It Occurs to Me: Did Behan paint Donegal red?

On Monday November 10th, 2014, Francis Harvey was buried in the Convent Graveyard in Enniskillen after his funeral mass in Donegal Town.

Gerry Moriarty (formerly of this parish!) and I were asked to say a few words at our dear friend’s graveside. We would have been there since had we indulged in all the wonderful memories we shared with this most gentle of poets and playwrights. I was thinking of Francis a lot recently, as press, radio and TV celebrated the 100th birthday of the late Brendan Behan, and in particular his friendship with Brendan and his wife Beatrice.

Another Brendan is the renowned author and Professor of History, Breandán MacSuibhne, a native of Dungloe to whom I was introduced in Ardara a few years ago. Breandán had a brilliant article in the Indo almost three years ago about Behan’s ‘staycation’ in Donegal in May 1960. Francis had told me many stories about that visit and had introduced me to writer Patrick Boyle, whom I visited in Portmarnock over 40 years ago.

One of the most memorable lines was Behan telling Francis that “Everybody outside Dublin is a bleedin’ culchie…but I’ll make an exception for Donegal!” Francis also remembered that the Dubliner would keep the lounge of the Highlands "entranced for hours, with excruciatingly funny stories, accompanied by much dramatic posturing and miming, about his various escapades in Ireland and abroad".

My own curiosity was whetted at an early age as my grandmother Bridget (McGinley) Byrne used to take me with her to visit Mona Gildea, her cousin, when she visited her in Carrick. Mona had a popular pub and grocery business there, and her brother Patrick owned Gildea’s (now the Beehive) in Ardara. In the attached photo, included in the programme for the August Carrick Carnival in 1955, Mona is listed as a sponsor.

The programme for the August Carrick Carnival in 1955

Not only did the legendary Dylan Thomas drink in Gildea’s Ardara pub, but as Breandán Mac Suibhne reminds us…”it is possible that, whatever of subsequent visits to the north-west, he (Behan) may have avoided alcohol in Donegal in May-July 1960.

Certainly, he looks a lot healthier in photographs taken in those months than in London in March of that year. Still, the man was drawn to bars like a moth to flame. There is a photograph of him with a glass of tomato juice in Gildea's, now the Beehive, in Ardara in 1960.

From the third week of May 1960, Brendan Behan, aged 37 and at the height of his celebrity, spent over two months with his wife Beatrice in Glenties, Co Donegal. It was a much needed break.

In London in March, for the opening of his brother Dominic's play Posterity be Damned, he had careered off the rails, drinking not simply heavily but constantly, almost catastrophically.

…Glenties, then, was a chance to get things back on an even keel. Brendan and Beatrice booked into the Highlands Hotel, which boasted a grocery shop, a petrol pump and a beer-bottling business. Johnny Boyle, the popular proprietor, shared the Behans' left-wing republicanism and, not unlike the playwright, enjoyed a tall tale well told.”

Shortly after his arrival in Glenties, the Democrat had reported that "Mr and Mrs Brendan Behan, the noted playwright, from Dublin", had been the "guest artistes" at the monthly meeting of the Ardara and Glenties branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann. And on Wednesday, June 8, he attended the Irish Countrywomen's Association Dance in the local hall; at the interval, he drew the winning ticket in a draw - the prize was a holiday in Glenties - and he sang songs, in Irish and English. The accompanying photo shows him swimming at Narin.

Behan had befriended Harvey and another bank official cum writer, Patrick Boyle, who a few years later won international acclaim for his short stories and a novel.

Indeed, on Sunday, July 24, Behan gave a seven-course dinner in the Highlands in honour of Francis Harvey, for having had a play broadcast "in a number of languages". Unfortunately for the diners, Garda Sergeant Dudley Solan raided the party at 12.30am on Monday morning, that is, three and a half hours after closing time (then 9pm on Sundays in the summer, 8pm in winter), and he found nine people at a table in an upstairs room. Eight of them were bona fide, that is, either residents or living more than five miles from the premises.

Harvey, however, lived closer to the hotel. Noticing a glass of wine in front of him, Solan asked if he was drinking it; Harvey replied that he was. And so ended Brendan Behan's Donegal dinner party.

The case went to court in September, with the hotelier charged with a breach of the licensing laws and Francis Harvey with "aiding and abetting". They were defended by Louis Walsh - himself the son of a playwright, Louis Joseph Walsh, caricatured by James Joyce, a contemporary in UCD, as Hughes in Stephen Hero.

The dinner, it emerged, had been served in a private room, where Behan, who was "residing" in the hotel, "did some of his literary work". Johnny Boyle testified that he had sold no drink after 9pm and that he had no authority to make people stop drinking what he had sold "as it did not then belong to him". There had been two bottles of champagne served, he said, and two bottles of wine, one red and one white.

Justice Bob O hUadhaigh indulged them and dismissed the case. Behan was named only as "an eminent literary figure and playwright".

GREAT WRITER...POOR PAINTER!
Thankfully, Brendan Behan was never asked to paint our own St John’s Point Lighthouse, but in 1950, he was sent to do a job in St John’s Point Lighthouse in County Down. Here is the famous letter to Irish Lights in August of that year which sunk his painting career!

"Sir, I have to report the painter B. Behan absent from his work all day yesterday and not returning to station until 1.25 a.m. this morning. No work has been carried out by him yesterday (Tuesday). I also have to report that his attitude here is one of careless indifference and no respect for Commissioner' property or stores.

"He is wilfully wasting materials, opening drums and paint tins by blows from a heavy hammer, spilling the contents which is now running out the paint store door. Drums of water-wash opened and exposed to the weather - paint brushes dirty and lying all round the station - no cleaning up of any mess but he tramps through everything. His language is filthy and he is not amenable to any law or order.

"He has ruined the wall surface of one wall in No. 1 dwelling by burning. He mixes putty, paint etc. with his bare hands and wipes off nothing. The spare house which was clean and ready for painters has been turned into a filthy shambles inside a week. Empty stinking milk bottles, articles of food, coal ashes and other debris litter the floor of the place which is now in a scandalous condition of dirt.

"I invite any official of the Irish Lights to inspect this station and verify these statements. He is the worst specimen I have met in 30 years service. I urge his dismissal from the job before good material is rendered useless and the place ruined.

Your obedient servant,
D.Blakely
Principal Keeper."