Godoy in Ireland. Coming back to Dublin

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

Dear Fran,

This is the last e-mail that Godoy sent me. On it he speaks about his return to Dublin and his farewell of Ireland.

«Wednesday, 27^th September

The Galway Railway Station is like a hangar, longer than wide, has two track, one of them seems is not in use; no trains have arrived in nor have departed from in the two days I have been there.

On my way to the Railway Station I went in to the eason and bought a little biography of our man — I will send you it when I read it — and the cashier has rounded up. Amount rounded by 0,01.

This time a boy with a topknot is my travelmate to Dublin and he is reading a book entitled ‘The Red House’, by Mark Haddon.

My window allows to me to observe the numerous paths that Galway has.

On the other side of the aisle a well- dressed man doesn´t stop of speaking on the mobile phone. He is a perfect businessman, perhaps a trader.

I have never seen my name reserved in anywhere. Now it is in blue letters on a small screen above my window. Am I so important?

Brown Nancy is another name that is showed beside the well-dressed man, but she is not sit on her seat. Or she has sat in a wrong place or she has not take the train.

I like the Irish public transportation; it is simple, intuitive and efficient.

Outside it is pouring with rain.

The businessman continues to speaking on mobile. What deal does he will have closed during the journey?

Ballinasloe has a superb river.

The boy who reads ‘The red House’ has bought a sandwich when the serving cart has passed. He leaves five cents of change on the table. When I see he is preparing to get off I tell him about ‘The Curious Incident of the dog...’ He says me that her girlfriend has read both books and she likes more ‘The Curious Incident...’ when he goes away he shakes hands with me.

The river of Athlone is bigger than the Ballinasloe one and, in the distance, I can see a grand church.

The businessman has stopped of speaking and he has eaten two sandwiches and drunk a tea; now he is reading ‘The Irish Time’. Yet this entertainment has been short: he has received a phone call.

There is a small village called Clara. Here we wait for the train which goes to Galway go by.

Tullamore, also a river, owns a ruins. I don´t know if of a castle or a stately house.

City Quay. Dublin

I am in Dublin again.

At 74 of Talbot St. I have a homemade soup and a sandwich after having left my belongings at the B&B. By the way, this accommodation I don´t recommend you it. We are not in our twenties in order to go into in anywhere. They send me to the last room (I refer the room more distant from the reception) which is to the end of a maze of corridors as well as a hidden and square courtyard which is out in the open with an iron stairs which is not very reliable, especially when it is raining like now.

Three nights, 187€. It is true that it is not expensive, yet if I had known I would have search a little more expensive B&B. The breakfast is not included. This price only for sleeping and I have to share the bathroom. Nevertheless, as I am in Ireland, a travel planned a year ago, I am delighted.

Now I am going to buy some fruit, bread and throw an eye over the presents for my family.

River Liffey. Dublin

Thursday, 28^th September

The children of the Central Model Junior School (Est. 1859) are helped to cross the street by volunteers. These volunteers wearing a white hat and an orange and reflecting yellow ‘overcoat’. They also carry a signal of STOP.

I get on the bus (route 1) to Sandymount. I put the coins in to a kind of letterbox and remove my ticket.

While I am taking some photos from the number 5 of Sandymount Avenue, a woman accompanied by her dog has come to me: why are you photographing my home?

When I answer her that I am from Spain and I am interested in knowing the place where the poet was born, surprisingly, this woman tells me that her husband would be delighted of telling me all what I want to know.

DUBLIN AND EAST TOURISM

BIRTHPLACE OF

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

POET * DRAMATIST * AUTHOR

JUNE 13 1865

Immediately, the husband appears. The woman is Irish, the man is Welsh. We have started to talk to. He has invited me to enter to his home and starts to show me a book from 1900.

I don´t believe it!

I am inside the house which the baby William saw the world for the first time in and a gentleman is explaining me about Edward Martyn (Abbey Theatre), Lady Gregory, Augustus John (artist),... At the same time I am watching the ink bottle and the pen which belonged to the poet and were painted by his brother Jack. I am receiving a torrent of information and anecdotes ... 860 rabbits in one only day! — my host emphasizes — in one only day!, john Mc Cormack (Champion Pike Fisherman), Catherine Kennedy (who 50 years later repeated the visit for a second time), tennis players (Ilie Nastase, Stan Smith, Vitas Gerulaitis),Seamus Heany (who lived at the corner), Bob Geldof (the Irish musician and political activist)...

His name, Alan Tilley, but his friends —I look on him as my friend— call him ‘Ogmore’.

When he has opened the bureau he shows me a piece of Berlin Wall, then he explains me that his daughter lives and works in Berlin. She is a Max Planck research fellow.

5 Sandymount Avenue. Dublin

Custom House is an extraordinary building. Its dome can be seen from any spot in Dublin. I visit an exhibition about The Revenue Police.

‘Illicit stills for the distillation of whisky (Poitin) proliferated in the early decades of the nineteenth century. An English visitor wrote: they are erected in the kitchen of the baronets and in the stables of clergymen. The Revenue Police, established in 1818 to tackle the problem...’

The premises (built by James Gandon) signified the English power in Dublin; for this reason volunteers of IRA took it and burned it in 1921.

Close to the Custom House there is a park. It is dedicated to Elizabeth O´Farrell who ‘played a full and active role in the Easter Rising of 1916’.

Famine Memorial. Dublin

I feel ‘happy as a pig in clover’ because I have order a fetuchini at chq.

Mary, as in many cities, I am seeing many beggars. This is a misfortune very difficult to solve.

I come in Saint Patrick Church and take a seat on the pew ‘In memory of Sister Mary Josephine Byrne’. I feel at ease here. This is a parish no a Cathedral, even though the saint is the same. O luxury, an intimate place for pray.

Saint Patrick´s Cathedral

The Public Library hosts the history of the ‘Biscuits of the Jacob & Cº’. There are pocket calendars with beautiful girls —are they pioneering of the calendars which truck drivers carried in the sixties and seventies in Spain?

‘The exhibition shows a Selection of Jacob´s biscuit tins 1960s. As well as Jacob´s embossed ‘tea caddy’ tins. After their contents had been consumed some of Jacob´s decorative tins were designed for specific further use'.

I continue reading. ‘Every girl in the Department is to be sent to the Recreation Hall before 6 p.m. once a week to take a bath’. Rule Nº 10 (1914)

‘Extraction and regular dental work were provided free by the dentist’.

‘Before statuary holidays Jacob´s provided all workers with two weeks holiday with pay, and an extra week if they had over thirty years of service’.

Do I perceive a certain patronizing treatment behind these practices? These were some measures I applaud but there were persons (like Jim Larkin, the labour leader) who referred to Jacob´s directors as ‘slavedrivers, wily-crawlers, lug-biters and ear-wigger’.

This businessman was a remarkable watercolorist and a notebook of watercolours is available to see in one of the counters. Among them a splendid seascape with a note: Spanish Point.

On my way to the B&B is the Trinity College. One of its facades is dedicated to Samuel Becket. ‘To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now’.

Trinity College, Dublin

Friday, 29^th September

As the National Museum of Ireland –Archaeology is closed yet I come in at the National Library where there is an exhibition about William B. Yeats.

The NL was founded in 1877 and, in 1890, ‘the Library´s own building opens for the first time’,

There is a thing that grabs my attention: a cup won in 1879, at the age of 14, for winning the half-mile race at the Godolphin School in Hammersmith, London.

A letter in a secret message to his sister Lily (c.1876)

Mary, at my age I value toilettes highly and the NL has ones which are magnificent. There is available a leather armchair in the area prior to the W.C.

Surprise. I discover he went to Seville!

Advised by his doctor, William and his wife, travelled to the South of Europe looking for a better weather for him.

Also I find out that his Muse (Maud) died the same year I was born.

‘How to Think Creatively’ is a book written by Professor Elliot D. Hutchinson based in interviews and questionnaires like Questionnaire on Creative Effort. I can read...

*Check your answers to the following questions. Any additional information is welcome.

—Passive attitude of waiting for ‘inspiration’?

Always  Usually  Seldom  Never

—Is the arrival of this ‘inspiration’ unforeseen and madden?

Always  Usually  Seldom  Never

—Is the first conception followed by alternate or supplementary ones?

Always  Usually  Seldom  Never

—Do you work systematically regardless of inclination?

Always  Usually  Seldom  Never

Some of characteristics of him can see above.

In other showcase I continue reading ‘his belief in the need for a spiritual component in Irish nationalism led him to plan, with help of Maud Gonne, a Celtic Mystical Order to have its headquarters at a Castle of Heroes on Lough Key, County Roscommon’.

‘During the ceremonies of the Golden Dawn, the members wore a sash appropriate to the grade that they had attained. At the stage when WBY had passed through all of the grades of the Outer Order, he would have worn the sash of a Philosophus, 4º=7º’.

Among his personal belongings are his spectacles and a lock of hair —thing I don´t like.

Mary, sometimes I miss other circles. Here, having a coffee in the Tea Room surrounded by people talking about their works at the Library...

William painted also, but his brother was better than him.

On the other hand, ‘WBY was an avuncular figure to Iseult —Maud´s daughter— when she was growing up, but later entertained romantic ideas and proposed to her in 1917, when she was twenty two, but she turned him down’.

Boy and Dog

As politician, Yeats had his own ideas. In his Divorce speech he said:

‘I think it unfortunate that within three years of the establishment of this state, the Catholic Church should impose its law, in this most vital matter, upon a minority, who regard that law as oppressive’.

Spectacular hall. Elegant dome. I am in to the National Museum of Ireland –Archaeology. ‘Opened in 1890, this Museum displays artefacts dating from 7000 B.C. Collections include the finest prehistoric gold artefacts in Western Europe, outstanding examples of metalwork from the Celtic Iron Age and ...’

(Or I have a prurient mind or what I am watching is a prehistoric dildo found in Passage tomb, Co. Meath.)

A splendid macehead, polished jadeitite axehead (the stone originated from quarries high in the Northen Italian Alps).

Hoar containing four Gold Bracelets and a Gold Dress Fastener. (800-700B.C.)

Gold Torc. Priestland West, Giant´s Causeway, Co. Antrim c. 1200-1000BC.

Gold Torc. Near Ballina, Co. Mayo c. 1200-1000BC.

Gold Armlet. Co. Sligo, c.1200-1000BC.

Hoard of the Late Bronze Age. A necklace of gold beads. ‘Gradually over a period of about 150 years, nine of the original eleven were adquired by the Royal Irish Academy and the National Museum of Ireland, one is in the collection of the British Museum but whereabouts of the one remaining bead are unknown.

Bronze Shield. Co. Sligo 900-500BC.

Side-Blown horn and End-Blown horn.

Two Sickles (900-500BC)

The Rapier (Sword) Lissam. Co. Derry 1400-1000BC. It is the longest rapier known from Bronze Age Europe.

Spheres

VOICE OF THE VOICELESS

In a small room of this Museum I come across an exhibition about Roger Casement.

Mostly are photos but there is one statuette from Massabe, Cabinda (Angola) which represents a power figure (Nkisi).

A butterfly collection from Colombia.

In the Casement´s diary (Putumayo Diary, 1910) he writes about the annihilation of plants, animals and —what is worse— persons, due to the rubber boom between 1850-1920.

Rubber was indispensable for the tire of bikes and cars (the T Ford in 1906). Rubber known as ‘black gold’, became more valuable than gold itself.

In one photo from Nsongo District you can see several men and two of them show their hand cut, ‘severed hands of fellow rubber workers’. Congo Free State.

A whole country in ‘good hands’. A whole country was a private ownership of a Belgian king! In hands of a person! Unbelievable.

Chained men, prisoners of the Anglo-Belgian Indian Rubber Company.

I wrote at the beginning this exhibition was small, but it is a way of attracting our attention in order to know the life of this man.

Mary, there is a book ‘El Sueño del Celta’ written by Vargas Llosa that carries out an interesting introduction about Roger Casement.

Interesting room full of ceramic and glass from Cyprus (2500BC-300AD)

I love the ‘Virgin and Child’ (14^th Century). ‘Her body trusted in a gentle S-curve’. It is a pity; there is a lot of gleam. I cannot take a pict.

The Shrine of St, Patrick´s Tooth (12^th and 14^th Centuries. It was used for curing sick animals.

Security guards recommend us come out of the Museum.

Twilight in Dublin

Tomorrow, at 7:00 a.m. I flight to Seville.»

Y. a.

Mary