CAROLINE WALSH: EVERY JOURNALIST in the building, and many staff from other departments, gathered round Caroline Walsh's desk on the fourth floor of The Irish Timesoffices on Thursday afternoon to remember their colleague who died earlier in the day.
The silent sorrow was testament to people’s affection for one of the paper’s longest-serving and most inspirational writers and editors who was much loved for her kind-hearted, supportive and passionate personality.
She loved the paper fiercely and protectively from the day she arrived as a 22-year old in 1975, remaining with it for her entire career and holding a number of senior editorial posts. She had been literary editor since 1999.
“I’ll remember her with glasses glinting, hair flying and never finishing one sentence because she had already started the next one,” said Maeve Binchy, a lifelong friend who taught her in Pembroke School, better known as Miss Meredith’s, in Dublin.
As a commissioning editor, her briefings to writers were legendary for their enthusiasm and thoroughness. Her passion for literature and rigorous commitment to quality writing allowed her to build a stellar list of regular book reviewers for The Irish Times– Seamus Heaney, Richard Ford, Roy Foster, Anne Enright, Carlo Gebler and dozens more.
She also made time though to encourage and mentor many lesser-known writers, often younger people at the start of their careers in journalism and the arts. Their gratitude and respect – indeed love – showed in the wave of tributes on Twitter and elsewhere in the hours after her death became known.
Born in 1952, she was the daughter of solicitor William Walsh and the noted short story writer Mary Lavin. Her father died when she was very young. She was later devoted to her stepfather Michael McDonald Scott.
After Miss Meredith’s, she studied English and art history at University College Dublin. Her master’s from UCD was in modern English and American literature; her thesis was on Elizabeth Bowen.
She was immensely popular – a central figure in a wide social circle that included students who would go on to be major figures in law, academe and literature. Several of them still talk of wonderful student weekends in Bective, Co Meath where her family had a farmhouse.
For a short time after college, she lived with friends in a squat in north London – she loved to drop the word into conversation for its shock value. She got temporary work on the obituaries page of the Daily Telegraphand started writing freelance pieces.
One of her earliest contributions to The Irish Times, on October 15th, 1975, was headlined: "Single, Irish, Female and Homeless in London", which tracked her 10- week search for a flat in London.
Before the year was out she joined The Irish Times. She had little or no experience in journalism, but was ushered into the newspaper by editor Fergus Pyle and the charismatic news editor of the time, Donal Foley, who backed his judgment to bring a succession of talented journalists, many of them women, to a job which was then overwhelmingly male-dominated.
She arrived into an indescribably scruffy 1970s newsroom which fellow journalist Elgy Gillespie memorably – and accurately – characterised as a “forgiving, warm, indescribably dusty Dickensian burrow” and found a desk in the innermost corner.
She covered everything, usually at the great length demanded in those days, but it was quickly clear that she had a literary bent. One day when it was snowing, she didn’t do the usual weather story – she knocked out a quick 1,000 words on appropriate books to read in front of the fire while it was snowing outside.
In 1983, she became editor of the Our Timespage which investigated issues affecting women's rights and changing role in society. In 1987, she was promoted to assistant features editor and in 1991, became features editor. She returned on secondment to the newsroom as regional news editor for a period in the late 1990s to invigorate the newspaper's news coverage outside Dublin. As literary editor for the past 12 years, she enhanced the newspaper's reputation for literary criticism by increasing the number of pages devoted to books, fostered new Irish writers and ensured attention was paid to foreign writers translated into English.
Throughout her career, she believed strongly that The Irish Timeshad a moral purpose and a campaigning place at the heart of Irish society. Her strong sense of right and wrong and social justice infused her often lengthy contributions at editorial conferences.
Not surprisingly, in view of her mother's international reputation, she had a passion for short stories. She was involved on behalf of The Irish Timeswith the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Awards, a generously endowed prize won by Anne Enright in 2004 and Claire Keegan in 2009.
She was a writer herself. Her book, The Homes of Irish Writers,grew out of a series of articles in The Irish Times.Anvil Press commissioned the book which was published in November 1982 to warmly enthusiastic reviews. Benedict Kiely found it "a most evocative, haunting book" and concluded his Irish Timesreview in his own forthright style: "There is any God's amount of information and suggestion and interesting associations."
She later edited three collections of Irish short stories: Modern Irish Stories from The Irish Times(Irish Times Publications, 1985), Virgins and Hyacinths(Attic Press, 1993) and Arrows in Flight: Stories From a New Ireland(Scribner/TownHouse, 2002).
She was a member of the Literatures in English committee of the Royal Irish Academy since 2009. The remit of the committee is to promote the study, discussion and dissemination of literature. According to the president of the academy, Prof Luke Drury, “she was a bridge between the literary and the academic communities and will be greatly missed by both”.
Growing up and for decades afterwards, there was an enduring friendship with Garret FitzGerald’s family. Her first of many extended family holidays with the FitzGeralds came the summer after her Inter Cert exams; she arrived with a friend at a remote train station in the Vendée region of France late at night to be met by FitzGerald and his wife Joan with flasks of soup – two flavours – to warm them up.
She loved aspects of the good life – travelling, particularly near Perugia for holidays for many years; a glass of champagne on special occasions; flowers on her desk – but she also had a frugal side. For many years in her 20s and 30s, friends were convinced she only had two outfits – a pink checked dress for summer and a smart black dress for winter.
The joy of her life was her happy family – her husband James Ryan, novelist and university lecturer, and her two adored grown-up children, Matt and Alice.
There were great times when they were all together in their country retreat at Aghaboe, near Rathdowney, Co Laois, where she covered many miles on her bike.
Caroline Walsh: born December 1st, 1952; died December 22nd, 2011.