Left Without a Handkerchief by Robert O’Byrne

On April 11th, 1923, the government executed six members of the anti-treaty militia; in retaliation, a group arrived at Spiddal House in the early hours of the morning, woke the housekeeper and cook, then set the property alight.

Spiddal belonged to Martin Morris, or Lord Killanin, whose forebears had occupied positions of political and commercial power in Galway since the Middle Ages. Morris, a Catholic, was an elected representative of the county council for 21 years and an ardent supporter of the Gaelic revival movement. He was also a unionist and outspoken critic of Home Rule. In addition to the many irreplaceable items that were put to the torch, Morris’s sister claimed that “when his beloved Spiddal was burnt, he seemed to lose his grip on life”. In a poignant letter to a friend, Morris admitted as much: “I am broke and my country broke me.”

Robert O’Byrne’s concise, propulsive book about a series of stately homes destroyed in the early 20th century brings to life the genealogy of several aristocratic families and their rootedness in a single house, ending inevitably in ruin. The burning of such homes was a common paramilitary strategy of the time, though “more country houses were burnt during the Civil War than during the earlier War of Independence”.

While the book’s format is historical, providing a sequence of dates that are contextualised by important events of the period, the unfolding of each story is intensely personal. O’Byrne has a Marquezian sensitivity for weaving together the lineaments of a family’s successes and crises into one compelling account: his dry, sometimes laconic style eloquently captures the passage of generations, providing just enough room for the reader to catch a glimpse of each individual’s ferocious vitality before closing the window and moving on. The effect is highly entertaining, and as the Spiddal episode illustrates, these short narratives give the reader an unusual insight into the incipient years of the Republic.

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O’Byrne excavates some of the more easily overlooked cross-currents that characterised the tumultuous politics of a society coming to terms with its newfound independence, through personal correspondence, municipal reports, and diary entries. A timely reminder that home ownership has long been a source of disquiet and political radicalisation in the Irish imagination.