Having studied Art together, Estella
Solomons
and Frances (Cissie) Sinclair were close friends.
Samuel Beckett
James Knowlson claims that she was
the "Alba" of the eponymous poem and of Dream of Fair to Middling
10
Although SB had already made plans to travel to Germany by Christmas 1931, he indicated later to Lawrence Harvey that he would not have resigned from TCD had it not been for the automobile accident in which Ethna Maccarthy, his passenger, was badly hurt. When she taught one of Professor Rudmose-Brown's courses in 1936, SB helped her prepare the Provenc;al lectures. Her poems, stories, translations from Spanish and German poetry, and a short play appeared in Hermathena, Dublin Magazine, Ireland To-Day, and an anthology of New Irish Poets (1948). Maccarthy continued her studies, receiving an MA in 1937; from 1939 to 1949 she was "Assistant to the Professor of French" at TCD, and she lectured in Spanish and French even as she studied Medicine (MB, 1941; MD, 1948). Maccarthy practiced medicine in Dublin and then in the East End of London. She married A. J. Leventhal in May 1956. SB remained a close friend to them both, particularly during MacCarthy's illness and death from cancer in 1959.
Women.
Thomas McGreevy(after 1943 known as MacGreevy, 1893-1967), Irish poet, critic, translator, art historian, and Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, was born in Tarbert, Co. Kerry. McGreevy worked in Dublin and London with the British Civil Service (1911-1914), served in World War I as an Officer of the Royal Field Artillery, and then studied History and Political Science at Trinity College Dublin (BA, 1920). While an assistant secretary to the Irish Advisory Committee of the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, McGreevy published articles for The Leader, The Irish Statesman, and The Gael. He moved to London in May 1925, where he joined the editorial staff of Connoisseur and wrote criticism for The Criterion, the Times Literary Supplement, The Nation and Athenaeum and the New Statesman. In January 1927, he was appointed as Lecteur d'anglais at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, and when SB took up the same post he and McGreevy became close friends. McGreevy introduced SB to many of his acquaintances in art and
10 Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 75. 704
literary circles in Paris, London, and Dublin, among them James Joyce, Richard Aldington, Jack B. Yeats, Charles Prentice, and Eugene Jolas. Both men published on Joyce in transition and Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work In Progress. SB stood in for McGreevy in his role as Secretary of the fine art journal Formes when McGreevy had to be away from Paris. In 1931, McGreevy published two monographs in the Chatto and Windus Dolphin Book series: Thomas Stearns filiot: A Study and Richard Aldington: An Englishman; SB's Proust, also in this series, came about as a result of McGreevy's suggestion. McGreevy stimulated and guided SB's interest in painting. He insisted that SB meet Jack B. Yeats. McGreevy's collection Poems was published in 1934. In London, he became chiefArt Critic for The Studio (1938-1940); returning to Dublin in 1941, he became Art Critic for The Irish Times (November 1941 to December 1944). A practicing Catholic all his life, he also wrote for The Father Matthew Record and The Capuchin Annual.
McGreevy's study JackB. Yeats was published in 1945.
McGreevy served as Director ofthe National Gallery oflreland from
1950 until his retirement in 1963. He was made Chevalier de l'Ordre de la Legion d'Honneur by the French Government for his services to the arts, made Cavaliere Ufficiale al Merito della Repubblica Italiana by the Italian Government, and awarded the Degree of Doctor of Letters by the National University oflreland. In the early 1960s, he wrote a critical study on Nicolas Poussin, was made Officier de la Legion d'Honneur, and organized an exhibition of Jack B. Yeats's work for the Venice Biennale.
Macy Manning Howe Adams (1905-1999), playwright, novelist, critic, childhood friend of SB (their mothers were close friends). Mary Manning studied at Alexandra College Dublin and the Abbey Acting School, and joined the Gate Theatre as Publicity Manager, editing the GateTheatrejournal,Motley. HerearlyplayswereYouth'stheSeason . . . ? (1931), in which SB had a hand - suggesting a wordless character called Horace Egosmith; Storm Over Wicklow (1933); and Happy Family (1934). In 1934 Mary Manning moved to Boston and married Harvard law profes sor Mark DeWolfe Howe, Jr. In the summer of 1936, while visiting Ireland, she had what she later claimed was an affair with SB. The first of her novels Mount Venus (1938) was published with Houghton Mifflin, whom she tried to interest in SB's Murphy. Director ofDrama at
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Radcliffe College during World War II, Mary Manning was a founder of
The Poets' Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1950-1968, 1987- ).
which staged her play The Voice of Shem (1955, published 1957), an
adaptation of Finnegans Wake, as well as a reading of SB's radio play All
That Fall (1958). After her husband's death in 1967, Mary Manning
returned to Dublin where she was Drama Critic for Hibernia. Her adap
tation ofFrank O'Connor's novel The Saint and Mary Kate was produced at
the Abbey Theatre in 1968, and she wrote a volume of satirical short
stories, The Last Chronicles of Ballyfungus (1978). In 1980, she married
Faneuil Adams (1899-1981), and again lived in Boston. Of her mother's
quick and sometimes cutting wit, the poet Susan Howe has written:
11
Sean O'Sullivan (1906-1964), Irish painter and draftsman. studied at the Metropolitan School ofArt in Dublin, the Central School ofArts and
Crafts in London, and at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and the Academie Colarossi in Paris. In 1931, he was the youngest artist to be elected to the Royal Hibernian Academy. Although he painted Irish landscapes, O'Sullivan is best known for portraits, done as drawings and in oils, including ones ofsuch Dublin notables as Douglas Hyde, Eamon De Valera,JamesJoyce, W. B. Yeats, Maud Gonne MacBride,Jack B. Yeats, SB, and Ethna Maccarthy (see illustrations). He aimed to "record every person of prominence on the Irish scene during his period," and was said to have a story about every person he had painted. 12 O'Sullivan knew McGreevy andJoyce in Paris. Although SB first mentions him in a letter in 1933, the two were most frequently together from 1935 to 1937 in Dublin; in 1939, SB arranged for him to rentJankel Adler's studio in Paris.
Seumas O'Sullivan (neJames Sullivan Starkey, 1879-1958), Irish poet and founding editor ofthe Dublin Magazine (1923-1958), was active in the Irish Literary Revival, appearing in W. B. Yeats's play On Baile's Strand at the Abbey Theatre in 1904, and was a supporter ofSinn Fein. A friend ofW. B. Yeats,JamesJoyce, AE, and Oliver St. John Gogarty, O'Sullivan championed young authors, among them Patrick Kavanagh, Padraic
11 Susan Howe, The Midnight (New York: New Directions Books, 2003) 64.
12 Ryan, Remembering How We Stood, 46.
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"She loved to produce and destroy meanings in the same sentence. "
Fallon, Mary Lavin, and SB. "Alba" was SB's initial publication in the Dublin Magazine (1931), followed by "Gnome" (1934), "Cascando" (1936), and several reviews. O'Sullivan was President of Irish PEN, a founding member of the Irish Academy of Letters, and was given an honorary degree by Trinity College Dublin in 1939. He was married to the painter Estella Solomons.
Georges Pelorson (later known as Georges Belmont, b. 1909), French poet, journalist, editor, and translator, entered the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1926 and was SB's first student there in 1928. Pelorson came to Trinity College Dublin as part of the exchange with the ENS, beginning in January 1930; in February 1930, he co-authored with SB the dramatic parody Le Kid for the Modern Languages Society produc tion at the Peacock Theatre; according to Knowlson, Pelorson figures as Liebert in SB's Dream of Fair to Middling Women. Pelorson married Marcelle Graham in Dublin, then returned to Paris in autumn 1931, leaving the ENS with a licence in English, rather than going on to sit for the agregation; with his wife Marcelle, Pelorson translated Emily Bronte's poems in 1933. He wrote for Paris-Midi and Paris-Soir (1931-1940), was Director of the Ecole bilingue de Neuilly founded by Maria Jolas, and published in La Nouvelle Revue Fram;aise, Mesures, and transition. With Raymond Queneau, Henry Miller, Le Corbusier, and Frederic Joliot-Curie, Pelorson co-founded Volontes (1937-1939); he published Essai sur une reforrne de l'enseignement en France (1940) and was involved in the literary section of the Jeune France educational movement. A collaborator, Pelorson held positions with the Vichy Government: as Chef de la propagande des jeunes for the Occupied Zone (1941), Secretaire general adjoint (1942-1943), and Secretaire general de la jeunesse (1943-1944). Blacklisted after the Liberation by the Comite national des ecrivains, briefly imprisoned, and stripped of his civil rights for ten years, Pelorson wrote under the name Georges Belmont. In the early 1950s SB and Belmont resumed their friendship. Belmont worked with Editions Robert Laffont (1952-1953; 1964-1979), as Editor-in-Chief of Paris Match (1953-1954), Editor of]ours de France, of Marie Claire, Review Editor ofArts (1953-1964), and as Literary Director for Editions Acropole (1980-1985). As Georges Belmont, he is widely known as the French translator of works by Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Burgess, Henry James, and Henry Miller.
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Alfred Remy Peron (1904-1945), writer and teacher, was in the class of 1924 at the Ecole Normale Superieure; Peron came to Trinity College Dublin on the exchange program from the ENS (1926-1928) and first met SB there. As a Lecteur d'anglais at the ENS in 1928, SB helped Peron study for the agregation. The two worked together on the initial French translation of Joyce's "Anna Livia Plurabelle" in 1930. Peron taught at the Lycee Buffon in Paris. When SB moved to Paris in 1938, Peron encouraged and helped SB to begin the translation of Murphy into French; Peron's translation of SB's poem "Alba" was published in Soutes (1938). When Peron was mobilized in the French Army, he asked SB to assist his family in the event of evacuation from Paris. Peron served as an agent de liaison for the British Army. He was a member of the Resistance reseaux "Etoile" and "Gloria SMH"; he recruited SB to the latter in September 1941. When Peron was arrested by the Gestapo in August 1942, his wife Maria Peron (known as Mania to SB) warned SB and Suzanne by telegram. Alfred Peron was sent to the concentration camp at Mauthausen; shortly after being freed from the camp, he died on 1 May 1945 in Switzerland, in transit back to France. SB remained supportive of Peron's family. SB enlisted Mania Peron's help with his writings in French, and he helped her as she taught English, translated, and wrote her novel. SB's correspondence with Mania Peron continued into the 1980s.
Charles Prentice (c. 1892-1949) was born in Scotland, studied Classics at Oxford, and was a senior partner in Chatto and Windus when, at Thomas McGreevy's suggestion, SB wrote and submitted Proust to the Dolphin Books series. In Prentice SB found a frank yet sympathetic reader. Prentice continued to further SB's writing career, publishing More Pricks Than Kicks (1934) despite the reservations of his colleagues at Chatto and Windus. Even when he could not publish SB's work, Prentice reassured SB and suggested other outlets for his writing. Richard Aldington characterized Prentice as a "man utterly without affectations . . . of simple dignity and straightforward utterance," con siderate, generous, and "full of laughter. "13 Prentice joined Aldington in providing funds so that McGreevy could travel in Italy and have time
13 Richard Aldington, Life for Life's Sake: A Book of Reminiscences (London: Cassell, 1941) 322-323.
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to write. Prentice retired from Chatto and Windus in 1935, but he returned to work there during World War II; in retirement he pursued interests in archeology in Italy, Greece, and Africa. He died in Nairobi.
Samuel Putnam (1892-1950), American editor, journalist, and trans lator, was a feature writer for the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Evening Post in the 1920s, and edited Youth (1921-1922) and Prairie (1923). In 1927, he moved to Paris, where in 1929 he was an editor at This Quarter with Edward Titus and then in 1930 founded The New Review, which expired with the April 1932 issue. SB published some ofhis own work as well as translations in both journals. Putnam initiated The European Caravan: An Anthology of the New Spirit in European Literature (1931), planned as a two-volume anthology to introduce modern European literature to American and English readers; the editors included Maida Castelhun Darnton, George Reavey, and Jacob Bronowski. Some ofSB's poems were published in the Irish section ofthe first volume; Putnam enlisted SB to help with the selection and translations for the Italian section of a second volume that remained unpublished. He published George Reavey's Faust's Metamorphoses (1932). Putnam returned to the United States in 1933, becoming a contributor and editor to several small magazines; in 1947 he published his memoirs, Paris Was Our Mistress.
George Reavey (1907-1976), Irish poet, literary agent, publisher, and translator ofRussian and French literature, was born and lived in Russia until 1919, when his father was arrested; the family fled to Belfast and moved to London in 1921. From 1926 Reavey studied at Cambridge University, where he knew William Empson, Jacob Bronowski, and Julian Trevelyan through their association with the journal Experiment. SB met Reavey in 1929 through Thomas McGreevy in Paris where Reavey was Associate Editor of Samuel Putnam's The New Review (1930-1932) as well as ofThe European Caravan (1931); Putnam published his first book of poetry, Faust's Metamorphoses (1932). In 1934 Reavey established Europa Press in London and Paris, which published SB's Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates (1935) in a series ofpoetry collections that included his own Nostradam: A Sequence ofPoems (1935), Signes d'adieu (1935), and Quixotic Perquisitions (1939); Intercessions (1937) by Denis Devlin; and Third Person by Brian Coffey (1938). Reavey edited and
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translated Soviet Literature: An Anthology with Marc Slonim (1934), and was a prolific translator from Russian, particularly of the works of Nikolai Berdyaev and Andrei Bely. He edited Thorns of Thunder (1936), a collection of selected poems by Paul Eluard translated by SB and others. Having established the European Literary Bureau in Paris, Reavey moved it to London in 1935; the agency represented SB's Murphy. Reavey served with the British Institute in Madrid in 1940 and with the British Foreign Office in Russia from 1942 to 1945, where he edited the journal Britanskii Soyuznik in Kuibyshev and Moscow. After the War, he published Soviet Literature Today (1946), taught at the University of Birmingham, England, and in 1949-1950 was a Rockefeller Fellow at Columbia and Stanford universities; thereafter, he resided primarily in the United States. Reavey continued to write poetry, publishing Colours of Memory (1955) and Seven Seas (1971), and to translate Russian litera ture. SB remained a close friend of Reavey; following his death, SB wrote: "Adieu George, to whom I owed so much, with whom shared so much, for whom cared so much. " 14
Gwynedd Cade Reavey (nee Clodine Gwynedd Vernon-Jones, 1901-? ), Welsh wife of George Reavey, helped Reavey establish the European Literary Bureau in London. During 1938 and 1939, she spent time in Cagnes-sur-Mer with Geer and Lisl van Velde, and she frequently saw SB as she passed through Paris. In 1940 she moved from London to Madrid with her husband, who was then working for the British Institute. In September 1941, she joined the Ministry of Economic Warfare. SB saw her in London as he returned from France to Ireland after the Liberation; she went to Germany with the Control Commission (autumn 1945-1947). After returning to London in 1949, she was employed by the British Iron and Steel Federation; SB lost contact with her after her divorce from George Reavey in 1950.
Lennox Robinson (ne Esme Stuart Lennox Robinson, 1886-1958), Irish playwright, was appointed by W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory to manage the Abbey Theatre in 1909 and was sent to London to gain theatrical experience with George Bernard Shaw; Robinson resigned
14 Samuel Beckett, "In Memoriam: George Reavey," Journal ofBeckett Studies 2 (Summer 1977) [lJ.
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from the Abbey in 1914 following a dispute about his decision to keep the theatre open during the mourning period for King Edward VII. In 1919, Robinson returned to the Abbey, where he was a director-pro ducer and served on the theatre's board of directors from 1923 until his death. In 1931 he married the artist and set designer Dorothy Travers Smith, daughter of Hester Dowden. A writer of fiction, biography, autobiography, and essays, Robinson was best known as a playwright. He wrote a history of the Abbey, Ireland's Abbey Theatre (1951), and he organized and traveled with the Abbey on lecture tours throughout the world.
Thomas Brown Rudmose-Brown (popularly known as Ruddy, 1878- 1942) was Professor of Modern Languages at Trinity College Dublin, and taught SB French and Proven�al Literature. Rudmose-Brown studied at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Grenoble and was appointed to TCD in 1909. He had a wide range of scholarly interests, from Pierre de Ronsard and Jean Racine to modern French writers, among them Marcel Proust, Francis Viele-Griffin, Stuart Merrill, Louis Le Cardonnel, Paul Valery, Valery Larbaud, and Charles Peguy. He also knew personally many of the poets of the Proven�al literary renais sance. TCD awarded him an honorary D. Litt. in 1931. He edited plays by Corneille and Marivaux, published French Literary Studies (1917), French Short Stories (1925), Contes du moyen age (1926), A Book of French Verse from Hugo to Larbaud (1928), French Town and Country (1928), and a collection of his own poetry, Walled Gardens (1918). Rudmose-Brown nominated SB as Lecteur d'anglais to the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1927; when this appointment was delayed, he arranged for SB's appointment to Campbell College in Belfast (from January 1928). Following two years at the ENS, SB returned to TCD in 1930-1931 as Rudmose-Brown's Assistant in French. Although he later regretted it, SB portrayed Rudmose-Brown as the "Polar Bear" in Dream of Fair to Middling Women. SB said of his mentor: "Much needed light came to me from 'Ruddy', from his teaching and friendship. I think of him often and
always with affection and gratitude. "15
15 Samuel Beckett to Roger Little, 18 May 1983, cited by Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 64. 711
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Frances Beckett Sinclair (known as Fanny and as Cissie, 1880-1951),
artist and musician, was the only sister ofSB's father William Beckett. She studied painting at the Dublin MetropolitanSchool of Art and at the Academie Colarossi in Paris in 1904, along with her good friends Estella Solomons and Beatrice Elvery (later Lady Glenavy). As Fannie Beckett, she exhibited her paintings in the Royal Hibernian Academy (1897, 1901-1908). In 1908, she married William Abraham (Boss)Sinclair, an art and antiques dealer; their home in Baily, Howth, Co. Dublin was a gathering-place for writers and artists. TheSinclairs moved to Kassel, Germany, in the early 1920s, where SB frequently visited them, sharing in their family and artistic life. In his Aunt Cissie, SB found a mature confidante with whom he could share interests in literature, art, and music. CissieSinclair traveled between Dublin and Kassel in 1931-1932, a time when personal difficulties, economic depression, and growing anti-Semitism were making life increasingly difficult in Germany. After the death of their daughter Ruth MargaretSinclair (known as Peggy) in May 1933, the family returned to Dublin in June. SB remained close to the Sinclairs, especially during Boss's illness and death in 1937; when Cissie was confined by rheumatoid arthritis and Parkinson's disease in her later years,SB was particularly attentive and visited her whenever
he was in Ireland.
Morris Sinclair (known as Sunny or Sonny Sinclair, 1918-2007) was
SB's first cousin, the only son of Frances (Cissie) and William (Boss) Sinclair. Despite the twelve-year age difference, the cousins were close. Sinclair and his family moved permanently from Germany to Dublin in
1933. SB helped him prepare for his examinations in Modern Languages (German and French) at Trinity College Dublin. Sinclair was a gifted violinist and studied at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. His father and sister Peggy had died of tuberculosis, so when Sinclair became ill in autumn 1936, it was arranged for him to go to the more favorable climate ofSouth Africa (1937-1938) as a private tutor. He completed his studies at TCD in winter 1940. In 1945,Sinclair received a scholarship to study in Paris; as he hesitated about a thesis subject,SB suggested that he might write on Sartre and the influences of Husserl and Kierkegaard, offering to introduce him to Sartre. From 1948 to 1952, Sinclair worked for UNESCO, first in English translation and editing and then as a writer and producer for radio broadcasts in German. He then moved to Geneva,
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where he worked in the Public Information Office of the World Health Organization (1952-1971), becoming Director of Public Information (1971-1974). He corresponded with SB and often visited him in Paris.
Ruth Margaret Sinclair (known as Peggy, 1911-1933), daughter of Frances (Cissie) and William (Boss) Sinclair, was SB's first cousin. When her family moved to Kassel in the early 1920s, SB often visited. SB and Peggy were attracted to each other when she visited Dublin in mid-summer of 1928. Peggy studied art, music, and movement at the Schule Hellerau-Laxenburg, near Vienna, where SB visited her in September 1928 before beginning his appointment at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, but by early 1929 their intimacy had ended. She figures in several of SB's early poems and many of her qualities are reflected in the character of Smeraldina-Rima in Dream of Fair to Middling Women and "The Smeraldina's Billet-Doux," first pub lished in More Pricks Than Kicks. Peggy Sinclair died of tuberculosis in Germany in May 1933.
William Abraham Sinclair (known as Boss, 1882-1937),Jewish, an art and antiques dealer, SB's uncle by marriage to his aunt Frances (Cissie) Sinclair, was an amateur violinist and a member of the Dublin Musical Society; he had been active in the Republican movement. They lived in Howth, Co. Dublin, before their move in the early 1920s to Kassel, Germany, where he dealt in contemporary German art. Sinclair published Painting (1918), contributed art criticism to the Irish Review, lectured on art, and taught English. SB grew close to the Sinclairs during his visits to Kassel, appreciating their warmth, their easy ways, and their encouragement of his writing. In the early 1930s, economic depression and anti-Semitism made life in Germany inhospitable; Sinclair returned to Dublin in the summer of 1933 after the death of his daughter Margaret (Peggy) Sinclair. He died from tuberculosis in 1937. Fulfilling a death-bed promise to Boss, his twin brother Henry Sinclair pursued a lawsuit against Oliver St. John Gogarty, who had libeled them and their grandfather in his book As I Was Going Down Sackville Street; SB gave testimony in the case in November 1937.
Estella Solomons(1882-1968),Irishpainter,wasmarriedtoSeumas O'Sullivan, but used her maiden name professionally. She was a
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political activist who became involved in the Easter Rising and the War of Independence. She studied with William Orpen at the Metropolitan School ofArt in Dublin, and with Walter Osborne at the Royal Hibernian Academy, and in London. Solomons painted portraits of many Irish liter ary and artistic figures, including Jack B. Yeats, and showed her work regularly at the Royal Hibernian Academy Exhibitions. She was named an Honorary Royal Hibernian Academician. SB attended the opening of Solomons's exhibition (with her cousin Louise Jacobs and friend Mary Duncan) at the Arlington Gallery in 1935.
Having studied Art together, Estella Solomons and Frances (Cissie) Sinclair were close friends. Estella Solomons took an interest in SB and his work, and her sister the singer Sophie Jacobs (nee Solomons, 1887-1972) befriended SB in the 1930s in Paris and London. SB occasionally visited the home of Solomons and O'Sullivan, "The Grange," in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin.
Francis Stuart (ne Henry Francis Montgomery Stuart, 1902-2000),
Australian-born Irish novelist, poet, and dramatist, converted to
Catholicism in 1920, and was married to Iseult MacBride, the daughter
ofMaudGonne. WithA. J. Leventhal,CecilSalkeld,andothers,hebegan
the short-lived literary magazine Tomorrow (1924). SB's letters mention,
among Stuart's prolific early writings, the novels Women and God (1931),
which was dedicated to Thomas McGreevy; The Coloured Dome (1932);
and The Great Squire (1939). In 1939, Stuart gave a series of academic
lectures in Germany, and then taught English and Irish Literature in
Berlin in 1940. From 1942 to January 1944, Stuart read German radio
broadcasts aimed at Ireland. Although Stuart claimed that he wrote to
SB in August 1942, and that SB replied, the letter has not been found.
After World War II, Stuart lived in Germany, France, and England; he
married Gertrude Meissner in 1954, returning to Ireland in 1958. He is
perhaps best known for his book Black List Section H (1971). Although
"men ofdiffering viewpoints," he and SB met occasionally in Paris after
16
Jean Thomas (1900-1983), French educator, entered the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1920, became Agrege-repetiteur (1926-1932), and Secretaire general of the ENS (1933). He taught French Language and
16 Elbom. Francis Stuart. 8. 714
World War II.
Literature at the Sorbonne (1934-1936), French Literature at the University of Poitiers (1936-1938), and Modem Comparative Literature at the University of Lyon (1938-1944). Thomas published studies of Diderot, Musset, and Sainte-Beuve. He was appointed as Directeur du cabinet du Ministre de ! 'Education Nationale (October 1944) and Chef du service des relations universitaires et artistiques avec l'etranger (1945); having been a member of the French delegation to the constituting conference of UNESCO, he became its Director of Cultural Activities (1947-1954), and then Assistant Director General of UNESCO (1955-1960). In 1932, Thomas wrote a letter of reference for SB, and in his position with UNESCO suggested SB for various translation projects during the 1950s, most notably the English translation of The Mexican Anthology edited by Octavio Paz. Thomas's eminence in French public and international education culminated in his appointment as President de la Commission de laRepublique Frarn;aise pour ! 'education, la science, et la culture (1972-1980).
Arthur Geoffrey Thompson (known to SB as Geoffrey, 1905-1976) was, with his brother Alan, a childhood friend of SB; they studied together at Portora Royal School and Trinity College Dublin. They shared interests in music, literature, and sports, and, while students at TCD, attended the Abbey Theatre together. Thompson qualified in Medicine at TCD in 1928, then studied Biochemistry in London and Paris as a Rockefeller Research Fellow. Returning to Dublin in 1930, he took up the position of Physician at Baggot St. Hospital. Thompson became increasingly interested in mental illness manifested as physical symptoms, and moved to London in 1934 to train in psychoanalysis, a specialty that could not be pursued in Dublin at that time. He was resident Senior House Physician at Bethlem Royal Hospital and later worked at the Maudsley Hospital and St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. When SB came to see Thompson, he would also visit long-term patients who otherwise were seldom visited. Thompson has said that SB was "preoccupied with decrepitude, people who could hardly help themselves. "17 It was Thompson who suggested that SB begin psychotherapy with W. R. Bion in 1934. In 1935, Thompson
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17 Geoffrey Thomson interviewed by Andy O'Mahoney, RTE. 1976.
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took a post in the Tavistock Clinic. In November 1935, SB was best man at Thompson's wedding to Ursula Stenhouse.
After war-time service, Thompson practiced privately and at the Tavistock Clinic, qualifying in psychoanalysis in 1949. He worked with the National Health Service and was a member of the Institute of Marital Studies, retiring from the Tavistock Clinic in 1970. In later years, the Thompsons and SB saw each other from time to time in London and in Paris.
Edward William Titus (1870-1952), Polish-born American bibliophile, translator, and publisher, opened his anglophone bookstore, At the Sign of the Black Manikin, in Paris in 1924. Subsidized by his wife Helena Rubinstein, he published twenty-five books under the Black Manikin imprint from 1926 to 1932: ranging from works by Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler to those by British modernist Mary Butts, from Harlem Renaissance poets Claude McKay and Countee Cullen to Anai:s Nin's An Unprofessional Study ofD. H. Lawrence, and also translations of Rimbaud and Baudelaire. In 1929 he became Editor of This Quarter (1925-1932), initiating prizes to attract submissions and encourage young writers. In This Quarter SB published translations from Italian of work by Eugenio Montale, Raffaelo Franchi, Giovanni Comisso (1930), as well as his own story "Dante and the Lobster" (1932), and many of his translations from French for the surrealist number (1932) guest edited by Andre Breton. In 1932, SB translated Rimbaud's "Le Bateau ivre" (Drunken Boat), unpublished until 1976, as a commission from Titus.
transition (1927-1938), an international avant-garde literary magazine, was founded by EugeneJolas, MariaJolas, and Elliot Paul to present new European writing to American readers and to create a forum for lin guistic experimentation: as Jolas put it, "a laboratory of the word. " Eugene Jolas's ideas about language and literature were expressed most concisely in two manifestos, "The Revolution of the Word" (1929) and "Poetry is Vertical" (1932). Among the writers published by transition were Andre Breton, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, and Dylan Thomas; transition may be best known for serially publishing sections of James Joyce's Work in Progress (1927-1935), a process in which SB was involved. SB's first published
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writing, his essay "Dante. . . Bruno. Vico. . Joyce," appeared in transition Uune 1929). He also published in transition the short stories "Assumption" and "Sedendo et Quiesciendo [sic]," poems ("For Future Reference," "Malacoda," "Enueg II," "Dortmunder," and "Ooftish"), and a review of Denis Devlin's collection of poetry Intercessions.
AfterWorldWar II, the Jolases transferred the publishing licence of transition to Georges Duthuit, who capitalized its title and changed the focus of the journal (see profile of Transition in Volume II).
Percival Arland Ussher (known as Percy until mid-1937, then as Arland, 1899-1980), essayist, critic, and translator, was born in London and studied at Trinity College Dublin (1917-1919) and St. John's College, Cambridge (1920). He settled on his family's estate in Co. Waterford, where he wrote on the Gaelic language and the way of life of the Deise Gaeltacht. His translation from Irish of Brian Merriman's The Midnight Court (1926) was prefaced byW. B. Yeats. SB visited Ussher at Cappagh, and Ussher often sent him his essays on philosophy, history, politics, and art, especially in the late 1930s and again afterWorldWar II, when he occasionally visited SB in Paris. Acerbic wit and strong opinions mark his writing, which he called "philosophical belles lettres. " He published Postsoipt on Existentialism and Other Essays (1946); The Twilight of Ideas and Other Essays (1948); The Face and Mind ofIreland (1949); a study of Jewish culture and an analysis of anti-Semitism, The Magic People (1949); a study of Shaw, Yeats, and Joyce, Three Great Irishmen (1952); a book on existentialism with reference to Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre, Journey Through Dread (1955); Sages and Schoolmen (1967); and Eros and Psyche (1976). His interest in folklore and divination is reflected in his study Twenty Two Keys to the Tarot (1957). Edited selections from Ussher's diary (1943-1977) were published as From a Dead Lantern (1978) and The]oumal ofArland Ussher (1980).
Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957), Irish painter, illustrator, novelist, and playwright, the son of John Butler Yeats and younger brother to the poet William Butler Yeats, was born in London, but spent his boyhood in County Sligo with his maternal grandparents. In 1887, he returned to London where he studied Art and established himself as an illustrator; in 1894 he married Mary Cottenham White (known as Cottie), a fellow-student at the Chiswick Art School. Although he visited Ireland
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frequently, Jack Yeats did not settle there until 1910. In 1912 he pub lished a book ofpaintings and drawings, Life in the West ofIreland, and began to work in oils. SB met Yeats through Thomas McGreevy in November 1930; over time, Yeats became a trusted older friend to SB. In the 1930s, SB occasionally attended Yeats's "at-homes" in Fitzwilliam Square, but much preferred to visit the painter in his studio. SB greatly admired Yeats's paintings and saw a correlation between them and his own work. SB owned several ofYeats's works, including the painting A Morning("a setting out without the coming home"), which he bought on what he called the "stuttering system. " Yeats was also an accomplished writer, and in 1936 SB reviewed his novel The Amaranthers in the Dublin Magazine. In 1938, Yeats wrote to Routledge, his own London publisher, on behalfofBeckett's Murphy. At the time ofYeats's 1954 Paris exhibi tion, SB wrote "Hommage a Jack B. Yeats" and elicited tributes about Yeats's work from Pierre Schneider and Jacques Putman for Les Lettres Nouvelles (April 1954). SB was deeply disappointed that he was unable to return to Dublin for Yeats's funeral in April 1957.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED
Abbot, Vivienne. "How It Was: Egan and Beckett. " Desmond Egan: The Poet and His Work. Ed. Hugh Kenner. Orono, ME: Northern Lights, 1990. 45-53.
Ackerley, C. J. Demented Particulars: The Annotated Murphy. 2nd rev. edn. Tallahassee, FL: Journal of Beckett Studies Books, 2004.
Ackerley, C. ]. , and S. E. Gontarski. The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett:
A Reader's Guide to His Works, Life, and Thought. New York: Grove Press, 2004.
Adam, Antoine. The Art ofPaul Verlaine. Tr. Carl Morse. New York: New York University Press, 1963.
Adler, Alfred. The Neurotic Constitution: Outlines of a Comparative Individualistic Psychology and Psychotherapy. Tr. Bernard Glueck and John E. Lind.
New York: Moffat, 1916. Rpt. London: Kegan Paul, 1921.
Adler, Jankel. Janke! Adler. Intro. Stanley William Hayter. London: Nicholson and Watson, 1948.
Aldington, Richard. The Complete Poems ofRichard Aldington. London: Allan Wingate, 1948.
"James Joyce. " Rev. ofFinnegans Wake, by James Joyce. The Atlantic 163 Uune 1939) [supplement] "The Bookshelf' [17, 19, 21].
Life for Life's Sake: A Book of Reminiscences. London: Cassell, 1941. Alphant, Marianne, and Nathalie Leger, eds. Objet: Beckett. Paris: Centre
Pompidou, IMEC-Editeur, 2007.
Andre Lhote, 1885-1962: Cubism. New York: Leonard Hutton Galleries, 1976. Andrews, Keith. Adam Elsheimer: Paintings - Drawings - Prints. New York:
Rizzoli, 1977.
Annuaire diplomatique et consulaire de la Republique Fran�aise. Nouvelle serie. Vol.
49. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1938.
Anon. "Gontcharov's [sic] 'Oblomov. " Rev. ofOblomov, by Ivan Goncharov.
Times Literary Supplement (14 November 1929) 919.
"Murphy. By Samuel Beckett. " Rev. ofMurphy, by Samuel Beckett. Times
Literary Supplement (12 March 1938) 172.
Rev. ofJames Joyce's "Ulysses," by Stuart Gilbert. Dublin Magazine 6. 2
(April-June 1931) 64-65.
Rev. ofMurphy, by Samuel Beckett. Dublin Magazine 14. 2 (April-June 1939) 98.
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Bibliography of works cited
Arnheim, Rudolf. Film. Tr. L. M. Sieveking and Ian F. D. Morrow. London: Faber and Faber, 1933.
Association amicale des anciens eleves de ! 'Ecole normale superieure. Paris: Hachette Universite, 1973. Supplement historique. Paris: Hachette-Universite, 1990.
Atik, Anne. How It Was: A Memoir ofSamuel Beckett. London: Faber and Faber, 2003.
Augustine. Confessions. Tr. E. B. Pusey. Everyman's Library. London: Dent, 1907.
Baedeker, Karl. Das Deutsche Reich und einige Grenzgebiete, Reisehandbuch fiir Bahn und Auto. Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1936.
Bair, Deirdre. Samuel Beckett: A Biography. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.
the "Alba" of the eponymous poem and of Dream of Fair to Middling
10
Although SB had already made plans to travel to Germany by Christmas 1931, he indicated later to Lawrence Harvey that he would not have resigned from TCD had it not been for the automobile accident in which Ethna Maccarthy, his passenger, was badly hurt. When she taught one of Professor Rudmose-Brown's courses in 1936, SB helped her prepare the Provenc;al lectures. Her poems, stories, translations from Spanish and German poetry, and a short play appeared in Hermathena, Dublin Magazine, Ireland To-Day, and an anthology of New Irish Poets (1948). Maccarthy continued her studies, receiving an MA in 1937; from 1939 to 1949 she was "Assistant to the Professor of French" at TCD, and she lectured in Spanish and French even as she studied Medicine (MB, 1941; MD, 1948). Maccarthy practiced medicine in Dublin and then in the East End of London. She married A. J. Leventhal in May 1956. SB remained a close friend to them both, particularly during MacCarthy's illness and death from cancer in 1959.
Women.
Thomas McGreevy(after 1943 known as MacGreevy, 1893-1967), Irish poet, critic, translator, art historian, and Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, was born in Tarbert, Co. Kerry. McGreevy worked in Dublin and London with the British Civil Service (1911-1914), served in World War I as an Officer of the Royal Field Artillery, and then studied History and Political Science at Trinity College Dublin (BA, 1920). While an assistant secretary to the Irish Advisory Committee of the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, McGreevy published articles for The Leader, The Irish Statesman, and The Gael. He moved to London in May 1925, where he joined the editorial staff of Connoisseur and wrote criticism for The Criterion, the Times Literary Supplement, The Nation and Athenaeum and the New Statesman. In January 1927, he was appointed as Lecteur d'anglais at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, and when SB took up the same post he and McGreevy became close friends. McGreevy introduced SB to many of his acquaintances in art and
10 Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 75. 704
literary circles in Paris, London, and Dublin, among them James Joyce, Richard Aldington, Jack B. Yeats, Charles Prentice, and Eugene Jolas. Both men published on Joyce in transition and Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work In Progress. SB stood in for McGreevy in his role as Secretary of the fine art journal Formes when McGreevy had to be away from Paris. In 1931, McGreevy published two monographs in the Chatto and Windus Dolphin Book series: Thomas Stearns filiot: A Study and Richard Aldington: An Englishman; SB's Proust, also in this series, came about as a result of McGreevy's suggestion. McGreevy stimulated and guided SB's interest in painting. He insisted that SB meet Jack B. Yeats. McGreevy's collection Poems was published in 1934. In London, he became chiefArt Critic for The Studio (1938-1940); returning to Dublin in 1941, he became Art Critic for The Irish Times (November 1941 to December 1944). A practicing Catholic all his life, he also wrote for The Father Matthew Record and The Capuchin Annual.
McGreevy's study JackB. Yeats was published in 1945.
McGreevy served as Director ofthe National Gallery oflreland from
1950 until his retirement in 1963. He was made Chevalier de l'Ordre de la Legion d'Honneur by the French Government for his services to the arts, made Cavaliere Ufficiale al Merito della Repubblica Italiana by the Italian Government, and awarded the Degree of Doctor of Letters by the National University oflreland. In the early 1960s, he wrote a critical study on Nicolas Poussin, was made Officier de la Legion d'Honneur, and organized an exhibition of Jack B. Yeats's work for the Venice Biennale.
Macy Manning Howe Adams (1905-1999), playwright, novelist, critic, childhood friend of SB (their mothers were close friends). Mary Manning studied at Alexandra College Dublin and the Abbey Acting School, and joined the Gate Theatre as Publicity Manager, editing the GateTheatrejournal,Motley. HerearlyplayswereYouth'stheSeason . . . ? (1931), in which SB had a hand - suggesting a wordless character called Horace Egosmith; Storm Over Wicklow (1933); and Happy Family (1934). In 1934 Mary Manning moved to Boston and married Harvard law profes sor Mark DeWolfe Howe, Jr. In the summer of 1936, while visiting Ireland, she had what she later claimed was an affair with SB. The first of her novels Mount Venus (1938) was published with Houghton Mifflin, whom she tried to interest in SB's Murphy. Director ofDrama at
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Radcliffe College during World War II, Mary Manning was a founder of
The Poets' Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1950-1968, 1987- ).
which staged her play The Voice of Shem (1955, published 1957), an
adaptation of Finnegans Wake, as well as a reading of SB's radio play All
That Fall (1958). After her husband's death in 1967, Mary Manning
returned to Dublin where she was Drama Critic for Hibernia. Her adap
tation ofFrank O'Connor's novel The Saint and Mary Kate was produced at
the Abbey Theatre in 1968, and she wrote a volume of satirical short
stories, The Last Chronicles of Ballyfungus (1978). In 1980, she married
Faneuil Adams (1899-1981), and again lived in Boston. Of her mother's
quick and sometimes cutting wit, the poet Susan Howe has written:
11
Sean O'Sullivan (1906-1964), Irish painter and draftsman. studied at the Metropolitan School ofArt in Dublin, the Central School ofArts and
Crafts in London, and at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and the Academie Colarossi in Paris. In 1931, he was the youngest artist to be elected to the Royal Hibernian Academy. Although he painted Irish landscapes, O'Sullivan is best known for portraits, done as drawings and in oils, including ones ofsuch Dublin notables as Douglas Hyde, Eamon De Valera,JamesJoyce, W. B. Yeats, Maud Gonne MacBride,Jack B. Yeats, SB, and Ethna Maccarthy (see illustrations). He aimed to "record every person of prominence on the Irish scene during his period," and was said to have a story about every person he had painted. 12 O'Sullivan knew McGreevy andJoyce in Paris. Although SB first mentions him in a letter in 1933, the two were most frequently together from 1935 to 1937 in Dublin; in 1939, SB arranged for him to rentJankel Adler's studio in Paris.
Seumas O'Sullivan (neJames Sullivan Starkey, 1879-1958), Irish poet and founding editor ofthe Dublin Magazine (1923-1958), was active in the Irish Literary Revival, appearing in W. B. Yeats's play On Baile's Strand at the Abbey Theatre in 1904, and was a supporter ofSinn Fein. A friend ofW. B. Yeats,JamesJoyce, AE, and Oliver St. John Gogarty, O'Sullivan championed young authors, among them Patrick Kavanagh, Padraic
11 Susan Howe, The Midnight (New York: New Directions Books, 2003) 64.
12 Ryan, Remembering How We Stood, 46.
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"She loved to produce and destroy meanings in the same sentence. "
Fallon, Mary Lavin, and SB. "Alba" was SB's initial publication in the Dublin Magazine (1931), followed by "Gnome" (1934), "Cascando" (1936), and several reviews. O'Sullivan was President of Irish PEN, a founding member of the Irish Academy of Letters, and was given an honorary degree by Trinity College Dublin in 1939. He was married to the painter Estella Solomons.
Georges Pelorson (later known as Georges Belmont, b. 1909), French poet, journalist, editor, and translator, entered the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1926 and was SB's first student there in 1928. Pelorson came to Trinity College Dublin as part of the exchange with the ENS, beginning in January 1930; in February 1930, he co-authored with SB the dramatic parody Le Kid for the Modern Languages Society produc tion at the Peacock Theatre; according to Knowlson, Pelorson figures as Liebert in SB's Dream of Fair to Middling Women. Pelorson married Marcelle Graham in Dublin, then returned to Paris in autumn 1931, leaving the ENS with a licence in English, rather than going on to sit for the agregation; with his wife Marcelle, Pelorson translated Emily Bronte's poems in 1933. He wrote for Paris-Midi and Paris-Soir (1931-1940), was Director of the Ecole bilingue de Neuilly founded by Maria Jolas, and published in La Nouvelle Revue Fram;aise, Mesures, and transition. With Raymond Queneau, Henry Miller, Le Corbusier, and Frederic Joliot-Curie, Pelorson co-founded Volontes (1937-1939); he published Essai sur une reforrne de l'enseignement en France (1940) and was involved in the literary section of the Jeune France educational movement. A collaborator, Pelorson held positions with the Vichy Government: as Chef de la propagande des jeunes for the Occupied Zone (1941), Secretaire general adjoint (1942-1943), and Secretaire general de la jeunesse (1943-1944). Blacklisted after the Liberation by the Comite national des ecrivains, briefly imprisoned, and stripped of his civil rights for ten years, Pelorson wrote under the name Georges Belmont. In the early 1950s SB and Belmont resumed their friendship. Belmont worked with Editions Robert Laffont (1952-1953; 1964-1979), as Editor-in-Chief of Paris Match (1953-1954), Editor of]ours de France, of Marie Claire, Review Editor ofArts (1953-1964), and as Literary Director for Editions Acropole (1980-1985). As Georges Belmont, he is widely known as the French translator of works by Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Burgess, Henry James, and Henry Miller.
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Alfred Remy Peron (1904-1945), writer and teacher, was in the class of 1924 at the Ecole Normale Superieure; Peron came to Trinity College Dublin on the exchange program from the ENS (1926-1928) and first met SB there. As a Lecteur d'anglais at the ENS in 1928, SB helped Peron study for the agregation. The two worked together on the initial French translation of Joyce's "Anna Livia Plurabelle" in 1930. Peron taught at the Lycee Buffon in Paris. When SB moved to Paris in 1938, Peron encouraged and helped SB to begin the translation of Murphy into French; Peron's translation of SB's poem "Alba" was published in Soutes (1938). When Peron was mobilized in the French Army, he asked SB to assist his family in the event of evacuation from Paris. Peron served as an agent de liaison for the British Army. He was a member of the Resistance reseaux "Etoile" and "Gloria SMH"; he recruited SB to the latter in September 1941. When Peron was arrested by the Gestapo in August 1942, his wife Maria Peron (known as Mania to SB) warned SB and Suzanne by telegram. Alfred Peron was sent to the concentration camp at Mauthausen; shortly after being freed from the camp, he died on 1 May 1945 in Switzerland, in transit back to France. SB remained supportive of Peron's family. SB enlisted Mania Peron's help with his writings in French, and he helped her as she taught English, translated, and wrote her novel. SB's correspondence with Mania Peron continued into the 1980s.
Charles Prentice (c. 1892-1949) was born in Scotland, studied Classics at Oxford, and was a senior partner in Chatto and Windus when, at Thomas McGreevy's suggestion, SB wrote and submitted Proust to the Dolphin Books series. In Prentice SB found a frank yet sympathetic reader. Prentice continued to further SB's writing career, publishing More Pricks Than Kicks (1934) despite the reservations of his colleagues at Chatto and Windus. Even when he could not publish SB's work, Prentice reassured SB and suggested other outlets for his writing. Richard Aldington characterized Prentice as a "man utterly without affectations . . . of simple dignity and straightforward utterance," con siderate, generous, and "full of laughter. "13 Prentice joined Aldington in providing funds so that McGreevy could travel in Italy and have time
13 Richard Aldington, Life for Life's Sake: A Book of Reminiscences (London: Cassell, 1941) 322-323.
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to write. Prentice retired from Chatto and Windus in 1935, but he returned to work there during World War II; in retirement he pursued interests in archeology in Italy, Greece, and Africa. He died in Nairobi.
Samuel Putnam (1892-1950), American editor, journalist, and trans lator, was a feature writer for the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Evening Post in the 1920s, and edited Youth (1921-1922) and Prairie (1923). In 1927, he moved to Paris, where in 1929 he was an editor at This Quarter with Edward Titus and then in 1930 founded The New Review, which expired with the April 1932 issue. SB published some ofhis own work as well as translations in both journals. Putnam initiated The European Caravan: An Anthology of the New Spirit in European Literature (1931), planned as a two-volume anthology to introduce modern European literature to American and English readers; the editors included Maida Castelhun Darnton, George Reavey, and Jacob Bronowski. Some ofSB's poems were published in the Irish section ofthe first volume; Putnam enlisted SB to help with the selection and translations for the Italian section of a second volume that remained unpublished. He published George Reavey's Faust's Metamorphoses (1932). Putnam returned to the United States in 1933, becoming a contributor and editor to several small magazines; in 1947 he published his memoirs, Paris Was Our Mistress.
George Reavey (1907-1976), Irish poet, literary agent, publisher, and translator ofRussian and French literature, was born and lived in Russia until 1919, when his father was arrested; the family fled to Belfast and moved to London in 1921. From 1926 Reavey studied at Cambridge University, where he knew William Empson, Jacob Bronowski, and Julian Trevelyan through their association with the journal Experiment. SB met Reavey in 1929 through Thomas McGreevy in Paris where Reavey was Associate Editor of Samuel Putnam's The New Review (1930-1932) as well as ofThe European Caravan (1931); Putnam published his first book of poetry, Faust's Metamorphoses (1932). In 1934 Reavey established Europa Press in London and Paris, which published SB's Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates (1935) in a series ofpoetry collections that included his own Nostradam: A Sequence ofPoems (1935), Signes d'adieu (1935), and Quixotic Perquisitions (1939); Intercessions (1937) by Denis Devlin; and Third Person by Brian Coffey (1938). Reavey edited and
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translated Soviet Literature: An Anthology with Marc Slonim (1934), and was a prolific translator from Russian, particularly of the works of Nikolai Berdyaev and Andrei Bely. He edited Thorns of Thunder (1936), a collection of selected poems by Paul Eluard translated by SB and others. Having established the European Literary Bureau in Paris, Reavey moved it to London in 1935; the agency represented SB's Murphy. Reavey served with the British Institute in Madrid in 1940 and with the British Foreign Office in Russia from 1942 to 1945, where he edited the journal Britanskii Soyuznik in Kuibyshev and Moscow. After the War, he published Soviet Literature Today (1946), taught at the University of Birmingham, England, and in 1949-1950 was a Rockefeller Fellow at Columbia and Stanford universities; thereafter, he resided primarily in the United States. Reavey continued to write poetry, publishing Colours of Memory (1955) and Seven Seas (1971), and to translate Russian litera ture. SB remained a close friend of Reavey; following his death, SB wrote: "Adieu George, to whom I owed so much, with whom shared so much, for whom cared so much. " 14
Gwynedd Cade Reavey (nee Clodine Gwynedd Vernon-Jones, 1901-? ), Welsh wife of George Reavey, helped Reavey establish the European Literary Bureau in London. During 1938 and 1939, she spent time in Cagnes-sur-Mer with Geer and Lisl van Velde, and she frequently saw SB as she passed through Paris. In 1940 she moved from London to Madrid with her husband, who was then working for the British Institute. In September 1941, she joined the Ministry of Economic Warfare. SB saw her in London as he returned from France to Ireland after the Liberation; she went to Germany with the Control Commission (autumn 1945-1947). After returning to London in 1949, she was employed by the British Iron and Steel Federation; SB lost contact with her after her divorce from George Reavey in 1950.
Lennox Robinson (ne Esme Stuart Lennox Robinson, 1886-1958), Irish playwright, was appointed by W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory to manage the Abbey Theatre in 1909 and was sent to London to gain theatrical experience with George Bernard Shaw; Robinson resigned
14 Samuel Beckett, "In Memoriam: George Reavey," Journal ofBeckett Studies 2 (Summer 1977) [lJ.
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from the Abbey in 1914 following a dispute about his decision to keep the theatre open during the mourning period for King Edward VII. In 1919, Robinson returned to the Abbey, where he was a director-pro ducer and served on the theatre's board of directors from 1923 until his death. In 1931 he married the artist and set designer Dorothy Travers Smith, daughter of Hester Dowden. A writer of fiction, biography, autobiography, and essays, Robinson was best known as a playwright. He wrote a history of the Abbey, Ireland's Abbey Theatre (1951), and he organized and traveled with the Abbey on lecture tours throughout the world.
Thomas Brown Rudmose-Brown (popularly known as Ruddy, 1878- 1942) was Professor of Modern Languages at Trinity College Dublin, and taught SB French and Proven�al Literature. Rudmose-Brown studied at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Grenoble and was appointed to TCD in 1909. He had a wide range of scholarly interests, from Pierre de Ronsard and Jean Racine to modern French writers, among them Marcel Proust, Francis Viele-Griffin, Stuart Merrill, Louis Le Cardonnel, Paul Valery, Valery Larbaud, and Charles Peguy. He also knew personally many of the poets of the Proven�al literary renais sance. TCD awarded him an honorary D. Litt. in 1931. He edited plays by Corneille and Marivaux, published French Literary Studies (1917), French Short Stories (1925), Contes du moyen age (1926), A Book of French Verse from Hugo to Larbaud (1928), French Town and Country (1928), and a collection of his own poetry, Walled Gardens (1918). Rudmose-Brown nominated SB as Lecteur d'anglais to the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1927; when this appointment was delayed, he arranged for SB's appointment to Campbell College in Belfast (from January 1928). Following two years at the ENS, SB returned to TCD in 1930-1931 as Rudmose-Brown's Assistant in French. Although he later regretted it, SB portrayed Rudmose-Brown as the "Polar Bear" in Dream of Fair to Middling Women. SB said of his mentor: "Much needed light came to me from 'Ruddy', from his teaching and friendship. I think of him often and
always with affection and gratitude. "15
15 Samuel Beckett to Roger Little, 18 May 1983, cited by Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 64. 711
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Frances Beckett Sinclair (known as Fanny and as Cissie, 1880-1951),
artist and musician, was the only sister ofSB's father William Beckett. She studied painting at the Dublin MetropolitanSchool of Art and at the Academie Colarossi in Paris in 1904, along with her good friends Estella Solomons and Beatrice Elvery (later Lady Glenavy). As Fannie Beckett, she exhibited her paintings in the Royal Hibernian Academy (1897, 1901-1908). In 1908, she married William Abraham (Boss)Sinclair, an art and antiques dealer; their home in Baily, Howth, Co. Dublin was a gathering-place for writers and artists. TheSinclairs moved to Kassel, Germany, in the early 1920s, where SB frequently visited them, sharing in their family and artistic life. In his Aunt Cissie, SB found a mature confidante with whom he could share interests in literature, art, and music. CissieSinclair traveled between Dublin and Kassel in 1931-1932, a time when personal difficulties, economic depression, and growing anti-Semitism were making life increasingly difficult in Germany. After the death of their daughter Ruth MargaretSinclair (known as Peggy) in May 1933, the family returned to Dublin in June. SB remained close to the Sinclairs, especially during Boss's illness and death in 1937; when Cissie was confined by rheumatoid arthritis and Parkinson's disease in her later years,SB was particularly attentive and visited her whenever
he was in Ireland.
Morris Sinclair (known as Sunny or Sonny Sinclair, 1918-2007) was
SB's first cousin, the only son of Frances (Cissie) and William (Boss) Sinclair. Despite the twelve-year age difference, the cousins were close. Sinclair and his family moved permanently from Germany to Dublin in
1933. SB helped him prepare for his examinations in Modern Languages (German and French) at Trinity College Dublin. Sinclair was a gifted violinist and studied at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. His father and sister Peggy had died of tuberculosis, so when Sinclair became ill in autumn 1936, it was arranged for him to go to the more favorable climate ofSouth Africa (1937-1938) as a private tutor. He completed his studies at TCD in winter 1940. In 1945,Sinclair received a scholarship to study in Paris; as he hesitated about a thesis subject,SB suggested that he might write on Sartre and the influences of Husserl and Kierkegaard, offering to introduce him to Sartre. From 1948 to 1952, Sinclair worked for UNESCO, first in English translation and editing and then as a writer and producer for radio broadcasts in German. He then moved to Geneva,
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where he worked in the Public Information Office of the World Health Organization (1952-1971), becoming Director of Public Information (1971-1974). He corresponded with SB and often visited him in Paris.
Ruth Margaret Sinclair (known as Peggy, 1911-1933), daughter of Frances (Cissie) and William (Boss) Sinclair, was SB's first cousin. When her family moved to Kassel in the early 1920s, SB often visited. SB and Peggy were attracted to each other when she visited Dublin in mid-summer of 1928. Peggy studied art, music, and movement at the Schule Hellerau-Laxenburg, near Vienna, where SB visited her in September 1928 before beginning his appointment at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, but by early 1929 their intimacy had ended. She figures in several of SB's early poems and many of her qualities are reflected in the character of Smeraldina-Rima in Dream of Fair to Middling Women and "The Smeraldina's Billet-Doux," first pub lished in More Pricks Than Kicks. Peggy Sinclair died of tuberculosis in Germany in May 1933.
William Abraham Sinclair (known as Boss, 1882-1937),Jewish, an art and antiques dealer, SB's uncle by marriage to his aunt Frances (Cissie) Sinclair, was an amateur violinist and a member of the Dublin Musical Society; he had been active in the Republican movement. They lived in Howth, Co. Dublin, before their move in the early 1920s to Kassel, Germany, where he dealt in contemporary German art. Sinclair published Painting (1918), contributed art criticism to the Irish Review, lectured on art, and taught English. SB grew close to the Sinclairs during his visits to Kassel, appreciating their warmth, their easy ways, and their encouragement of his writing. In the early 1930s, economic depression and anti-Semitism made life in Germany inhospitable; Sinclair returned to Dublin in the summer of 1933 after the death of his daughter Margaret (Peggy) Sinclair. He died from tuberculosis in 1937. Fulfilling a death-bed promise to Boss, his twin brother Henry Sinclair pursued a lawsuit against Oliver St. John Gogarty, who had libeled them and their grandfather in his book As I Was Going Down Sackville Street; SB gave testimony in the case in November 1937.
Estella Solomons(1882-1968),Irishpainter,wasmarriedtoSeumas O'Sullivan, but used her maiden name professionally. She was a
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political activist who became involved in the Easter Rising and the War of Independence. She studied with William Orpen at the Metropolitan School ofArt in Dublin, and with Walter Osborne at the Royal Hibernian Academy, and in London. Solomons painted portraits of many Irish liter ary and artistic figures, including Jack B. Yeats, and showed her work regularly at the Royal Hibernian Academy Exhibitions. She was named an Honorary Royal Hibernian Academician. SB attended the opening of Solomons's exhibition (with her cousin Louise Jacobs and friend Mary Duncan) at the Arlington Gallery in 1935.
Having studied Art together, Estella Solomons and Frances (Cissie) Sinclair were close friends. Estella Solomons took an interest in SB and his work, and her sister the singer Sophie Jacobs (nee Solomons, 1887-1972) befriended SB in the 1930s in Paris and London. SB occasionally visited the home of Solomons and O'Sullivan, "The Grange," in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin.
Francis Stuart (ne Henry Francis Montgomery Stuart, 1902-2000),
Australian-born Irish novelist, poet, and dramatist, converted to
Catholicism in 1920, and was married to Iseult MacBride, the daughter
ofMaudGonne. WithA. J. Leventhal,CecilSalkeld,andothers,hebegan
the short-lived literary magazine Tomorrow (1924). SB's letters mention,
among Stuart's prolific early writings, the novels Women and God (1931),
which was dedicated to Thomas McGreevy; The Coloured Dome (1932);
and The Great Squire (1939). In 1939, Stuart gave a series of academic
lectures in Germany, and then taught English and Irish Literature in
Berlin in 1940. From 1942 to January 1944, Stuart read German radio
broadcasts aimed at Ireland. Although Stuart claimed that he wrote to
SB in August 1942, and that SB replied, the letter has not been found.
After World War II, Stuart lived in Germany, France, and England; he
married Gertrude Meissner in 1954, returning to Ireland in 1958. He is
perhaps best known for his book Black List Section H (1971). Although
"men ofdiffering viewpoints," he and SB met occasionally in Paris after
16
Jean Thomas (1900-1983), French educator, entered the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1920, became Agrege-repetiteur (1926-1932), and Secretaire general of the ENS (1933). He taught French Language and
16 Elbom. Francis Stuart. 8. 714
World War II.
Literature at the Sorbonne (1934-1936), French Literature at the University of Poitiers (1936-1938), and Modem Comparative Literature at the University of Lyon (1938-1944). Thomas published studies of Diderot, Musset, and Sainte-Beuve. He was appointed as Directeur du cabinet du Ministre de ! 'Education Nationale (October 1944) and Chef du service des relations universitaires et artistiques avec l'etranger (1945); having been a member of the French delegation to the constituting conference of UNESCO, he became its Director of Cultural Activities (1947-1954), and then Assistant Director General of UNESCO (1955-1960). In 1932, Thomas wrote a letter of reference for SB, and in his position with UNESCO suggested SB for various translation projects during the 1950s, most notably the English translation of The Mexican Anthology edited by Octavio Paz. Thomas's eminence in French public and international education culminated in his appointment as President de la Commission de laRepublique Frarn;aise pour ! 'education, la science, et la culture (1972-1980).
Arthur Geoffrey Thompson (known to SB as Geoffrey, 1905-1976) was, with his brother Alan, a childhood friend of SB; they studied together at Portora Royal School and Trinity College Dublin. They shared interests in music, literature, and sports, and, while students at TCD, attended the Abbey Theatre together. Thompson qualified in Medicine at TCD in 1928, then studied Biochemistry in London and Paris as a Rockefeller Research Fellow. Returning to Dublin in 1930, he took up the position of Physician at Baggot St. Hospital. Thompson became increasingly interested in mental illness manifested as physical symptoms, and moved to London in 1934 to train in psychoanalysis, a specialty that could not be pursued in Dublin at that time. He was resident Senior House Physician at Bethlem Royal Hospital and later worked at the Maudsley Hospital and St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. When SB came to see Thompson, he would also visit long-term patients who otherwise were seldom visited. Thompson has said that SB was "preoccupied with decrepitude, people who could hardly help themselves. "17 It was Thompson who suggested that SB begin psychotherapy with W. R. Bion in 1934. In 1935, Thompson
Pro. files
17 Geoffrey Thomson interviewed by Andy O'Mahoney, RTE. 1976.
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took a post in the Tavistock Clinic. In November 1935, SB was best man at Thompson's wedding to Ursula Stenhouse.
After war-time service, Thompson practiced privately and at the Tavistock Clinic, qualifying in psychoanalysis in 1949. He worked with the National Health Service and was a member of the Institute of Marital Studies, retiring from the Tavistock Clinic in 1970. In later years, the Thompsons and SB saw each other from time to time in London and in Paris.
Edward William Titus (1870-1952), Polish-born American bibliophile, translator, and publisher, opened his anglophone bookstore, At the Sign of the Black Manikin, in Paris in 1924. Subsidized by his wife Helena Rubinstein, he published twenty-five books under the Black Manikin imprint from 1926 to 1932: ranging from works by Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler to those by British modernist Mary Butts, from Harlem Renaissance poets Claude McKay and Countee Cullen to Anai:s Nin's An Unprofessional Study ofD. H. Lawrence, and also translations of Rimbaud and Baudelaire. In 1929 he became Editor of This Quarter (1925-1932), initiating prizes to attract submissions and encourage young writers. In This Quarter SB published translations from Italian of work by Eugenio Montale, Raffaelo Franchi, Giovanni Comisso (1930), as well as his own story "Dante and the Lobster" (1932), and many of his translations from French for the surrealist number (1932) guest edited by Andre Breton. In 1932, SB translated Rimbaud's "Le Bateau ivre" (Drunken Boat), unpublished until 1976, as a commission from Titus.
transition (1927-1938), an international avant-garde literary magazine, was founded by EugeneJolas, MariaJolas, and Elliot Paul to present new European writing to American readers and to create a forum for lin guistic experimentation: as Jolas put it, "a laboratory of the word. " Eugene Jolas's ideas about language and literature were expressed most concisely in two manifestos, "The Revolution of the Word" (1929) and "Poetry is Vertical" (1932). Among the writers published by transition were Andre Breton, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, and Dylan Thomas; transition may be best known for serially publishing sections of James Joyce's Work in Progress (1927-1935), a process in which SB was involved. SB's first published
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writing, his essay "Dante. . . Bruno. Vico. . Joyce," appeared in transition Uune 1929). He also published in transition the short stories "Assumption" and "Sedendo et Quiesciendo [sic]," poems ("For Future Reference," "Malacoda," "Enueg II," "Dortmunder," and "Ooftish"), and a review of Denis Devlin's collection of poetry Intercessions.
AfterWorldWar II, the Jolases transferred the publishing licence of transition to Georges Duthuit, who capitalized its title and changed the focus of the journal (see profile of Transition in Volume II).
Percival Arland Ussher (known as Percy until mid-1937, then as Arland, 1899-1980), essayist, critic, and translator, was born in London and studied at Trinity College Dublin (1917-1919) and St. John's College, Cambridge (1920). He settled on his family's estate in Co. Waterford, where he wrote on the Gaelic language and the way of life of the Deise Gaeltacht. His translation from Irish of Brian Merriman's The Midnight Court (1926) was prefaced byW. B. Yeats. SB visited Ussher at Cappagh, and Ussher often sent him his essays on philosophy, history, politics, and art, especially in the late 1930s and again afterWorldWar II, when he occasionally visited SB in Paris. Acerbic wit and strong opinions mark his writing, which he called "philosophical belles lettres. " He published Postsoipt on Existentialism and Other Essays (1946); The Twilight of Ideas and Other Essays (1948); The Face and Mind ofIreland (1949); a study of Jewish culture and an analysis of anti-Semitism, The Magic People (1949); a study of Shaw, Yeats, and Joyce, Three Great Irishmen (1952); a book on existentialism with reference to Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre, Journey Through Dread (1955); Sages and Schoolmen (1967); and Eros and Psyche (1976). His interest in folklore and divination is reflected in his study Twenty Two Keys to the Tarot (1957). Edited selections from Ussher's diary (1943-1977) were published as From a Dead Lantern (1978) and The]oumal ofArland Ussher (1980).
Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957), Irish painter, illustrator, novelist, and playwright, the son of John Butler Yeats and younger brother to the poet William Butler Yeats, was born in London, but spent his boyhood in County Sligo with his maternal grandparents. In 1887, he returned to London where he studied Art and established himself as an illustrator; in 1894 he married Mary Cottenham White (known as Cottie), a fellow-student at the Chiswick Art School. Although he visited Ireland
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Profiles
frequently, Jack Yeats did not settle there until 1910. In 1912 he pub lished a book ofpaintings and drawings, Life in the West ofIreland, and began to work in oils. SB met Yeats through Thomas McGreevy in November 1930; over time, Yeats became a trusted older friend to SB. In the 1930s, SB occasionally attended Yeats's "at-homes" in Fitzwilliam Square, but much preferred to visit the painter in his studio. SB greatly admired Yeats's paintings and saw a correlation between them and his own work. SB owned several ofYeats's works, including the painting A Morning("a setting out without the coming home"), which he bought on what he called the "stuttering system. " Yeats was also an accomplished writer, and in 1936 SB reviewed his novel The Amaranthers in the Dublin Magazine. In 1938, Yeats wrote to Routledge, his own London publisher, on behalfofBeckett's Murphy. At the time ofYeats's 1954 Paris exhibi tion, SB wrote "Hommage a Jack B. Yeats" and elicited tributes about Yeats's work from Pierre Schneider and Jacques Putman for Les Lettres Nouvelles (April 1954). SB was deeply disappointed that he was unable to return to Dublin for Yeats's funeral in April 1957.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED
Abbot, Vivienne. "How It Was: Egan and Beckett. " Desmond Egan: The Poet and His Work. Ed. Hugh Kenner. Orono, ME: Northern Lights, 1990. 45-53.
Ackerley, C. J. Demented Particulars: The Annotated Murphy. 2nd rev. edn. Tallahassee, FL: Journal of Beckett Studies Books, 2004.
Ackerley, C. ]. , and S. E. Gontarski. The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett:
A Reader's Guide to His Works, Life, and Thought. New York: Grove Press, 2004.
Adam, Antoine. The Art ofPaul Verlaine. Tr. Carl Morse. New York: New York University Press, 1963.
Adler, Alfred. The Neurotic Constitution: Outlines of a Comparative Individualistic Psychology and Psychotherapy. Tr. Bernard Glueck and John E. Lind.
New York: Moffat, 1916. Rpt. London: Kegan Paul, 1921.
Adler, Jankel. Janke! Adler. Intro. Stanley William Hayter. London: Nicholson and Watson, 1948.
Aldington, Richard. The Complete Poems ofRichard Aldington. London: Allan Wingate, 1948.
"James Joyce. " Rev. ofFinnegans Wake, by James Joyce. The Atlantic 163 Uune 1939) [supplement] "The Bookshelf' [17, 19, 21].
Life for Life's Sake: A Book of Reminiscences. London: Cassell, 1941. Alphant, Marianne, and Nathalie Leger, eds. Objet: Beckett. Paris: Centre
Pompidou, IMEC-Editeur, 2007.
Andre Lhote, 1885-1962: Cubism. New York: Leonard Hutton Galleries, 1976. Andrews, Keith. Adam Elsheimer: Paintings - Drawings - Prints. New York:
Rizzoli, 1977.
Annuaire diplomatique et consulaire de la Republique Fran�aise. Nouvelle serie. Vol.
49. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1938.
Anon. "Gontcharov's [sic] 'Oblomov. " Rev. ofOblomov, by Ivan Goncharov.
Times Literary Supplement (14 November 1929) 919.
"Murphy. By Samuel Beckett. " Rev. ofMurphy, by Samuel Beckett. Times
Literary Supplement (12 March 1938) 172.
Rev. ofJames Joyce's "Ulysses," by Stuart Gilbert. Dublin Magazine 6. 2
(April-June 1931) 64-65.
Rev. ofMurphy, by Samuel Beckett. Dublin Magazine 14. 2 (April-June 1939) 98.
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Bibliography of works cited
Arnheim, Rudolf. Film. Tr. L. M. Sieveking and Ian F. D. Morrow. London: Faber and Faber, 1933.
Association amicale des anciens eleves de ! 'Ecole normale superieure. Paris: Hachette Universite, 1973. Supplement historique. Paris: Hachette-Universite, 1990.
Atik, Anne. How It Was: A Memoir ofSamuel Beckett. London: Faber and Faber, 2003.
Augustine. Confessions. Tr. E. B. Pusey. Everyman's Library. London: Dent, 1907.
Baedeker, Karl. Das Deutsche Reich und einige Grenzgebiete, Reisehandbuch fiir Bahn und Auto. Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1936.
Bair, Deirdre. Samuel Beckett: A Biography. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.
