Courtney McGrailThe World of Books
The other day while going through my accumulated books – I am supposed to be undertaking that now fashionable process of ‘downsizing’, an impossible task for a bibliophile – I came on a book of essays by Lennox Robinson, which I had not looked into for years.
Lennox Robinson was once a familiar figure, well known not only as a director of the Abbey theatre, but as a leading playwright and author in his own right. But, like many who lived in the shadow of the great, Yeats he is little talked about today.
It was called I Sometimes Think, published by the Talbot Press, in 1956, two years before the writer’s death. The essays were written for the now defunct The Irish Press, and are full of interest. One essay in particular struck me. It was about the figure of the Priest’s Housekeeper in Irish literature.
Fiction
“She figures frequently in our plays and fiction,” Robinson remarks, and he alludes to Joseph Tomelty’s Is the Priest at Home? and to Lady Gregory’s Hyacinth Halvey. She was always, it seems, for Robinson at least, a dramatic figure, representing common sense. “She shows, as she must show, an ever-watchful care of his reverence’s well-being; she is the buffer between him and his exigent parishioners; she is often their confidante and wise adviser; she knows all – or nearly all – the secrets of the parish.”
Robinson goes so far as to compare her to Walter Pater’s notorious evocation of the Mona Lisa.
I suppose she was of more consequence in a country town or village than in the city, with its different values, where I grew up.
Rather like a local TD with the power of the State, she acted in folklore as an intermediary with the power of the Church, or so it seemed to parishioners. But however she was seen by novelists and dramatists the role cannot always have been a comfortable one.
The days of the priest’s housekeeper have gone by. The clergy today have to cater for themselves, a thing made easier by the proliferation of eateries of all kind all over the country, where a parishioner with a quick eye will sometimes see one of the local pastors happily consuming an all-day breakfast over his copy of The Irish Times.
In my years as Honorary Librarian of the Central Catholic Library, I have often be called on to advise communities and individuals about the disposal of unwanted books. Once I was asked to the priest’s house in a parish on the northern edge of Dublin.
The housekeeper explained that “her priest” had died, and though some things of a personal and family nature were going to his nephews and nieces in England, there were a great many books in his study in which they had no interest at all; they could go in a skip for all they cared. I had a look at some to these, and then paused to accept a cup of midmorning coffee from herself.
She had worked for the late priest for some 35 years, and as she told me about him, she unfolded a life of dedication which we don’t often think about. Hers was a special contribution to religious life, such as few of are prepared to make nowadays.
The reality was that she was in mourning for what was, with all respect, a domestic relationship. It was not marriage, certainly not concubinage; but in its long, companionable nature was certainly a close one.
Yet, she told me, the diocese was already on to her about clearing out the rooms and vacating the premises so the new priest, a vigorous young man, who called while I was there, could have the house.
Redecorated
Before he moved in it would have to be completely redecorated and modernised, she had been told. Thier old way of life was no longer quite the thing.
For her it was it was not a complete tragedy, for she had a new home of her own to go to nearby. Perhaps it was in the nature of things. Her mourning for her friend was real, but little thought of by the diocese.
I suspect that the new parish priest would have to fend for himself – easy to do in these days of ready meals of all kinds. But there would not be a housekeeper. The lady I met that day was almost the last of the breed.
I still think of her situation from time to time. Mourning, as they say, never ends, it only changes.