Comments on: Bishop Plunket, Yeats and JFK

By: Ita Beausang

Ita Beausang — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 21:49:57 +0000

Thank you for your most interesting account of Bishop Plunket et al. My sons attended St. Paul’s and all the family, Including granchildren, enjoy the wonderful amenities of St. Anne’s Park. I have a well-worn copy of the Dublin Corporation Parks Department ‘St. Anne’s Trail’ and also a copy of Joan Ussher Sharkey’s book ‘The Story of the Guinness Estate’. I’m delighted to include your article in my archive, you added lots of intriguing details to the story. It’s a shame that the house did not survive but the avenue, the trees, the playing fields, the Rose Garden, the Red Stables and the playground are a tremendous resource for the people of Dublin. I’m sure Bishop Plunket would approve.

By: Bean an Phoist

Bean an Phoist — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 08:28:58 +0000

You’ll be glad to hear that I’m working on Felix for an encore!

By: Póló

Póló — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:35:23 +0000

Very interesting post. I, like Felix, worked close to the statue in Kildare St., and I have been living in Raheny, where the man is buried, for well over thirty years. I have only acquainted myself with All Saints’ Church in recent times, but both my sons went to St. Pauls.

And there is nothing like a manual typwriter to jump out of the page at you.

This sort of post is great. Brings it all together. Encore, author.

By: paulne coakley

paulne coakley — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 23:09:59 +0000

Enjoyed the feature. Good starting point for further study.
Thanks

By: Bean an Phoist

Bean an Phoist — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:32:12 +0000

Felix replies: You’re right about Joe Jr dying first, Rosemary. His body was never recovered, and his name is included on the Tablets of the Missing in the beautiful American war cemetery at Madingley, Cambridgeshire. I found it quite by chance during a visit earlier this year with the Parnell Society. Glenn Miller’s name is also recorded there.

By: Rosemary Raughter

Rosemary Raughter — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:11:13 +0000

Felix ,
I didn’t know about the reference to Olive Ardilaun in Lady Gregory’s journals – thanks for that.
Sebastian Barry (towards the end of scene 1) describes a visit to Coolattin by one of Kathleen’s sisters, by then an old woman herself, and the reaction of the countess’s spirit to ‘the invasion of her bedroom by ‘the sister of the woman that had destroyed her life’. Possibly (if this is based on local lore rather than imagination) the visitor was Jean Kennedy Smith during her time in Dublin? Incidentally, Barry says that Kathleen was the first of Joe Kennedy’s children to die – in fact of course Joe junior was.

By: Bean an Phoist

Bean an Phoist — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:55:58 +0000

Felix replies: Thank you, Rosemary, for this comment. Did you know that Lady Ardilaun is also portrayed in Lady Gregory’s Journals, page 221? I don’t know anything about the herb garden you refer to. I remember a walled garden near the Sybil Hill house in my time at St Paul’s College. It was “out of bounds” for the schoolboys and usually locked, though I saw the gate open one day and took a quick, furtive peek inside. The herb garden may have been there. I think a swimming pool was eventually built on it. Interesting to know that the Kathleen Kennedy story was common gossip in Co. Wicklow in the 1960s – I didn’t think it was well known until the publication of Lynne McTaggart’s biography of Kathleen Kennedy in 1983. I am very grateful to you for telling me about the reference in Sebastian Barry’s play Tales of Ballycumber – I wasn’t aware of that.

By: Bean an Phoist

Bean an Phoist — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 09:09:59 +0000

Hi Richard,

custard and prunes??? the one dessert I think I could have resisted!

By: Richard Mc Cormick

Richard Mc Cormick — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 18:01:04 +0000

As a former pupil of St. Pauls in the 1960′s I found this a very interesting and well researched account of the history of the building. My abiding memory of it is school dinners with prunes and custard for dessert and a huge aluminium teapot of sweet tea with milk, whether we liked it or not.

By: Rosemary Raughter

Rosemary Raughter — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:49:44 +0000

Felix – interesting account. Some years ago I picked up a second-hand copy of Katherine Everett’s Bricks and Flowers (1949). Katherine (nee Herbert) was a cousin by marriage of Olive Lady Ardilaun (who died in 1923), and stayed with her at Sibyl Hill during WWI and the Troubles. She describes the making there of a herb-garden, ‘now no doubt a wilderness’. Is it, I wonder?
Re Olive Fitzwilliam – I grew up close to Coolattin, the Fitzwilliam’s Shillelagh house, and the story of her marital difficulties and her husband’s flight with JFK’s sister Kathleen were common gossip there during the ’60s. I think, in fact, that Debo does give the whole story in her recent volume of memoirs, but don’t have it by me at present to check – certainly it’s appeared in many accounts of the period, and is also mentioned in Sebastian Barry’s play, Tales of Ballycumber.