JP returned to a ‘crime scene’ after Behan visit
The old stone cottage where one of the great Irish novels was written now lies in ruins, writes Bill Dunn
THE stone cottage in the village of Kilcoole, Co Wicklow, where newlyweds JP Donleavy and his first wife, Valerie, initially lived and where in mid-1951 he began writing what became The Ginger Man, has fallen into ruin after being badly vandalised in 1980. But its literary significance has been saved by the placement of a historic marker on a surviving wall of the studio where Donleavy wrote and Brendan Behan edited the first draft of the novel that has become a classic.
The property, 20 miles southeast of Dublin, is owned by the Towell family, of Northern Ireland. In the 1950s-70s, the family used the cottage as their seashore getaway. In recent decades, the land has been leased to local farmers.
The plaque, affixed last September without ceremony, features an image of a young Donleavy in etched relief.
Donleavy and Valerie married in early 1949 and purchased the unheated Kilcoole cottage plus four acres in May of that year. In his third year at TCD, he found commuting to Dublin arduous and eventually he left university without a degree. He intended to support himself and wife as a painter. After four Dublin exhibitions with mixed results, Donleavy in the spring of 1951 went to London, hoping to interest a gallery there. One gallery owner praised his oils and watercolours, but rejected them because Donleavy was not famous. After leaving, Donleavy recalled in The History of The Ginger Man: “Shaking my fist, I announced to the street that, goddamnit, seeing as I was contemplating it anyway, I would write a book that no one could stop and would make my name known in every nook and cranny all over the world.”
Back at Kilcoole, Donleavy immediately began writing. He worked seven days a week, first in the cottage’s sunporch. On sunny days he wrote outside. Most days he wrote in the stone out-building he converted into his studio. In six weeks there were 120 pages when Donleavy abruptly left Kilcoole to join Valerie on the Isle of Man, where her father had died.
Days later, Donleavy returned to Kilcoole, encountering what he first thought was a crime scene.
As he recalled in The History of The Ginger Man: “I found a window broken open and the sitting-room-kitchen in total disarray. Towels dirtied and clothes and food strewn everywhere. Every cooking pot blackened with soot...
“In a panic I went out to my studio to see if my manuscript was safe. After a few anxious moments, I finally found it lying next to and just beneath an unrecognised thumbed and ragged thick sheaf of papers.
“Turning the torn and stained pages, I did not have to read many words to conclude that it could not have been written by anyone else but Brendan Behan — giving as it did an account of a young Republican of heartfelt Fenian sentiments, venturing abroad with gelignite and detonators into deepest enemy territory, which happened to be Liverpool.”
What Behan left behind was the manuscript of Borstal Boy, his autobiographical novel. As Donleavy flipped through his own manuscript, he discovered Behan had made insertions, deletions and suggestions. He also signed his name with a flourish atop page 80.
When they next met, Behan told Donleavy he came out to visit his friends. Finding no one home, he got into the cottage, helping himself to food and drink. He wandered into the studio and there read every page of Donleavy’s untitled manuscript. Behan then delivered his startling judgment.
“This book of yours is going to go around the world and beat the bejesus out of the Bible.”
At first, Donleavy was incensed by Behan’s edits. But in time he came to appreciate
Behan’s changes and accepted many of them. And in the coming decades, the first half of Behan’s prophecy was proven correct.
By late summer the manuscript had grown to the point where Donleavy was making plans to circulate it — first in America. The Kilcoole cottage was sold in October 1951. The new owners were Dr Anne Dowds Towell, a Trinity College-trained physician, who was married to Wing Commander Thomas Stanley Walker Towell, a career RAF officer and decorated World War II bomber pilot, originally from Northern Ireland.
The cottage became the Towells’ seaside retreat where the couple and their three children went on holidays and between postings from one RAF base to another. “As a ‘services’ family we moved home every 30 months or so,” recalls son Patrick Towell.
Donleavy and Valerie left Kilcoole for her mother’s home on the Isle of Man. There on October 20, 1951, Valerie gave birth to their son, Philip. In February 1952 they sailed for America, staying initially with Donleavy’s parents in New York City before venturing out on their own.
While still in New York,
Donleavy began circulating his manuscript of 558 typewritten pages, now titled SD after the lead character Sebastian Dangerfield.
The novel is a fictional re-creation of bohemian Dublin of the late 1940s that Donleavy experienced and observed as a Trinity student. The story focuses on the adventures and calamities of Dangerfield, who keeps sailing his dreamboats on the rough seas of reality, while steering clear of responsibility in search of good times and riches. Donleavy started at the top, submitting his manuscript to Charles Scribner & Sons, where it was praised but rejected because of obscenity, mild by today’s standards.
After a disappointing year in America, Donleavy and family returned to Europe, staying a few months on the Isle of Man. By November of 1953, they were settled into the upper flat of a two-storey terraced house in the working-class London borough of Fulham. Donleavy continued his search for a publisher, collecting 30 rejections in all.
Behan found his way to Fulham in 1954, accompanied by a character known as Lead Pipe Daniel the Dangerous. They and Donleavy embarked on a London pub crawl, along the way picking up transplanted Dubliner and sculptor Desmond MacNamara.
Several hours later, Behan told Donleavy: “I know who will publish your book for you in Paris.”
Behan directed Donleavy to The Olympia Press. He wrote to the Olympia publisher Maurice Girodias on September 7, 1954. In June 1955, the novel was finally published as The Ginger Man.
Despite efforts of critics and censors to bury it, the novel has gone around the world, as Behan said it would. Never out of print in English, The Ginger Man has been translated into two dozen languages, including Mandarin, with worldwide sales topping 45 million.
Donleavy returned to Ireland in 1969, settling in Co Westmeath where he spent the rest of his life. He died on September 11, 2017, aged 91.
The remnants of the Kilcoole cottage and studio are stop seven on the Ballydonarea Loop, stretching from the village to the sea. With improvements to the path and the way clearly marked, the loop has become a popular walk for locals and is likely to become so with summer tourists.
Directions can be found on the village website (www. kilcoole.ie/walks/ballydonarea-loop/).