elected a Scholar (the most prestigious undergraduate award) in 1926. After teaching briefly at Campbell College in Belfast, he moved abroad to teach English at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, from late 1928 to 1930. Notably, while there, he was introduced to the renowned Irish author James Joyce, and is said to have assisted in his research for what became Finnegan’s Wake. Beckett’s first published work was a critical essay on Joyce, yet the two are said to have fallen out when Beckett rejected the advances of Joyce’s daughter.

Beckett returned to Ireland in 1930 to take up a post as lecturer in French at Trinity College, but resigned a year or so later, wanting to travel. For several years, he moved around between London, France, Germany and Italy, before eventually deciding in 1937 to settle in Paris. Soon after, he embarked on an affair with Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil, to whom he would eventually get married, in 1961. This period saw him publish More Pricks Than Kicks (1934) a collection of stories, and the novel Belacqua Shuah (1938).

As a citizen of a country that was neutral in World War II, he was able to remain in Paris even after the occupation by the Germans. He joined an underground resistance group in 1941, but when, the following year, members of the group were arrested, he and Suzanne went into hiding, he working as an agricultural labourer. The end of the war found him volunteering for the Irish Red Cross in France, and being assigned as an interpreter in a military hospital, before returning to Paris in 1945. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his resistance work. During the next few years, he continuted to write more intensively, producing several stories and novels that, thanks to Suzanne’s efforts, found a publisher - from 1951 onward. But it was the success of his play, Waiting for Godot, first produced at a small Paris theatre in 1953, that brought Beckett international fame.

Beckett continued to be domiciled in Paris, but spent much of his time writing at a small house not far from Paris in the countryside. He shunned all publicity, and refused interviews. When, in 1969, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he declined to travel to Stockholm for the ceremony. He continued writing and publishing up to his death on 22 December 1989 (some six months after his wife’s). Wikipedia gives this assessment: ‘Of all the English-language modernists, Beckett’s work represents the most sustained attack on the realist tradition. He opened up the possibility of theatre and fiction that dispense with conventional plot and the unities of time and place in order to focus on essential components of the human condition. Václav Havel, John Banville, Aidan Higgins, Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter and Jon Fosse have publicly stated their indebtedness to Beckett’s example. He has had a wider influence on experimental writing since the 1950s, from the Beat generation to the happenings of the 1960s and after.’ Further information is also available from Encyclopaedia Britannica, The Samuel Beckett Society or The Poetry Foundation.

Beckett has never been known as a diarist, and yet, in the mid-1930s, he did keep diary notebooks during an extended visit to Germany. These were not known to exist until Edward Beckett found them in a trunk after his uncle’s death. He made them available to James Knowlson for his 1996 biography Damned to Fame - The Life of Samuel Beckett (Bloomsbury). In Chapter 10 - Germany: The Unknown Diaries 1936-7 - Knowlson uses the diaries as a source book, yet fails to offer any analysis of them, or the idea of Beckett as diarist. Subsequently, Mark Nixon, who was Knowlson’s successor as Director of the Beckett International Foundation (University of Reading) where the diaries are held, published a book-length analysis of the diaries (based on his PhD thesis): Samuel Beckett’s German Diaries 1936-1937 (Bloomsbury, 2005). Both this and the biography can be previewed at Googlebooks. However, to this day the diaries themselves remain unpublished. The following extracts from Beckett’s diary are all as found in Knowlson’s biography (stripped, though, of Knowlson’s commentary and context).

18 October 1936
‘Even to listen is an effort, and to speak ausgeschlossen [impossible]. Anyway the chatter is a solid block, not a chink, interruption proof. Curse this everlasting limpness and melancholy. How absurd, the struggle to learn to be silent in another language! I am altogether absurd and inconsequential. The struggle to be master of another silence! Like a deaf man investing his substance in Schallplatten [gramophone records], or a blind man with a Leica.’

26 November 1936
‘Transparent figures before landscapes, street, town reproduced in Sauerlandt not there. Wonderful red Frauenkopf, skull earth sea and sky, I think of Monadologie [of Leibniz] and my Vulture. Would not occur to me to call this painting abstract. A metaphysical concrete. Nor Nature convention, but its source, fountain of Erscheinung [Appearance]. Fully a posteriori painting. Object not exploited to illustrate an idea, as in say Leger or Baumeister, but primary. The communication exhausted by the optical experience that is its motive and content. Anything further is by the way. Thus Leibniz, monadologie, Vulture, are by the way. Extraordinary stillness. His concern with Renaissance tradition.’

9 December 1936
‘in fear and trembling, lest I should break a leg, be attacked by vermin, lose the key, [toiling up] a succession of crazy ladders in the gloom, 365 steps to the gallery (for which I have 2nd key) 70 m. above ground. Tiny platform; 1½ from base of wall to railing. I cower against former, and scarcely dare look at view. Force myself to make the circle round with quick sickening glances at the ground.’ 

12 January 1937
‘Bright and cold. First view of terraces faced with glass frames for vines disconcerting, but soon accepted. Trimmed yews very effective. Terrace perhaps too steep and heavy for the palace, which disappears at the foot of every flight. Palace exquisite, and big summer house, faultlessly proportioned, the shallow green cupola resting like a flower on the yellow front, and the caryatids laughing under the lightness of their load. Not in the least Versailles or Watteauesque, but truly an architecture without care.’

15 January 1937
‘I am not interested in a ‘unification’ of the historical chaos any more than I am in the ‘clarification’ of the individual chaos, and still less in the anthropomorphisation of the inhuman necessities that provoke the chaos. What I want is the straws, flotsam, etc., names, dates, births and deaths, because that is all I can know. Meier says the background is more important than the foreground, the causes than the effects, the causes than their representatives and opponents. I say the background and the causes are an inhuman and incomprehensible machinery and venture to wonder what kind of appetite it is that can be appeased by the modern animism that consists in rationalising them. Rationalism is the last form of animism. Whereas the pure incoherence of times and men and places is at least amusing.’

2 February 1937
‘[Willi Grohmann s]ays it is more interesting to stay than to go, even if it were possible to go. They can’t control thoughts. Length of regime impossible to estimate, depends mostly on economic outshot. If it breaks down it is fitting for him and his kind to be on the spot, to go under or become active again. Already a fraternity of intellectuals, where freedom to grumble is less than the labourer’s, because the labourer’s grumble is not dangerous.’

2 February 1937 [Knowlson calls this extract a remarkable mixture of fierce self-criticism and intense self-pity’.]
‘I am always depressed and left with [a] sense of worthlessness at the beautifully applied energy of these people [his German friends], the exactness of documentation, completeness of equipment ... and authenticity of vocation. In comparison I am utterly alone (no group even of my own kind) and without purpose alone and pathologically indolent and limp and opinionless and consternated. The little trouble I give myself, this absurd diary with its lists of pictures, serves no purpose, is only the act of an obsessional neurotic. Counting pennies would do as well. An ‘open-mindedness’ that is mindlessness, the sphincter of the mind limply for ever open, the mind past the power of closing itself to everything but its own content, or rather its own treatment of a content.

I have never thought for myself. I have switched off the incipient thought in terror for so long that I couldn’t think now for half-a-minute if my life (!) depended on it.’

2 March 1937
‘Full of excuses and explanations. Mixture of insufferably hideous and pitiable. Every second phrase a lie, every third a try on and every sixth a grovel and all ? !! Good. Only has coat with him. Says no need to try on the trousers, though of course they are ready! The stuff came only this morning. Suddenly occurs to me that the stuff never came at all, perhaps never was ordered, and that what he has used is inferior. Telepathically he starts to praise the stuff, woof, weight, etc. His next own suit will be of no other. He had meant to bring the sample so that I could compare, but etc ... It is so flagrant as to be diverting. It is diverting to be thought to be done. One is done but not in the eye. The difference between being done and done in the eye is in first case one knows and in second not. He thinks he is doing me in the eye, whereas he is only doing me. That is the diverting position, that I would not spoil with the least show of discernment.’

Pulsing like a python

‘I have just finished my modest airline nosh when Ali plops down beside me. He has short sleeves and his enormous bicep rests near mine with the vein in it pulsing like a python.’ This snippet about the boxer Muhammad Ali is from the gossipy and entertaining diaries of Irish writer and historian Ulick O’Connor who died three months ago.

O’Connor was born in 1928 in Rathgar, County Dublin, to the dean of the Royal College of Surgeons and his wife. He attended Catholic secondary school in Galway and Dublin counties, before studying law and philosophy at University College Dublin. He was keen on sports, especially boxing, rugby and cricket, and was an active member of the Literary and Historical Society. He went on to attend Loyola University, New Orleans, and was called to the Irish bar in 1951. Although he practised in Dublin until 1970, he increasingly turned to writing - biography, poetry, history and literary criticism - for his day job. He was a regular contributor on sport to various newspapers, but also published a regular poetry column.

O’Connor is best known for his  biographies of Oliver St. John Gogarty and Brendan Behan, for his studies of the early 20th-century Irish troubles and the Irish Literary Revival, and for several plays. He became something of a personality, appearing on radio and television as an outspoken commentator on social, cultural and political issues. He never married (see the Irish Mirror on incorrect rumours that he was gay), and lived to the age of 91. Further information is available at Wikipedia, The Irish Times or Ricorso.

O’Connor was a keen and interesting diarist. He decided to keep a diary, he said, so as ‘to keep an eye on myself and so as not to let material that might be useful to me as a writer be erased from memory’. His agent eventually suggested to John Murray that some extracts be published in book form. The Ulick O’Connor Diaries 1970-1981: a cavalier Irishman (with a foreword by Richard Ingrams) came out in 2001.

According to the publisher, O’Connor evokes ‘the streets and bars of Dublin with their now legendary characters, the world of the Abbey Theatre and that of the Gate Theatre’; he ‘recreates the atmosphere and talk of the Anglo-Irish country houses [. . .], where he often stayed as a guest of the Guinnesses and the Longfords’; and he ‘reveals the secret part he played as a go-between for the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch’. Furthermore, the diaries show him to be an inveterate traveller: ‘In New York he makes friends with Viva, the star of Andy Warhol’s infamous Blue Movie, he talks to Robert Kennedy and witnesses the anti-Vietnam protests and the growth of the Civil Rights movement. In London he appears on Wogan, in Tangiers he dines with Alec Waugh and Paul Bowles, and in Stockholm he plays a practical joke on Edna O’Brien that unhappily misfires. Ulick O’Connor’s diaries are funny and entertaining, gossipy and a good read.’ Here are several extracts, including the first.

3 January 1970
‘Peter Sellers, the film actor, at dinner, at Aileen [the Hon. Mrs Brinsley] Plunket’s, Lutterellstown Castle. Seems down after his separation from Britt Ekland. Tears stream down his cheeks.

‘Knife in my heart, excuse me if I cry.’

I suggest that all men cry for the lost belief in the goodness of womanhood. Lolita. He tells me that when Britt ran out of money, he went back to her.

‘I didn’t kick her when she was down.’

When I told him he looked in good shape he said he worked out in the gym every day with weights. Was this wise since he had had heart surgery? He said not only was it safe but it actually improved his condition. He had always been interested in sport anyway. He talked of his uncle Brian Sellers, Captain of Yorkshire and England Selector, who he said used to take him to matches when he was a small boy. I was surprised at this because I always assumed Peter was a Bow Bells boy. Not so. I am touched by his affection for Uncle Brian and put a note about the relationship in my Sunday Mirror column. Later I receive an angry note from Brian Sellers denying he is related to ‘that bloody little cockney’. How extraordinary to invent a sporting pedigree on the spur of the moment.’

23 November 1972
‘To Dublin Airport to see Jack Lynch off. He’s addressing the Oxford Union on the motion ‘That this House would favour Irish Unity.’ Hugh McCann, Secretary to the Department of Foreign Affairs, is on the tarmac when the Taoiseach gets on the steps to enter the plane. Lynch shakes my hand warmly and ignores McCann who is left with his paw ‘all bright and glittering in the smokeless air’. This is authentic Jackspeak.’
 
7 May 1973
‘To Washington to interview Teddy Kennedy. Arranged by John Hume through a Kennedy aide, Carey Parker. Washington in early summer is beautiful. Lush green trees lining the drives. Spectacular after New York, where in Central Park still the bare branches anatomize the sky.

Kennedy himself is well versed in Northern Ireland. He corrects me when I give the wrong number of internees in Long Kesh: ‘Around 2,000, I think.’ (I checked, he was right.)

He is on top of his brief. Would that his English counterparts were the same. I tell him I was on the Kennedy election plane on Bobby’s last jaunt, just before he died. He showed me a picture of Bobby in his Harvard football kit.

‘Great little guy wasn’t he.’

He looked wistful for a while. He has had two brothers cut down in their prime who, when he was a baby, used to affectionately toss him between them like a football, two handsome Micks with a dash and brightness that were specially theirs - all gone.’

14 April 1974
‘Flying back to New York from Chicago where I had gone to promote Irish Liberation on the Kupcinett Show, I pass a truly enormous black man in first class as I board. He is sitting with another black.

‘Hi,’ says Muhammad Ali, ‘How’s it going?’

I met Ali a number of times in the late Sixties and also covered his fight in Dublin in 1970 against Al Blue Lewis when we had become well acquainted over three weeks.

‘Come down and see you later,’ Ali said.

I have just finished my modest airline nosh when Ali plops down beside me. He has short sleeves and his enormous bicep rests near mine with the vein in it pulsing like a python.

‘I’d like to show you some poems.’

This is the guy that put Sonny Liston away in round two so I listen. To my credit, I don’t nod acquiescently but try to remain detached. Fortunately, two lines come up which I can approve:

The same road that connects two souls together
When stretched becomes a path to God.

I nod and he doesn’t stop for half an hour. His face is unlined, miraculously free from the damage that boxers can acquire. Of course, in the ring he bobs like a bamboo and it is almost impossible to land a clean punch on him. His ears are close to his head, neat and well formed. When he straightens up you can see his trousers stretched tightly over gigantic thighs, each more than two feet in circumference. I asked him was he never afraid he’d get shot when he was a Vietnam protester and had his title taken away from him because he wouldn’t join the army.

‘A true Muslim doesn’t fear, neither does he grieve. I was happier than I had ever been then in my little car, riding round the States. I never sold out. I was no Uncle Tom.’

He goes back to his chum. I don’t see him again till I am getting off the plane. He introduces me to the man he is with.

‘This is Kid Gavilan.’

I am impressed. Kid Gavilan is the inventor of the bolo punch and one of the great all-time world middleweight champions. Ali says he’ll give me a ride into town in his chauffeur-driven limousine. He sits in front while he puts me in the back of the car with the Kid who starts to sing for me, in Spanish, bits of a musical he is composing about the boxing ring. He says he was down and out recently in Alabama when Ali saw him at a petrol station where he was working and took him on board for a month’s holiday. As we roll into Manhattan, the Kid is singing away at his own songs, while Ali’s well shaped head rolls from side to side in the front seat. Out for the count.’
 
28 May 1974
‘Horrors on horror’s head accumulate. Hear at four o'clock that the Northern Ireland Assembly has been dissolved. Faulkner has resigned as Chief Executive. It seems the bullies have won. I go down to the Dail to see Jack Lynch. Meet Eugene Timmons TD in the hall. He seems to accept the news with equanimity. Then I see David Andrews. He does not seem as downcast as he should be (I wonder has he something up his sleeve?). Brian Lenihan passes us with a cheery smile. Then I go into the Dail chamber. Afterwards I meet Jack Lynch. Exhausted. He looks like an old man, shrunk. He puts off our meeting until Thursday. I go to discuss what’s happened with George Colley (former Minister for Finance). He says we were closer to trouble in 1969. I point out that then the British Army were regarded as peacekeepers by the Nationalists, now this is not so. Therefore the situation is significantly worse. Rory Brugha TD who is also with us remarks that the British will always suit themselves. George Colley says he thinks the real danger is unilateral declaration of independence by the Unionists. I suggest that we should consider sending in the Irish Army as a protective force with a view to getting the UN to come in at a later stage. The general feeling is that the Irish Army should have gone into Northern Ireland in 1969 after Lynch had said that the South would not ‘stand idly by’ when the Nationalist population in Northern Ireland were being attacked and burned out of their homes. If they had gone across the border at Derry then to protect civilians they could have remained in situ and refused to evacuate until the UN came in with a peacekeeping force.

My thinking. The British will now get very tough with the Unionists. They may cut Harland & Wolff’s subsidy and that of other industrial jewels in the British Crown.’