McDowell On McDowell: A Memoir

By R.B. McDowell

Between clubs, dining halls, libraries, institutions and good addresses in the country, R.B. McDowell, born in September 1913, had led the charmed and energized existence of a distinguished bachelor don, embellishing the lives of generations of students – chiefly Trinity College undergraduates – fellow historians, academic colleagues and friends. In McDowell on McDowell, A Memoir, he describes this life, almost entirely shaped by a seventy-five year association with Trinity College, Dublin, with interludes at Radley, Oxfordshire during the second world war, in London after official retirement in 1981 and on the Continent for vacations. With spare, poised prose, which reveals as it conceals, he tells of origins in Edwardian Belfast and evokes memories of secondary education at Elmwood Sunday School, annual visits to London, and summers at Fahan and Portadown. He survives the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, and experiences widening social and intellectual contours informed by avid reading in military history, eighteenth-century British politics, nineteenth-century fiction, Adam Smith, Marx and Spengler. In 1932 he progresses to TCD as lecturer, historian and writer, coming to identify with eighteenth-century Ireland – its buildings, politics and people – as the primary focus of his interest and work in a moving expression of its ethos and his own. He also provides fascinating, vivid cameos of Europe in crisis: visiting Cologne in January 1939, and in May 1968 joining student radicals on the Boulevard St Germain in Paris, an experience turned to account as he dealt with home-grown Internationalists in his capacity as Junior Dean (1956-69). This entertaining essay is self-portraiture, conveyed with the perception and ease of an after-dinner speaker and raconteur, alive to the idiosyncrasies and vagaries of his profession, is a valuable record of a unique Irishman and citizen of the world at the close of his days. R.B. MCDOWELL, who has been the subject of two volumes of tributes and reminiscences edited by Anne Leonard (The Junior Dean: Encounters with a Legend, 2003, and The Magnificent McDowell: Trinity in the Golden Era, 2006), is Emeritus Fellow and former Professor of History at Trinity College, Dublin. His own writings, from Irish Public Opinion 1750-1980 (1944) to Ireland in the Age of Imperialism and Revolution 1790-1801 (1979), include editions of Edmund Burke’s letters and Theobald Wolfe Tone’s journals, and biographies of Alice Stopford-Green (1967) and (with W.B. Stanford) J.P. Mahaffy (1971). The Lilliput Press has published four of his previous works: Land and Learning: Two Irish Clubs (1993), Crisis and Decline: The Fate of Southern Unionists (1997), Grattan: A Life (2001) and Historical Essays, 1838-2001 (2003).

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Lilliput Press
• Release date: Apr 11, 2008
• ISBN: 9781843512929

Book preview

I

Boyhood

I WAS BORN

in south Belfast on 14 September 1913 a few years too late to be an Edwardian, but indubitably pre-war. My parents both belonged to large families, my father being the eldest of fourteen children and my mother the youngest of nine, therefore I had numerous uncles and aunts scattered over the globe from Australia to Berlin. These included the head of a well-known engineering firm, the founders of a small and successful engineering business, a doctor, a colonial civil servant, hospital nurses and, by marriage, a bankman, a very senior Australian civil servant, a German stockbroker and a doctor prominent in civic life. My paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian farmer in King’s County, upright but not very successful. About 1895 he was offered the commission of the peace but, disapproving of the ‘Morley magistrates’, he declined it. My father left home early and entered a solidly established Belfast tea firm of which he ultimately became a director.

My maternal grandfather was a Londonderry wine merchant with a retail outlet, a pub, never mentioned in the family. From the fragments that drifted to my parents’ house he had a good collection of books, especially of Victorian travel. It was long remembered that at Londonderry City dinners when trifle was served, an elderly waiter used to say, ‘Cut deep, Mr Ferrris, cut deep,’ and so get down to the sherry. He was adored by his daughters whom he used to take on a thrilling walk through the tunnels on the Londonderry–Castlerock railway line, teaching them that if they heard a train to search quickly for a manhole in the tunnel wall. Robust girls, they enjoyed the experience. His wife, Henrietta Laurence, was from Liverpool. Very correct with a sense of style, she was the niece of an Anglican clergyman who, it was said, possessed a very large library, which he successfully defended against female borrowers. If a lady asked him for the loan of a book he would immediately say, ‘Please take it as a present.’ It was a good deterrent.

About 1910, my mother, living in Londonderry, and my father in Belfast, first met. My mother was travelling by train to visit friends in the North and, a sheltered young woman, she was dismayed to discover she had lost her ticket and had very little money – at home everything could be bought on account. However, a nice gentleman in the carriage dealt with the ticket collector, lent her money and, before the end of the journey, made up his mind he was going to marry her. He, of course, had to overcome a serious obstacle – they had not been introduced. But after diligent enquiries he found that a friend knew my mother’s parents and could take him to her home.

My parents married in 1911 and, after a honeymoon in London, at the newly opened Aldwych Hotel, returned to settle in Belfast. They were distinctive personalities, in many ways strikingly different. My father, not tall but sturdy and always perfectly turned out, was energetic, good-natured, impulsive and easygoing. My mother, with masses of black hair and fine features, was delicate and frail-looking. In her youth she was a vigorous tennis player and dancer, and until very elderly a competent motorist. In social matters she was a formalist: an intelligent conformist to the Edwardian social code. At times she faced the problems of life with apprehension – it was an age when middle-class women suffered from nerves. If my father believed in ‘dropping in’, she emphasized the restraints that manners imposed on spontaneity. These differences in temperament were frequently illustrated when they had to deal with financial matters. My father adopted a cavalierish attitude to bills; my mother eyed the totals with dismay.

What I, a censorious teenager, mentally and sometimes verbally adjudicating on the conflict, overlooked, was that my father was a very shrewd businessman and my mother a generous woman far from parsimonious. In fact, they both greatly enjoyed the pleasures of life, were very ready to help those in trouble and intently appreciated one another’s company. Oddly enough my mother, though well equipped with household skills, didn’t cook. My father did. Starting with sauces, he finally purchased a Mrs Beaton. Of course, until 1939 he rarely managed to get into the kitchen, although his knowledge made him an informed critic of food and wine, a quality he shared with my mother; they both greatly enjoyed a good restaurant meal together. In fact, it was only in my twenties that it dawned on me that it was a most happy and successful marriage.

My mother’s emphasis on formality, derived from, I think, her mother, greatly influenced and benefited me. Though not an intellectual woman she based her teaching of manners on two general principles, consideration for others and common sense; the result was that when I went out into the world I believed I knew the right way to behave as well as the rules of dress and general deportment. I am afraid I must add that I observed with concealed contempt the failings of others in those areas. I may have been unpleasantly critical but at least I was self-assured and at ease socially. I also discovered about the age of sixteen a literary guide to good behaviour, Lord Chesterfield’s Letters (Everyman edition). It may seem strange that a raw, unsophisticated Belfast schoolboy should receive instruction from an accomplished eighteenth-century nobleman on the value of graceful manners and how to become socially acceptable, but to some extent I resembled the clumsy youth to whom the letters were addressed. I now sometimes look with gratitude at the simple, elegant monument that Lord Chesterfield erected in Dublin. Another work that greatly helped to form my conceptions of good behaviour was Thackeray’s Book of Snobs, which I read and reread (there was a copy in the house). In it Thackeray, a hugely perceptive and sardonic Victorian gentleman, in a series of vignettes describes and satirizes many instances of social pretensions, upward-mobility striving and tuft-hunting – warning me in advance of the sins I was inclined to.

After settling in Belfast my parents occupied three houses in rapid succession – a villa in Bawnmore Road, near Balmoral, was followed by a terrace house in Ulsterville Avenue (a dreary thoroughfare terminating in a railway embankment, which offered my mother an excellent view from her bedroom window of the city cemetery on a distant hill). Early in 1918 we moved to No. 88 University Street, the family home until 1957. One of the earliest events in my life, which naturally I don’t remember, was when my mother, out at the theatre, began to worry and hurried home. She found that a newly engaged nurse (the term ‘nanny’ was not yet in vogue) was about to plunge me into a bath of water so hot that it took the skin off my mother’s fingers. When being remonstrated with, the nurse explained that if the water was too cold the baby turned blue and if it was too hot, red. In fact, I was about to be treated as a human thermometer. Earliest memories, from about the age of three, circle round two striking figures – Sergeant Trumbly and Alice. When I was walking with my nurse and perambulator along the Lisburn Road we sometimes met the sergeant, very tall, in

RIC

uniform, and his salute gave me a great glow of gratification. Alice, our maid, was English, elderly and a devout Catholic. In a well-starched white apron, she was punctilious and kind.

Shortly after Alice came to the house, my mother was struggling at the piano with a new piece of music; Alice asked to be allowed to try it and my mother realized at once that Alice was a far better pianist than herself and encouraged her to use the piano. Alice’s story was a strange one. As a young, well-educated girl, she had run away from home and from then onwards remained in domestic service. When there were two young children in Bawnmore Road she found it a strain and went to a quieter household. Soon afterwards she retired and her employers, including my father, arranged that she should enter the Shields Institute, Carrickfergus, which was a number of small, one-person houses. The inmates were able to live independently but for emergencies there was a matron in the background. Alice with her memories, links with past employers and her religion, was a very cheering person to visit.

Other early memories are connected with a vague phenomenon – ‘The War’. I cried bitterly when my maternal grandmother gave her sugar ration to my baby brother, Patrick; ‘Fair play is for all’ was my slogan. I had a vehement admiration for soldiers, and when just able to walk I staggered around a military hospital distributing magazines. One Christmas, Santa Claus in a big shop gave me a cardboard toy displaying the Kaiser flanked by Hindenburg and Ludendorff, together with a pea-shooter. Also I heard, wondering what it meant, that the owner of the hairdressing establishment I patronized, Mr Hoffman, had ‘been interned’. With the war vaguely in the background, early in 1918 we moved to No. 88 University Street, a dwelling that made a deep impression on me. It was a three-storied, bow-windowed Victorian terrace house with about nine rooms and the usual ‘offices’. To a schoolboy like me it was very spacious, but when I visited it in about 1980, after years of living in institutional grandeur, the rooms seemed comparatively small. No. 88 was then the headquarters of the Alliance Party, my old bedroom being the leader’s study.

The house provided adequate accommodation for my family, my parents and my brother along with myself, a cook-general and my brother’s nurse, who was to be replaced in time by a mother’s help. The milkman, the breadman and the laundryman called frequently; the coalman less often. A string of messenger boys brought parcels, the contents of which were distributed between three pantries. The cook-general spent a substantial amount of time in the kitchen and my mother helped her with the housework, regulated by weekly routine with a great upheaval in the spring. My mother also paid sustained attention to her children, went shopping and met her friends – ‘calling’ and being ‘called on’. The day culminated for her and my father at dinner, which was a three-or four-course meal. In Belfast, in some ways a very divided city, a marked division was between meal patterns. Some people had breakfast, dinner (about midday) and high tea (a mixture of cake, bread and butter and meat); others had breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea (about 4 pm) and dinner at about 7 pm. My parents adhered to the second pattern. When starting to go into the world, I quickly learned when asked to tea to find out at what time was I expected. A school contemporary once told me in strict confidence that his family (as we would now say, upwardly mobile) had decided to change from high tea to dinner. I was thrilled at being a confidant.

No. 88 was kept warm by the kitchen range and, if necessary, by a coal fire in at least one room. In addition there were some gas fires, each with a bowl of water in front of it. In the 1930s electric fires replaced the gas ones. The ‘wireless’ arrived about 1924. ‘Listening in’ could be trying. We sat round the set, each with his or her own earphones. There was always the danger that an impetuous listener (my father for instance) might move quickly, forgetting his earphones and bringing the whole contraption crashing to the floor. The gramophone, which arrived about the same time, also needed careful handling. If the turntable was not stopped in time the record was scratched. With the gramophone I associate the annual popular song – one year it was ‘Yes we have no bananas, we have no bananas today’, the next year it was ‘Felix keeps on walking, he keeps on walking still’. But these frivolities were submerged by the ringing notes of Clara Butt singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’.

In contrast we had a record from the south of Ireland, ‘The boys who beat the Black and Tans were the boys from County Cork’, which my brother, myself and our friends would sing ironically. We also had a fair amount of drawing-room music. My mother was a keen pianist who played by ear, and when my brother became a violist she greatly enjoyed accompanying him. My maternal grandmother, a frequent visitor, was also a keen pianist, playing strictly by sight. This sometimes put her in an awkward position at Londonderry haute bourgeoisie parties. At such gatherings it was usual for some of the guests to be asked to make musical contributions, and of course it was good manners for them to express surprise at being requested to do so. But my grandparents could not be coy; she arrived armed with her music and his instrument was the double bass.

Shortly after we moved to No. 88 an event occurred that had a deep long-term effect on my life. One morning shortly after I had started at a kindergarten I felt strangely uncomfortable, I would now say feverish. I remember distinctly lying in a large chair with my parents and our doctor looking at me solicitously; then I lapsed into unconsciousness, which lasted for approximately three weeks. Later I gathered that I had been attacked by the prevalent flu that had developed in my case into double pneumonia; I had been so ill that at one stage the doctor (an outstanding

GP

) felt he must tell my parents that I probably would not survive the night. My parents were both down with the flu themselves, my brother was ill and his nurse died. The maid was the only member of the household on her feet and she coped splendidly. Since good nursing was at that time the best and perhaps indeed the only effective remedy against flu and its developments, it was very fortunate that our doctor secured two hospital nurses – one an army nurse convalescing – who in the emergency had come back to work.

With devoted and skilled attention I pulled through, and one day was carried by the nurse to the window to see a large Union Jack flying from the house opposite: ‘We have won the war’, I was told. It was the eleventh of November 1918. The great flu epidemic was a frightening appendix to the war and in my youth many grim stories were told about it. To take one example, in 1918 a young man came into Trinity College Dublin to call on his future tutor. When they were chatting they saw an undergraduate collapsed on the Examination Hall steps and they carried him to a ground-floor set in Botany Bay, where rows of helpless undergraduates were lying on the floor waiting for ambulances to take them to hospital.

My major flu-pneumonia attack left me vulnerable for years to severe colds, mild flu attacks and bronchial trouble, so my parents thought I must live a comparatively sheltered life, though