that Irish Protestants like myself existed (unless he thought of us as Orangemen, which we, decidedly, were not) and that it was we who made up about ‘a third of the total’.
I joined the Hist and made my maiden speech, but the experience so terrified me that I never spoke there again: I, who only a year or so previously had addressed – without a hint of nervousness – an audience of hundreds in the Metropolitan Hall. I am writing about my own perceptions but, with exceptions, I think many other Irish students felt the same. Several that I knew, finding themselves, like myself, studying the wrong subject, dropped out. Their decision to do so was, I feel sure, as much influenced by the atmosphere in Trinity as it was by their academic failure. For whatever reason, I decided within myself that I would stay the course. I wanted a degree and I was not going to be beaten. I told myself (and I still think of this): if I survive the social intimidation of Trinity, nothing or no one will ever intimidate me socially again.
Having had digs with a wonderfully eccentric Miss Fleming (Helen) on Leinster Road, Rathmines, in my first years (where I shared with, among others, Malcolm Benson and Charles Smyth), I took rooms in my sophister years: first in New Square, where I shared with an unusual friend, Reggie Fairfax-Crone. Reggie was English and older than most undergraduates, having already studied elsewhere before coming up to Trinity, and was, improbably, studying engineering. He was very clever, widely read, and with a penchant for arcane information about all sorts of different subjects; and for some reason, he found me an appreciative audience.
‘“Wherefore have ye left your sheep”’ he reprimanded me, ‘did not mean “Where have you left your sheep” but “For what reason have you left them.”’
‘And does the same apply to “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?”’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ he said.
Although we have remained lifelong friends (when he married Carmel I was asked to be godfather to one of his daughters), sharing rooms with him was rather a trial, and the following year I found a single set in the Graduates Memorial Building. Reggie had a seductively appealing younger sister, Penny, who would sometimes visit from England, and she and I embarked upon a sometimes-reckless romance. Exceedingly attractive in looks and personality (so much so that my mother deemed her ‘dangerous’), she was very clever, culturally stimulating, socially enervating, and tremendous fun. Maddeningly unreliable at times, she came to exert considerable influence on me, giving me a confidence that I had lacked, drawing me out of myself, and in time introducing me to a wider world, and – by her example – pointing my life in all the right directions. Charm, a dubious commodity in my mother’s opinion, was as her second name and she had it in bucketfuls. She spoke with an English accent that sounded a little too posh for Trim, pronouncing the word ‘Aga’ as ‘aahGaah’ when we called it ‘the Agga’. Penny and I are friends to this day and I am also godfather to one of her sons.
Endnotes
1.(1927–2016). Lecturer (at this time) and later professor of the History of Art in Trinity and previously keeper of Art at the Ulster Museum. Author (with the Knight of Glin) of The Painters of Ireland 1660–1920 and many other publications. Obituary by Robert O’Byrne, Apollo, October 2016.
2.Trinity Tales: Trinity College Dublin in the Sixties (2009). See also Anne Leonard, Portrait of an Era: Trinity College, Dublin in the 1960s; and Jeremy Lewis, Playing for Time (1987).
CHAPTER 4
FRIENDSHIPS AND FOREIGN PARTS
General studies had an advantage over honours degrees in that the end-of-year exams took place in June, and one was then free for four months until the start of the Michaelmas term in late October. I would go to London immediately term ended in June, and find myself a job (or jobs) and a place to live. I would work, and save money, for about two months and then take off for another two months hitchhiking in France, Italy, Spain and, one year, Morocco. (I had read Brideshead Revisited.) My mother had her concerns about this and wrote to me, ‘Poste Restante, Tangier’ (12 September 1968), to tell me that my Aunt Polly had come to lunch: ‘She was quite worried about you getting lifts to Morocco, said there are queer people in the world. I hope you are all right staying there – be careful, as we read so much about Dope dens etc. I know you have sense.’
It was news to me that my mother was given to reading about dope dens, but her anxieties in respect of my welfare were ill-founded. On my arrival in Morocco, I am sorry to say that the ‘Dope dens’ of Tangier eluded me. But, during these summers away from Trinity, and from Ireland, I did have a host of other experiences that enriched my life greatly. They, and the people I encountered, meld in my memory now and the chronology is hazy. One year, I got a job doing accounts (yes, accounts) in the Daily Mirror offices in Holborn; but the accounts I did were not for the Daily Mirror but for one of their weekly publications, a tabloid called Reveille. It was one of the first mainstream publications to feature photographs of glamour models – it may have been banned in Ireland on that account – but it also covered, in a saucy way, the worlds of pop and royalty. This was an office job, nine to five, but at six o’clock I would make my way to a pub nearby, where I worked as a barman until closing time at eleven o’clock. Another year, I went into Claridge’s Hotel and asked for a job, and was taken on to work in the Still Room. The hours were seven in the morning until three in the afternoon. I made Melba toast from seven till ten, crafted butter pats from ten till twelve, and brewed coffee from noon till three. I had the afternoon off and then returned at six for a second job (until eleven at night) on one of the floors. There, I was on duty in the pantry where room-service meals were put together: they came up in a lift from the kitchens and I would set up the trolleys for the waiters to take to the rooms. I never did any waiting myself and never met any of the guests. A manager took a shine to me – I think he felt that, from his point of view, I might have more to offer than Melba toast – and over the weeks that I was there he made suggestions that I should think of a career in hotel management: he could help me get a traineeship in Claridge’s if I was so inclined. I wrote and told my mother about this and she replied (on 15 August 1966): ‘You were very lucky to get a job in that good Hotel. The idea of doing “Hotel Management”? A degree in Law would be less worry and more secure.’ Another of my jobs was in some sort of small family-run printing firm. I can’t recall what I did there but when I was leaving, the owner tried to persuade me to stay on. ‘You could have a career here,’ he said, pointing out that he and his wife had no children to take on the business. But I was not tempted.
One year I rented a room in Barkston Gardens, off the Earl’s Court Road, with a sinister landlord who lived with his wife on the ground floor and always emerged into the hall to see who was entering or leaving. If I was five minutes late in paying the rent, they would send their bruiser of a son up to bang on my door and threaten me with eviction if I did not produce the cash there and then. Much superior was the accommodation I found (through friends) another year. This was in a council flat in Streatham with a ‘Mrs Hutt’ (as I shall call her). She was posh but, having fallen on hard times (hence the council flat), took various cooking jobs here and there. She had mislaid her husband and, much to her own embarrassment (and the embarrassment of everyone else), had taken an Irish navvy as a live-in lover. Her eldest son, who was in the RAF and modelled himself on the actor Leslie Phillips, did not live with her but appeared from time to time. But her second son, who was mildly mentally handicapped, did, and so did her daughter, a happy blonde twenty-something who came and went as she pleased, always with a friend or more in tow. I was happy squeezed into this ‘ménage’ although, as I was working from early morning till late at night, I was only really there on Sundays, when Mrs Hutt would cook a fabulous Sunday lunch, which we ate on our knees at five o’clock in the afternoon (having spent lunchtime in the pub down the road).
A young Australian artist whom I met, Michael Garady, lived with his friend in Rutland Mews off Exhibition Road. Once, when I was stuck for accommodation, he invited me there for a couple of
