Books

Legends of Brendan Behan

John Stewart Collis

with the reader's permission I will in- troduce Brendan Behan before mak- ing an assessment of these volumes, which contain 107 vignettes of a great man partly eclipsed by his weaknesses and flawed by his follies.

He was born in 1923 and died in 1964 at the age of 41. His father's trade was that of a house painter, though the Behans were really a genteel family come down in the world. It was a cultivated and talented household; Mr Stephen Behan would gather the family about him in the evenings and read aloud from his favourite authors which included Dickens, Zola, Galsworthy, Maupassant, Shaw, and Marcus Aurelius.

They were able to live rent free because a grandmother, having survived two husbands, had invested her money so wisely that she was quite wealthy. She lived upstairs in her bedroom, never rising save to attend funerals; for from that station she could best receive solicitude and exert in- fluence. She adored Brendan, and as an aid to his education she introduced him to beer when still a child, while his mother in- ebriated him with politics, encouraging him at the age of six to recite by heart Robert Emmet's long speech in the dock.

He read everything he could lay hands on, including tram tickets, and at the age of 14 astonished his schoolmaster by an essay on 'French Influence on British Culture in the Renaissance.' He began to cultivate a beautiful singing voice which was to en- chant people for the rest of his life. He was good-looking, with black hair and blue eyes, ivory white skin, and a slim figure. The family tended to make a little god of him. Thus he was deprived of the basic necessities for such a person — namely, resistance, disapproval, scepticism of his abilities, sarcasm at his views, indifference to his charm. 'To have made a god of Bren- dan' said his brother Brian eventually, 'was to destroy him as surely as sticking a knife in his back.' He was encouraged in a natural arrogance and would brook no argument, becoming quite vicious if baulk- ed in any way.

Anxious to be independent and in need of pocket money, he left school at 14 to follow his father's trade. Between then and the age of 16 his mother and her friends in- itiated him into the debauchery of politics so that he fell an easy victim to a phrase such as 'England's danger is Ireland's op-

portunity.' Five minutes' reflection should have been enough to convince him that an English military disaster would be an Irish disaster also; that a successful invasion of England would mean also the occupation of Irish ports and then the rest of the island; that Englishmen dying for England meant dying for Ireland as well. But Brendan Behan was as ignorant as any washer- woman of the forces at work in Germany. He was an embarrassment to the perplexed Sinn Feiners of the day, and they sent him to England on a bogus 'reconnoitering ex- pedition'. Full of self-importance, he cross- ed the Irish Sea with a suitcase filled with an assortment of combustibles. He was ap- prehended by the police, brought to court, and sentenced to three years in Borstal.

This was his first piece of good fortune, for as soon as he entered this juvenile prison the unsavoury aspects of his character fell from him and his greatness came to the surface. Lacking in any kind of snobbery or assumption of mental superiority, he raised the spirits of everyone around him, and at the same time the artist within him was preparing material for a masterpiece.

Yet no sooner had he emerged from Borstal and returned to Ireland than on an Easter Sunday he became involved in a scuffle with the police and, snatching a revolver from someone, he fired at two detectives. Luckily he missed, but he was caught and brought to trial and sentenced by an Irish Court to 14 years' penal ser- vitude! He was appalled, his heart 'turned over' at the outcome of his bit of theatrical bravado. But once inside, his greatness was again made manifest. The Governor of Mountjoy Prison was amazed to see how Brendan raised the hearts of the prisoners, whether criminal or political, by the vitality of his presence. 'Gay, witty, amusing, always in good humour, his strong voice could be heard above all others.' It was extraordinary. He showed more spiritual power than holier men. By a merciful amnesty in 1946 after the war, he was released.

His experiences of prison life gave him the material for two great works — Borstal Boy and The Quare Fellow, in the Irish manner touching with poetry the macabre and the droll, and lifting into comedy sor- did characters and squalid scenes. Borstal Boy sold 15,000 copies in England and did as well in America, .while being translated into eight European languages. The Quare Fellow was adapted for the stage by Joan Littlewood; its hanging scene is more effec- tive (and more poetic) than The Ballad of Reading Gaol. His play The Hostage brought him much more fame. The idea was good but the writing was loose and banal; indeed it had so little merit that Joan Littlewood, given a free hand, could turn it into a Musical, abstracting its humanity and trivialising it to that point of imbecility that would assure box-office success.

Brendan Behan was now famous, and overnight became a household word bY coming on drunk to a television interview with Malcolm Muggeridge. It was perfect theatre in itself: the stage Irishman, ebullient, outrageous, and besotted, over against the stage Englishman, urbane, unruffled by behaviour alien to him, more interested in freedom of speech than the thing said, and impregnably affable. The nation rose to it.

All that Behan had to do now was to collect himself, consolidate his position, and fulfil his declared deepest ambition — to succeed as a great writer. But his gift as a spontaneous raconteur, amounting to genius, impeded his progress. Yet the dif- ficulty was deeper than that. He did try to write and produced a manuscript called The Catacombs. It was turned down as a disaster. He was flabbergasted, then in- furiated. He was victim of the terrible misfortune of an easy childhood and earlY literary success. He could not face it. It is often held that he failed to write because he drank, but it would be truer to say that he drank to excess because he could no longer write. He was not a man of ideas. He had given up solid reading. He had nothing fresh to say. His forte lay in h's power to use in the service of art an intense experience such as a prison sentence. Now he had no material, and was being rejected. Brendan Behan had a splendid constitu. tion, a strong frame resistant to excessive assaults of alcohol. Inspired by an account of a rugger match in a book by my brother, Dr Robert Collis (who was an international, and played for Ireland), he decided for a period on rugger in preference to alcohol. He loved swimming at Dalkey where Bei' nard Shaw also used to bathe; and at such times, braced by the cold waters of the Irish Sea, he felt in control of himself. But now he was being rejected by the very peOPle who had so ardently accepted him before. His pride received a fearful blow. In his late thirties he turned his face towards death. It was not a swift death, nor did it seal inevitable, for he often recovered front drinking bouts and regained his strength' Too often he would be the drunk tragectr. queen declaring that all the world was against him, the ruffian in the public house' the foul-mouthed windbag — though he never allowed anyone to make a jest at the expense of religion, for he was deeply at- tached to his Church.

During the last few years of his life it astonishing how often he was arrested an", put in prison, or rescued by doctors an", brought to hospital. When in hospital, ad sober, again the transformation! Again superior being! He would talk to, and CO

fort, and amuse, all the people in the wards — becoming a special kind of warden. He Would go out of his way to cheer them with a joke or a story. They adored him and looked up to him. It was here, in the midst of ordinary people brought low by pain or grief, that he was as a light shining in darkness. This is what David Astor, his devoted and never failing friend, meant by Brendan's tremendous humanity. But his days were numbered. Even his heroic wife, Beatrice, could not restore his Will to write. He was encouraged by his Publisher to talk to tape Brendan Behan 's Island, and Brendan Behan's New York and Confessions of an Irish Rebel. But he was too genuine an artist to own these Publications as books — he could not en- dure the sight of them! He had captivated People by his gift as a raconteur intermingl- ed with song, but he knew that he had once Possessed the gift to write. And now, even as a raconteur, he was losing his audience, due to repetition or bad behaviour. There Came a time when few pubs were prepared to admit him. In the very places where he had reigned as king he was treated as a clown. At 40 now he looked an old man. His voice creaked when he tried to sing a ballad. His Cheeks sagged in and his stomach sagged out• He saw double. He was found reading books upside down. He rose in the morning anxiously looking for a drink to steady him — for he had reached the stage when he drank in order to keep sober. He had not abandoned his will to live for he never conquered his fear of death. He could not bear the thought. 'I'd rather die than think of death!' he declared. Every time he felt himself going he made a pro- digious effort to return. But by 1964 he was fading from the category of human beings and entering the mysterious family of those Who are dying. One day, in March, he sank down Upon his knees in a pub, and could not rise. He was brought to Meath Hospital Where it was found that his liver was partial- ly destroyed. It was clear that he had come to his final station. He asked for a priest that he might receive the Last Sacraments. Ashe lay dying, his head which had always been splendid, now as the bonds were loosened, seemed to his friend, John Ryan, 'extraordinarily beautiful — like one of the Caesars in marble.' When he was a small boy, watching an ill- attended funeral, Brendan Behan said to a friend, 'What a lousy funeral. When I'm dead they'll come from all over the world or mine.' It was even so. His impact had been felt far beyond the shores of his native land. A great crowd came. The police who had so often been obliged to arrest him, now did their best to control those who had ,co. me to praise him. His unpublished acts of Kindness and of help were known to many. Few may have known his literary works, but the humanity of the man, and his gaiety, had been cast abroad, and the People knew, as they always do, when a good thing falls to the ground. ,,The two volumes listed above, edited by H. Mikhail the doyen of scholars of Irish

literature gives chapter and verse to my in- adequate sketch, and much more besides. The most illuminating piece, with regard to Behan as a raconteur and one-man-show, comes from Anthony Cronin. The most profound concerning the man is by lain Hamilton. 'What struck me was this,' said Hamilton who met him unexpectedly in the Shelbourne, 'that whatever else he was, Behan was God-branded. I don't know how

else to put it. Among other odours, that of sanctity was predominant.' It is not surpris- ing. Hamilton's vignette should not be missed. Some contributors claim to speak of 'the real Brendan Behan.' Forget it: we are all composed of five or six real selves. It is a pity that we have no word here from Stephen Behan, a remarkable man. But then the son had become a legend in the lifetime of his father.