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Speaking Volumes: A Dublin Childhood
In this text Edith Newman Devlin remembers her childhood in Dublin in the 1930s and 40s as a poor Protestant living among even poorer Catholics. Reading was her escape, and commentaries on the emotional truth of literature alternate with chapters of personal memoir.
269 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2001
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June 5, 2018
This is not a book about a poor Irish childhood; this is a story about an intelligent child who survived childhood thanks to books. She climbs trees and reads her stories even when cycling. She loved learning but found school rigid and restrictive.
The story centres on Edith and her father, but it’s mostly about Edith, in Dublin in the 1930’s – 1940’s. Many of her childhood memories are so vivid it’s like she never left, or she becomes the child again when writing this story.
She is often told, “be a good soldier” and I want to scream out with Edith, “I’m a child!” The betrayal of a child by an adult is hardly ever recognised, and I felt that she wrote this book to make peace with her childhood.
Edith cracked the code of reading before starting school, and she comes across as a deep thinking girl with a quest to figure things out. She gives many passages of classics and tells us what they have taught her, but they are just too long. A short paragraph would have been enough, but she goes into details which take from the story I think. The story also skips and hops a lot which is mildly annoying. When books were censored, Edith’s father was outraged and smuggled in as many books as he could from the north. Despite his lack of warmth, I like his no-nonsense approach to life.
She starts by telling of how her emotionally closed father from the north finds compassion for a cat’s unbelievable will to live. Edith’s father has no time for soft feelings, and stray animals belong in the streets, not in their home, but Edith rescues them anyway. She hides them and hopes he won’t find out, but he does when one of her many rescue cats falls into tar, and he comes into the house and lies down to die. The father lets the cat lie on the kitchen floor while waiting for him to die. Edith force feeds him milk, and slowly, slowly he starts to clean his fur. He cleans it until it’s raw in places and the way he brings himself back to life impresses Edith’s father so much he buys meat for him and from then on the cat never leaves his side.
Edith tells of her fear of the cats crying. She thinks it's something evil because of stories she heard. She knows it’s cats crying, but a part of her still wonders if it's evil. Edith includes many categories of folklore in her story, tales from her father’s travels, traditional music, Irish dancing, proverbs and superstitions.
She tells the story of the cat and her father first so that we’ll know that despite his dislike for softness, he had soft feelings too, but they came out in actions, not in words, as Edith hoped for. Instead, his words cut through her and left an emotional scar. I can forgive him though while she can’t and perhaps it’s because she’s too close to see what he did for her and her brothers and sisters.
When her mother dies, Edith is five, and they move from Swords to the gate lodge at St Patrick’s hospital for idiots and the insane. Edith's father takes on full responsibility for all his children, and he never falters in his duty to care for them even if his type of care is not the care they wish for. He worked on the sea with the Royal Navy, that was his life, but now he takes up a job he doesn’t care for so he can care for his children. I get that. I hear that, I feel that through all the hurt. He is hurting. He loved his mother dearly and lost her at a young age too. People from the north don’t talk about feelings, so when he comes home one day and sees men carrying a long box out from his house, his heart breaks and never becomes whole again and no one explains, it’s just silence. The first time he talks about the death of his mother is on his deathbed when cancer has devoured him. Edith is hoping for words of comfort and when he chooses to talk about his mother she still thinks she’s not getting the love declaration she craves, but he has given it all his life in the only way he has been taught, through action, not softness. She says her father made her feel homeless in her own home.
He doesn’t drink, gamble or bring home lots of women, apart from the many maids he employs throughout the years to help with the household. The stories about the maids are very entertaining.
Edith didn’t just feel like an outsider because she was Protestant, she felt like an outsider because she was not the genuine article Irish. Real Irish were Catholics. Thanks to her father’s insistence on education, she goes on to study modern languages in Trinity, but it takes almost two years for her to make sense of the course.
She meets a young man from the north at Trinity, a young man from the north who has also been in the navy, and all alarm bells go off, but she falls hard and eventually marries him.
Religion makes people more superstitious, more prone to believe what’s not there, to explain natural phenomena with banshees or lost things on fairies. The Catholics had more rituals and traditions around what they believed, while Protestants had more rituals around what was real. Edith enjoyed going to her one best friend’s house where the Catholic welcome was as warm as a hug every time.
Despite his many flaws, Edith’s father loved her in his own way, the only way he could and it’s not perfect, but it’s real.
The story centres on Edith and her father, but it’s mostly about Edith, in Dublin in the 1930’s – 1940’s. Many of her childhood memories are so vivid it’s like she never left, or she becomes the child again when writing this story.
She is often told, “be a good soldier” and I want to scream out with Edith, “I’m a child!” The betrayal of a child by an adult is hardly ever recognised, and I felt that she wrote this book to make peace with her childhood.
Edith cracked the code of reading before starting school, and she comes across as a deep thinking girl with a quest to figure things out. She gives many passages of classics and tells us what they have taught her, but they are just too long. A short paragraph would have been enough, but she goes into details which take from the story I think. The story also skips and hops a lot which is mildly annoying. When books were censored, Edith’s father was outraged and smuggled in as many books as he could from the north. Despite his lack of warmth, I like his no-nonsense approach to life.
She starts by telling of how her emotionally closed father from the north finds compassion for a cat’s unbelievable will to live. Edith’s father has no time for soft feelings, and stray animals belong in the streets, not in their home, but Edith rescues them anyway. She hides them and hopes he won’t find out, but he does when one of her many rescue cats falls into tar, and he comes into the house and lies down to die. The father lets the cat lie on the kitchen floor while waiting for him to die. Edith force feeds him milk, and slowly, slowly he starts to clean his fur. He cleans it until it’s raw in places and the way he brings himself back to life impresses Edith’s father so much he buys meat for him and from then on the cat never leaves his side.
Edith tells of her fear of the cats crying. She thinks it's something evil because of stories she heard. She knows it’s cats crying, but a part of her still wonders if it's evil. Edith includes many categories of folklore in her story, tales from her father’s travels, traditional music, Irish dancing, proverbs and superstitions.
She tells the story of the cat and her father first so that we’ll know that despite his dislike for softness, he had soft feelings too, but they came out in actions, not in words, as Edith hoped for. Instead, his words cut through her and left an emotional scar. I can forgive him though while she can’t and perhaps it’s because she’s too close to see what he did for her and her brothers and sisters.
When her mother dies, Edith is five, and they move from Swords to the gate lodge at St Patrick’s hospital for idiots and the insane. Edith's father takes on full responsibility for all his children, and he never falters in his duty to care for them even if his type of care is not the care they wish for. He worked on the sea with the Royal Navy, that was his life, but now he takes up a job he doesn’t care for so he can care for his children. I get that. I hear that, I feel that through all the hurt. He is hurting. He loved his mother dearly and lost her at a young age too. People from the north don’t talk about feelings, so when he comes home one day and sees men carrying a long box out from his house, his heart breaks and never becomes whole again and no one explains, it’s just silence. The first time he talks about the death of his mother is on his deathbed when cancer has devoured him. Edith is hoping for words of comfort and when he chooses to talk about his mother she still thinks she’s not getting the love declaration she craves, but he has given it all his life in the only way he has been taught, through action, not softness. She says her father made her feel homeless in her own home.
He doesn’t drink, gamble or bring home lots of women, apart from the many maids he employs throughout the years to help with the household. The stories about the maids are very entertaining.
Edith didn’t just feel like an outsider because she was Protestant, she felt like an outsider because she was not the genuine article Irish. Real Irish were Catholics. Thanks to her father’s insistence on education, she goes on to study modern languages in Trinity, but it takes almost two years for her to make sense of the course.
She meets a young man from the north at Trinity, a young man from the north who has also been in the navy, and all alarm bells go off, but she falls hard and eventually marries him.
Religion makes people more superstitious, more prone to believe what’s not there, to explain natural phenomena with banshees or lost things on fairies. The Catholics had more rituals and traditions around what they believed, while Protestants had more rituals around what was real. Edith enjoyed going to her one best friend’s house where the Catholic welcome was as warm as a hug every time.
Despite his many flaws, Edith’s father loved her in his own way, the only way he could and it’s not perfect, but it’s real.
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