Frank OConnor - The Autobiography: An Only Child and My Fathers Son

The Autobiography

An Only Child and My Fathers Son

Frank OConnor

My Fathers Son

FRANK OCONNOR

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For William Maxwell

Contents

I
Child, I Know Youre Going to Miss Me

II
I Know Where Im Going

III
Go Where Glory Waits Thee

IV
After Aughrims Great Disaster

I
Rising in the World

II
The Provincial in Dublin

III
The Abbey Theatre

IV
The Death of Yeats

About the Author

Frank OConnor (19031966) was born in Cork, Ireland, and fought for the Irish Republican Army in the war for independence. He was a prolific author of short stories, plays, literary criticism, memoir, and poetry, and the managing director of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. In addition to being a renowned writer whom W. B. Yeats famously described as doing for Ireland what Chekhov did for Russia, OConnor was also a highly regarded teacher and translator of Irish literature. The worlds richest prize for short fiction is named in his honor.

FOUR EPISODES from this autobiography have appeared in The New Yorker, and the author wishes to thank William Shawn and the other editors for their encouragement and assistance.

The frontispiece is a photograph of my mother, taken a few months before her death by my friend Dorothy Jeakins.

Throughout this book the author is referred to by his real name, Michael ODonovan, not by the pen name that he later adopted.

When Frank OConnor died on 10 March 1966, he had not completed this second volume of his autobiography, My Fathers Son. Much of it existed in early drafts, some of it in separate pieces. We are indebted to Dr Maurice Sheehy of University College, Dublin for comparing the different drafts and producing the present text.

I

CHILD, I KNOW YOURE GOING TO MISS ME

II

I KNOW WHERE IM GOING

III

GO WHERE GLORY WAITS THEE

IV

AFTER AUGHRIMS GREAT DISASTER

PART ONE

RISING IN THE WORLD

PART TWO

THE PROVINCIAL IN DUBLIN

PART THREE

THE ABBEY THEATRE

PART FOUR

THE DEATH OF YEATS

A S A MATTER of historical fact I know that I was born in 1903 when we were living in Douglas Street, Cork, over a small sweet-and-tobacco shop kept by a middle-aged lady called Wall, but my memories have nothing to do with living in Douglas Street. My memories begin in Blarney Street, which we called Blarney Lane because it follows the track of an old lane from Cork to Blarney. It begins at the foot of Shandon Street, near the river-bank, in sordidness, and ascends the hill to something like squalor. No. 251, where we lived, is one of the cottages on the right near the top, though I realize now that it would be more properly described as a cabin, for it contained nothing but a tiny kitchen and a tiny bedroom with a loft above it. For this we paid two and sixpencesixty centsa week.

Up here we were just on the edge of the open country, and behind the house were high, windy fields that are now all built over. A hundred yards farther up the road the country proper began, and there a steep lane called Strawberry Hill descended past my first school into the classy quarter of Sundays Well. The Womens Prison was at the foot of this lane, where it turned into Convent Avenue, and beside the Womens Prison was the Good Shepherd Convent. The convent had a penitentiary for fallen women and an orphanage, and it was in the orphanage that Mother had been brought up. At the foot of Convent Avenue on the left was a house where Mother had been a maid for eight years with a family called Barry, and where she had been happier than at any other time in her life. To the right was a shop the owner of which had once wanted to marry her. All these places were full of significance to methe convent because my mother and I often visited it to see Mother Blessed Margaret and Mother of Perpetual Succour, who were her friends there, the Barrys house because of the elegance of the life that Mother described in it, and the shop because of a slight feeling of resentment at the thought that if only Mother had been sensible and married a rich man I should have had a pretty elegant life myself.

That was the exalted end of Blarney Lane. At the other end it descended to the river and across the bridge to the North Main Street, where Mother took me shopping, and beyond the North Main Street, over another bridge to Douglas Street, where we had lived, and where my mothers brother, Tim OConnor, had a cobblers shop just across the street from Miss Wall. My memories of the cobblers shop are hazy; I can remember my uncle only when he was dying in the South Infirmary of dysentery he had contracted in the Boer War; and yet I seem to have a very vivid recollection of himtall, thin, and fair-haired, unlike Mother, who was small and had very dark hairbecause he seemed to be always gay. One of the things I have inherited from my mothers side of the family is a passion for gaiety. I do not have it myselfI seem to take more after my fathers family, which was brooding, melancholy, and violentbut I love gay people and books and music.

Not that Tim had much to be gay about; his wife, as I remember her, was common and jealous, and disliked Mothers politeness and gentleness, while Mother never ceased to resent the hysterical scenes Annie OConnor had made over Tims grave. Mother disliked and distrusted any form of demonstrativeness, and when Annie married again it was only what Mother had expected of her. How she thought Annie could bring up two children unaided I do not know, but she and Father shared an attitude which seemed to be commoner then than it is now, of regarding all second marriages as a form of betrayal.