An Irishman's Diary

‘WEARING AN impeccable dinner-jacket, a bucolic complexion, and just the most delicate trace of a black eye, Mr Trevor Howard rocked a Cork Film Festival audience with a few of the harsher facts of a film star’s life at the Savoy Cinema here on Monday night.” So began a typically stylish, quirky and humorous piece by Séamus Kelly, who for more than three decades was Quidnunc of the Irishman’s Diary and this newspaper’s hugely influential drama critic.

Kelly was a household name in his day. His funeral Mass in 1979 was attended by the then taoiseach Jack Lynch, the leader of the Fine Gael party, Garret FitzGerald, Army chief-of-staff, Lieut-Col Carl O’Sullivan and actor Peter O’Toole. According to an account in this column, the University Church on St Stephen’s Green overflowed; but still only “a tiny percentage of his legions of friends from all over the world was there, his colleagues in the media, Army men, politicians, playwrights and actors, musicians and writers, dancers”.

And yet some 33 years after his death, he is largely unknown to younger readers – a collateral casualty of the “yesterday’s papers” syndrome.

Séamus Kelly read English literature and earned a boxing blue at Queen’s, Belfast, and read Anglo-Irish literature under Daniel Corkery at UCC. His entrance on to The Irish Times stage in 1946 was suitably dramatic, according to Tony Gray’s book Mr Smyllie, Sir, an account of the newspaper under its formidable former editor, RM Smyllie. One day Kelly walked into the office in his Irish Army captain’s uniform and asked the editor for a job. General Luck was on Capt Kelly’s side because Smyllie had just had a blazing row with his drama critic, the playwright Brinsley McNamara, who rashly threatened to resign. RM Smyllie readily accepted.

Up to Kelly’s arrival, the Irishman’s Diary often comprised a collection of snippets edited by Smyllie or his deputy editor Alec Newman, or featured the esoteric enthusiasms of the Honourable Patrick Gordon Campbell, 3rd Baron Glenavy. (Campbell was followed in the diary by Brian Inglis and Tony Gray.)

But Smyllie wanted the column to be more relevant to a modern Ireland; and so it became under Kelly. Quidnunc’s beat included theatre, film, ballet, opera, and reports from about town, occasionally from his “Cultural and Carousing Attaché” featuring stories from the haunts of painters, poets and playwrights, many of whom were his friends. Here, Brendan Behan would be playfully referred to as “the ineffable”, an allusion to the playwright’s alleged profanities.

“I do remember him as a feared and respected theatre critic; ramrod straight of bearing, standing at the bar in the Abbey, a glass of whiskey in his hand,” a colleague recalled.

According to another, “He had an encyclopedic knowledge of theatre and literature and was a shrewd judge of new shows and of character, with a sharp wit and Belfast directness.”

His columns are a rich treasure trove of Ireland’s cultural and social heritage. And they brought sparkle and stardust into the black-and-white post-war gloom.

“This was the era when journalists were still bohemian, before they became bourgeois,” said another veteran, who also recalled Kelly’s dapper attire.

Writing a daily diary and being the Irish Times drama critic could be onerous and required his “sabbaticals”. These involved sailing in Dublin Bay or boating on the Barrow or the Shannon with his companion Maureen (“Mo”) Brown and his fellow inland waterways enthusiast and successor, Dr David Nowlan, or travelling to Spain where he developed an enduring affection for flamenco. Quidnunc’s most notable sabbatical took place in the mid-1950s when he left to play the role of Flask, the third mate, in John Huston’s film adaptation of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, playing alongside Gregory Peck.

Kelly’s reputation as drama critic spread far and wide. His work appeared in, among other publications, the Guardian, the Observer, the London Times, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Spectator and Cosmopolitan.

He was also a founder member of Dublin Joyce Society.

In recognition of his life’s work, in 1981 a perpetual Séamus Kelly Memorial Young Journalist Award was established by a trust fund to annually reward excellence in young journalists. His legion of admirers contributed generously to the fund. Mindful of his lifelong love of the Army, the trustees also set up the Séamus Kelly Military Award, for best article in the Army magazine An Cosantóir. While this one is still open, it seems the “perpetual” award has been prorogued.

However, as of today there is a special place where he will be remembered. This story began in July, 1982, when a bust of Séamus Kelly by sculptor Kieron Kelly (no relation) was presented to his friend in Cork, Joan Denise Moriarty, the doyenne of Irish ballet. After her death in 1992, the bust turned up at an auctioneers. The Irish Times was notified and promptly bought it.

For years afterwards, Séamus looked out from his lonely perch in a quiet office on the sixth floor, until the editorial committee of the NUJ and management combined to have it restored, and enhanced with a plinth by the sculptor John Coll.

Last Tuesday the bust was unveiled on the top floor of The Irish Times Building on Tara Street. Along with former colleagues, there was one particularly honoured guest, Brian Kelly, Séamus Kelly’s son, who was on a flying sabbatical from his work as a senior UN press officer, and also to represent his brother Conor and sister Bairbre Clear. The whole southeast of the city lay to the left of the bust, and just below to the right, was Fleet Street, where our diarist worked under five editors as the last word on this column, Quidnunc.