Band of Brothers

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers

                                                        Henry V

a selection from

A Time of Grace – School Memories

Edited by J. Matthew Feheney FPM

Brother Paul Townsend

In a time when university education was the exclusive priv­ilege of the Protestant minority, Brother Paul received an education equal to that afforded by present-day universi­ties. He could speak four languages - Irish, English, French and German, and was as well a famous mathemati­cian. He became an architect, but soon abandoned a lucra­tive profession, to become a monk, a criminal in the eyes of the law. (Allen, 43)

It is not suggested, however, that Brother Paul did actually attend Trinity College, Dublin, the only university in Ireland at the time, but that he did attend some school of further education. In fact, little is known of Brother Paul's early education, though the writer of his obituary notice (not the same as the Milltown annal­ ist), who knew him well, says that he had trained as an architect, and was proficient in mathematics, as well as in French, German and Irish. While it is probable that he acquired his training in architecture through apprenticeship to a practising architect, it is more difficult to surmise where he received his general education, especially the two foreign languages with which he is credited.

Since both were architects, it probably that he had some associ­ation with Brother Michael Augustine Riordan before the autumn of 1826, at which time the latter left the North Monastery, Cork, to set up a foundation in the South Parish. Though we are not sure of this, we do know that, as a mature man of twenty-nine years, he was one of Brother Riordan's assistants in the school which opened in temporary accommodation in a disused corn store in Cat Lane, off Barrack Street, Cork, on 1 July 1827. This school moved to new premises in the South Monastery, Douglas Street, Cork, built by Brother Riordan, in 1829.

Like Edmund Rice, Paul had been contemplating another form of religious life before he met Brother Riordan and became attracted to the latter's educational work for poor children. But, whereas Edmund Rice's first attraction was towards the Augustinians, Paul's was towards the Cistercians. In the work of education, however, Paul found his true vocation. He was not long with Brother Riordan before he became indispensable, his many talents, striking personality and great personal charm making him

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an ideal assistant. Paul also had another characteristic in common with Edmund Rice. This was his baptismal name: though baptised Edmund, he chose the name Paul on entering the Presentation Brothers to signify his adoption of a new way of life.

By 1838 Paul was assistant to Brother Riordan in the South Monastery and acting head of the Lancasterian School in Cork, of which Brother Riordan was superintendent, when, at the request of Bishop Egan of Kerry, he went, with three compan­ions, to open a school in Killarney. Here the community had to endure unusual poverty and hardship, all four being compelled to sleep in one room about twelve feet square, and this even when one suffered a severe illness and another died of typhus.

The school in Killarney prospered, however, under Paul's guid­ance, even though the buildings were inadequate and unsuitable. It was a measure of the Bishop's satisfaction with the work of the Brothers in Killarney that, in 1842, he invited Paul to open another school in the diocese, this time in Milltown, about ten miles west of Killarney. This invitation Paul gladly accepted. He had first, however, to build the new school. Here he used his training and experience as an architect and engaged local work­ men to quarry the stone, after which he supervised the building of the monastery and schoolrooms. On completion of the school in Milltown, he was commissioned by the Bishop of Kerry to build a new monastery and school in Killarney. This necessitated his return from Milltown to Killarney.

Though Paul, as someone with architectural training, was capable of drawing up a plan for the new school in Killarney, the Bishop felt that Pugin, who was designing the new neo-Gothic cathedral for the town, should be involved. Paul agreed and Pugin submitted a plan based on that of the nearby ancient ruins of Muckross Abbey, with a cloister in the centre of the building. Like many of Pugin's famous designs, only a sketch plan was sup­plied. Though the design was extremely attractive, Paul was left to pay the forty guineas which the great Augustus Welby charged for his services, the Bishop having deftly side-stepped paying the bill. Incidentally, the forty guineas was equivalent to one third of the entire annual income of the community at the time.

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Brother Paul Townsend

Before the new monastery and school in Killarney could be completed, however, the terrible tragedy of the Great Famine struck Ireland, affecting Kerry no less than other parts of the country. The money to build the new school in Killamey had to be raised by collections of various kinds, and such fund-raising proved impractical, if not unthinkable, during the famine years when every available penny had to be used to provide meals for the children. As things developed, therefore, it fell to Paul's suc­ cessor to complete the fine cut-stone building designed by Pugin to complement the magnificent Cathedral nearby.

Paul did, however, work hard to obtain a choice site for the new monastery and school in Killamey. This was known as Falvey's 'Inch' and was donated by Mrs Raymond, a great bene­factor of the school. Though the site, amounting to five acres, was the legal property of Mrs Raymond, it was being used by some local people who put obstacles in the way of Paul taking possession of it. Eventually, he had to have recourse to the law courts to get possession of the site and the tiresome legal pro­ ceedings were a source of great irritation to him. On top of this, no sooner had he taken possession of the ground than the Bishop requested part of it as a site for Pugin's new Cathedral. Though Paul was quite willing to donate a site for the Cathedral, he insist­ed on a separate, independent entrance to the monastery and school and this entailed more lengthy negotiations.

Return to Cork

In 1846, the health of Brother Augustine Riordan, the superior of the mother house in Cork, began to decline and the Cork community requested Paul's return from Killamey. Bishop Egan, however, declined to permit him to return on the grounds that he was indispensable. Finally, when Brother Augustine died in Cork in January 1848 and Paul was nominated by the Cork commu­nity to succeed him as Superior, Dr Egan relented, most proba­bly in return for a promise from Paul to send him some Brothers from Cork.

The post of Superior in Cork included responsibility for super­intending both the South Monastery School and the larger Lancasterian School in Great George Street, now the Western

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Road, Cork, which had an enrolment of about eight hundred pupils. It is with this latter school especially that he was popular­ly associated as the years went on. He continued as Superior in the South Monastery, Douglas Street, and as Manager of these two schools, until bodily infirmity forced him to retire in 1871 at the age of seventy-three.

        Paul builds Greenmount School

In 1854, Paul began building the Greenmount National School. The site was the old Gallows Green, a low hill close to St Finbarr's (Church of lreland) Cathedral, for which he obtained a five-hun­dred year lease from Cork City Corporation at an annual rent equivalent to £1.50. Gallows Green was the site of public execu­tions in Cork, and, to get away from its unpleasant associations, he renamed the place Greenmount, a name which it has retained ever since. He explained his reasons for opening his school to the Powis Commission in 1868:

We thought it better to build a school and take it to the poor bare-footed children, rather than have them coming to us. We thought we could be better able to travel to them, being well shod and clothed, than have the poor children coming to us. We wished to accommodate the children and built this school at an expense of about

£2,000. (Powis, Q.17, 286)

The Annals of the South Monastery describe the difficulties Paul and his companions overcame in raising the money and getting the building erected:

He was his own architect and clerk of works and direct labour was employed. He taught in the old Lancasterian School every day, and in the evenings and on Saturdays he begged the money in Cork city, to pay his tradesmen and labourers on Saturday evening. (Allen, 155)

         Paul as an architect

Though the annalist of the South Monastery is emphatic that 

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Brother Paul Townsend

  Paul trained as an architect, unlike Brother Riordan, architecture played a very minor part in his life after he entered the Presentation Brothers. Paul is on record as building only two schools: that in Milltown, County Kerry, begun in 1842, and the National School, Greenmount, Cork, in 1854. Though he also laid the foundations of the monastery and school in Killarney in 1846, the Great Famine and shortage of money brought this project to a standstill for several years. Paul's involvement in architecture after joining the Presentation Brothers seemed to be motivated solely by the needs in hand rather than a desire for self-fulfilment. When a school had to be built, he went to his drawing board and got on with the job. Once the school was built, however, he reverted to his normal work as teacher or director of schools.

The involvement in architecture of Paul's mentor and superi­ or, Brother Michael Augustine Riordan, was, however, much more intense and continuous. As long as Bishop Murphy was alive, he never seemed to escape from his original profession. His continued involvement in church architecture has been discussed elsewhere in this volume (Feheney, 'Edmund Rice and the Presentation Brothers'). Suffice it to say here that he was believed to be the architect of many of the churches built in the dioceses of Cork, Ross and Cloyne in the first half of the nineteenth cen­tury. From what we know of Brother Riordan, however, it is more likely that this involvement in building churches was due to pres­sure from his friend, patron and religious superior, Bishop John Murphy, than to his own personal need for self-fulfilment or involvement in a field of endeavour other than education.

Paul, on the other hand, never became involved in diocesan affairs, church building or otherwise. All his time and energy were devoted to his community, schools and pupils. He was meticulous in keeping records and the financial transactions of the South Monastery for the period, in his fine, bold handwrit­ing, are preserved in the archives of the Presentation Brothers.

Long association with the 'Lanes'

Paul enjoyed enormous respect and esteem as Director of the Lancasterian School in Cork, popularly known as the Lanes. The school was set up in 1814 along the lines advocated by Reverend

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Joseph Lancaster in England. Though Reverend Alexander Bell devised a similar system, whereby a large number of children were taught by a small number of teachers, using student-teach­ers or monitors to help in the instruction, the Catholic Church preferred Lancaster's method mainly because his system was devised for non-conformists whereas Bell's was a Church of England system. Brother Riordan and the Presentation Brothers were invited by the Cork Charitable Society, Managers of the school, to assume responsibility for the administration and staffing of this historic institution in 1829.

A past pupil of this school describes Brother Paul as follows:

Brother Paul was an ideal gentleman, in his deportment, in his carriage, and in his manner; he was most affable and courteous to everybody; he spoke with a tone of sincerity in everything he said, and his kindness of heart and innate nobility of character won him the respect and admiration of all. He had great affection for children and naturally enough was loved and venerated by them in return...lt was most edifying to hear him say the prayers with the boys in the school with much unction and fervour, and to listen to his religious instruction in the afternoon, to the advanced pupils in the Lecture Room, was a real treat in itself. The force he put into these instructions has never been forgot­ten and I firmly believe that the words which he uttered with such sincerity and ardour never fell on deaf ears. (Allen, 145)

Paul was remarkable for the courteousness, charm, kindness and good humour which were characteristic of him. In addition to being known as Brother Paul, he was sometimes affectionately called Father Paul and yet, at other times he was formally addressed as Mr Townsend. The word 'gentleman' was also fre­quently used to describe him. One past pupil wrote:

I doubt if ever a teacher of youth was more esteemed, admired and loved better than Father Paul was by the boys who had the good luck to be catered for intellectually by him.

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 Brother Paul Townsend

He stood with the boys for something more than a schoolmaster. He was not feared, any more than a loving father may be said to be feared, for we felt that he was sym­pathetic, just, considerate and gave us of his best. He seemed to me at the time to belong to the past, he was so courtly in his demeanour... In or out of school, he carried a perpetual smile ... The bigger boys and monitors almost adored him. (Feheney, 11)

He showed the same courtesy towards parents and exercised the same charm over them. The same past pupil described Paul's reception of himself and his mother in the Lancasterian School:

Mother took me to the Lanes. one Monday morning, where she had an interview with Father Paul, who received her, as was his wont, with great affability. Mother was charmed with him and her admiration lasted throughout her lifetime. (Feheney, 11)

Attitude towards Fenian nationalism

Paul lived through the period of intense nationalism between the Young Ireland movement of 1848 and the Fenian Rising of 1867. The evidence to hand would seem to indicate that he tried to steer a middle course between nationalism and acceptance of the status quo. A past pupil makes the following comment:

Father Paul always showed strict neutrality in these trou­bled times, and even in his lectures on Irish history, we could never gather what were his personal opinions as to the merits or demerits of the cause for which so many of his erstwhile pupils were condemned to prison or exile. He would, however, impress on us that it would be all for the better to forget in many respects 'the days of old' and remember the days to come, and the possibilities of what they were likely to hold for us. He believed that Irish boys could hold their own with any others. His counsels were many, but, like the commandments, could be reduced to two - truth and honesty. (Allen, 147)

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Views on education

In addition to possessing an inherent courtesy and graciousness, Paul was also broad-minded and tolerant. Protestant parents had no hesitation in sending their children to the Monastery School which he built in Milltown: there were some half dozen attend­ing the school in 1844, despite the fact that the town contained not only a Protestant (Church of Ireland) School, but also a Presbyterian and a Wesleyan one. Even more notable, however, was Paul's positive attitude towards, and acceptance of, the sys­ tem of education under the supervision of the National Board. When compared with the relations of the Christian Brothers with this Board, Paul's attitude would seem not only significant but strikingly anomalous.

The Irish National Schools

The Irish National Schools are of considerable significance, not only in the history of education in Ireland, but in also in that of some other English-speaking countries, because they were the first attempt at a non-denominational State system of education in the British Empire. First established in 1831, these schools, though theoretically non-denominational, gradually, over the years, became de facto denominational schools.

This latter evolution, however, took many years and, especially in the second and third quarters of the century, there was deep division among the clergy and hierarchy on the question of the National Board. Dr Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, took the view that the system gave sufficient freedom to Catholic teachers to give the essentials of Catholic education. While the majority of the Irish Bishops agreed with him, some sided with Dr John McHale, Archbishop ofTuam, who maintained that the ethos of the National Schools was opposed to that of the ideal Catholic school. Though McHale appealed to Rome on the matter, Propaganda, after some initial dithering, ultimately refused to legislate on the question, leaving it to the local ordinary to decide whether or not to support the National Schools in his own dio­ cese. (Feheney, 12)

The dissatisfaction of the Christian Brothers with the National Schools began in the lifetime of Edmund Rice. That Edmund

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 Brother Paul Townsend

himself initiated the movement to sever the connection of the Brothers with the National Board, or was even personally anxious to do so, is, as yet, however, far from established beyond doubt. This is not to deny that, at the 1836 General Chapter, a specially­ appointed Committee of Five recommended withdrawal from the National Board and had its recommendation accepted. Moreover, the Chapter, in Plenary Session, passed a resolution to the effect that 'a connection with the Board of National Education .. would ultimately prove fatal to the religious as well as to the professed object of the Institute'. (Normoyle, 281)

Edmund Rice, when informing Dr Murray of the decision of the General Chapter of 1836 to withdraw some of the Brothers' schools from the National Board, makes it clear that this was not necessarily his own personal decision: 'I have to inform your Grace that, at our last Chapter, it was decreed...' (Normoyle, 283). Though few would contend that the National Schools were all that Edmund Rice would like his schools to be, a close study of the proceedings of his council and the minutes of the chapters of the time makes it clear that his immediate advisers brought sig­ nificant pressure to bear on him to sever his connection with the National Board. There was a forceful and articulate anti-National Board lobby among Edmund's confreres in the Christian Brothers, just as there was among the hierarchy.

           Paul and the National Board

It is important to remember that the direct connection between the Presentation Brothers and Edmund Rice formally ended in the autumn of 1826 when Brother Riordan left the North Monastery and came to the South Parish, Cork, under the imme­diate authority of Bishop Murphy. Though trained as one of Edmund Rice's followers, Brother Riordan and his early compan­ ions, including Paul, had to make their own decisions, under the general authority of Bishop Murphy, from 1826 onwards. Their attitude towards the National Board of Education was similar to that of Edmund Rice in the early years of that institution. This attitude could be succinctly expressed as one of reluctant co-oper­ation. In 1836, as we saw above, Edmund and his council decid­ ed to sever their connection with the National Board and make

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all the Christian Brothers schools private. The Presentation Brothers, under Brother Michael Augustine Riordan, on the other hand decided to continue their association with the Board. One of the most practical effects of severing a connection with the Board was the financial consequences for both teachers and pupils. It meant that the Christian Brothers had to charge the children more for schoolbooks and either the parish or the par­ents had to contribute to the upkeep of the Brothers. The Presentation Brothers, on the other hand, were paid a capitation grant in lieu of salaries by the National Board and schoolbooks were supplied at cost price to the children. If the Presentation Brothers had any significant complaint against the Board, it was merely the reluctance of the latter in certain instances to grant affiliation to new schools. (Powis, Q.17,303)

Paul and the Powis Committee

In 1868 Paul appeared before the Powis Committee of Inquiry into Primary Education. He professed himself satisfied with the books of the National Board and had no objection to their covert Protestant tone or overt moralising (Powis, Q.17305). After sev­ering their connection with the Board, the Christian Brothers, on the other hand, wrote and published their own set of textbooks but had to charge the children the retail price of these books (Powis, Q. 9317). It will be seen in another contribution in this volume that this charge could sometimes involve considerable hardship for poor people in Cork at that time. Writing about his early schooldays around the time of the Powis Inquiry, Conroy says:

I was sent first to the Christian Brothers in Blarney Lane... but the lesson books were so expensive that I can yet see the sad face of my mother who could not afford the price of the new books needed whenever I was promoted. (Conroy, p. 41, this volume)      

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 Brother Paul Townsend

Paul also had no objection, as the Christian Brothers had, in accepting the National Board's directive that religious instruction be confined to a specific time of the day and so listed on the school timetable. He believed in keeping religious instruction separate from secular instruction. He even went so far as to say that he would never mix the two on the grounds that religious instruction was too solemn to have it mixed up with secular instruction (Powis, Q.17293).

In these respects, Paul's evidence differs significantly from that of Brother John Augustine Grace, who was the official represen­ tative of the Christian Brothers. Brother Grace found that the rules of the National Board restricted him and his companions 'very much' in so far as they felt that they were 'not permitted to teach in a Catholic spirit' (Powis, Qs.9,294-5). Paul, on the other hand, contended that, not only did he not experience any incon­venience in operating the rules of the National Board, but that, even if the Presentation Schools were separated from the Board, he would not be disposed to make any change in the distribution of time for religious instruction (Powis, Q.17, 283). There was, therefore, at least in 1868, a significant difference between the attitudes of the two congregations owing their origin to Edmund Rice towards co-operation with the Irish National Board of Education.

The stand taken by Paul before the Powis commission, being so much at odds with that of Brother Grace, representing the Christian Brothers, was a cause of tension between the two Congregations (O'Toole). And while Paul's evidence was undoubtedly at variance with the policy of the leadership of the Christian Brothers, especially from 1836 onwards, it is far from clear that it was in opposition to the private sentiments of Edmund Rice himself. At the time of the 1836 General Chapter, Edmund, as Superior General, was under pressure from several directions. His plan to use the profits from pay schools to finance schools for poor children was being attacked by a faction led by his successor, Paul Riordan (not to be confused with Michael Augustine Riordan), who regarded pay schools as anathema. There was also pressure from the same group to reform the struc­ture of the General Council of the Congregation. And, finally, there was the anti-National Board lobby, in which, again, Paul Riordan was prominent. It is a moot point, therefore, whether, even if Edmund Rice felt strongly that the connection with the 

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National Board should be maintained, he had sufficient physical stamina and self-confidence at that particular stage of his life to win general support for his view.

The late Brother Leonard O'Toole CFC has suggested that Edmund Rice, if allowed room to manoeuvre by the 1836 General Chapter, would not have severed his connection with the National Board (O'Toole). This point is important in any consid­eration of the contribution of the followers of Edmund Rice to popular education in Ireland. It raises the question as to whether or not the nature of that contribution, subsequent to the death of the Founder, was entirely along the lines envisaged by him.

The evidence of Brother Paul is of some significance in any evaluation of the attitude of the Christian Brothers towards the National Board and their decision to terminate affiliation and set up what was tantamount to an opposition system of primary education in Ireland. The Christian Brothers have explained this decision by claiming that the subsequent history of the Board justified the fears of the anti-national Board lobby within the Congregation. Normoyle, its premier historian, calls the decision 'both historic and heroic' and sees the Congregation renouncing its claim to Government aid in preference to sacrificing its prin­ ciples (Normoyle, 282-3).

A study of the views of Paul Townsend, however, indicates that there was an alternative approach, even at that time.

Paul Townsend, though not unique, was atypical of Roman Catholic clergy and religious of the second half of the nineteenth century in having a positive attitude towards the National Board of Education. This is not to say that he was not familiar with the system and did not understand it thoroughly, or was unaware of its dangers, but he seemed to believe that, ultimately, how the system was mediated to the pupils depended on the teacher. And his own experience convinced him that the good teacher had enormous influence on his pupils.

It should, however, be pointed out that in his evidence before the Powis Committee of 1868, Brother Paul's fellow Presentation Brother, Alphonsus L. Gaynor, fell somewhat short of Paul in his approval of the Board, though he, also, was unequivocal in stat­ing that he experienced no difficulty with the rules of the Board when imparting religious instruction to the children (Powis, Q.17, 363).

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 Brother Paul Townsend

Influence of Paul in educational policy

Brother Paul's attitude of co-operation with the National Board, and his ability to maintain a religious atmosphere in the school, while honouring the regulations of the Board, did not pass unno­ticed. A former junior teacher at the Lancasterian School, who emigrated to the USA but retained his interest in education later wrote about it:

The schools were National ones, although taught by Brothers, a most equitable arrangement, and, as such, without any expense to the parish or people, and I cannot understand to this day why some priests employ lay teach­ers in their parishes, or even employ the Christian Brothers, who are admirable teachers, but necessarily an added expense to the poor people especially when the National School System taught by the [Presentation] Brothers is so superior in its methods. (Feheney, 13) 

Beloved of his pupils

A past pupil, writing in 1880 on learning of Brother Paul's death in the South Monastery, sums up the feelings of many of his past pupils:

I cannot tell you what a flood of pleasant memories rushed through my mind on reading of Brother Paul's death. In my wanderings to and fro over this little world of ours, my mind often returns to the scenes and surroundings of my boyhood, and prominent amongst my recollections of such stands Mr Townsend. I can never forget the angelic kindly old man - he was one of the grandest characters it has ever been my lot to come across. His childish simplicity, his humility and deep piety drew children towards him with feel­ings of confidence; whilst his keen relish of wit and humour, and his sympathetic and cheerful disposition endeared him to his pupils as if he were a fond parent (Allen, 149).

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For me, I can never forget the kindly interest he took in my welfare, and there must be a great many, who, like myself, owe - in no remote degree - their success in life to him. One of the dearest wishes of my life is, that my sons will have a preceptor and such an example and incentive to good as I had in Father Paul. (Allen, 148)

Dr Higgins, Bishop of Kerry, and a past pupil of Brother Paul, paid him a very generous tribute of comparing him with the cler­gy, saying, 'Neither in nor out of Maynooth College did I ever meet his equal'. The writer of the Annals in the Presentation Monastery, Milltown, said of him, 'He was a perfect gentleman. No one could converse with him without realising his nobility of character and feeling oneself in the presence of one whose noble bearing and outstanding virtues commanded respect.' (Allen, 149)

Conclusion

Paul Townsend is a neglected personality in the history of educa­tion in Cork and, more regrettably, in the history of his own Congregation, the Presentation Brothers. He is a person, more­ over, whose ideas on education are worthy of more research. This might, conceivably, be done within the context of a study of the Lancasterian School, of which he was Superintendent for twenty­-three years. He undoubtedly had a vision of education for the poor, in line with, and arguably in harmony with that of his founder, Edmund Rice.

We have called him an exemplar of the tradition of Edmund Rice within the Presentation Brothers. This is not to say that he was trained by Edmund, or even met him more than once, and that only probably, but that in his life and work he continued a tradition begun by Edmund and gave expression to values that were dear to the Founder. These included a great practical love of and devotion to poor children; an idealism and unselfishness that enabled him to commit himself to the realisation of the Kingdom of God on earth and in so doing make use of every talent he pos­sessed. Paul was also gifted with a pleasing personality charac­terised by graciousness, benevolence and geniality that made him beloved of young and old. Moreover, though modest and humble, he had a self-confidence and independence of mind that enabled him to see the road ahead and follow without fear where his conscience beckoned.

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 Brother Paul Townsend

NOTES

1. In keeping with the editorial policy outlined in the Introduction to this volume, referencing will be kept to a min­imum. This article is an extended version of the more fully-ref­erenced article, by J. Matthew Feheney, 'Br Paul Townsend, 1798-1881', published in Presentation Studies, No. 1 (1982), 10-15. Reference has also been made in the text to the follow­ing works:

Allen, D.H., The Presentation Brothers (1993, Presentation Brothers, Cork).

Normoyle, MC, A Tree is Planted (1975, 2nd ed. 1976, Christian Brothers, Dublin).

O'Toole, Leonard, Lecture on 'Renewal in the Spirit of the Founder' at Presentation College, Reading, Berks, England, 28 October, 1980.

Report of the Royal (Powis) Commission on Primary Education. Minutes of Evidence, B.P.P. XXVIII, Pt 111.1 &

IV.l. Microfiche 76. Termed Powis Report in text after the chairman, Lord Powis.

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TWO TEACHERS

            Seán Ó Faoláin

            (From Vive Moi!)

Editor's Note: John Whelan, later known as Seán Ó Faoláin, was born in 3 Mardyke Place, next door to Presentation College, Mardyke, Cork. Later the family moved to a larger house in Half Moon Street. He spent fourteen years in two Presentation Brothers' schools, the first ten at the Lancasterian School (The Lanes), Washington Street, and the last four at Presentation College (Pres). Though he has also written about his time in The Lanes, the limit­ed space available will permit us to reprint here only part of the sec­tion in his autobiographical Vive Moi! dealing with his years in Pres. have retained his own title, 'Two Teachers: for the chapter even though he really speaks about three: Brother E.J. Connolly (The Man), Mr Edward (Doggy) Sheehan and Pádraig  Ó Domhnaill.

From my crazy-happy Lancasterian National School I duly fol­lowed the trail of my two elder brothers into the secondary or higher school run by the same order, known to the public as the Presentation Brothers' College and to its pupils as the Pres, with the final s pronounced as a z. Fees here were a large worry to my parents, even though the headmaster kindly granted my father special rates. I could list other acts of kindness by him, such as the loan of expensive books like good dictionaries, efforts to throw a few pounds in my way for the private tutoring of back­ ward pupils, and - I now suspect - much patient forbearance with a boy whom he must have considered egregious, or odd, or worse...

The Pres, in my time, which is now a long time ago, was a fake in every respect except two. It provided some sort of pseudo­ religious education, and it was a useful cramming factory for the sons of less well-heeled parents - clerks, civil servants, lay teach­ ers and the like. In this latter it sometimes succeeded to remark­able effect when it got hold of specially bright students. It was also the useful gateway through which a small number of youths

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 Two Teachers

entered the local college of the National University, there, if they were industrious, to become doctors, engineers, secondary teach­ ers, and the like. The majority went to modest posts in banks, insurance, the railways. If any reader feels that in doing so much the Pres did all it could do, I have to say that there were other schools, managed by priests, at that same time, and subject to similar governmental controls, which adapted themselves with subtlety and sophistication to the task of providing a Christian education with a humanist bias. One such was James Joyce's Jesuit School at Clongowes Wood, and whatever that school may now think of Joyce, he alwi3.ys paid high tribute to his Jesuit teachers. In fairness, however, we must remember that Clongowes Wood not only drew boys from much better-class homes than ours, but was a boarding school where the Jesuits had the boys all day long, for games, debating societies, and cultural doings of every kind. They did no less well at examinations than cramming schools like ours.

The worst about the Pres I must admit at once and be done with it - the place was snobby: it was the very essence of gen­ teelism. It was an imitation of something else somewhere else. But, to be sure, the whole of urban Ireland at that time was an imitation of something else somewhere else; and it was the dilem­ ma of the Pres, and all of urban Ireland, that it had to be so. To be of any use it had to accept the fact of life of the same imperi­ al pattern and hierarchy that my father had accepted, to fit us all into it, to help us all to succeed within it. How few escaped, could escape, or wished to escape that trap! If James Joyce had half an ounce of social conscience, of Stendhal's or Balzac's aware­ ness of the moulding power of the cash-nexus, he would have made this clear in his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He made it most near to clear when he contrasted Daedalus the poor rebel - but not against both the Empire and the Church - with Buck Mulligan, who set out to conform. My school produced some rebels but not many; it produced conformists by the ton.

I have no wish to dally over my four years in the Pres I have an idea that I have spent a good part of my life labouring under the same wish. My unhappiness there was chronic and suppressed. Even to this late day my two most frequent nightmares bring me 

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back either there or to the period of the Troubles, each always leaving me with an identical, detestable impression of having been helplessly coerced. Those nightmares were often associated in my earlier manhood with the image of myself as a pea or a lit­ tle glass marble under the towering overhang of a vast globe, large as the world, about to roll over me. If there is anything at all rebellious, obstinate or even mulish in my nature, and I think there is, it either began to take form at this time of subjection or, if it was latent in me from the moment of my birth, it flourished then like the banyan.

The prison gates closed on me the first day I started to cram French, Latin and algebra at breakback speed, an experience for whose drudgery it is not possible to find adequate language. Again, in fairness, I must say that although punishment was the sole spur within the school, by far the more painful spur came from outside the school: my father's and mother's repeated reminders that all this wonderful education was costing them great hardship and that, for their sake as well as my own, I must profit by it. Since there was no escape from this loving blackmail there were many occasions when I almost hated my parents for enduring so much for love of me.

I recall a typical occasion with a particular shame and bitter­ ness. On this day the whole of my class, on being refused early release from school to go to the Cork Park Races, a great annual event which had always hitherto meant that classes were cut short, rebelled in a body and did not return after the lunch break - all, that is, except three boys, two others and myself. We plead­ ed, quite honestly, that we did not mind being punished, if pun­ ishment ensued, but that we could not bear that our parents should be, as we knew they would be, hurt and shocked. (The parents of the two other fellows were teachers in city schools.) The next day the massed rebels were duly caned, one by one, while we three sat, heads hanging, ashamed and unmanned. Remembering that day, I was to write one of my best stories, 'Up the Bare Stairs', about a man who went through that school and passed out of it to an eminent career inspired wholly by desire to escape from his parents' enslaving love.

I based it also, in part, on a remark of my brother's when in 

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later life I said, to tease him: 'I have been told that there was only one examination in your whole career that you could not pass - a test in the Irish language. It was part of some scholarship exam­ination that would have won you three years free at the university. Is this true?'

'Couldn't pass it?' he laughed. 'I failed it deliberately. I would have had to remain at home for years if I had gone to the uni­versity. My sole ambition was to get out from under at all costs.' I wished he had not kept that secret to himself: we might have conspired to make home life more easy for both of us.

Only two subjects were presented to me at the Pres with enough feeling to fire my interest: Irish and Latin - the first because I could relate it to life, and the second because the head­ master, who was prior of the order, took a few of us brighter boys for Latin in our senior years.

He was the Reverend E. J. Connolly, known to us all as the Man, already old when I sat under him, so old that it was said that he had taught the grandfathers of some of my fellow pupils. He was a slight, smallish man, with a gentle, benevolent, com­ manding appearance, his white hair curling out from under his biretta, his voice always soft, his persistent attitude to us boys one of solemn amusement. He seemed to us a saintly man, yet at the same time we recognised in him, with admiration, a force of per­ sonality and a shrewd worldliness that none of the other Brothers had. His large family of past students were by my time already scattered all over the world, and he had hung the portraits of about a score of the more distinguished among them in the main corridor for us to admire and emulate: officers in the British Army, colonial judges, men in the Indian Civil, and suchlike. Now and again one of these old boys would drop in to visit him, and he would always bring the visitor to see his old classroom. Once I remember an Australian officer, so tall that, as he looked at the old desks in the old room, and chatted with the Man, he leaned one hand on top of the door. Once a mayor from, I think, Johannesburg came. The Man thus gave us our first glimpse of the world's possibilities. We felt that he held the keys to all sorts of interesting careers in his hands.

He had the name of being a fine Latinist, and when he took us 

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over he conveyed to us, if only by his mere tone of voice and his reverent approach as he recited the verses of Horace, Ovid or Virgil, at least some awareness of the sacred ground we were beginning to explore. I can still hear his caressing voice fondling the familiar phrases:

0 fans Bandusiae, splendidior vitro,

Dulci digne mero non sine floribus ...

(0 fountain of Bandusia, shining like crystal,

worthy of flowers and a libation of sweet wine ...)

The impression was indelible. Many years after, when following the steps of John Henry Newman in Italy, I visited Castrogiovanni, or Enna, perched high in the centre of Sicily. There I found, at its base, the Lake of Pergusa, where Pluto abducted that fair flower Proserpina while she was gathering flowers far less fair. As I stood by the lake I suddenly heard his old, soft voice murmuring in my ear: Terra tribus scopulis vastum procurrit in aequor Trinacris (Sicily pours down to the vast sea its three promontories). And:

Tot faerant illic, quot habet natura, colores:

Pictaque dissimili flore nitebat humus.

(There were as many colours there as Nature holds:

The whole earth painted with motley, gleaming flowers.)

I am sure that under a better system the Man could really have made young Latinists of some of us. He had no time. Too many examinations lay ahead like fences in a four-year race. There was no time to allow us to recite aloud, to talk to us about the authors of those poems or about classical mythology, even to show us a map of the voyages of Aeneas, to show us photographs of Cumae, or Lake Avernus, or the forum Romanum, or Sirmione, to do anything that would relate what we read to life and history. Yet he did give us a sense of form in poetry, he schematised eternal emotions, instilled a sense of immemorial piety, revealed to us that happy marriage of feeling and the intelligence which is the very heart of the classical way of life. 

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It goes without saying that he had time to do this only in a lit­ tle way, could open only a pastern gate - not even that, a cat's door; that we read no Catullus, or Juvenal, had to wait for our college days to open Pliny or Seneca; that when we read Cicero we had no time to think of Roman politics - in Cicero's day the most exciting politics in the whole history of Rome; that we pur­ sued Caesar and Livy at such a pace that they became dull tasks in mechanical translation that bored us stiff. I suppose even the Commissioners of Education had their excuse for all this sav­agery. Behind them, no doubt, there lay some other tyranny, including possibly the grim morality of Arnold of Rugby, whom many Latinists blame for cleaning up the classics, as certain other men cleaned up Shakespeare. (Had Sam Johnson gone to Rugby under Arnold, he would not have read his Catullus and Juvenal as avidly as he did at Lichfield.) Apart from what we got from the Man we had time only to cram for examinations to get jobs. That was the sum of it. An absurd instance of this: one day our English teacher, Doggy Sheehan, said, as was his way: 'Learn off the first sixteen lines of Tennyson's 'Ulysses'.'

The next day the first boy in the class recited rapidly down to 

And drunk delight of battle with my peers, and stopped.

'Go on!' said Doggy.

'That's the sixteen lines, sir.'

'But where did he drink delight of battle?' Doggy implored.

'It's not in the sixteen lines, sir.'

'Not another line?' Doggy sighed. 'Even for the sake of Far on

the ringing plains of windy Troy? '

But it was not merely Doggy's own mechanical way of saying 'The next sixteen lines for tomorrow' - as if all poetry were in quatrains - that had produced the result he deplored: both he and the boy were identical victims of a universal chain reaction started years ago and elsewhere.

In literary terms Doggy was an aged version of all Chekhov's schoolteachers, that weary, frustrated type we meet as younger men in The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull, become at last con­tented, no longer troubled even by remnant dreams. He was tall, thin, shambling, spectacled, bowler-hatted. His little briefcase 

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bore his derisive nickname Doggy scratched by some boy on a patch of leather that had obviously been sewn there to hide the word Doggy scratched beneath it by some earlier tormen­tor. He had a flat Cork accent, saying 'flaat' for 'flat', or 'waey' for 'way', and all his th's, as in 'this' or 'that', had been, after the common Cork manner, dentalised into d's - 'dis' and 'dat'. He taught, that is he crammed, English poetry, drama and prose, English history, European history, Irish history, and world geography. His methods of cramming so much so quickly may be summed up by observing that the effective text for English history was somebody's outline handled by such injunctions from Doggy as: 'For tomorrow look up the reign of Queen Anne and pick out the dates.' Inevitably, he was a butt - nobody could hold the interest of a class of lively boys under such circumstances. He would be asked 'double-meaning' ques­tions, whose tenor he either ignored or reproved by a snigger­ing, 'Stop dat now!' His piles of books were slyly toppled from his table. He suffered constant inattention and occasional row­diness. If it were not that in his senior classroom there usually were at least two other classes, and teachers, and, frequently, the Man himself in a corner coaching two or three boys preparing for special examinations, he would have been quite badgered by us. Yet, as his nickname may suggest, we all liked Doggy. He was harmless, he was necessary, and even we could see that he was put upon.

   I more than liked him because he conferred a supreme gift on me. I had his open invitation to drop down, any night I liked, to his old dusty, murky house in the Lower Road, above the Railway Terminus, and there rummage among his books - mottled, dusty, foxed, unread, piled on shelves, chairs, the floor, up the stairs, in the hall, in boxes, on tables, under tables. (He must have spotted a potential book-lover in me: for which I revere him.) He lived in this old house alone with his mother, who was said to have been a midwife, a fat, heavy-breasted, warm old soul who gave to this drape of clothes on two sticks who was our Doggy and her beloved son the surprising personal reality of a name. She spoke of him as Jack. I would pick out a book, attracted by its binding, or its gilt lettering, or the decoration on the spine, and find I held

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Congreve's Plays. He would say, 'Dey're Congreve's plays. Some of' em are dirty. Read 'em.'

I would find a sixpenny paper novel in my dusty hand.

'What's dat you have? Marie Corelli? Very romantic. Don't let your mudder see you readin' it.'

I have wondered whether the books he pressed on me were of his own taste or the midwife's: Hall Caine's The Manxman, George Moore's early novels ('Dat fellow was an awful black­ guard!'), Captain Kettle, Hewlett's The Forest Lovers, William de Morgan's Alice-for-Short, Countess von Arnim's Elizabeth books, Rider Haggard's She, Barrie's Little Minister, E. F. Benson's Dodo, mixed up with practically all of Shaw, Norman Angell's The Great Illusion, somebody's Our German Cousins, many books about Napoleon. (He had once visited France, and walked all over the site of the Battle of Waterloo.) He ignored the classics. ('I have dem all. But I'm all for the moderns now.') The reader will have noted that most of the books I mention were of the 1890s.

Did his preferences reflect early aspirations - sentimental, mil­itary, political? If so, he reached the apex of his ambition when he founded and became first, and last, president of the Cork Consumers' League, a body composed almost entirely of land­ladies, interested chiefly in the prices of domestic supplies.

Chekhov, clearly, exaggerated the sadness of the teacher type. Doggy was a drudge, but not a sad drudge. It is one definition of insanity to have an itch, and of sanity to have a niche. He had made his own modest image of himself. He had found a niche in the city's body politic to enshrine it. So much of life is a pure act of the imagination!

There were other talents whose waste impressed me, but I was most deeply marked by our one rebel, apart from the Man the only teacher there whom I fully admired. He was our Irish lan­guage teacher, who let fall, in odd words and phrases, hints about a far-off free country called the West where people talked only in Irish, wove and spun in it, fished and ploughed, drank and laughed in it, where - to me, at any rate, he gave this feeling - there was a wonderland where the star of Eden never died. I was also impressed by another teacher, Christy Flynn, to whom I had no opportunity to come closer than respect. He would pause in 

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a French lesson at, say, the word bois to recall with a few fond words Le Bois de Boulogne, or at the word invalides to wave a hand across Ireland towards the Seine and Les lnvalides. That was true education. In another not wholly dissimilar way the Man would leave a mark when, at five minutes to twelve, he would take out his silver watch, rub its glass between his thumb and his palm, halt lessons with a word he was always uttering, 'Gentlemen!: and talk for four minutes about somebody like Marshal Foch ('A daily communicant, gentlemen'), or of his reg­ iment of cuirassiers drawn up before a priest for general absolu­ tion before entering battle. (This, of course, was right up my alley, plumes, swords, helmets and all that splendid fudge.) Then, while we were still seeing his picture, he would take off his biret­ ta and lead us into the Angelus at the stroke of noon that, by then, sounded like a bugle calling us to charge!

      I must say more about our Irish teacher, Pádraig Ó Domhnaill: young, handsome, eager and quite uncowed. He, too, had his own self-image, as we all discovered the day the news ran through the school that he had been seen in the streets dressed in the full dark-green uniform of the Irish Volunteers (forerunners of the IRA) leading a band of what, I fear, The Man would have called canaille, on some military exercise. Had he been any other man I would have scoffed at him. I was on the Man's side, the saintly­ worldly side, with Foch and his cuirassiers, with the Indian Civil, Sandhurst, gallant little Belgium, brave little Montenegro, and so on, beside all of which these Irish Volunteers were nothing but vulgar corner-boys' nonsense. But I so admired Ó Domhnaill as a man that this wind of rumour about him ran over me with the shiver of a question and a doubt. Besides, I gathered that he had worn a handsome uniform with a hat pinned up on one side. 'Was there a plume on it?' I asked eagerly, and felt disappointed when they said, 'No, no plume.' I have talked earlier of pools brimming and fountaining. The brimmings one can more or less easily recall and record; not so easily the last glorious moments of pouring-over, of fountaining revelation, chiefly because they so often come not with a sense of triumph but of surrender. So it was with me and the revelation of the Rising of 1916 for which young Ó Domhnaill was preparing.

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  My heart did not burst with excitement and joy when I heard that a rising had broken out in Dublin that Easter Monday morning of 1916. I had not more than a week previous seen somebody, who might have been Pádraig Ó Domhnaill, drilling a shamble of forty or fifty men in the open place beneath our windows in Half Moon Street - rudely accoutred fellows, with no uniform other than a belt around their ordinary working clothes, only a very few bearing rifles. As I watched them fumble and stumble my blood had curled against them, they were so shabby, so absurd, so awkward, so unheroic-looking. They were, as my father said, as the Man would have said, disgracing our country: and this while real, glorious war was flashing and booming in Flanders and France. When we heard of the Rising my father and I raged at its betrayal. The British Army would clean 'those fel­lows' up in twenty-four hours. Then they would all get what they damn well deserved - the low ruffians, the common corner-boys! Only bit by bit did my loyalties veer as the days passed, one by one, and I found that they were still holding out. Dublin was shelled and burning, that noble city I had traversed with poor Tom Boyhan, now dead in France, but still they were holding out. There was a charge by British cavalry down O'Connell Street, in the best G. A. Henty, Light Brigade tradition of gallant lunacy, and I, who should have been all for that splendid gesture, felt the world turning around in my stomach when I heard, with satisfaction, that the ruffians and corner-boys had mowed them down. I continued to resist until the final surrender, and that broke me. Irishmen were surrendering to Englishmen, with dig­nity. That day I stole away up to my attic, and knelt on the scrubbed floor and looked out over the roofs of Cork under its tent of clouds, and I wept for them. When, in the following weeks, the British took out the leaders and shot them in ones, and twos, and threes, everybody and everything I had believed in began to tumble about me. Henty, my father, my home. The Man held out longest, because although he disapproved of the whole thing he was mild in his reproof. 'Foolishness!' he said. 'Foolishness on all sides!' For another long time, two years and more, I held out with him.                           

      I noticed one day that Ó Domhnaill, who was still with us after 1916,

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was wearing a plain gold ring in his lapel and asked him what it meant. He explained that what he was wearing was An Fáinne, the Irish words for 'The Ring', a token which meant that whoever wore it could converse in our native tongue with anybody he met who also wore it. I at once told him I wanted to belong to this circle, and he encouraged me to prepare for the oral test. He began to talk to me in Irish whenever he had the chance. He told me I should start reading poetry and prose aloud, and loaned me a couple of books of Irish verse for the purpose.

One of these books contained the simple Gaelic verses of one Tomas Ó Suilleabhain, a Kerry postman of the nineteenth cen­tury. I kept the book for years. I cherished it solely for its fron­tispiece - a smudgy photograph showing a rocky promontory on the Atlantic, a ruined chapel, an old graveyard, a few small fields. Time out of mind I used to open the book at this photograph and gaze and gaze at it. Sea, chapel, graveyard, lonely rock, poor fields - they became my new symbols, transfigured by my long­ing for that liberty from my passionate flesh in a romantic, nobly patterned world which I now equated with remoteness, hardness, age and a traditional life whose pieties they rounded. It was not the place in the photograph that I revered or wished to possess but the absoluteness or essence of the entire life that I imagined made it, so that what I was really shaping in my mind whenever I looked at that photograph was a myth of life for which, so far, the only bodily vessel I knew was the wet, worn plain of West Limerick, with its lichened limestone walls, its distant sea, its bat­tered Norman ruins, its dead, my dead. Gazing at that picture, I was creating a new legend, a new myth. I was unconsciously writ­ing it, peopling it. I was engaged in every writer's first task - hypothesising life, imagining himself in it, as it, another Adam, self-created, fecund.

My new symbols were, of course - I say 'of course' because such is the course of nature - exhaustible symbols. Most symbols are. That apple, also, would fall with a whisper from its tree. Yet, before it fell life was to seem one long summer, many years of it, during which I was to know the reality behind those appealing images and during which the tree that bore them had to die for everybody else as well as me. All art, Pater said, is life seen

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through a temperament. One modifies one's views but one's tem­perament is a given thing, an indestructible and unalterable necessity.

Thanks to Ó Domhnaill, I was wearing my Fáinne in the sum­mer of 1917. That summer I went for the last time to County Limerick with my mother. I remember very little of that holiday. I remember my Uncle John, on the farm, laughing and saying,

'Haha, John, I see they're making a fine, tall, straight young man out of you!' I remember cycling about the country on my own in search of old abbeys and castles, such as the ruined castle of the last of the Desmond earls at Askeaton, or the friary of the Kildare earls at Adare. In a dim, general way I recall wandering around the Commons when my uncle would be at work on his humble plots of ground, or sitting daydreaming for hours by the lake, or walking the small white limestone roads - once with a purpose: to see Curragh Chase, where the poet Aubrey de Vere lived - or merely lying in the high-walled cottage orchard on Roche's Road reading, reading, reading, or idly watching the swifts dart like bullets into the ivy hanging a foot thick on the walls, or the Atlantic clouds passing ever so slowly from wall to wall, and not a sound but the inevitable crowing cock far away, or the dim clop of a straying horse's hooves.

The school year after that summer was my last, and it was cli­mactic.

I was now eighteen, and by this time we were all for the Rebels, but still only as an idea, unembodied. The Pres, and the Man, so far changed as to allow a group of us to start a hurling team - hitherto the only game played in the school had been 'English' rugby. The Man gazed at me in amused surprise the first day he saw me going off with my hurley stick of new white ash and my togs. 'You?' he said. 'Games?' For my part, it was merely an effort to give body to my vague rebelly ideas, and it took some doing, because although Uncle John might say I was fine and straight I was also skinny, had never played any games, and was deeply con­scious of how silly I looked with my long spindly legs in white shorts, running helplessly and uselessly around the field after the flying ball, so inept that my fellows had to beg me to desist because I was a danger to them (and to myself) with my wild

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swinging ash. That summer I won, with difficulty, an entrance scholarship to the university, and that summer the Man so far yielded to the new winds blowing over Ireland as to permit the college to be used as a summer school open to the public at large, men and women, young and old, for the teaching of Irish. Again encouraged by Ó Domhnaill, I attended it. Here, having done his work, he drops out of my story. No other man has influenced my life so much and so quietly as he. 

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I told the story of the cats in the graveyard and others I had heard on the road. I became part of the school in no time. I was accepted by the other boys there, without the usual reception that is set aside for boys who enter St Joseph's for the first time. I had, of course, to learn to adjust myself to a way and routine of life that was com­pletely alien to me. I was gravely handicapped by my lack of any type of previous schooling, but, as if by a miracle, by the time I was six months at the school I was able to read and write fluently. The method of teaching practised at the school was, in my opin­ion when I first started, silly, and I said this too, to Brother Columba. The following week, however, I was put in another class where I was given a new school reader. The teacher in sec­ond class was Brother Theobald.

When he started reading the book to the class I fell in love with it straight away. In it were stories of Setanta, Fionn McCumhaill, Cúchulainn, The Fate of the Children of Lir and others. Here at last was my world, and the moment I heard them I was learning, and did not look back.

Within a short time I was moved up another standard, to third class, under the guidance of Brother Eugene. There is no doubt that it was the book of stories that created my interest for learn­ing. Somehow the tales of Setanta, Tír-na-nÓg and that seemed very familiar to me. Somewhere I had heard these tales before, when I was on the road. Only the characters were different.

Brother Eugene was a man of fifty who had spent thirty or so of those years in the Order of the Presentation Brothers. He was different from the other Brothers in that he spoke with an English accent. He never taught Irish or singing, which made me quite happy. He was a man who loved English literature, and was forever telling stories and reading. Brother Eugene first became interested in me one day when he recited a poem by Longfellow to the class.

'Today,' Brother Eugene said, 'we are going to recite "The Village Blacksmith" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I want to know whether you like it or not, and most important, why you like or dislike it.' After reciting the first verse of the poem, Brother Eugene asked if any boy in the class had heard the poem before.

 

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that I could pour out questions without hindrance from my fel­low classmates. Here too, in private, I was able to talk to him about road life and about my hatred of it.

At one of these sessions Brother Eugene said to me, 'Seán, you are a very remarkable boy. You have an unquenchable thirst for learning. Can you tell me why?'

'Oh, because I like it,' said I, 'particularly your stories, although some of the stories you tell are different than the ones I heard at home.'

‘And how do you mean “different” Seán?’, asked Brother Eugene.

'Ah, like St Patrick and that. You never tell about him being a traveller, like I was told on the road.'

'That is because you may have heard a false version', said Brother Eugene.

'No, it was not false, it's the one in the schoolbook that's wrong, because St Patrick was a travelling man,' I replied.

'With Irish history, English, Danish and what have you, perhaps yours is not false after all. There is one thing I want you to do, Seán, and that is to tell me some more of your stories about the past, the ones you have heard around the campfires I mean. Will you do that?'

'Yes, Brother,' I said, 'I will tell you lots if you want me to.'

Thus I continued my questions. After the first year in school I had mastered reading, and in so doing read very widely about Ireland and its religious and literary history.

'Brother,' I said to my favourite teacher one day, 'in all the his­ tory books I have read of Ireland and England, there is never a word mentioned about the travellers.'

'Maybe', said the Brother politely, 'there were no travellers then.'

'Oh, but there were', I said. 'Even St Patrick used to travel with them, as well as the monks and the priests.'

'Yes, Seán, this may have been so, but the history of any coun­try is very hard to pinpoint, especially that of many centuries ago. You must always remember that there were not many educated men in those days and you have to be very well educated to write any history.'

'This isn't true,' I said. 'Nearly every famous writer or poet of the past had hardly any education.'

 

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'And who, may I ask you, told you that?' asked the Brother.

'Oh, a very old friend of mine on the road; he was old too, so he should know,' I answered.

'Well, to a certain extent, I suppose I shall have to grant you that.'

School for me was a godsend. I enjoyed every day I spent there, mostly for the learning. Reading books was my earthly heaven. 'All's well that ends well'; alas, with me this was never to be. Soon, like a cork, I was to be tossed out on the ocean of life, I was to be pared, as is the wattle, to support the rigging pole - to become, in other words, a cog in the wheel.

I could not voice against this for to do so was like the clucking hen voicing the linnet. To the tober I was born, and to the tober I must return.

It was on a bright March day in 1948 that I left St Joseph's Industrial School in Cork to return once more to the road. A week or two previous to my leaving, my father came to collect me. However, over a mistake in my age, he had to return home to get my birth-certificate. According to the school records I was only thirteen years old while my father, who was right, claimed I was sixteen.

When I arrived at the station at Dara after my long journey from Cork, I was greeted by a much older mother, a mother with a haggard face. Her lonely eyes were misted with tears, as were mine.

'Oh son,' she said, 'you have changed, but it's lovely to see you.'

'You have changed too, Mammy,' I said, 'but why the tears?'

'Oh, Alannah, I'm happy, that's all,' she said.

129

COLLEGE ON A TRAFFIC ISLAND!

Dan Donovan 

Time plays funny tricks on us. Recently, while adjudicating a drama festival in the UCC Granary Theatre on the Mardyke, Cork, I found myself once again in a familiar and well-loved place: my old school - Presentation College, where, as a student, I learned, and, as a teacher, taught, over a period of nearly sixty years. I first entered what was to become my second home through the old Western Road gate, before the Mardyke section had been opened up and developed, in the autumn of 1932.

As I stood in the familiar concrete yard, I began to hear again the saws cutting down the trees of the old orchard garden attached to No. 21 Dyke Parade and the mixers preparing con­ crete for the new extended playground that would link the Western Road with the Mardyke. In my mind's eye, I could see again the old sheds running behind the original school buildings and the coke yard with its great mounds of fuel. This was laboriously transported in a wheelbarrow by Denis Buckley, or Bill Hannon, to the old furnace under the lunch room, until oil-fir­ing mercifully reduced the drudgery. It was a quiet afternoon and I reflected on the extraordinary contrast in the noise levels of a school, from the screaming, shouting and play of hundreds of youngsters, to the more subdued murmur of learning and teach­ing, to the total stillness when the students had gone home for the day or were on holidays. In my mind's eye I also saw shadowy figures from the past moving about: there was 'The Man', with his slow shuffle; 'Lolly' (Brother Loyola), with his brisk, decisive movements: Evangelist, with his long stride; Vincent with his head held sideways; Dan Duggan, bustling with purposeful stride; Con Buckley, clutching a briefcase and a huge bundle of exercise copies; 'The Beet', with his portly but sedate movement; Johnny Mahony, bowler-hatted, retreating round the corner to the Western Road after his day's work. The memories merge into a pattern because so many of these people were associated with

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 College on a Traffic Island!

the College over a long period, giving it an atmosphere of unusu­al stability and continuity that makes recall easy. I found I was standing on the site where a circular wooden seat had been made around one of the few surviving tree stumps. Alas, there is now no trace of this seat or of the tree stumps: what secrets the smooth concrete surface of today hides!

The main entrance in my time was from the Western Road, where the trams were still noisily clanking and the high-pitched sound of their engines filled the air as they accelerated away from the stop. I well remember the 'Muskerry Dasher', in its station across the road: when it came to life in the afternoon we knew that our time of release was at hand. I often raced it on my bicycle out the Straight Road and it was a matter of pride to catch up with it at the Carrigrohane halt before parting company with it again, as I climbed the hill, past the old mill to my home in Ballincollig. My first introduction to schooling in the local national school had not been too successful and my poor mother, who was Principal of the girls' school, decided to send me to Pres, after many tears and nightmares. My brother, Tim, had already matriculated there. The change worked, and, escorted by an older friend, the late Pa Joe Ahem, subsequently a dentist, I settled to a routine, first as pupil and later as a teacher, that has given me a precious legacy of friendships and happy memories.

Even to someone as young as I was, though in no conscious manner, the tradition and atmosphere of Pres, was palpable. From its opening on the Western Road in 1888 the careers of two Brothers were synonymous with the running of the Junior and Senior Departments. From the old 'Lanes' on Lancaster Quay, Brother Ignatius Connolly, known always as 'The Man', brought many of his students to the new foundation and his connection with the College lasted until his death in 1944. I made closer contact with Brother Loyola ('Lolly'), who ruled the Junior School until his death in 1940. My first year or so was spent in the first floor of the second block, erected in 1901, with the old open-plan space where several classes and their teachers were accommodated. This, in itself, was a distracting and noisy arrangement, but, when the bedlam of traffic outside was added, you got challenging, if not difficult, teaching and learning conditions.

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Loyola was tall and vigorous as well as being an excellent disciplinarian. However, his innate kindness kept shining through. My abiding memory is of his tuition of me and a small group of three or four others who had missed the regular prepa­ration for First Communion. We received special coaching in his little office off the Physics Laboratory. This little room was full of books, jotters, pens, nibs, jars of ink and cardboard boxes of pur­ ple school skull-caps, beautifully arranged according to size and wrapped in tissue paper. Our study of the small green Catechism was often interrupted by a customer for one of these items from his shop. One day I remember he sold a cap, shrewdly judging the size with a sharp glance at the customer's head, fitting it with a brisk precision, while not forgetting to collect payment at the end of the transaction. He was always doling out pennies for the bus, especially on wet days and, as a country boy - Ballincollig was then five miles west in the heart of the country - I was often the recipient of sixpence. He was always well groomed, with sil­ver hair shining under the biretta that he and 'The Man' invari­ably wore. The space situation was improving rapidly and soon I was under Sebastian in No. 21 Dyke Parade, where new rooms and offices were being refurbished. I was taught by a Mr Franklin in Second Class and then by Michael and Nessan with Carthage Kelleher for my Confirmation year. By this time we were back in the old building which was now neatly partitioned into four classrooms. 'Lolly' seemed to be always present and active, stop­ ping for a moment to talk, to ask about oneself and one's family, never delaying too long. Part of the kindly ambience of the place seemed to diminish with his death in 1940, and I remember with affection his practical, kindly and thorough teaching, his simple and direct spirituality, as he prepared us in that little office for first Communion, bringing us beforehand to a kindly Franciscan, Fr Oliver, in Broad Lane, to make our first Confession, without fear or embarrassment.

     By the time I entered the Secondary Department, 'The Man' largely devoted his attention to the famous Bank Class to ensure that his staff - 'Doggy' Sheehan (memorably evoked by Sean Ó Faoláin in Vive Moi!, Johnny Mahony and Tim Donoghue ('Beetie') - could survive in some kind of order and impart a

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modicum of information and skills in that tough assignment. While Loyola was brusque and pragmatic, 'The Man' was gentler, small, red-apple cheeked, quietly spoken with a strong nasal accent and a tendency to preface every remark with 'Eh', his sternest term of opprobrium being, 'Eh! you're a great puppy'. He also had the ability to appear suddenly, surfacing out of the blue at some crisis point. He rambled from class to class giving little ten-minute pep talks, the content of which varied little over the years. I, too, in my turn, heard his tributes to Marshal Foch, 'a daily communicant, boys!' Like Loyola, he was devoted to Mary of the Presentation whose life and work provided an inspiring educational ideal and a living model for the daily task in hand.

Yet, there was a roguish realism about 'The Man', noticeable, for instance, in the twinkle in his eye. Over the years, I recall that, in his little ten-minute chats, he would commend the Rosary as the ideal form of prayer in the lower classes. Later, in the middle years, he would remark, 'Never forget to say a decade of the Rosary every day'. Finally, in the senior class, I can recall him telling us of a former pupil, now given to drink, in a remote out­post of the far-flung empire, never forgetting to say a single 'Hail Mary' every day. Eventually, in extremis, the required spiritual aid came just in time. 'Doggy' Sheehan always referred to 'The Man' as Mr Connolly, which, in itself, revives a memory of the old title of the Brothers, 'The Gentlemen of the Presentation'. In a prize I received for passing the Intermediate Certificate in 1942 (a copy of Corkery's  Stormy Hills), he signed himself 'E. J. Connolly'. After the National University of Ireland conferred an honorary LLD on him for services to education, he was often affectionately referred to as 'The Doc'. Like Edmund Rice, he was acutely concerned about encouraging his pupils to develop a steady involvement with the less well-off, who lived in Sheare's Street, Crosses Green and the lanes off Barrack Street in the immediate environs of the College. He devoted himself to organ­ising the School Conference of the St Vincent de Paul Society. He'd remind the members weekly, 'Eh, are you going to the Vincent de Paul tonight?' If, for any reason, you failed to attend, he would check with the Chairman, the late Pat Foley of Castle Street, and, next day, he would say, 'You weren't at the Vincent de

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Paul last night. Make sure to be there next week'. He died in 1944 during my first year at the University, and I can still recall the palpable sense of loss and affection among all who were pre­sent at his funeral. With his complex brand of simplicity, warm humanity, scholarship and deep spirituality, he was a remarkable product of his time. His example and memory continue to inspire. The old moulds have been broken and too much has changed too fast.

Evangelist Griffin was another great influence. During his long career in the College he was a fine teacher and administrator. In his two long spells as Superior he ran the entire College from a well-filled wall press, packed with books and old examination papers and a black notebook that contained all the lists and infor­mation he required He had bushy eyebrows surmounting grey eyes that acquired the cutting power of a laser if he glared at you in anger or annoyance. He had odd speech inflections, ending sentences with propositional phrases like 'in it' or 'for it' or 'in connection with it'. His staff notices were famous. Of a Cup Match, 'If win, half-day; if not, classes as usual'.

He wasted neither words nor time and asked no one to do any­thing he was not prepared to do himself (his philosophy was 'Be there and keep them at it'. In Religious Instruction classes his speciality was Dr Sheehan's Apologetics, which was a storehouse of doctrine and relevant information, especially in the detailed foot­ notes and objections, which, I must confess, were often more cogently expressed and raised more hares than the main body of the text. Little foxed Evangelist, and the 'text', another great word of his, provided the answer. He often could not understand what was bothering someone. 'It's all in the text', he would say, and the comprehensive Sheehan suited his approach well. His shyness and basic reticence concealed a great concern and awareness. My widowed mother died in 1941, and, as a result, my scholastic per­formance disimproved considerably. Neither was it helped by changes that were happening in the range of school activities.

I was in the school unit of the LDF while Der Breen, myself and others had established a thriving drama group and were tak­ing part in drama festivals. (Evangelist asked, 'Will there be girls in it?"); The Debating Society, founded some years earlier by

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Brother Austin, had become a very lively force, and I also got my place on the College rugby team. Unlike students today, labour­ ing zealously for points, I had a beatific sixth year, one of the best of my life from the standpoint of a general education. One day, towards the end of the last term, Evangelist and Vincent bore down on me and suggested that I enter the Scholarship Group, with a view to obtaining some kind of an scholarship or exhibi­ tion UCC. The College had always prided itself on getting a number of these awards annually in keeping with its high acade­mic standards. They laid down the law and practically insisted that I attempt what then seemed to me the impossible. Their faith in my ability amazed me, but they also pointed out how welcome any cash input would be to my family in our fairly straitened circumstances. I never worked so hard and, to my own surprise, I succeeded. In the process I learned something that proved of benefit all through my life, that the trust and consid­ered, dispassionate advice of good people, acting disinterestedly for the welfare of others, is a powerful motivating factor in achievement.

I am trying to convey by all this my awareness of a constant, caring atmosphere that formed part of the ambience of those days. It sprang from the dedication and spiritual resources which animated so many of my mentors and their sense of the long tra­ dition to which they were heirs. It was the Feast of the Presentation on 21 November, always a school holiday, that focused my own understanding on the joint influence of Mary and Edmund Rice in the Order. It was an invariable practice that prior to the feast day, time would be given to this subject in reli­gion classes. At one time I remember Brother Austin, who was doing some research into the Order and its efforts in the early years to provide popular education in Cork, talking about Brother Augustine Riordan and some of his companions, who, in the 1820s, preferred to carry on with the old Presentation model of Brotherhood rather than that of Jean Baptist De La Salle, which had been adopted in Mount Sion in Waterford. He had a strong feeling that Edmund Rice's role as co-founder of the twin congregations which stemmed from the original Presentation Society, needed to be retold and re-emphasized. It was also a fact

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that at least four of the lay staff in 'Pres.' had spent some time in the Christian Brothers and they certainly brought a dedication and sense of vocation to every aspect of their work there.

I had personal experience of the help and kindness of the staff when I returned to teach at my old school. So many of them were genuinely pleased that I had decided to follow my own family's long teaching tradition and my former teachers welcomed me as a colleague. At that time there were about ten lay staff and five or six Brothers in the Secondary Department. The camaraderie was great, the morale high and the spirit of co-operation, allowing for the inevitable tensions in any education establishment, extreme­ly good. I continued with my dramatic work and with the Debating Society. Affected by the tenor and ethos of my training, it became the practice of the Presentation Theatre Guild to pre­sent a Passion play or a religious drama each year, preferably dur­ing Lent. The advantage was that you could usually use a fairly large cast and involve them in the experience of mounting a pro­duction. Behold Your King, Caesar's Friend, The Trial of Christ (presented in the old Opera House). The Veil, T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, The Strong are Lonely, a fine play on the story of the Jesuit settlement in Paraguay, recently treated in the film The Mission, all come to mind. It would be difficult to present plays of this kind in these more secular times, but the Guild lasted independently until 1964, when it was gradually absorbed into the New Everyman movement.

   Mention of The Strong are Lonely reminds me that we were also aware of the missionary work of the Order. Brothers came back from Canada and told us of the contrasting lifestyle and demands made on them in such differing conditions. 'Yankee Dan' (Brother Albertus Reen, RIP, who lived to reach his century) was a marvellous raconteur, who sometimes spent the greater part of his class periods regaling his eager listeners with reminiscences of his years in Canada, leading Dan Duggan, who had his class the following year, to remark, 'Ye know all about Montreal but not enough about Allen's Latin Grammar. Big Brother Cassian too, often told us how he dealt with a blasphemous obscenity about the Mother of God: 'Off with the coat, boys! Off with the col­lar! Up with the fists! Laid him out boys, laid him out!' Looking

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at Cassian, his fine physique striking even in old age, we could well believe it.

I can also recall when Archbishop Finbarr Ryan visited, and I attended a public lecture in the Dairy Science Lecture Hall of UCC, where he talked of the educational needs in his archdiocese of Port of Spain in the West Indies. Many Brothers left to follow a new challenge, doing marvellous pioneer work which provi­dentially had most welcome reciprocal benefits for Pres, itself. My final years in the old building were spent assisting, as Vice­ Principal, two of that loyal band who spent many years abroad, Brothers Jerome and Bartholomew. Jerome in particular returned at a time when the College was somewhat in the doldrums. Times were changing and a fresh sense of direction and impulse were badly needed. Such a revitalizing energy could only come from outside. Re-organization and new structures provided the key motivating forces that were to transform the rather stodgy and static atmosphere and re-energise all of us, at the same time restoring the kind of prestige and dynamism the College former­ly had. Again, Brother Jerome's strong social conscience, like that of 'The Man' of yore, led to the foundation and development of SHARE. Once more it was only fitting that history repeat itself when the National University of Ireland awarded him an hon­orary doctorate in recognition of his work. Subsequently, Cork Corporation gave him the Freedom of the City. It was a great privilege to serve with him and his successor, Bartholomew, who was to be my last Principal in the old building. The crowded con­ditions and the fact that the building had virtually become a traf­fic island led to some decisive thinking and action on his part. There was only one thing to be done: 'Seo chuige in ainm Dé'. In a spirit of complete faith and trust, albeit in indifferent health, and towards the end of a long, varied and useful career, he brought his building scheme to fruition and ensured a worthy building for the College into the next century.

With the transfer of the old Pres across the Mardyke to the ample space and facilities of the fine new complex, my memories come to an end. As I stand in the familiar site, still fully used and well-maintained by its present owners, UCC, I part company with all who laboured here for so long. When the traffic light

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turns green, I cross the wide thoroughfare of the present Mardyke, crammed with traffic flowing into Cork city from the west, and visualise it as it was when I first came here in 1932: a pleasant, tree-lined walk for pedestrians and cyclists only, flanked by the murky waters of the Dyke stream.

106

NO REGRETS, NO CHIPS, JUST THANKS

            Alan Titley

I have always thought autobiography to be the first refuge of the writer bereft of imagination and the last refuge of the person with nothing to say. Certainly, experience of Irish literature this cen­tury has given us rich and thick examples out of the memoir industry of everything from the dull and plodding to the sloppy and slushy. Writing about self has been variously drawn from a past that was so beautiful that it never could have existed, even while going through the fields to school, or so awful that it would have taken a dark and barracked sensibility to invent. Most of us have lived with a mottled experience that we have never pre­ sumed to have been so different from anybody else's that we feel it should be thrust upon the public, either as self-congratulation or self-flagellation - with their attendant pleasures for the writer. Besides, memory is the most porous and fleeting of sieves. We all come through because of a birdy-song practice of memory - a little bit of this and a little bit of that. But why those little bits survive rather than the long days and weeks and months that van­ ish forever is something that the greatest committees of psychol­ ogists and and brain surgeons will never answer. We remember neither birth nor death and most of life in between is an erased tablet. Yet what we still do every day is a result of what we have learned, and more particularly of what we have learned so well that we cannot recall when we first knew it.

Like everyone else I can vividly remember my first day at school, or, if I can't I have invented it from numerous essays which I must have been forced to write. But I do not remember my second day, or my third, or my seventh, or my three thousand and thirty-third. And yet they must have been the days in which the learning was done, in which the forgotten bits were put together to help me know what I think I now know. For school­ing is a matter of routine rather than a series of eurekas and epiphanies, a matter of slowly acquired skills rather than the

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miraculous opening of doors and windows upon enchanting vistas. So my only contribution to autobiography has to be the grate­ful acknowledgement of all that I have forgotten I ever learned but which I now demonstrably know. There are, of course, the anecdotes of this teacher or that who by force of personality or by the good fortune of eccentricity has given us stories to tell round the fire or in the club or wherever takes your fancy when senti­ mentality calls. And there are those moments of illumination which come by accident or good fortune when all the ground­work has been done. But teaching, no less than learning, is pri­marily a matter of slog and slog again, which is not in any way an excuse for it to be boring, but a recognition that the first business of a school is to impart skills and knowledge and that all other things shall be added thereto.

I had the fortune and grace to be blessed with good teachers and good teaching almost all of my instructed life both in Scoil Chríost Rí national school and later in Coláiste Chríost Rí sec­ondary school. I knew they were good because there were always those few who did not measure up and we all knew the differ­ence. You might say, 'So what? Teachers are supposed to be good no more or no less than any other professional.' I have no stick to measure the competence of teachers against doctors or dockers or consultants or coopers, but during a life spent in education at first, second and third levels and in three continents, both giving and receiving, I have no doubt that what I got from school was of the highest standard and for me something very special. There are no chips on the shoulders and no gripes in the belly. Being grateful is not as strong or as grabbing a feeling as blaming it all on one's roots or on some teacher or on an 'irrelevant' curricu­lum, but it is the seedbed from which we all grow.

Nothing too exciting yet: no beatings, no abuse, no savagery, no narrow-minded jingoistic Jansenism. As a writer I have been cursed with a happy childhood and a fulfilling education. More pain and bigotry might have led to a livelier appreciation of the autowritings of the begrudgers. This is not to deny the toughness of it for those for whom it was tough, but we have lived enough in the world to differentiate between the bitter harshness of real­ ity and the literary expectations of fashion. Education itself

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 No Regrets, No Chips, Just Thanks

should begin to be a bulwark against disappointment and the false consciousness of being always sinned against. In the debate between free will and determinism we have no choice but to plump for the former. And yet if asked what is the single greatest determining factor in anyone's life I am tempted to say it is luck. Fate is an older word, grace a Christian one. Strip the wrapping from luck, however, and you get a convergence of personal, social and historical factors which can at least be partly explained.

Luck in education does not and did not fall unbidden from the sky. It comes about because someone, somewhere, decided to do something, somehow. The education that the Presentation Brothers give and have given has come about because Edmund Rice decided that it should be so. It could have been otherwise. It could have been that it never was. That he did was grace, or fortune, or luck, but it can never be said that it was not good, nor great, nor for the betterment of many generations of Irish chil­dren.

Down the line in Coláiste Chríost Rí of the 1960s the glow of that decision to educate the everybodies was still warm.

Sometimes when I hear the word 'ethos' I want to go for my gunge-detector. It is certainly an over-used and now much shriv­elled word that is desperately trying to capture the ineffable and intangible. Ethos can most certainly not be bottled or packaged or marketed or nailed to the ground. And when you read certain English public-school memoirs overflowing with ethos you wish the Greeks had never had a word for it. It may, however, be just a fancy word for 'atmosphere'or, to be more accurate, atmosphere with a purpose attached. And we can never deny that places and events and times and people have atmosphere, whatever else they lack.

The problem is in detaching or unpacking the specifics of the school from the specifics of time and place and personality. No doubt it cannot be done. I do recall us being inordinately and unjustifiably confident whether we were taking part in games or debates or drama festivals. The fact that we were often beaten didn't dent that confidence. I was later told that this is just part of the Cork swagger which can never admit to being second best to

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