Shelter and Shadows: An Awakening to Our Common Identity

By Raymond M. Keogh

Shelter and Shadows reveals what it is to be born and live between two worlds that emerged from conflicting Irish traditions. In a lifetime quest to resolve his dilemma, Raymond Keogh traces the origins of his contradictory ancestral legacy. The outcome is the story of a hybrid family; its complex social histories; its interweaving genealogies; its genetic profile; and its identity.

Coming to terms with ancestral conflict and cultural incompatibility awakens a revolutionary view of our common humanity. Ultimately, we are presented with an uplifting exploration of the meaning of human identity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Our Own Identity Ltd
• Release date: Sep 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9780993565212

Book preview

Shelter and Shadows

An Awakening to Our Common Identity

By Raymond M. Keogh

Our Own Identity

Shelter and Shadows

An Awakening to Our Common Identity

Our Own Identity Ltd

Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland

Published by Our Own Identity in 2016

© Raymond M. Keogh

ISBN 978-0-9935652-1-2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic or mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

Cover by Ana Grigoriu, Books Design, Germany

A Product of The Gerald Keogh Identity Series

Decade of Commemorations (2012–2022)

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

I. Indigenous Identity

Awakening

Domestic Shadows

Blood Sacrifice

Anzac Bullet Brings Shaw to Town

At Odds with the Stereotype

Cultural Shock

Foreign Bride

Kate’s Curiosity

Family Secret

Trevelyan’s Claque

Decline and Recovery

II. A Forgotten Society

Anthropology of an Urban Tribe

Radically Inclusive

The Merchant and the King

Beginnings of Native Urbanisation

Roads to Wealth

Urban-Rural Links

Native Upland Farmers

Tribal Roots

III. The Wider Perspective

Idyllic Illusion

White Feathers

Old English Identity

A Dangerous Pastime

Love of Enemy

Destiny

Bison Hunting to Bib Manufacturing

Tip-toeing Round Eggshells

The March of a Nation

Universal Reunion

References

Relevant Dates in History

Author

Shelter and Shadows

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to all who contributed to this book, including, amongst many others:

John Arden and Margaretta D’Arcy (actors) who helped me establish contacts with the second branch of the Keoghs of Ranelagh. Many details of this family were clarified by Ms Anne Dowden, Ms Margaret Baczkiewicz and Ms Germaine Greenwood, who supplied important facts about the family’s involvement with the Irish theatre and the independence movement;

Niall Bergin, Supervisor, Kilmainham Gaol Dublin and Brian Crowley, Curator, Pearse Museum Rathfarnham—instrumental in casting new light on Irish Volunteer Gerald Keogh, who was killed outside Trinity College Dublin in 1916, and his brother Cyril who also took part in the Easter Rising;

Deirdre Larkin of the Parnell Society for information relating to the possible involvement of James Keogh—father of the Keoghs of Ranelagh—in Parnell’s visit to the USA;

Lieut. Alan Kearney of the Irish Army’s Ordnance Corps for information pertinent to the death of Gerald Keogh;

Anne Matthews for her clarification about movements of The Kimmage Garrison in 1916;

The National Art Gallery of Ireland for providing pertinent insights into portrait painting of middle-class Gaelic business families in Dublin by Charles Russell in the late nineteenth century. Special thanks are due to Andrew Moore, Library Assistant, in this respect;

Dr. Colum Kenny who supplied valuable insights into the life of John Keogh of the eighteenth-century Catholic Committee;

Lloyd Dunlap of the Library of Congress and Monsignor William Awalt of Saint Peter’s Rectory, both of Washington City, for assistance in uncovering civil and church records belonging to private John M. Keogh, 40th N. Y. Volunteers;

Saint Patrick’s Hospital in Dublin which has been singularly helpful in providing information about Thomas J. Keogh, particularly Mr Andrew Whiteside, Archivist, and Breda Ryan, Record Keeper—whose painstaking examination of the archives contributed to clarifying details of his life;

Dr. John Harbison, former State Pathologist, for suggestions in relation to the possible exhumation of subjects in order to clarify reasons for illness;

Damien Burke of the Irish Jesuit Archives for examining the details of Milltown Jesuit records to check for possible family connections with their property;

Michael Kelleher, Senior Library Assistant, Bray Public Libraries, for his valuable support;

William J. Hayes, Coordinator of the Restoration Project of Holy Cross, County Tipperary, for invaluable help in clarifying details about the roofing of the abbey. To Michael Mallin and those associated with the reroofing of the monastery, including Sean Campbell, Pat McCloskey and Dom Ryan, formerly of Irish Forest Products, for their valuable input;

Mauricio Pineda for providing information on particular cultural aspects of Latin America;

Henning Flachsenberg colleague and companion of the Orinoco expedition;

Deceased family members, especially Nanette and William Keogh;

Author Patrick McCusker for his candid advice, input and corrections to the text. I also thank Blanca McGarry and writer P. J. Cunningham in this respect; and to colleague Paul Clinch for his helpful suggestions in relation to an early edition of the work;

Hilary Johnson of Authors’ Advisory Service, UK, for copy editing the text;

To Ana Grigoriu of Books Design, Germany, for the cover design;

Keogh Photography for cover photo.

Preface

Shelter and Shadows reveals what it is to be born and live between two worlds that emerged from conflicting Irish traditions. In a lifetime quest to resolve his dilemma, Raymond Keogh traces the origins of his contradictory ancestral legacy. The outcome is the story of a hybrid family; its complex social histories; its interweaving genealogies; its genetic profile and its identity.

Coming to terms with ancestral conflict and cultural incompatibility awakens a revolutionary view of our common humanity. Ultimately, we are presented with an uplifting exploration of the meaning of human identity.

The account is divided into three:

Part I—Indigenous Identity—aims to affirm Raymond’s paternal Gaelic roots in spite of personal discomfort that arose from his maternal Old English cultural background. Simple anecdotes, oral history, a search of written records and a candid treatment of sensitive family issues highlight the characteristics of the native society from which the author emerges. The account is interrupted by periods of fortuitous foreign service that helped him gain a wider understanding of the nature and diversity of human cultures outside his country.

Part II—A Forgotten Society—uncovers the social stratum to which Raymond’s Gaelic family belongs. An unusual view of Ireland’s past is revealed as the focus of attention is the country’s little-understood native urban middle-class who lost their tribal lands to confiscations and plantations in the seventeenth century. Its roots are traced to the professional ranks of Gaelic society.

Part III—The Wider Perspective—shows the author’s parental backgrounds in conflict with each other. These cultural contradictions are resolved by facing the issues that prevent the emergence of a clear understanding of the nature and meaning of identity. Human genetics reveals the true base of our distant ancestors. Our golden threads of life are found to have arisen beyond artificial geographic boundaries in a multitude of cultures across a series of wide spatial platforms and deep into the past, thereby raising questions about the true nature of who we are. This leads to a redefinition of what is meant by personal, family, cultural and national identities.

Shelter and Shadows is relevant to Irish society as it seeks for a clearer perception of itself during the anniversary period of its independence. Its conclusions are timely for a world in which multiculturalism and globalisation have become increasingly important. Ultimately, the conclusions provide a new way to comprehend the meaning of human identity.

Raymond M. Keogh

I. Indigenous Identity

Awakening

The Irish are a contradictory race. They are moulded by a mix of opposing cultural influences. Declan Kiberd puts it well when he says: there is no single Ireland, but a field of varied forces, subject to constant negotiations, and there is no unitary Irish mind, but many Irish minds ...¹ These forces expressed themselves as cultural contradictions in my hybrid makeup which arose from two distinct sources: the Gaelic identity of my father’s people and the Old English identity of my mother and her people. The Old English were pre-Reformation settlers in Ireland. This foreign dimension disturbed the purity of my native inheritance and gave me an uncomfortable feeling, when I was growing up, that I was not fully Irish. I even began to suspect the genuineness of my Gaelic roots.

But, in the early 1950s I was oblivious to many of these issues. Vivid memories from those years evoke my grandfather’s redbrick terrace house at Beechwood Road in Ranelagh. It was the one location in Dublin where a sense of the past completely encased and impregnated the present. It contained a residual presence of former generations. I find it difficult to explain the nature of this presence. Many different influences from the past coalesced to create an enchanted atmosphere and I was acutely sensitive and receptive to these stimulating ancestral leftovers. It was as if I had arrived late at a farewell reunion, was not informed about who had departed and could only garner vague notions about them from fragments of conversation and surviving memorabilia. The palpable void left by their absence drove me, over the following half century, to reconstruct the world of my forefathers.

It intrigues me that my most vivid early recollections call to mind happenings that occurred when I was less than four. I know this because many of these memories involve Bartholomew, my grandfather. I was born in 1947 and he passed away in 1951. My last memory of him is indelible. I looked back from the rear leather seats of our Morris Minor as he waved to me from the upstairs window of his sick-room in Ranelagh.

My elder brother and I visited this special place with our father every Christmas morning during the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. The drawing room on the ground floor had a roaring turf fire that burnt brightly in a cast-iron fireplace. A marble mantelpiece was decorated with an elegant clock and mirror; and twin statues—one of a Viking warrior and the other of a Roman soldier—standing sentinel over the hearth. A painting on the wall represented a platoon of soldiers resting before a battle during the Napoleonic Wars. Other paintings and photos reflected people and locations associated with the family.

There was always something exciting happening in the drawing room; it was full of surprises. I remember the hushed silence as Bartholomew shouted down the phone to my uncle in New York one Christmas morning. I felt a deep sense of occasion and perceived the dimension of the world increase.

The smell of cigars was strong when my grandfather smoked. I liked the smell but tobacco gave him a ferocious cough. He was a white-haired man in a dark suit and his gold watch-chain was draped across his waistcoat. He slept a deep sleep in his favourite armchair by the fire, facing the door with his back to the street window. The cough began in his sleep and worsened as he raised himself to get oxygen. His face reddened exceedingly in contrast to his white hair the more he coughed. I was terrified. He would surely burst or vomit. I ran out of the room. My aunt pursued me into the hall and ensured me all was well. She brought me back and I peeped round the door. My eyes were at the level of the door handle. Bartholomew was sitting up looking at me in amusement and some embarrassment. He had recovered and all the room was gazing at me and laughing.

Visitors were welcomed in the front room on Christmas morning and sat around on the settee and seats, and a host of odd chairs that were assembled for the occasion. Trays of cakes and lemonade and tea and bottles of Guinness were brought in amidst the opening of presents and the buzz of animated conversation. Boxes of chocolates and biscuits were peppered about on small tables. Faces I had not seen since the last year reappeared. Introductions were made and niceties exchanged. The cosiness of the place and the feeling of so many friendly people made it a warm cocoon. My uncles were there with their girlfriends or wives; some years later their children appeared. Other people would come and visit too and the atmosphere was as good as one could hope to expect anywhere.

My aunt made sure we were always entertained, and challenged us to complete a jigsaw puzzle or play a game of snakes-and-ladders. When all avenues were explored—or perhaps it was the last resort to keep order—the family album would appear. It was full of black-and-white photos, many of which had faded to sepia. My aunt would tell us about those who featured in it. It was stocked with people I knew, like my uncles, photographed in sports cars when they were young. However, there were others whom I had never met. Women wore long dresses and men were always presented as if bedecked for a special occasion. Cars were more boxlike than round like our Morris Minor. Whenever the album appeared the conversation turned to stories of men and women who were no more. These were real relations and friends that had existed and were known to those present. Accompanying anecdotes reinforced the ever-present sense of lost time and the fading oral memory caused by relentless bereavements. Lost time emerged repeatedly in that house and connected me intimately with the mystery of the past.

The wave that Bartholomew gave me from his sick-room as I looked back from our Morris Minor was our last farewell. I never saw him again. He carried with him the knowledge of his father’s life and times, and that of his grandfather. A family secret was almost extinguished in his passing; mere threads survived. The past was almost laid to rest—but not quite. My desire to uncover the true story of his forefathers grew from a fascination into an obsession. In the years after his death, I began to follow—to their sources—all the paltry clues left behind in his enchanted house.

Domestic Shadows

Several shadows lurked within the domestic shelter of my home, including—as mentioned—the cultural contradictions of my parents’ families. But, I also began to sense something sinister in the story of my paternal ancestors. A veil of censorship appeared whenever I attempted to delve into the lives of my forefathers in the generations previous to my great-grandfather, James Keogh, father of Bartholomew. Snippets had come through from behind a persistent obstruction but they were mainly vague and garbled.

Despite all obstacles, I followed each trivial clue, each anecdote, each snippet of oral history, each written record to make sense of the past. At no stage did the underlying drive subside despite many years of frustrated progress. Goals changed as new findings were made and as I grew older. I wove along an erratic course that began in a cloud of childhood memories and visions. Curiosity shifted from the family to the society from which it originated. Paltry progress along this twisted track was sweetened by a trickle of new discoveries, followed by the incessant pull of increasingly complex questions and the promise of ever-greater enlightenment. Family history turned into an obsessive quest to answer the ultimate questions of genealogy: Who are we and what is our identity?

*

In 1953 the evocative country-wide event—An Tóstal—an emotional celebratory festival of things Irish was held throughout the country. It occurred well before I began delving formally into family history. An Tóstal placed emphasis on nostalgia, sport, nationalism and history and left a strong impression on my young memory. It was an attempt to attract tourists to the country by the government of the day. It was also an opportunity to re-conjure the spirit created during the cultural revival movement of the late nineteenth century—called the Irish Renaissance—for a younger generation that had not experienced this romantic age. Flags lined O’Connell Bridge, Dame Street and the Liffey and brought the aura of ancient Ireland within the old city walls. The festival took place during the heyday of our family outings made through cities, towns and the countryside in our Morris Minor, and draped the land in Celtic imagery. Its attempts to impress the youth were successful, at least in me.

When travelling through the landscape, I watched it pass and become altered with each change in scenery. The view from the moving windows of the car linked the visible and the present with the hidden and the past. Residues from previous periods created an invisible presence round abandoned historical monuments. As with all memorials they can be ignored, but I allowed myself to be captivated by their tantalising magnetism. Faraway places, and incidents—disconnected in time—emerged and disappeared. The world transformed again and again in marvellous imagery, stimulated by sun, shadow and changing panorama. Wonderful visions ignited a mind already aroused with the glories of a heroic Celtic nation, where warriors lived in emerald settings and where they exercised their young and agile lives in the freedom of woods and glens and open fields.

What makes Celtic imagery, myths and legends so potent a force? Far from being a childish fetish, they were exploited in modern times by Irish revolutionary movements like the Fenians, and poets and writers like W. B Yeats and Patrick Pearse and politicians like Douglas Hyde and Eamonn de Valera. Gaelic symbols and literature were so evocative that they succeeded in gathering about them the men and women who ignited the independence movement. Even today, Celtic images are used as the symbols of free Ireland. Part of their fascination is the link they evoke between us and our primordial roots in the Irish countryside. Implied in this vision is a perfect bond between the early Irish and their natural environment.

Contemporary society may or may not consider the past to be an inspirational compass for current and future nationhood. Today we may regard Irish romanticism as archaic sentimentalism based on outdated myths, even though its power gave rise to a particular definition of Irish nationhood that influenced, in its turn, the shape of the early Irish Free State.

In the 1950s I was touched deeply by Celtic romanticism. As a result I became determined to affirm my Irish identity through my Gaelic surname. The most reliable fragments of oral history suggested that the family came from Leinster, probably County Wexford, where, it was said, we had owned property. If I could link my people to a specific parcel of land in the province I would be able to validate my identity as genuinely Irish and authentically part of the Keogh or MacEochaidh tribe of ancient Leinster. This became my fixation as a young adult, almost half a century ago. At the same time, I refused to acknowledge the stark cultural fracture in my makeup, caused by the contradictory traditions of my mother’s people. I simply ignored them.

*

The accumulated memorabilia, conversations and experiences of life that I encountered in the houses of my father’s relations in Dublin collectively amounted to a set of shared characteristics peculiar to a society that appeared to have few connections with the rest of Irish culture. The anecdotal snippets coming from past generations confirmed definite links with Irish history but they were somehow extraneous to the flavour of the past lauded by schoolteachers and commentators on Irish radio. It would take me many years before I clearly understood the nature of this divide.

Someone told me that at one stage in his life my grandfather, Bartholomew, rode a penny-farthing bike. Bicycles were becoming fashionable to such an extent that cycling organisations were formed. He joined one of these and there met Jenny McDowell. The couple began seeing each other for a time but broke off their dating. However, one day, while still convalescing after an illness, Bartholomew happened to be on a tram in Glasnevin. The story goes that he had a ghastly pallor. Coincidentally, Jenny had taken the same tram and didn’t fail to notice him and his alarming appearance. They began to converse. This led to a renewal of their friendship and eventually, in 1911, they married.

Several years after Jenny became Mrs Keogh, the family moved to Beechwood Road. The anecdotes of this period become the oral history of my father’s generation. Much of his awakening years were spent in Beechwood. He related to me the memory of a chest of drawers on the upstairs landing containing blood-splattered swabs—elements of the confusion and paraphernalia surrounding the birth of another child. In all, his parents had five children: four boys and one girl. The brothers were a wild bunch. Several of them carried wounds of old battles fought with wooden swords in the back gardens and lanes around Beechwood. There was a gruesome story told about them sitting round a table while one circled the palm of his hand over the point of an upright and large darning needle. Another suddenly slammed a fist down on the revolving palm, forcing the needle through the hand.²

Bartholomew created a tie-manufacturing firm called Bart & Sons in the 1920s. Being the managing director of the enterprise, my grandfather came to be known as The Boss by his children. But, the emphasis they put on the title was more a sarcastic jibe than a reference to his position. The business was a family-run affair. Despite the fact that ladies were not recognised in company titles, Jenny and her daughter Nanette worked there and it was often said that Jenny was the real force behind the firm.

My father left the family business because he didn’t get on well with The Boss. He set up a bicycle repair workshop. Later he established a firm called JEKA Ltd, a Dublin manufacturing company that made children’s clothing. JEKA grew behind the Republic of Ireland’s protective tariffs and was located in Smithfield. In the 1950s the business was doing well and I remember being brought into town to be fitted out with new clothing every summer. The smell of brand-new leather sandals is a particularly vivid memory. My mother used to buy these clothes in Our Boys shop in Wicklow Street.

However, when the Taoiseach, Mr Lemass, decided to open the economy to free trade and eliminate protective barriers, the rag trade collapsed. My father recalled how establishments fell and how acquaintances of his died under stress. There was a strong feeling that similar support—psychological or otherwise—was not on hand from government, parallel to that given to the farming traditions. Diarmaid Ferriter makes reference to the veneration for the rural way of life in official thinking and cites a speech given by Charles Haughey in his capacity as Minister for Agriculture in 1966 where he stated that: ... we must always think of farmers as people. We must not listen only to the economist and the bureaucratic planner who think of agriculture as simply another sector of the economy and who are concerned only with output, return or investment and so on.³ This type of comment exacerbated the sturdy perception in urban circles that business people, including those of Gaelic origin, were not viewed with the same reverence as those who inherited the land and this served to highlight the favouritism, on the part of government, towards those who were regarded as being genuinely Irish.

The dismantling of protectionism really began after 1966. Among the industries most exposed to foreign competition were textiles, clothing and footwear. The cold winds of import penetration were felt most severely by such enterprises.⁴ The response of my father to these economic ills was to keep JEKA afloat by designing and developing his own business machines, thus ensuring increased productivity and competitive prices. Before his creations emerged he filled single sheets of paper or blank corners of the newspaper he was reading with pencil-drawings and sketches of his ideas and inspirations. I remember visiting his premises in Smithfield where he housed the resulting gadgets. The factory was on the first floor. Access was by way of an old wooden stairway bordered by a smooth and unstable ebony banister-rail leading to what to me was a large room, laden with the smell of new cloth.

Long rolls of fabric lay on the floor; each contained a tubular cardboard core which was designed to allow the metal bar of the cutting machine to pass through before the large roll was set up for the operation. There were pressing machines that stamped the cloth into shapes and sewing machines that completed the finer details. Huge make-shift tables of plywood covered the available space of most of the room over which lay a structure of iron bars with attached cogs, wire ropes, flexible bands and circular disk-knives. When working, all parts moved in unison and with sudden loud clanging noises at the beginning and end of the operations. Out of all this chaos came aprons, pinafores, kiddies’ bibs and bias binding. On these self-created machines and rolls of cloth we survived as a family.

Bartholomew’s wife Jenny, who was born in Belfast, belonged to an urban Catholic class in Ulster equivalent to that of her husband’s in Dublin. But, the nature of this class was not clear; little has been written about it in history.

Jenny’s father, William McDowell, was a journalist. A feature article in a centenary supplement of The Irish News, dated 1955, revealed something of his professional background. William became editor of the Belfast Morning News in 1875. It was the only Catholic daily published in Ulster; the first penny-newspaper in Ireland and the first successful penny-paper in the United Kingdom. The publication engendered animosity. The Belfast Newsletter warned the people of the city that: ... it emanated from the Press which printed the Douai Bible and sneering at it as having been established on the street hawking system and having as its readers "servants, street-sweepers, pedlars and pot-hogs."⁵

One would have thought that the working-classes ought to have been congratulated for their ability to read. However, reasons for this reaction were partly fuelled by the paper’s success. In July 1856 its circulation was over 2,000 copies, more than all other Belfast newspapers combined. The outburst against the religion and class of its readership also shows that sectarian bitterness in Northern Ireland extended back at least to the mid-nineteenth century. Indeed, this intolerance has deep historical roots. In reference to the Protestants of the North, Roy Foster says: At once austere, exalted and unbending, they were also cantankerous, febrile and prone to hysteria and conspiracy theories. Initially, religion had not been important in dictating the unofficial Scots settlements of Antrim and Down; but settler defensiveness and intolerance fused with anti-establishment Presbyterianism to create a northern mentality ... Ulster people believed they lived permanently on the edge of persecution; they gloried in covenanting against ‘tyranny’; and they were committed to a democracy that extended to the elect only. These attitudes did not moderate with time.⁶

Oral history suggests that William McDowell was threatened for something he had written in the Morning News. He was told to leave Belfast or would be killed. As a result, he moved to the Freeman’s Journal in Dublin but didn’t continue in that newspaper. Once again he encountered trouble. There were rumours that he took an action against the paper. Whatever the circumstances, he opened a shop or several shops in Dublin and died eighteen years later in 1912, one year after his daughter Jenny married my grandfather Bartholomew.

At this time Ireland was about to enter the most transforming period of its recent history.

Blood Sacrifice

Four years after the death of his first wife, my great-grandfather—James Keogh, father of Bartholomew—married eighteen-year-old Mary Walsh of Cullenswood. Her father owned property in South Dublin and obtained an income from it. The Walshes originally came from County Kildare⁷ and were of Norman or Anglo-Norman descent. James’ marriage to Mary is an example of hybridisation between native and Old English lineages, though it seems that the cultural differences between the newly-weds were significantly less than those between my parents. The couple eventually settled in Ranelagh. They had ten children. The best-known of these are J. Augustus, who became manager of the Abbey Theatre in 1916, and Gerald, who was killed