The Contribution of Offaly Writers to Irish Literature

By Michael Byrne

Reginald Ingram Montgomery Hitchcock

Rex Ingram was not born in Offaly but he lived at Kinnitty with his father who was rector in a house which still stands and is occupied - opposite the Church of Ireland. Boylan writes; (1893-1950), film director known as Rex Ingram. Born 18 January 1893 at 58 Grosvenor Square, Rathmines, Dublin, son of Rev. Francis Montgomery Ryan Hitchock, a Donnellan Lecturer at TCD, and later Rector of Kinnity, Co. Offaly and the author of several historical works. Educated at St Columba's College, Dublin. At eighteen he emigrated to the USA, studied sculpture at Yale School of Fine Arts and in 1913 joined the young film industry, working for the Edison, Vitagraph and Fox Companies as actor and script writer. At the early age of twenty-three he directed The Great Problem from his own story, for the Universal Company. Later his films for his company included Black Orchids, Reward of the Faithless, The Flower of Doom and Under Crimson Skies. Joined the Metro Company 1920 and launched The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, distinguished for its pictorial beauty, its introduction of Rudolph Valentino and Alice Terry, who was to become Ingram's wife and the star of many of his films. It was a great financial success and the basis of the fortunes of the Metro Company which later became the major partner in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer organisation. The Conquering Power, The Prisoner of Zenda, Trifling Women and Scarmouche followed, the latter three films introducing the young Mexican actor, Ramon Novarro. Tired of the regimentation of Hollywood, Ingram turned to North Africa and Europe for backgrounds to his films and founded the Victorine Studios of Nice. There, in 1926, he made Mare Nostrum based on a Blasco Ibanez story, The Magician and the Garden of Allah. He made one sound film, Baround, a romance of Morocco, in which he played the lead. Ingram retired from film making in 1933 to devote himself to sculpture, writing and travel. The director of twenty-seven films, he is regarded as one of the three most important film makers in Hollywood during the twenties. Received an honorary degree from Yale University, Cross of the Legion of Honour from the French government and Order of Nichan Igtkar from the Bey of Tunis. At one stage he embraced Mohammedanism. He left wo novels, The Legion Advance, a story of North Africa and Mars in the House of Death, a tale of bullfighting in Spain and Mexico. Died in Hollywood on 22 July 1950. (Boylan, p. 147). The Irish Film Theatre recently paid a tribute to him in screening a selection of his films.

In his study of Rex Ingram, Liam O'Leary (Dublin, 1980), stated that the family moved to Kinnitty in 1903 when Rex was 11 years of age - Kinnitty was to be his home until his departure to the U.S.A. seven years later. It was from here that his father published his Midland Septs and The Pale in 1908. When he departed for the U.S.A. at 18 years of age in 1911, his brother, Francis Clere, wrote of the departure of his brother:

"The afternoon before he left home - the rectory, Kinnitty, he and I went to say goodbye to Captain and Mrs. Drought of Lettybrook, and had tea with them and their family. On our return home it rained heavily and we got awfully wet which was akward because Rex was next morning to catch a train at Roscrea for Queenstown (Cobh) and his boat for the U.S.A. At 6.30 am we left on a lovely morning from the rectory, Kinnitty, for Roscrea railway station across the Slieve Bloom Mountains by a road called Boharaphuca - the way of the spirits. As we climbed the road we always dismounted from the outside car as the gradients were too steep for the horse. We could see the Shannon glistening in the morning sun and the Devil's Bit Mountain, also the great keep of Leap Castle. I went with him to see him off at Roscrea as father was away delivering lectures at Trinity College, Dublin.

And so I waved him farewell, not to see him again for twelve years when he came to France and I stayed with him in Paris when on leave (he was working on the preliminaries of Mare Nostrum). I returned home very, very miserable, I remember, for he had always been such a kind and gay brother to me, particularly since the death of our mother in 1908". (O'Leary, p2l-22).

Francis Clere Hitchcock.

Boylan records that Francis Clere Hitchcock was born in Dublin 1896, died in Beaconsfield 1972 (not 1962 as in Boylan). Brother of Rex Ingram. Served in India First World War and in England Second World War. OBE, MC. Published Stand To, a diary of the trenches, and his famous Saddle Up, 1933, a manual of equitation, frequently reprinted. To Horse, 1933, concerns advanced management of stables and horsed. Stand to: A diary the Trenches 1915 -18 was first published in 1937 and reprinted in 1988. Hitchcock a regular officer in the now disbanded 2nd Leinster Battalion and served at the mine in 1916 and gained the M.C. in the winter of that year.

Francis Brerton Hudson

O'Donoghue writes that Francis Brerton Hudson was a clever sporting writer of the day, and author of several Irish stories of a racy character. Only child of S. B. Hudson, of Screggan House, King's Co which is the Briscoe's house near Tullamore and perhaps let at the time. (Destroyed early 1920s). When about 14 he wrote a three-act comedy, and published his first poem, a hunting song, in Shamrock when about 16. Was editor and half proprietor of a Dublin paper, The Turf Telegraph, and editor of second series of Pat, a Dublin comic. Has written much prose and verse since he settled finally in London in 1882, for Theatre, All the Year Round, Lady's Pictorial, Globe, Winning Post, Pall Mall Ga\ette, Funny Folks, Sporting and Dramatic News, Household Words, Era, Pictorial World, Whithall Review, etc. A burlesque by him was produced at Queen's Theatre, Dublin, in 1881, and he has written various dramatic pieces not yet brought out. He is the author of a book entitled, The Fishing for Amateurs.

Charles Jasper Joly

Of this family Jasper Robert has already been mentioned. Charles Jasper, (1864-1906), astronomer. Born St Catherine's Rectory, Tullamore, 27 June 1864. He was the son of Revd. John Swift Joly. Educated Galway grammar school and TCD where he took fellowship in 1894. Appointed astronomer-royal for Ireland at Dunsink 1897. Edited Quaternions of Rowan Haniliton (1899-1901). Accompanied expedition to Spain in 1900 to view eclipse. MRIA and elected FRS 1904. Published Manual of Quaternions (1905). Died at Dunsink, 4 January 1906.

John Joly

(1857-1933), engineer, geologist and physicist. Born Hollywood, Clonbullogue, Co. Offaly on 1 November 1857. Educated Rathmines School and TCD. Studied modern literature and engineering, and on graduation in 1883 secured a teaching post in the school of engineering. Professor of Geology 1897-1933. He maintained a constant flow of inventions, including a photometer to measure illumination, and a steam calorimeter. In 1899 he measured the age of the oceans by estimating the rate of deposit of sodium and also devised a method of estimating the age of rocks. He carried out pioneer work on the cooling of the earth, on radium extraction, and on the radium treatment for cancer. Elected FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society) in 1892 and received many other distinctions from learned bodies. Died Dublin on 8 December 1933.

The Joly family are the second distinguished family in Offaly in the history of science. Patrick Hency wrote of this family in the Irish University Review (Autumn, 1977).

Patrick Kavanagh

Kavanagh is of course associated with Monaghan but it may be noted in passing that his grandfather, Patrick Kevany who is buried in Durrow and was schoolmaster at the Tullamore Workhouse from the late 1850's.

Charles Lever

Although not born in Offaly Lever had associations with the county through his brother John who was rector of Durrow (1823-30), Tullamore (1830-43) and Ardnurcher (1843-62) . The King's County Chronicle noted in 1906 that a great many people may not aware that the celebrated author of Charles O'Malley was identified with the King's County, and it may not be amiss to give some particulars contained in a communication received a few days ago, from the pen of the Rev. Canon Moore, M.A. Mitchellstown.

Any particulars regarding this celebrated Irish novelist are of interest, and if the following have not already been noted, you may perhaps kindly give them a place in your columns. Charles Lever had a brother in Holy Orders, the Rev. John Lever, who appears to have spent his clerical life in the Diocese of Meath. He was Rector of Durrow, and Charles used to stay a good deal with him and while there wrote some of his books. His occasional residence this locality made him familiar with Kilbeggan, Tyrrellspass and Philipstown, , which places figure in his works. One of his later novels, Lord Kilgobbin, (considered his best) deals with the Tullamore district. The Rev John Lever was promoted from Durrow to be Rector of Tullamore, and here again Charles used to stay with him, and I believe Charles' bedroom in Tullamore Rectory is still pointed out. John Lever afterwards moved promotion from Tullamore to Ardnurcher, (Horseleap), in the same neighbourhood, so that the King's County furnished Charles with much material for his novels. I had in my early days as a clergyman, a parishioner named Neal O'Donnell Browne, R.M. who remembered the Rev John Lever very well, having lived in one of his parishes in Tullamore, and who used occasionally to talk about him. He evidently regarded him as a very estimable and efficient pastor. While Rector of Durrow the Rev John Lever preached a funeral sermon on the death of Lord Norbury, of Durrow Abbey, who was murdered there during his incumbency. (1839) This sermon was printed, and the present Rector of Durrow, Rev Sterling S De Courcy Williams, recently informed me that he had seen it, and read it, but that in his opinion it displayed little or none of the literary merit to be found in Charles' work.

Fitzpatrick in his Life of Charles Lever (1884) recalls how John Lever, the novelist's brother was discharging clerical duties in Tullamore in the 1830's. Their mother died in 1833 and their father was so upset by her death that he moved to Tullamore where he lived with his son until his death, some three months later, at St. Catherine's rectory in April 1833. In a footnote to Fitzpatrick's life is a reference to the rector of the Tullamore of the 1880's, Revd. Graham Craig writes that "Some of Lever's best works were written in this house" i.e. St. Catherine's Rectory, Tullamore. Fitzpatrick does not accept this in an appendix where he cites the "Recollections of Charles Lever's boyhood" by Harry Innes' (a brother in law by reason of Levers sister having married Revd. John Lever). In the short Recollections it is stated that; "there is no man who expressed a greater influence on the character of Charles Lever than the Revd. Ponsonby Gouldsbury, rector of Tullamore (1799-1830) and uncle of Mr. North, M.P. Gouldsbury was intimate with the great men were actors in the French Revolution and with the men, he thought as great, who produced the Irish Revolution of 1782, of which the Union was only the end. Gouldsbury had a dinner party of eight every Thursday - Three talkers and three listeners (the best men of the lot), and two to whom the dinner was a dutie. His cook was an artiste; the dinner and wines - money nor skill could not produce better. But it was the after dinner talk that these feasts si attractive. Gouldsbury had anectoted of great people inexhaustible. With the old man, Lever was an immense favourite. I heard Lever say more than once after a pleasant dinner, that it was not a patch on Gouldsbury's.

Vivian Mercier

Vivian (1919-1989), bilingual literary historian. Born in Clara, Co. Offaly, he was educated it Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, and at TCD, where he shared rooms with Conor Cruise O'Brien. He completed doctoral work on Realism in Irish Fiction. 1916-40, reviewing for The Bell in the 1940s before taking up a succession of teaching posts in American universities: New York City College, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and finally the University of California in Santa Barbra, where he followed Hugh Kenner in the Chair from 1974. In the same year he married his second wife, the novelist Eilis Dillon (who is now deceased and also buried in Clara). Mercier's commitment to learning Irish with the assistance of Professor David Greene in the 1950s resulted in The Irish Comic Tradition (1962), with its path-breaking assertion of a temperamental and imaginative bond between Anglo-Irish literature and its Gaelic antecedents. Beckett/Beckett (1977) provided commentary on the Irish novelist and playwright that grounded his sceptical humour and dramatise personae in the same broadly conceived tradition of Irish writing, with its antipathy to establishments and its Rabelasian irreverence. The impact of Irish texts in on W.B. Yeats and other authors of the literary reveal provided the subject-matter of e Modern Irish Literature (1994), an exploration of sources and influences published posthumously by his wife. (see Welch (ed.) Oxford Companion to Irish Literature)

Donal Lunny

(1947-), multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer and record producer. Born in Tullamore, Co Offaly but raised in Newbridge, Co. Kildare, educated in the National College of Art. Particularly noted for his role in establishing the bouzouki as a mainstream instrument in Irish music. Founder member of Planxty 1971 and in 1975 formed the Bothy Band with Matt Molloy, Paddy Keenan, Tommy Peoples, Triona Ni Domhnaill and Micheal O Domhnaill; despite its relatively short life the group has an enormous impact on the development of ensemble traditional music. The very popular Moving Hearts, formed in 1981, specialised in new musical directions.

Tony Molloy

Mr. Molloy is only son of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Molloy, Convent View, Tullamore. He is an ex-pupil of St. Columba's, Tullamore, and for the past six years, (in 1937) has been living in Dublin, where he has taken an active part in the language and cultural movement, both in organising ceilidhthe and in teaching Irish classes. He had made Irish a study and a hobby and to acquire a complete mastery of the language has spent a considerable time in the most primitive and least-known of the Aran Islands. Mr. Molloy has contributed several poems to The Midland Tribune. He later published several boys' stories including; Gillvgoolv and The Twins, these are stories based on folk tales together nonsense rhymes. The plot is based on old mythology, yet in a modern form. One of poems, which was his first is Evening in Dublin which was published in a Dublin weekley paper.

James Lynam Molloy

David O'Donoghue's writing in 1892-3 noted that Molloy was one of the most popular composers and song writers of the present day. His Kerrv Dance, Thady O'Flvnn, Darby and Joan, Just a Song at Twilight, and Bantry Bay, have had, or have, great vogue. He is son of Dr. K. J. Molloy, of Cornalaur, parish of Rahan, King's County, and was born there in 1837. Educated at Catholic University, Dublin, London University, and at Paris and Bonn. He was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple, London, in 1872, but does not practice. He has written the words of a large number of songs, and in 1879, published a work entitled Our Autumn Holiday on French Rivers. A short Biography of Molloy is soon to be published by the OAHS following its recent research by its author, Desmond Moore.

William O'Connor Morris

Born in Kilkenny city 26 of Nov. 1824 and died in 1904. His mother was Elizabeth., youngest daughter of Maurice Nugent O'Connor of Gortnamonanear, Tullamore. Educated in Oxford. Called to Irish Bar in 1854. Professor of Law at Kings Inns 1862. County Court Judge in Louth 1872. Moved to Gortnamona 1880. Wrote a great deal; his best-known book is the fictional reconstruction of the events leading to the Treaty of Limerick, and all that followed, told through the Memories of Gerald O'Connor 1671-1748). See DNB vol ii, p. 2803. But he wrote too much and too superficially to become an authority of Irish or Military history or Irish History. He died at Gortnamona August 1903, survived by one son and five daughters.

O Maolmhuaidh, Proinsias (Francis Molloy)

Proinsias (Francis Molloy) (?1614-1684), Franciscan priest, theologian, and grammarian. Born probably in Co. Offaly, of a noble family, he was educated at St Anthony's in Rome from 1632 in philosophy in Klosterneuberh near Vienna, held the Chair in Theology in Graz in 1645 and was appointed principal Professor of Theology at St Isidore's in Rome in 1650. Author of Disputatio Theologica de Incarnatione Verbi 1645 and Cursus Phliosophiac (1666) he also composed poetry, Iubelattio Genethliaca in honorem prosperi Balthasaris Philippi Hispaniarum Principis (1658). His devotional text Lochrann na gCreidmheach (1676), like many Franciscan publications of the period, was produced for the spiritual and Scottish missions, and for the spiritual welfare of Irish soldiers in Continental armies and of those banished to the West Indies and elsewhere. His Grammatica Latino-Hibernica (1677), which contains an eloquent plea for the preservation of Irish, and was the first modern grammatical text on Irish, and was used by Edward Lhuyd in Archaeologia Britannica (1707). He wrote his grammar so that the 'Catholic Irish nation' might retain a connection with its ancient history and avoid the 'numberless errors' consequent upon the lack of proper study of the language, as he declared in the preface. Tomas O Flannghaile made English translations of some of its metrical sections in De Prosodia Hibernica (1908). See Gregory Cleary, Fr. Luke Wadding and St. Isidore's College (1925). See Welch, ed. Oxford Companion.

Flann O Brien

Anthony Crain in his No Laughing Matter the early history of Flann O'Brien (Brian O'Nolan in Tullamore from 1920 to 1924). Strabane was to be a second home for all the O'Nolans for years to come, but in 1920 Michael O'Nolan was transferred to Tullamore, a town situated in the flat, rather featureless central plain of Ireland. Brian was to use this landscape years later as the background to The Third Policeman and to give its very emptiness and lack of individuality a curiously threatening and disturbing quality. It was Michael O'Nolan's job to oversee the payment of excise duties by the distilleries in his area. The principle ones were D.E.Williams of Tullamore, who made a brand called Tullamore Dew, and Locke's of Kilbeggan. Both of these were often mentioned later in Brian's Irish Times column; and in later years he was to affect more than a drinker's knowledge of the law governing the proof strength or otherwise of whiskey, sometimes to the annoyance of publicans.

The family's new home was a house called The Copper Beeches, about two miles outside Tullamore. Leased from the Odlums, a local flour-milling family, by Irish standards it was a small mansion, its size reflecting Michael O'Nolan's status as a senior excise official. The house is on the Daingean road opposite the junction for the canal and Thomas' boats. It had a lawn in front, a garden and a yard with outbuildings at the back. There was still no attempt to send the boys to school and the apparent idyll continued. As in Strabane they would wander off together and were seen only at mealtimes. Each of them was alloted a patch of garden and Brian made suprisingly good use of his, growing vegetables which were eaten at table. There was a donkey which had its own stable in the yard at the back, though it stubbornly refused to be ridden, making straight for a wall when mounted and threatening to crush its rider's knee. There were also fowl in which the boys took a great interest, observing with glee the conseqences of putting duck eggs under a brooding hen. When they hatched out tiny ducklings made straight for the water of the stream, to the bewilderment of their foster mother.

Michael O'Nolan, always a great book-buyer, now had his books about him again; for the time the boys were making full use of them. According to Ciaran, Brian soon had every book in the house read. These included works by most of the great writers of the English language from Defoe to Stevenson, as well as more contemporary authors, such as Conan Doyle, Wells, and Bennett. The boys especially enjoyed The Pickwick Papers and, for some reason , Trollope's Autobiography. James Stephens seems to have been the only representative of the so-called Irish Literary Revival, then in full swing, through the poems of the two most important Irish poets of the 19th century, James Clarence Mangan and Samuel Ferguson were in the house, as well as Douglas Hyde's eccentric but richly rewarding history of Gaelic literature, A Literary History of Ireland.

If Brian read all of these, or even a good proportion of them between the ages of nine and twelve, he was, though still free from what Ciaran called 'the foolish demands of school', a well educated youngster indeed. But besides the books in the house, the boys also soon had access to a library run by the nuns in Tullamore. Here they found many of the best-selling authors of the time, Including Rafael Sabatini, who wrote swashbuckling historical romances, H. de Vere Stacpoole, an Irish romanticist who wrote about imaginary South Sea islands. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories were well represented in this library; and it is not too difficult to discern their influence on their future creator of De Selby, Count O'Blather and Myles na Gopaleen. Another book Brian read which made an impression on him was Georrge A. Birmingham's comic novel Spanish Gold. This is a stage Irish but a genuinely comic tale and was one of the few books the boys read which was set in the Ireland of the time. They would visit the nuns eclectic library every Sunday morning after Mass and take a couple of books each, to be read and returned by the following Sunday.

The vast majority of the books in the house were in English, though there was some Irish and there is an element of comedy in the fact that Michael O'Nolan was undermining his own efforts to bring the boys up and think in Irish by providing them with so much engrossing reading matter in the tongue of the foreigner. He became aware that Brian's reading in that language was now fairly extensive on a day when they were laying linoleum in an upper room, the window of which was open. A car pulled up some yards away along the road to discharge a couple of passengers and as they said their farewells to the remaining occupants Brian began to mimic their flat Offaly accents. 'Bi do thosc. Clainfhidh siad thu ' - 'Be silent. They will hear you', his father said to him sternly. 'And as for you, sir,' Brian replied in English 'if you do not conduct yourself I will do you a mischief.'

They are his first recorded words in the English Language and it is evident that he was already a pasticheure of promise. It was also the first time one of the boys addressed his father in that language. Fortunately Micheal O'Nolan seems to have seen the joke. He certainly put no obstacles in the way of his sons continuing to read his books or make use of the library, though, like most parents of the time, he locked away some reading matter that he considered unsuitable.

The O'Nolan children were now seeing a great deal more of their father than they had in Strabane. On summer evenings they would all play croquet on the big lawn in front of the house, using a second hand set of mallets and hoops that Michael O'Nolan had bought. The game was generally quite decorous, but on one occasion, when his father's ball was poised to go through the hoop Brian drove his own at it with such vicious force as to send it across the lawn and behind some rose bushes. This was an Instance of lese-majeste so unusual as to be long remembered by the younger children.

Michael O'Nolan now owned a car, an Overland, and he often took the three eldest boys on his business trips. It was the time when the rough, potholed roads were sometimes blocked by trees felled across them by the local I.R.A.. Each of the numerous bridges spanning the Grand and Royal canals was a checkpoint guarded by parties of soldiers; and they were often forced to the side of the road by speeding Crossley tenders, The military sitting back-to-back with their knees. Although Michael was a servant of the crown and not an active nationalist his attitude to these soldiers was clear. They were foreigners, 'the enemy', and they should be sent back to their country fortwith. Shortly after moving into The Copper Beeches he received a visit from a party of them. The house was not searched nor the occupants seriously questioned but the intruders did a little casual looting, removing a sword belonging to the Odlum family which was hanging in the hallway. Michael's children were disappointed that their father had not sent the soldiers packing or at least given them a piece of his mind. He was not there when another party came to the house looking for helpers to clear away some trees that had been felled nearby. Such temporary press ganging was a common practice, but since there were only women and children in the house there was no corver this time. On another occasion when some soldiers came, there was nobody at home except the three eldest boys. Brian and Ciaran had both built 'houses made of sacking against the wall in their patches of garden. Finding no-one in the house the soldiers went into the garden, guns in hand and looked about. Seeing them through the gaps in the sacking, the boys decided one instinct to keep quiet and crouch where they were. Luckily the soldiers soon left. Given the general state of nervousness of the military a cough or an involuntary movement might have had serious consequences.

But Offaly was not one of the more disturbed counties and apart from such incidents life at The Copper Beeches was peaceful. There were visits to the cinema in Tullamore (the old Foresters or CYMS hall where the usual programme of silent feature plus one-reel comedy was to be seen. Brian had first been to the cinema on a memorable occasion during the Inchicore period, probably in 1916, when his father had taken him and his brothers to a newly opened cinema in O'Connell Street and they had seen a western full of galloping horses in which someone was shot dead every 30 seconds. Now as often as they were given permission they would walk into town to see much the same sort of fare, varied sometimes by a feature-length Chaplin comedy and even an epic.

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