Acquainted with the Night
by Suzanne Strempek Shea
MARCH 16, 2010 TAGS:
When I married into an Irish family 25 years ago, I quickly noticed that death was mentioned as much as life.
My father-in-law and his friends never looked so jazzed as when they headed off to a day at a funeral, burial and reception. My mother-in-law kept a fat purse of neatly filed prayer cards, collected at every wake attended since her arrival in this country, in 1949. When my husband and I travelled to the villages from which my in-laws emigrated, relations whisked us off to cemeteries. During that vacation, I heard for the first time my husband call home with the greeting: “Hi, Ma! Anybody dead?”
And Ma knew. Because in her house, the freshly delivered newspaper is flipped straight to obituaries, a.k.a. the Irish sports pages.
An entire book of those pages fills Great Irish Lives, a 362-page collection of obituaries of Irish-born and Irish-connected notables, now in paperback from HarperCollins UK. If ever a country were custom-made for such a compendium, Ireland is it. Ancient Celts constantly faced mortality, constantly searched for signs of being next; the dominating Roman Catholic Church’s expected at-least-thrice-daily prayers are rife with references to death and the afterlife. So while the Irish truly might be “sorry for your troubles” at your loved one’s wake, there’s a side of them that wouldn’t know what to do in a world where death had died.
But this book was born in another country. The 96 pieces that follow an introduction by editor and veteran obituarist Charles Lysaght originally ran in The Times of London. Politically, that’s perhaps a surprising fact, but this tome, one in a series that includes Obituaries from the Times 1961-1970 and Great Victorian Lives: An Era in Obituaries, aims to remind readers “both of some prominent Irish people we may have forgotten and of forgotten aspects of many others whom we remember.”
Figures from the worlds of music, film, religion, literature, science, politics and sports are featured. In this book, “Irish” refers to both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, so included are such Northern Irish figures as George Best of Belfast (“the most talented British football player of his and arguably of any generation,” with the city airport named in his honor), and Sister Genevieve O’Farrell, who attempted to run a school in the war zone that was Belfast’s Falls Road area.
“A woman of great courage and spirituality, [O’Farrell] defied the Roman Catholic Church, the IRA, and the Army in her tenacious determination to give her girls the best possible start in life, never hesitating to take on all those who stood in her way.” There is no way to credit the author of this or any other inclusion. Writes Lysaght, who is rumored to have penned some of the modern-day submissions, the identities “will not be disclosed by the paper in their lifetime, … keeping faith with the nineteenth century descriptions of The Times as ‘the most obstinately anonymous newspaper in the World.’”
The survey begins with the June 6, 1820, death of Henry Grattan, a member of the Irish House of Commons who opposed the Act of Union 1800 that merged Ireland and Great Britain. Antique style remains untouched: “With unfeigned concern we announce … the much-to-be-lamented death of the Right Hon. Henry Grattan. The dissolution of this intrepid patriot would have been a subject of deep regret to the empire at large, had not the decline of his intellectual as well as vital powers been more recently observed.”
Delivered with similar embroidery is news of the May 15, 1847, death of Daniel O’Connell, “The Liberator of Ireland,” who led a movement that forced the British to pass the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, after which Roman Catholics could become members of the British House of Commons. “We believe there is no doubt that Mr O’Connell expired on Saturday, the 15th of this month, at Genoa. He yielded up his latest breath at the distance of many hundred miles from the remains of [his] humble dwelling....”
Don’t let language stop you from reading, and learning. The obituary of James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, Jan. 13, 1941, includes the story of his meeting as a student with W.B. Yeats, whose obit resides nearby. The back-and-forth: “We have met too late,” the budding novelist said, “you are too old to be influenced by me,” to which the poet answered, “Never have I encountered so much pretension with so little to show for it.”
Religious leaders include no fewer than four cardinals, with Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore, Md., March 24, 1921, a nod to the Irish diaspora. But there’s also Dermot Morgan, whose sudden death on Feb. 28, 1998, jolted the masses who adored his portrayal of fictional priest-in-exile Father Ted on the U.K. Channel 4 sitcom of the same name.
Also representing the arts community are The Chieftains’ Tommy Makem, Aug, 1, 2007, “The Godfather of Irish Music”; playwright and novelist John B. Keane, May 30, 2002, best known in this country for writing the screenplay to the Academy Award-nominated film The Field and described thusly: “Straight as a die, he hated intolerance and berated the hypocrisy surrounding much Irish republicanism.”
There’s stained class artist Evie Hone, singer John McCormack, and lots of fine writing. The Aug. 29, 1970, obituary for 90-year-old Dublin hostess Lady Constance Geraldine Hanson notes, “The tenderness with which she encouraged the humble and meek was matched by the almost surgical skill with which she punctured the proud and overbearing.”
The book concludes with the obituary of Nuala O’Faolain, May 9, 2008, broadcaster, columnist and author, whose two memoirs, Are You Somebody? and Almost There garnered international praise. Her final radio interview one month earlier shocked listeners with news of her incurable cancer and her decision to forgo treatment.
“Intrepid as ever,” we read, “she undertook a frantic round of trips to her favourite cities, enjoying the galleries and sights, retiring to a hospice only in the last days of her life.”
And, in her living with death, being a very Irish soul to finish this very Irish collection.
Suzanne Strempek Shea contributes regularly to Obit.
My father-in-law and his friends never looked so jazzed as when they headed off to a day at a funeral, burial and reception. My mother-in-law kept a fat purse of neatly filed prayer cards, collected at every wake attended since her arrival in this country, in 1949. When my husband and I travelled to the villages from which my in-laws emigrated, relations whisked us off to cemeteries. During that vacation, I heard for the first time my husband call home with the greeting: “Hi, Ma! Anybody dead?”And Ma knew. Because in her house, the freshly delivered newspaper is flipped straight to obituaries, a.k.a. the Irish sports pages.
An entire book of those pages fills Great Irish Lives, a 362-page collection of obituaries of Irish-born and Irish-connected notables, now in paperback from HarperCollins UK. If ever a country were custom-made for such a compendium, Ireland is it. Ancient Celts constantly faced mortality, constantly searched for signs of being next; the dominating Roman Catholic Church’s expected at-least-thrice-daily prayers are rife with references to death and the afterlife. So while the Irish truly might be “sorry for your troubles” at your loved one’s wake, there’s a side of them that wouldn’t know what to do in a world where death had died.
But this book was born in another country. The 96 pieces that follow an introduction by editor and veteran obituarist Charles Lysaght originally ran in The Times of London. Politically, that’s perhaps a surprising fact, but this tome, one in a series that includes Obituaries from the Times 1961-1970 and Great Victorian Lives: An Era in Obituaries, aims to remind readers “both of some prominent Irish people we may have forgotten and of forgotten aspects of many others whom we remember.”
Figures from the worlds of music, film, religion, literature, science, politics and sports are featured. In this book, “Irish” refers to both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, so included are such Northern Irish figures as George Best of Belfast (“the most talented British football player of his and arguably of any generation,” with the city airport named in his honor), and Sister Genevieve O’Farrell, who attempted to run a school in the war zone that was Belfast’s Falls Road area.
“A woman of great courage and spirituality, [O’Farrell] defied the Roman Catholic Church, the IRA, and the Army in her tenacious determination to give her girls the best possible start in life, never hesitating to take on all those who stood in her way.” There is no way to credit the author of this or any other inclusion. Writes Lysaght, who is rumored to have penned some of the modern-day submissions, the identities “will not be disclosed by the paper in their lifetime, … keeping faith with the nineteenth century descriptions of The Times as ‘the most obstinately anonymous newspaper in the World.’” The survey begins with the June 6, 1820, death of Henry Grattan, a member of the Irish House of Commons who opposed the Act of Union 1800 that merged Ireland and Great Britain. Antique style remains untouched: “With unfeigned concern we announce … the much-to-be-lamented death of the Right Hon. Henry Grattan. The dissolution of this intrepid patriot would have been a subject of deep regret to the empire at large, had not the decline of his intellectual as well as vital powers been more recently observed.”
Delivered with similar embroidery is news of the May 15, 1847, death of Daniel O’Connell, “The Liberator of Ireland,” who led a movement that forced the British to pass the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, after which Roman Catholics could become members of the British House of Commons. “We believe there is no doubt that Mr O’Connell expired on Saturday, the 15th of this month, at Genoa. He yielded up his latest breath at the distance of many hundred miles from the remains of [his] humble dwelling....”
Don’t let language stop you from reading, and learning. The obituary of James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, Jan. 13, 1941, includes the story of his meeting as a student with W.B. Yeats, whose obit resides nearby. The back-and-forth: “We have met too late,” the budding novelist said, “you are too old to be influenced by me,” to which the poet answered, “Never have I encountered so much pretension with so little to show for it.”
Religious leaders include no fewer than four cardinals, with Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore, Md., March 24, 1921, a nod to the Irish diaspora. But there’s also Dermot Morgan, whose sudden death on Feb. 28, 1998, jolted the masses who adored his portrayal of fictional priest-in-exile Father Ted on the U.K. Channel 4 sitcom of the same name.
Also representing the arts community are The Chieftains’ Tommy Makem, Aug, 1, 2007, “The Godfather of Irish Music”; playwright and novelist John B. Keane, May 30, 2002, best known in this country for writing the screenplay to the Academy Award-nominated film The Field and described thusly: “Straight as a die, he hated intolerance and berated the hypocrisy surrounding much Irish republicanism.”There’s stained class artist Evie Hone, singer John McCormack, and lots of fine writing. The Aug. 29, 1970, obituary for 90-year-old Dublin hostess Lady Constance Geraldine Hanson notes, “The tenderness with which she encouraged the humble and meek was matched by the almost surgical skill with which she punctured the proud and overbearing.”
The book concludes with the obituary of Nuala O’Faolain, May 9, 2008, broadcaster, columnist and author, whose two memoirs, Are You Somebody? and Almost There garnered international praise. Her final radio interview one month earlier shocked listeners with news of her incurable cancer and her decision to forgo treatment.
“Intrepid as ever,” we read, “she undertook a frantic round of trips to her favourite cities, enjoying the galleries and sights, retiring to a hospice only in the last days of her life.”
And, in her living with death, being a very Irish soul to finish this very Irish collection.
Suzanne Strempek Shea contributes regularly to Obit.
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