IN THE AUTUMN OF 1923, six months after leaving Tullamore and settling in Dublin, Gearóid, Brian and I were sent to school for the first time. Gearóid was fifteen years of age, I was thirteen and a half and Brian was twelve. The Christian Brothers School, Synge Street, was the one chosen for us. Our father did not consult us about going to school or enquire if it was in any way against our principles – he simply announced that the decision had been made. The three of us were put in the same class – Fourth Year – a class that was supervised by Brother Broic. We spent four years in Synge Street, until the family moved house again, this time to Blackrock. Brian remained in Fourth Year for the duration of our time in Synge Street. He sat the Intermediate Certificate, getting honours in that examination. In our last year in Synge Street (1926–7) Gearóid and I were moved up to Fifth Year.
It is very difficult to give an accurate account of the pain we suffered from the huge upheaval in our lives. After the years of complete freedom – with little association with other boys, with no precedent for a stranger having the right to threaten us or give us homework to do, with no habit of preparing lessons or a need to get them right – there are no words to describe the hardship we suffered. One can only compare it to some sort of violence, like throwing a person into the fire or plunging him into freezing water. Indeed, the change affected us so much and we took so long to adjust to our new environment that I would be inclined to say that the price of our earlier freedom had been too high. But on reflection this would be wrong – the halcyon years of freedom were priceless!
The first thing we had to face was the torment that was in store for us from our classmates. They recognized immediately that we were ‘green, soft and vulnerable’ and decided, as boys will, to have fun at our expense. We were safe as long as we were in the classroom, but in the school yard or at lunchtime things were very different. The whole school, or so it seemed, gathered around us. A lad would approach from behind and give you a push in the back. When you turned to confront him, the boy who was now at your back struck you. It was probably boys from our own class who started this taunting, but boys from other classes soon joined in. They were coming at us from every side and running away again. We could not eat our lunch or do much except put our backs to the wall. Even the walls proved a poor defence as they were low enough for a boy to climb the other side and pull your hair or strike a blow to the head. Of course, the blows were light, but they were none the better for that.
Having suffered this ‘persecution’ for a number of days I decided to put an end to it. On the following day I went out into the school yard and waited until I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the first boy making for me from behind. As it happened, he was a boy from my own class. Just when he was about to strike me, I rounded on him and struck him a blow to the face with my fist. It was no playful blow and before he had time to recover a crowd had gathered around us. Some older boys intervened and said we could not fight in the yard as the Brothers would intervene. Instead, we were advised to go up a lane on the way home from school to settle matters between us. It was apparent that these boys liked arranging fights and had taken the matter in hand.
When the last class was over, four or five of the older boys accompanied us to the lane, which was off Harrington Street. We abandoned our school bags, threw off our jackets and began fighting. The first blows we exchanged were not very effective and did little damage. Then I succeeded in striking my opponent a hard blow to the nose. As I had no experience in boxing, this blow was a lucky strike. His nose began to bleed so heavily and he was so blinded by a mixture of blood and tears that the fight was over.
From that day on nobody interfered with me. Apart from these early school hazards there were two strong senior boys who posed as the ‘Kings’ of the school and expected other pupils to obey them – there are bullies like that in every school. The three of us had some trouble with the ‘Kings’ for a while but eventually we were accepted like any other pupils. An interesting aspect of our assimilation into the world of school is that Brian had no need to employ his fists. He had a characteristic gift that enabled him to come out of such encounters without violence. I noticed this ability of his again, in later life.
One would imagine that we would be far behind in class due to our beginning school so late, but strangely enough we were not. We did not have any Latin but once we started to learn it we were soon as good as anyone else. We had not been introduced to algebra or Euclid before going to Synge Street, but while the rest of the class were no beginners, they were not so advanced that we were not able to catch up quite quickly. We were not great at arithmetic, but were as good as some in the class. When it came to Irish and English we were ahead of the best in the class – we had read far more English literature and our literary appreciation was more mature.
I remember well how distressed I was when required to memorize verses from Macaulay’s The Lays of Ancient Rome, ‘The Stand of Horatio on the Bridge’. I thought, and still do, that it is bad verse. Likewise, I did not agree with having to memorize a poem such as ‘The Seagull’ by Gerald Griffin. I do not know if Brian was of a like mind on such matters but I guess he would have been – we seldom discussed such things. However, one piece of the English reader which we did discuss, and were of one mind about, was an extract on Marie Antoinette by Edmund Burke. We had much fun with this piece, especially the opening lines, ‘… and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon …’. It seemed to us that it was a barrage balloon that was being described! I think Brian satirized this passage in his column in The Irish Times long afterwards. It would be unfair, though, to conclude that we were only introduced to third-rate poems and bad prose in Synge Street.