The House on the North Circular Road: Fragments from a Biography

THE HOUSE ON THE NORTH CIRCULAR ROAD FRAGMENTS FROM A BIOGRAPHY WARM IT WAS THAT EVENING; warm with the lingering sun of a lingering summer, as he stood outside Cahill's the Chemists where the meandering North Circular Road is bisected by the wide straight line of Dorset Street. Dorset -Street ... why, the man he was on his way to meet was born here, not two hundred yards from the birthplace of Richard Brinsley Sheridanl <1(s a straight walk up Portland Rowand N. C. Road," the letter said; "cross over Dorset Street and continue up the N. C. R. passing Cahill's Chemist Shop on the left hand side as you cross." So far so good. "The house (422, on the comer of a lane) has a small sycamore growing in the front garden, and is about fifty steps from Cahill's the Chemists." Fifty steps, and here was the house at the comer of a lane. But was that a sycamore? Hardly the tree of William Barnes: When sycamore leaves wer a spreaden/Green-ruddy, in hedges. Thin, shrivelled, soot-laden, sparrow-haunted, a true child of the tenements; its sickly branches, in which no nightingale would ever sing, catching the last rays of the sinking sun and exuding the nostalgic frisson of a Chopin nocturne. A sycamore, forsooth! The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamo1'e tree. "Dear Gaby," the letter said. "Come up to-moITow, Wednesday, say, about 7.30 up to 8 o'c." It was now 7.45 p.m. on Wednesday, September, 3rd., 1924. He looked up at the house, a three-story tenement with basement and attic. A respectable tenement, its hall door closed; landlord's orders. Broken stone flags leading to two steps leading over broken stone flags to two steps leading to the heavy hall door. On the left, the front drawing-room, its two tall windows overlooking the wizened grass plot of the railed-in front garden, flaunting the spindly sycamore. This was his place now. It was here in the front drawing-room that he received his first royalties on The Shadow of a Gunman; it was here he wrote his ill-fated "Kathleen Listens In." It was to this room he returned after the Abbey Theatre's curtain had fallen in silence on that symbolistic farce in which he had lacerated every one of the far too many political parties in the infant Free State. It was here he sat down at his second-hand typewriter and swore an oath that the like would 223 224 MODERN DRAMA December never happen again; and then, still shrinking with the shame of the few halfhearted handclaps, bent over the machine and fingered out the opening line of Juno and the Paycock: "On a little bye-road, out beyant Finglas, he was found." What was that he had said? One knock for the first floor, two for the second, three for the third: and if you want the attic you'll have to shout. One knock; and here he was, in slippers, slacks, a brown pull-over, and an aura of hospitality. Carefully closing the hall door he bowed his visitor into the room. Its most remarkable feature was its fireplace and the fire it held. You felt the heat of it as soon as you entered the room. Not till the fire is dying in the grate/Look we for any kinship with the stars. Years after he was to write on the frontispiece of his first published work, The Story of the Citizen Army: "To Gaby Fallon, first friend in Literature and the Drama, in remembrance of many important and pleasant hours sitting couched in front of the Big Fire in 422 North Circular Road." A stretcher-bed to the left of the door, its head towards the near window. A wash-stand beside the bed-head. Rough book-shelves lined with second-hand books between the windows. A small table under the far window supporting the well-worn typewriter. Beside it a plain chair. Each side of the fireplace shelved cupboards. On the right-hand wall going in, more bookshelves. In the centre of the room a round mahogany table. On it a shaded oil lamp, books and papers. To the right of the fireplace an easy chair; facing the fireplace a small settee. But over all and penetrating all, warmer than the heat of the fire, the enveloping personality of the occupant, the man himself, the labourer who had just then laid down the shovel and the hod never to take them up again. What had attracted me towards him? What had drawn us together? There was that evening when standing in the wings at the Abbey Theatre the playwright had rather shyly approached the young actor who was playing the part of Mr. Gallogher in The Gunman. One word borrowing another it was found that both loved Dublin and the sky over it. And after that, occasional exploratory chats in the Green Room on life and literature, or cups of coffee in the vestibule, between the acts, under the staring eyes of the portraits of Augusta Lady Gregory, the Fays, and that meditative man, John Synge. And then that outstanding Sunday evening when we dress-rehearsed Juno and the Paycock after a bibulous theatre party the night before. What the author thought or felt we neither knew nor cared. Actors are selfish creatures. At rehearsals few if any of us had grasped the full import of the play. Weekly repertory, with a hard core of professional players and a peripheral cohort of "part-timers" like Barry 1961 FRAGMENTS FROM A BIOGRAPHY 225 Fitzgerald and myself, left little opportunity for fine distinctions. We knew our parts; we knew we could play them; we were fairly certain of our cues; Lennox Robinson, tall, thin, tentative, yet radiating confidence , was at the helm. What more did we need than that? The part of Bentham ended in the second act. Slipping into the stalls, I found a seat behind Yeats, Lady Gregory, and Robinson, two rows away from the intent and peering Sean O'Casey. The third act opened with Sara Allgood ominously tragic in the scene with Mary; Fitzgerald and F. J. McCormick uproariously funny as the Captain and Joxer, yet pinned down to a point by the rising tragic quality of Allgood's Juno. The act moved on; the furniture removers came and went. Then with the ensnaring slow impetus of a ninth great wave Allgood's tragic genius rose to an unforgettable climax and drowned the stage in sorrow. This surely was the very butt and sea-mark of tragedy! But suddenly the curtain rises again: are Fitzgerald and McCormick fooling, letting off steam after the strain of rehearsal? Nothing of the kind; for we in the stalls are suddenly made to freeze in our seats as a note beyond tragedy, a blistering flannel-mouthed irony, sears its maudlin way across the stage and slowly drops an exhausted curtain on a world disintegrating in "chassis." Well, here we are together in "422." "Did you have your tea, Gaby?" Again one is conscious of the quietly insistent, almost regal, note of hospitality. A throwback to the high halls and the groaning tables of royal Kincora. He takes my light overcoat and folding it carefully lays it across the end of his bed. He offers me a choice of the easy chair or the settee. I take the easy chair. Gradually I become acclimatised to the fire. I tell him we are reviving Juno next week at the Abbey. We talk about the play and the stupid notices it received from the critics. Sheer photography, they said; no sense of construction; a crude mixture of farce and tragedy; the final scene a complete anti-climax, totally unnecessary . It surprises me that he should be disturbed by what the critics say. I expected him to have more confidence in his work, to see it as I see it, for instance, a new high-water mark in tragicomedy. He tells me that when he submitted it to the Abbey it had an additional scene which the Directors cut. The shooting of Johnny Boyle, to be played in a roadside scene on a darkened stage. How right the Directors were to cut it! He cannot see this as clearly as I see it. I go over the scene in Act III in which the two armed Irregulars drag Johnny from the room: "Mother 0' God pray for me-be with me now in the agonies 0' death!" I try to make it clear to him that the Directors were right, 226 MODERN DRAMA December that following this, the shooting scene would be an affront to the imagination of the audience. He seems to see the point. Bit by bit we go over the entire play, I pointing out to him those things in which I believe its excellence lies. He is still worried about the final scene and the charge of anti-climax. But this, I assert, is the crowning point of the whole work. As for its "lack of construction," I tell him it is so well constructed that none of the framework is visible and that it is this fact which is upsetting the critics. These chaps feel that they must see "construction" in order to acknowledge its existence. For them the bone must protrude beyond the skin. Anyway, I tell him to forget the critics; already the theatre is completely booked out for next week's revival. As for mixing tragedy and comedy, Shakespeare did that: he may have been the first, but he certainly won't be the last to do it. Let's have a look. Then began a pastime (frequently repeated) as we shared a number of second-hand volumes between us and read aloud to each other the passages which took our fancy. "Eh, Sean, listen to this, in Measure for Measure:" CLOWN: Yonder man is carried to prison. BAWD: Well: what has he done? CLOWN: A woman. BAWD: But what's his offense? CLOWN: Groping for trouts, in a peculiar river. BAWD: What? is there a maid with child by him? CLOWN: No; but there's a woman with maid by him. Or, "Oh, Gaby, listen to this:" SHALLOW: 0 Sir John, do you remember since we lay all night in the Windmill, in Saint George's Field? FALSTAFF: No more of that good master Shallow: no more of that. SHALLOW: Ha? it was a merry night. And is Jane Nightwork alive? FALSTAFF: She lives, Master Shallow. SHALLOW: She never could away with me. FALSTAFF: Never, never: she would always say she could not abide Master Shallow. SHALLOW: By the mass I could anger her to the heart: she was then a Bona-Roba. Doth she hold her own well? FALSTAFF: Old, old, Master Shallow. And so it would go on, he reading, I reading, each commenting on the pithiness of the dialogue and the roundness and depth of the characterisation . No doubt the critics of that time condemned this stuff as being much too "photographic." One night he read from Henry V: "But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make when all those legs and 1961 FRAGMENTS FROM A BIOGRAPHY 227 arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all, We died at such a place; some swearing; some crying for a surgeon; some upon their wives left poor behind them: some upon the debts they owe; some upon their children rawly left . .." The passage seemed to impress him, go deep. It was to create its full effect after he had left "422" for good. It was in 1927 in 19, Woronzow Road, St. John's Wood, London, N. W. 8. that he sat down and typed: Act II. (In the war zone: a scene of jagged and lacerated ruin of what was once a monastery ...) And after that put into the mouth of The Croucher: And the hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of a valley. And I looked and saw a great multitude That stood upon their feet, an exceeding great army. And he said unto me Son of Man, can this exceeding great army become a valley of dry bones? And I answered, 0 Lord God, thou knowest. And he said, prophesy and say unto the wind, come from the four winds a breath and breathe upon these living that they may die. -the opening of the second act of The Saver Tassie, surely one of the greatest indictments of war written in our time, imperiously and foolishly rejected by William Butler Yeats and the Abbey Theatre to the detriment of both the theatre and Sean O'Casey. It is both interesting and sad to recall that when the play was published by Macmillan & Co. in 1928 the dramatist then saw fit to inscribe on the fly-leaf of the copy he sent me: "To Gaby Fallon, Whose Friendship and Talent was and is a wonderful gift to his affectionate friend and buttie. Sean O'Casey. London 11: 6: '28." But who can call back yesterday, bid time return? Evenings when we discussed the vagaries of current literature, the poems of Yeats, the short stories of O'Flaherty, the plays of Noel Coward. Joyce held no particular attraction for him at this time. But he had just read Coward's Hay Fever and The Vortex and had begun his deep dislike of what he ultimately branded as "Noel Coward Codology." It was little use telling him that Coward was a man of the theatre, that his shallow wit and lyricism were part of a hang-over from Dandyism in literature, that the characters in his plays were possibly based on the people of his particular milieu. For Sean O'Casey this was not the theatre; these were neither men nor women; this was "all codology." Literature, he felt, was dodging life, even in the poems of Yeats, and particularly in the work of the Abbey's playwrights. Years afterwards, smarting under the rejection of The Saver Tassie, he was to give vent to this feeling in a letter to the poet: "That is exactly, in my opinion 228 MODERN DRAMA December (there goes a cursed opinion again) what most of the Abbey dramatists are trying to do-building up, building up little worlds of wall-paper, and hiding striding life behind it all." Knowing his views it was with some temerity that I showed him my own early efforts. A sketch which Middleton Murry, then editing The Adelphi, had been kind enough to pat on the head with words of critical praise. Yes, good; but not good enough. The great thing was to keep at it. "You have put your hand to the plough; don't look back." It was the day of theories and Transition. I was obsessed by Miss Stein's simplification, by the attack on order and meaning in favour of sound. Something might be accomplished in this direction by beating out characters in rhythm. True to the father-son relationship between us (about twenty years divided us) he was kind but firm. Literature did not run in that direction. Nevertheless, when my first experiment Merry-Co-Round appeared in The Irish Statesman (edited by the poet George Russell) he was as pleased about it as if it had been his own. And he repeated his advice: "Plough on: don't look back!" Years after he was heard to refer to this early effort and to say to a young man in whose company he seemed to be re-living our former friendship: "\Vhat a pity he chucked the creative stuff and went in for this damned criticism!" He had finished a play and had ideas for another. The finished article was a one-acter "Nannie's Night Out." There had been some discussion with the Abbey Theatre Directors about the ending of this play; they wanted it to end one way, he another; eventually a compromise was reached. The play was successful; whereas his earlier one-acter "Kathleen Listens In" had been a failure, had been a failure by being much too successful so far as biting irony was concerned. In "Nannie" the irony had lost none of its bite but was less evident by being less didactic; more was implied, less directly preached. Nevertheless , the play made history in that the first audience hiss to touch O'Casey came on a line which I had to deliver in the part of Old Joe who, looking at a hunch-backed boy, declared that it would be better for all concerned if we fed him instead of trying to ram the Irish language down his throat. A section of the audience hissed; a section applauded. This continued each night of its presentation. Yes, he was working on a longer play. He was thinking of calling it The Plough and the Stars after the name of the £lag of the Citizen Army, the design for which had been suggested by the poet George Russell. He didn't like work. (\Vho did?) He had to drive himself to it. In fact he had to write on a piece of paste-board which he displayed on his mantel-piece: GET ON WITH THE BLOODY PLAY! 1961 FRAGMENTS FROM A BIOGRAPHY 229 He was getting on with it. Would I like to hear some which he had written that day? It was a scene in which a Catholic priest tried to cajole two male characters into attending the Mission which was being held at a neighbouring church. It never appeared in the play; it had to go in the general cutting from a script that in its final form was much too long for presentation. So far as I remember, it was a very funny scene and mainly concerned the Covey. Times when he would talk about his life as a labourer, about the jobs he had worked on, the characters he met, some of whom were destined to furnish material for his plays. Howat his breakfast break he would eat the best part of a two-pound loaf and wash it down with a pint of cocoa, or water, if cocoa was not available. "Never use the word 'hunger,'" he said, "until you have gone without food for three whole days. Otherwise, you don't know its meaning." Or he would talk about his mother, her care of him, her unfailing kindness, her "gay laugh at the gate of the grave." ''Though she is dead now for many years, she is still a living presence with me, Gaby." What about a drop of tea? And he would set about making it, carefully measuring into the pot two and a haH teaspoonfuls of the most expensive Indian blend ("bought in Kelly's of O'Connell Street, with the big Chinaman over the front door"). Biscuits from the tin. Fruit, perhaps; an apple, or a pear; or what about a banana? His diet at this time consisted of eggs (always boiled), fruit, tomatoes, bread, tea. Do I remember Bovril? He was living on his royalties, which with an occasional guinea or two from articles in The Irish Statesman brought him in something in the neighbourhood of £ 120 a year. Occasionally we would break the evening with a "ramble" or he would "see me home." Ultimately this became a most involved process , for when I reached my place, which lay in the heart of the parish in which most of his life's activities up till then had taken place-the parish of St. Laurence O'Toole and St. Bamabas-I would insist on "going back a bit of the way" with him; and he, of course, would insist on "going back a bit of the way" with me. Heads down, deep in discussions on life, and on our life's love, the theatre, we would ramble on and on, up and down, round and about, until stopping in our tracks, a church clock would strike three, and either of us would say: ''There that's enough; we've more than bloody-well heard the chimes at midnight !" "To-morrow night, at eight then." "No, at the Theatre, at nine. Remember, we're doing The Gunman." Once when about to set out on one of these "rambles" I asked him why he was not wearing his newly-bought flannel trousers. ''Why d'ye think?" "Where is it?" I asked. "Where the hell d'ye think it is? It's 230 MODERN DRAMA December in me Uncle's; pawned, popped, up the spout!" Behind this was the story of a delayed royalty cheque and Sean's Luciferian pride which would not allow him to hint, even to a "buttie," that he was short of cash. That pride is with him still. During some of these "rambles" he would discuss the plays he intended to write. He had worked as a labourer on the Great Northern Railway. (In May 1959 during a removal of records from the engineering department of that Railway a number of time-sheets were found bearing the name "J. O'Casey.") Railway working had a fascination for him and he actually played with the idea of writing a play called The Signal. The nearest he got to it is to be found in the setting for the opening scene of Red Roses for Me where through the large tall windows one can see "the top of a railway signal, with transverse arms, showing green and red lights" and "occasionally in the distance can be heard the whistle of an engine, followed by its strenuous puffing as it pulls at a heavy rake of goods wagons." That he had plenty of material for a play dealing with the railway was clear from the many stories he had to tell of his experiences while working there. He had one gripping story about a fireman who when oiling an engine standing in steam found that he couldn't withdraw his arm from between the spokes of one of the engine's wheels. The man called for assistance and a group of his co-workers quickly gathered. They gave advice and encouragement and tried to extract the unfortunate man's arm by gently pulling him away from the engine beside which he was painfully squatting, the oil-can still gripped in his right hand hidden somewhere in the engine's undercarriage. A hurried council was held and it was decided that the only thing to do was to get the man's mate, the engine driver, to mount the footplate and move the engine about one inch; a more than delicate operation . Sean told me that he saw drops of perspiration on the driver's forehead as he stepped into the cabin. In the meantime members of the group standing around placed themselves in strategic positions with a view to pulling the fireman clear the very second the engine moved. One of them arranged to signal the driver to start the engine. Suddenly the signal is given. The engine moves; the men pull, and the fireman is free. "And the remarkable thing," added Sean, "is that nobody fainted." Or if comedy were required in this setting he had many good stories, particularly those concerning the prototype of "Captain" Jackie Boyle in luno and the Paycock. Boyle was a know-all, a chancer, a walking "Boney's Oraculum." No matter what topic found its way into the conversation Boyle knew it "from backside to breakfast time." 1961 FRAGMENTS FROM A BIOGRAPHY 231 On one occasion a group gathered around the forge were discussing the meaning of the word "anthem." "Sure anyone knows what an anthem is," said the bould Jack. 'Well, tell us, Jack," cried one of the crowd. Jack put on his most professorial air. 'Well, now," said he, "Supposin'I was to say to one of yous 'Hand me over that hammer'now that's not an anthem." The group began to listen intently. Jack went on: "But if I was to ask yous for it this way ..." Jack proceeded to clear his throat, and striking the highest note he could reach began to announce his requirement in the form of an operatic cadenza: "Ha-aa-nd me-eh-ee oh-oo -ver tha-aa-t ha-aa-am-eh-erl" Puffed and blowing on his final note he barely managed to splutter out: "Now, that's an ANTHEMI" I have often thought that Sean might have used this little scene in a play. He never did. Myself apart, few were the visitors to "422." The gentle, sensitive, widely-read Dr. Cummins, the playwright's eye-specialist, came now and again. Barry Fitzgerald, once; his brother, Arthur Shields, once. Neither visit was uproariously successful; perhaps someone stepped off on the wrong foot. The then Minister of Finance, Ernest Blythe, an early friend of Sean's, once. A young exchange professor from Paris, currently lecturing at Trinity College, Raymond Brugere, came on a number of occasions. He and Sean and I went on a number of "outings " together. Brugere had a brilliant mind, an amazing grasp of the Irish dramatic movement, and, quite unconsciously, was the cause of much laughter so far as Sean and I were concerned. On one occasion after a visit to Liam O'Flaherty in Enniskerry we returned to Dublin and were about to go to a restaurant for a meal. Brugere insisted that we share the hospitality of his rooms and his larder in Trinity. It transpired that the larder consisted of six eggs and a mutton chop. The hospitality was slightly bent by the fact that his guests had to assist him in cooking these over a gas-stove beneath an open window overlooking the front square with its famous campanile . I can still see Sean O'Casey draped in Brugere's academic gown, with Brugere's "mortar-board" cocked over one eye, a frying pan in his hand, his head half-way through the open window, as he imperiously called for the attention of the Provost. Lennox Robinson came to "422" on one occasion, a most unfortunate one, as it so happened. For a rising jealousy of the new playwright had impelled him to upset completely O'Casey's casting of The Plough and the Stars. Availing of his privilege as producer of the play and his position as Director of the Abbey Theatre, he insisted on putting most of the players in parts for which they were never intended. This, 232 MODERN DRAMA December added to the political machinations of one Director, and the moral objections raised by another Director, led to a situation in which the play that O'Casey wrote failed to reach an Irish audience until many years after the riot-bedevilled first production. But that is another story. However, it was clear that the author himself-apart from the miscasting confusion brought about by Lennox Robinson-had a few preproduction misgivings. One was that he had written the part of Bessie Burgess for the great Sara Allgood. Sara was not available for the first production, and he doubted Maureen Delany's ability to give the part its full tragic quality, particularly in the death scene. As it happened Delany played the part surprisingly well for Delany, a fact which the dramatist generously admitted. He told me that he had had some difficulty in writing this particular death scene. "Now, had Bessie been a Catholic," he said, "she would sayan 'Act of Contrition' knowing she was at death's door. What would a Protestant do? That was my problem. And then this hymna rather nice hymn, by the same token-occurred to me." I do believe, I will believe That 1esus died fo1' me That on th' cross He shed His blood, From sin to set me free . .. And he sang it for me. "I feel it's just possible," he said, "that the words of this hymn might return to the semi-consciousness of the dying Bessie." He appeared to be somewhat worried about "The Voice of the Man" outside the public house in Act II. Feeling that the scene was conSiderably heightened in drama by the Voice-indeed, that the Voice was the dramatic backbone of the scene-I assured him that he had nothing to be worried about. But his worries were not of the dramatic kind. "You see, Gaby," he said, "that speech is made up of extracts from speeches delivered by Padraic Pearse and there are people who knew Pearse who might object." I tried to assure him that, objections or not, it would be ruinous dramatically to tamper with or remove the speech. As it happened, there were others, including William Butler Yeats, who saw the possibility of objectors feeling that the dramatist was deliberately mocking one of the revered leaders of the Easter Rising. But that, as I said, is another story. Like Autolycus I can say that I have served "and, in my time, worn three-pile; but now am out of service." Those evenings in "422" taught me many things. They enabled me to see at close quarters a genius plying his trade, to sense the sympathy, 1961 FRAGMENTS FROM A BIOGRAPHY 233 understanding, and companionship which such a one needs in the always hazardous first steps destined to set him irrevocably on the high road to fame. By the time Sean O'Casey came to leave "422" he had few friends in the Abbey. Yeats' subsequent rejection of The Silver Tassie, despite appearances to the contrary, cut the last effective cable that held the dramatist to the Theatre. What remained was nothing but a mixed sentimental memory. He felt he was not wanted by the Theatre, and, indeed, this was true in respect to most of its players and all but one of its Directors. But there was, still is, and always will be, an audience ready to welcome the man and his plays, despite a hard core of resentfulness that seizes upon his blind if sincere denigration of most things Irish, and his flamboyant gestures to the Soviet way of life. Little did he think during those "important and pleasant hours" spent in front of the Big Fire that he was fostering and developing in his "first friend in Literature and the Drama" a critical sense that in time would be turned unsparingly on every one of the plays written in exile, until Caesar-like he was compelled to meet analysis with the cry: Et tu, Brutel The critic - however honest -like the first bringer of unwelcome news: Hath but a losing office, and his tongue Sounds ever after as a sullen bell Remembered knolling a departing friend. The sycamore tree, to the surprise of all who knew it, waxed and grew fat. Now two feet in girth, it has survived a number of amputations undertaken for the benefit of those who live and love the light in 422 North Circular Road. Of the great dramatist who worked in the front drawing-room nothing remains but a memory in the minds of those who knew him there. Some say there is an ageing, active, generous, and hospitable genius of a Dubliner living in Torquay. Others will tell you there is nothing there but an embittered exile, hating everything his country stands for, and turning out plays which have nothing of the glory of his early work as a dramatist. Well, as a young-actor-turned-ageing-critic I am prepared to settle for the Dubliner and the genius, the generosity and the hospitality, and let the rest go hang. Remembering "422" and those evenings by the Big Fire, how could I do otherwise? GABRIEL FALLON ...