Context N°15
by Flann O’Brien
Spring is lurking like a shy child in the smiling parkland. Not yet has she decked the empty trees with ferny shoot or showered with dainty bloom the plum-tree wild. But those who listen can hear the rustle of her silken gown and notice on the wind her first sweet whisper.
Soon the daffodils will come, marching like a band of haloed angels on the upland lawn.
If some people are allowed to write like that, there is no reason why everybody should not do it, and if it makes the plumtree wild, it can’t be helped. But there must be some mistake. It is either the wrong paragraph, the wrong paper, the wrong season or the wrong hemisphere.
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I am glad to say that I have been able to do something about the tobacco shortage. I have for immediate disposal 48 bags of second-hand smoke. Some friends have kindly saved up their smoke for me by exhaling it into bags I had given them for the purpose. Forty of the bags are Virginia, five Turkish, and the remaining three a special ‘Cruiskeen Mixture,’ consisting of all sorts of tobaccosmokes and smells and public-house fumes.
You suck the bags as shown in my sketch, and exhale into a spare bag which I supply. When this is full, you return it to me and I make you an allowance on it. Easy, isn’t it?
A correspondent wrote this in a Sunday paper recently:
I wish to protest at what I consider a deliberate insult to our National Anthem, and incidentally, to the whole Irish nation, by a body of musicians who performed in one of our Dublin halls during the past week. They omitted to play the Anthem, either prior to or at the conclusion of their concert at the Metropolitan Hall.
Hmmmmm.
I suppose one should be thankful that they were not guilty of the unbelievable solecism of failing to play the tune before or after the concert. This sort of thing amuses me. By which I mean, of course, that it makes me very very angry. The veins on my neck bulge. Since when, I shout, did the playing of this poor tune make or unmake this most historic and loyal Irish race? Who gave this boy authority to receive insult on behalf of ‘the whole Irish nation’?
We have, of course, no national anthem, the thing has no constitutional or statutory sanction and as I understand the laws of the humble community in which we live, a body of musicians may or may not play the air, according as they wish. But I regret very much that when this state was being founded and fitted out with its civil accoutrements, steps were not taken to stamp out the craving for a ‘national anthem’. The ‘national anthem’ is a characteristically imperial pomp and whatever utility the device may have for use abroad when an Irish team may win a soccer match, or the like, why this inexcusable fashion of playing it—or eight bars from it—every night at home? Why must this Irish nation so continually salute itself?
We are very unenterprising copycats if you ask me. We could well drop a lot of this self-conscious state finery, disband our Ruritanian hussars, stop stealing the Guinness trade mark as the national monogram, and . . . hmmmmm . . . completely forget about printing the titles of our newspapers in a phoney gothic script as foreign to this country as I am myself. There is greater enterprise in walking naked. Another thing we insist on having—simply because other countries have it—is a civil service. Moreover, our civil service is quite the conventional kind; it is above reproach and it is discontented. The members thereof have ‘grievances’. Not for worlds would we dare have a corrupt and profligate civil service. ‘Finance’ (as the grim arbiter of all Irish destiny is called) would not hear of such a thing. We are civilsed, you see. Our boast is that we produce the finest horses, the finest whiskey, the finest heifers and the finest higher executive officers in the world. To the Statist we have given hundreds of editors. Even to the Irish Times we have given editors. Keep this under your hat but the Editor of the Irish Times is . . . . Irish! Owing to physical propinquity of two islands destinies inextricably intertwined, commonwealth of nations, futility of dwelling on history, promotion of amity and goodwill, tongue that Shakespeare spoke, our indefeasible claim to a seat at the peace conference. Ha-ho.
I hold also that Irish lord mayors, as a class, are essentially inadmissible. Blushing self-conscious foreignism never went further than that institution. Why you Irish can’t just be Irish and leave it at that beats me. Why you must so raffishly ape alien citizenries defeats me. Why at the same time you exclude so rigorously what is admirable in other civilisations agonises me. Some of you would deprive me even of my English language! Really often wonder are the Irish people really worthy of Trinity College.
On the 21st of last month I saw this heading in the Irish Times—‘IRELAND IN NEED OF AN ARISTOCRACY.’
Yes, I agree. That is a real want; unquestionably one misses them. Take me for instance the whole business has left me . . . nervous—you might say lonely. Really, I have lost my bearings. (It is not that I have lost my roots. What should I eat, they being lost?) As to whether the aristocrats have gone, doubt there cannot be. Let me tell you about my own case. I . . . I . . . I . . . whitewashed the place a few years ago. Nothing happened! Then, very quietly and unobtrusively, I . . . renewed some of the thatch! Hardly seems possible but the thing escaped notice. Emboldened, I next induced my sleeping partner, gentlemanly person, chequebook at disposal on quarter-day, takes quite a load off my shoulders, I—this seems horribly ungrateful—I . . . induced him to sleep . . . outside! He . . . grunted somewhat at the idea of removing his essentially pink hairless person from my couch. Not a word from the Big House. Then, I simply grew reckless. Fellow I know—he’s a writer—I had him write my name in Irish on my cart! I got away with it! Finally . . . plucked up all my courage . . . washed myself! (Could have sworn I had gone too far.) Well, it’s absolutely incredible but the rent remains exactly as before! The bailiff? I literally haven’t seen him for years. Everything seems so unreal, so . . . so . . . un-Irish, one simply sits in a daze from day to day living in the same cottage and never being evicted! (As for invitations to dance for the aristocracy after the claret with my boots bound with straw . . . they are a thing of the past. It’s hard to explain these cruel snubs to a man of my age.)
I have written many words here in defence of all that is holy. There are not, of course, many things in this world properly to be ranked as holy, but instantly to be discerned as partaking of that estimable quality are chastity, poverty, and, em, endemic slimness. Holiness, by the way, is to be confused with happiness. The happy are holy, the holy are happy. Indeed, Gen. Haley, revered American militarist, esteemed destructor of Hiroshima, is, I understand, hoppy—injured his ankle when a youth. Hunger also is a very fine thing—notwithstanding the hotheads who occasionally strike against it. I have myself never had the honour to experience it for a rather simple reason—I have no body! Into the brackets for a moment – I’ll make it worth your while!—and I’ll tell you why. (Readers file dutifully into brackets, are surprised and pleased to find attendant at threshold serving small ones. (Are slightly disquieted to find they are expected to enter further interior brackets. (Master resumes peroration. (I’ll tell you about me body. (I had one up to 1939—but never again! It’s about the greatest mugs’ game out. I sold it in June, 1939, refused flatly the usual cajoling to trade it in for a new one, and I don’t know meself since I got rid of it. The relief! The sense of . . . freedom, safety, absence of worry!
They say that the steam locomotive is about 8% efficient. I would rank the human body as about 2% if there was any way of rationalizing the efficiency of a machine so complicated. The ticker, for instance, has leaky valves. If it stops once, the whole job is useless, no matter how sound the liver or lungs, you can throw the whole thing away. It hasn’t even a scrap or remainder value. Put say two bottles of whiskey into the stomach and what happens? Hell to pay, the entire mechanism disorganised, eternal friendship pledged to strangers, gold watch presented to tram conductor and lethal capacity of Canal Co.’s locks surveyed following morning. Add to that the risk, so permanently run by persons with bodies, of being arrested by policemen! Or . . . or the danger of leaving it behind in a bus! Imagine the humiliation of ringing up C.I.E. the next morning. ‘I left my body in the last bus to Terenure last night.’ ‘What size sir?’ ‘O, it was fairly old, medium size, grey hair and paunch, waistcoat plastered with ash. It was fairly drunk.’ ‘No sir, it hasn’t come in yet.’ ‘Well if it comes in during the day, would you have it left in the Dolphin. I’m going to Cork this week but I’ll collect it when I get back and pay any expenses.’ Or imagine, not having a gold watch, your inebriated attempts to present it to a conductor. ‘Look, is this any use to you? You’re welcome to it.’ ‘No sir, thanks very much but I have one.’ ‘Nonsense man, go on, take it.’ ‘I couldn’t sir, I couldn’t manage two.’ ‘O very well.’Then a huff – and the exaggerated gesture of trying to stuff it into a street refuse-can. Bah! (Looks at readers who are blue-faced owing to low oxygen content of atmosphere. (Do yez want to get out? Very well. Concludes brackets.)))))))
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At War (Dalkey Archive Press, 2004) is a collection of Flann O’Brien’s columns written for the Irish Times during the years 1940-45. Penned under the pseudonym Myles na Gopaleen, his columns include witty and sometimes surreal attacks on everything from art to politics to the banalities of daily Irish life. Compiled below are five pieces that may serve as an introduction to both the range and tone of O’Brien’s often acerbic voice.
