Chapter 11: Dubliners
Emily might perhaps have been happy to live with her mother indefinitely in Alders, Foxrock, but once Martin had recovered from the exhaustion of Warsaw he was active, and looking for work. His experiences in Warsaw made people interested in hearing him speak, and he was invited to many churches and gatherings throughout Ireland. Among them was St Kevin's church in Dublin, a sandstone building on the South Circular Road which had a relatively short life as a parish church. It had been built in the second half of the 19th century and closed after less than a century. In 1939 it was at the height of its success, with people coming not only from the parish but from other parishes all over Dublin.
The rectory was no grand purpose-built mansion, but one house, number 130 South Circular Road, of a terrace, and situated in the next-door parish, just a few yards from that parish church. The houses have since been re-numbered, and 130 has become 260 or thereabouts. Black wrought-iron railings enclosed the tiny front garden. The hall door to the left of the 'front room' bay window had a fanlight above it, with faint traces of the name St Kevin's Rectory which had once been spelled out in stuck-on letters. The name had been removed in the vain hope of stopping the procession of beggars who sought out a rectory as a soft touch. Often they asked for food, but when Emily gave them a sandwich it was often found thrown away nearby; once it was stuffed into the letter box. Food was not what the beggars really wanted.
Inside the door, a second door formed a tiny hall, and then a narrow passage led off to the drawing room and then the dining room, both to the right. Straight ahead was the staircase, and after the dining room came the even narrower passage to a tiny, low dark kitchen, built on to the back of the house. It had a kitchen range and a sink to the left, and a window to the right looking out to the garden.
Upstairs were three or four bedrooms, including one above the kitchen, and a bathroom.
The garden was not large, and was filled with the cries of seagulls, which the woman next door used to feed. There was a cinder path running down the middle, with a lawn on the right as you looked from the house, and vegetable patch on the left, where Martin planted shallots and London Pride grew beside the path. A garage beyond the vegetable plot was not used for a car - Martin and Emily had none, and there was no petrol for ordinary people during the war - but had treasures like a drum of oil and a heap of sawdust, which David loved. The garage doors led to a back lane.
For someone brought up in a spacious Wicklow house and garden and whose mother lived in leafy Foxrock, the lack of trees must have been rather depressing; but just behind the houses opposite was the Grand Canal, quite a pleasant place for walks.
The family left Foxrock just before Christmas to move into this south Dublin house. Emily was pregnant. There was not much time to prepare for the Christmas celebrations, and it may have been this year that they went to the market on Christmas Eve to look for a Christmas tree, only to find they were sold out. The family made do with a big bough of holly set up like a tree.
Emily had never been without domestic help, so she looked for help at once. A young man called John Drum came for a short time, but his was only a temporary job. In the end Emily found Sophie Tutty, who stayed with her until the family moved to London, and became a family friend with whom Emily kept in touch until her death. Her brother George was a carpenter who once or twice came to the house to boil up glue in his glue-pot to mend furniture.
In February 1940 Emily gave birth to a baby boy with a very badly cleft palate, who lived only three days. Martin baptized him in St Stephen's Hospital, giving him the name of his much admired eldest brother, Victor. While Emily was still in hospital, Martin told David what had happened, and said "Mummy has been very brave." He did not go into details, explained the Victor would always have been weak. In his memoir Martin wrote: "There was no disguising our joint heartbreak."
To help look after David a succession of people lived in the rectory; first Eileen Owen, then Sybil her sister, and later Ottilie Schwartz and Erica Fischer, both Austrian refugees. This was some consolation to Emily for being left alone by her workaholic husband. When he was a home, mostly in the mornings, he was working in his study, and he was out not only in the afternoons but also many evenings. Mondays were his day off, but he did not spend the day with his family but on the golf course with clerical colleagues. He would come back after golf describing how he had had great craic with so-and-so.
Emily did her stint as a good rector's wife, running the Women's Meeting.
For their first summer holiday from St Kevin's Martin and Emily took David to Delgany, then a remote and small village in Co. Wicklow. There was no respite from the taking of Sunday services, because Martin acted as locum for the Rector in return for staying in the large and (to David and later Dorothy and Robert, because the family stayed there several times) magical Rectory with its large and wonderful garden and stream and hens and orchard. That first August was not much of a holiday for Emily; she had a miscarriage and spent time in bed. David had no idea what was happening, but vividly remembers his father doing his best to look after him and coax him to eat a pudding of apple and Farola (a kind of milk pudding) - 'a spoonful for Mummy, a spoonful for Granny', and so on.
1941 began with a bang - a stray German bomb landed in the South Circular Road, very near the South Circular Road Synagogue, and near enough to the rectory to blow out windows. Martin and Emily sent little David to stay with his Granny in Foxrock, and arranged for his high-sided cot to have a net covering in case of another attack.
Wills, the cigarette makers, had a factory near the Rectory, which was to use its siren as an air raid warning. They held a practice every Saturday morning, but there was never another cause to give warning.
The holiday that year was in Glendalough, which Emily knew very well. It entailed a hair-raising ride in the elderly St Kevin's Bus, which plied between Dublin and Glendalough and was held together, it seemed, with string and faith. The family stayed, not with Emily's first cousins Jack and May Wynne in The Cottage, but with another first cousin, the artist Gladys Wynne in Lake Cottage. She was a lively lady with a fine sense of humour, and the holiday went well, until Martin suggested to David the exciting adventure of getting up very early and going into the dew-drenched fields to watch the rabbits. The expedition was a great success; they saw many rabbits and came back to breakfast in high spirits. Unfortunately David shortly afterwards went down with pneumonia, which in days before penicillin was a serious illness for a four year old. A nurse was summoned, and he recovered, but it was a nasty experience.
Emily was five months pregnant. This time all went well, and on November 1st Dorothy Evelyn was born in the appropriately named Hatch Street nursing home. She was a much prayed for and much hoped for daughter, and Emily and Martin chose the name Dorothy for its meaning: Gift of God. Evelyn was the name of both her grandmothers. David was delighted, and made his sister a pair of spectacles out of paper, and took them to Hatch Street to offer them. When he could not see her, he was told that she was 'having her dinner'. Such was the culture of secrecy about all things reproductive that he had no idea about breast-feeding, and assumed that Dorothy had gone into another room to sit up at table for dinner.
Dorothy flourished and, her father reported, was greatly admired (as she still is). The family holiday next year, 1942, was in Greystones. The family never went to a hotel for their holiday. If the holiday was not a locum, a vicarage or rectory where Martin took Sunday services in return for a free house, it was staying with Emily's mother or being given a place to stay by a kind well-wisher, as happened this summer. (The only holiday ever taken in a seaside boarding house, in the Isle of Wight years later, was not a success.)
David turned 5 in 1942. There was no question in the minds of Emily or Martin of his being sent to the local state school, which in those days would have been greatly influenced by the Roman Catholic Church. They chose a small school held in an ordinary house in Palmerston Park, called Mount Temple. The headmistress was Miss Sweeney and her Deputy was Miss Ashworth. School was open only until lunch time. Irish language was not taught, which meant that children who attended this school would never join the state system, since Irish was compulsary there, and was required for any work in the service of the state. In the teaching of other subjects Mount Temple was excellent. The journey from St Kevin's Rectory involved a bus and a number 15 tram.
Emily was not able to concentrate wholly on caring for her two young children, and preparing for the birth of her third. Partly, perhaps, as a result of Martin's inability to refuse invitations to preach he became ill. At first the cause was not diagnosed, and he struggled on.
The birth of Robert in 1943, also in Hatch Street, nearly cost Emily her life. It was spared, Martin later wrote, "by the mercy of God and the skill of Ninian Faulkner". Robert was a delicate baby, and Emily took him to stay with her mother as soon as she left Hatch Street.
Meanwhile Martin struggled with his malady. In turned out that he had developed an ulcer that seems to have been precipitated by stress. Such a duodenal ulcer would now be treated quite easily with a one week course of two antibiotics plus an acid-suppressing medicine, but then the choice was between surgery on the one hand and a period of strict diet and rest followed by a lifetime of avoiding certain foods on the other. He wisely chose to avoid surgery. In fact he speculated at the time that in the future people would look back with amazement at a society that cut patients' bodies open.
Fortunately, after Martin had been in hospital for a fortnight Emily's mother and Fanny her maid were willing to have him to stay and to look after him, administering milk foods and medicines every two hours - "little and often" was what the doctor ordered - and taking the strain from Emily.
Strains were there for everyone during the war years. Ireland was neutral, and so was spared any but accidental bombings (Ireland preferred to call the war 'The Emergency'); but a country that had to import almost all its fuel was bound to suffer shortages. The coal supply from Britain ceased, and the hearths and kitchen stoves of Ireland had to burn logs and turf (peat). This came either in 'as is' condition as lumps from the bog, or compressed into bricks, which were more expensive. Emily could not afford the more expensive form, so the open fires, the only form of heating she had, were smoky, slow to catch light, and not very hot. Emily would hold a large sheet of newspaper to cover the chimney breast and so to make an up-draught to get the fire going. Sometimes the newspaper was held in place by a poker and a pair of tongs leaning against the chimney breast. More than once the fire took hold before the paper could be removed, and a flaming mass of paper was sucked into the fireplace and up the chimney.
Trains were converted to be run on turf.
Petrol was for essential services only. Emily's little Morris Minor, if she had kept it, would have been laid up. The milkman, from Lucan Dairies, came in a horse and cart, as did the baker from Johnson, Mooney and O'Brien.
Turf came on a horse-drawn cart. When Emily looked out onto the South Circular Road she occasionally saw a private car, but it might well have a billowing gas bag on its roof; some motor engines were adapted to run on household gas.
Gas itself, however, was also in short supply. There was rationing; households were allowed to use gas only a certain times of day. The supply was turned off at other times. Trying to use the little gas that remained in the pipes was illegal, and 'the glimmer man' was able to force admission to any house to find out whether gas was being used at the 'off' period. Once Emily was caught out, and the gas supply was cut off for a week.
Late in 1943, while Martin was still being nursed in Foxrock, Emily had to move house with the little family to a semi-detached house in the southern suburbs of Dublin. Martin had accepted the post of General Secretary of the Hibernian Church Missionary Society, the Irish version of C.M.S.
The job was to begin on New Year's Day 1944, and once again the move came at an awkward time, just before Christmas. Martin was able to join the family for Christmas, though he could not eat much of the dinner.
The new house stood about half way along a straight road, once called The Half Mile Road and now known as Terenure Road West, but then as Kimmage Road East. The house was lighter than St Kevin's, and the gardens, front and back, were larger. There was an integral garage, which contained a 10 horse-power Ford Prefect, ready for the General Secretary to use when petrol was available again. On the garage door were the bold letters 'SP' which stood for 'stirrup pump.' Emily's family were the proud holders of the local pump, with responsibility for putting out fires in an air raid.
The neighbours were, on one side a Jewish family called Bloom (coincidentally the name chosen by James Joyce for his Dublin Jewish hero) and on the other the Hendersons, a Presbyterian widower with two daughters and a younger son. Amost opposite was a large older house set well back from the road, and deserted except for the tiny gate lodge in which lived the Putt family, including Wally who led a local gang of children.
By this house a cul-de-sac led to a cricket field. A side road on the way to the local shops at Terenure was a muddy path called Green Lane; there the tinkers sometimes parked their caravans.
Sophie came with Emily and continued to sing at her work as she cooked or cleaned. Daisy Deacon, whose sister Anna was Emily's Aunt Irene's companion and helper, moved in for a while to help with the children.
Emily will have welcomed this company, because Martin was away a great deal. He saw that the job he had taken on was what the individual made it, and Martin made it a mission to bring not only the message of HCMS but also, and more importantly, the Christian gospel to every Church of Ireland parish in the Free State, and at the same time to bring encouragement and inspiration to the Rectors and their families, who often ministered to very small numbers in isolated places.
It was a noble aim, and Martin pursued it with his customary vigour, and with encouraging results. Emily had to stay at home without his support and company for longer or shorter periods. Once he was away for a whole month, though he arranged for Emily to come and join him for part of that long tour. He wrote constantly and lovingly from various parts of Ireland, but doubtless Emily would have preferred his presence with her.
She still had her mother who actually lived with the family for a time, and had the family to stay for the summer holiday one year. The family attended Zion Church in Rathgar, where old Canon Parkinson Hill had been rector for a long time. The children came to church with the adults and never went to Sunday School. Emily always read from the Bible and prayed with her children each night, and as they grew older they enjoyed preparing little plays based on Bible stories, which they performed for her on Sunday evenings. She would play the piano in the dining room while the children sang hymns and choruses.
David was encouraged to attend a small children's Bible class called 'Cruets' and he later went to Crusader Class near Harcourt Street.
In due course Dorothy and Robert went to Mount Temple School, which was less far from Terenure than it had been from St Kevin's Rectory. David went on to the small Rathgar Preparatory School, and then to the Presbyterian St Andrew's College.
In 1946 it was possible to get the Ford Prefect on the road. Emily never showed any sign of wanting to go back to driving, even though she had so enjoyed her Morris Minor. Martin learned to drive for the first time, and was able to use the car not only for his work, but also on family holidays, two of which were again in Delgany.
During the 1948 holiday Martin confided to David that the family might be going to Africa. He had been invited to be a bishop in Rwanda. David was excited at the prospect, but Martin said it was not at all certain. "If it's not Africa, it will be England," he said. It was England.
Martin does not say in his memoir whether he and Emily talked over the decision together. No doubt they did; but Emily always put Martin's wishes before her own, and would have gone along with whatever he thought right.
Emily might perhaps have been happy to live with her mother indefinitely in Alders, Foxrock, but once Martin had recovered from the exhaustion of Warsaw he was active, and looking for work. His experiences in Warsaw made people interested in hearing him speak, and he was invited to many churches and gatherings throughout Ireland. Among them was St Kevin's church in Dublin, a sandstone building on the South Circular Road which had a relatively short life as a parish church. It had been built in the second half of the 19th century and closed after less than a century. In 1939 it was at the height of its success, with people coming not only from the parish but from other parishes all over Dublin.
The rectory was no grand purpose-built mansion, but one house, number 130 South Circular Road, of a terrace, and situated in the next-door parish, just a few yards from that parish church. The houses have since been re-numbered, and 130 has become 260 or thereabouts. Black wrought-iron railings enclosed the tiny front garden. The hall door to the left of the 'front room' bay window had a fanlight above it, with faint traces of the name St Kevin's Rectory which had once been spelled out in stuck-on letters. The name had been removed in the vain hope of stopping the procession of beggars who sought out a rectory as a soft touch. Often they asked for food, but when Emily gave them a sandwich it was often found thrown away nearby; once it was stuffed into the letter box. Food was not what the beggars really wanted.
The garden was not large, and was filled with the cries of seagulls, which the woman next door used to feed. There was a cinder path running down the middle, with a lawn on the right as you looked from the house, and vegetable patch on the left, where Martin planted shallots and London Pride grew beside the path. A garage beyond the vegetable plot was not used for a car - Martin and Emily had none, and there was no petrol for ordinary people during the war - but had treasures like a drum of oil and a heap of sawdust, which David loved. The garage doors led to a back lane.
For someone brought up in a spacious Wicklow house and garden and whose mother lived in leafy Foxrock, the lack of trees must have been rather depressing; but just behind the houses opposite was the Grand Canal, quite a pleasant place for walks.
1941 began with a bang - a stray German bomb landed in the South Circular Road, very near the South Circular Road Synagogue, and near enough to the rectory to blow out windows. Martin and Emily sent little David to stay with his Granny in Foxrock, and arranged for his high-sided cot to have a net covering in case of another attack.
Wills, the cigarette makers, had a factory near the Rectory, which was to use its siren as an air raid warning. They held a practice every Saturday morning, but there was never another cause to give warning.
Dorothy flourished and, her father reported, was greatly admired (as she still is). The family holiday next year, 1942, was in Greystones. The family never went to a hotel for their holiday. If the holiday was not a locum, a vicarage or rectory where Martin took Sunday services in return for a free house, it was staying with Emily's mother or being given a place to stay by a kind well-wisher, as happened this summer. (The only holiday ever taken in a seaside boarding house, in the Isle of Wight years later, was not a success.)
Petrol was for essential services only. Emily's little Morris Minor, if she had kept it, would have been laid up. The milkman, from Lucan Dairies, came in a horse and cart, as did the baker from Johnson, Mooney and O'Brien.
Turf came on a horse-drawn cart. When Emily looked out onto the South Circular Road she occasionally saw a private car, but it might well have a billowing gas bag on its roof; some motor engines were adapted to run on household gas.
