The Kavanagh Case

By JACK WHITE

Dublin N like a nice juicy murder. We in Ireland have never developed the intense devotion of the English to murder as a pastime; our few homicides tend to be straight- forward and brutal, and the trials that arise from them uninteresting. But even an Irish editor has his day. Nothing, it is now evident, sells the papers in this country like a nice juicy libel action.

The Irish, said Dr. Johnson, " are a very fair people; they never speak well of one another." To this talent for verbal bitterness, they have added an incurable addiction to the process of Jitigation. The result, as Miss Honor Tracy has pointed out in a recent book, is that the writs for libel fall as plentifully as leaves in October. The actions do not often come to court, as the newspaper proprietors have discovered that it is generally cheaper to settle. The last few weeks may give them cause to revise their economics. The action of, Mr. Patrick Kavanagh against the Leader magazine sold so many thousand extra copies of the papers that one begins to wonder whether it would not pay the proprietors to bring down libel actions on their own heads in the interest of circulation.

The catch, of course, is that few actions can boast a plaintiff as colourful as Mr. Kavanagh. The article of which he complained described him' as the greatest living Irish poet. The judgement is debatable, like any other sweepingly dogmatic critical assertion; but it would be supported by a fair proportion

Mr. Kavanagh: That is the keynote of modern living.

Mr. Costello: Do you agree that it is a complimentary phrase ? Mr. Kavanagh: Yes, with a strong note of starvation implicit in it.

Mr. Costello: That may be the fate of poets.

Mr. Kavanagh: Nothing is a complimentary phrase which takes away a man's dinner.

Mr. Costello asked did Mr. Kavanagh further agree that the writer of the article said Mr. Kavanagh was our finest living poet, Mr. Kavanagh: In saying so he is unmannerly. Is he saying the finest living poet in Ireland, or in the world, or where ? I will have to go through it.

In the profile an imaginative picture was painted of Paddy Kavanagh holding forth in a literary salon .in London. Of the people mentioned, he said he knew Cyril Connolly, John Betjeman (" a very good poet "), and Louis MacNiece. He did not know Stevie Smith or Sacheverell Sitwell, though he knew others of the Sitwell family, nor W. H. Auden (" one of the finesrof living poets ").

Mr. Costello: Have you ever, to your knowledge, met the Lady Cunard that is referred to ?

Mr. Kavanagh: I have not. I never even travelled in one of her ships.

There was a good deal more : many questions, for instance, about Kavanagh's' Weekly, the journal • edited by Patrick Kavanagh and published by his brother, which elicited the surprising information that the printer " in trying to make the article fill the page would put in bits here and there, and sometimes impose his own political views on it." But the most surprising display of passion came from the plaintiff when Mr. Costello brought in the name of one Brendan Behan —a former IRA man, deported from England, who is a house- painter by trade and a writer by vocation.

Mr. Costello: You said rather emphatically yesterday that Mr. Behan was never a friend of yours ?

Mr. Kavanagh: That is correct.

Mr. Costello: And that he merely painted your flat and you paid him for it ?

Mr. Kavanagh: That is correct.

Handing Mr. Kavanagh a copy of his own book, Tarry Flynn, Mr. Costello asked him, " Is that your handwriting " Mr. Kavanagh replied, " What is written on it ? " Mr. Costello quoted, " For Brendan, poet and painter, on the day he decorated my flat, Sunday, 12th, 1950," and asked again, " Is that your handwriting, and did you write that to your friend, Brendan " " That is my handwriting, surely," said Mr. Kavanagh. (He went on to explain that he had behaved in a friendly manner to Behan only " to be free from the horror of his acquaintanceship." When Mr. Costello asked if he had suggested that Behan was on a par with other tradesmen who had worked in the flat, Mr. Kavanagh replied:) " He was very nearly bn the same par. As a matter of fact, he was on the same par. I state that for flattery."

That was on Thursday. Late on Friday afternoon the jury retired. They were absent for seventy-four minutes. When they came back, they told a hushed court that Mr. Patrick Kavanagh had not been libelled by the Leader's profile.

It would be improper to comment on this verdict, or the reaction to it;' notice of appeal has been given, although, at the time of writing, no grounds of appeal have been lodged. The first requirement, it appears, is money. Mr. Kavanagh must find £250 for a transcript of evidence before he can proceed.

Meanwhile the printing presses are purring happily. Notice has been given of another libel action against the Leader— joined, this time, with the Irish Press, organ of the Government party. The plaintiff is Ireland's wartime Minister to Spain; the complaint, it is understood, arises out of a series of articles on Ireland's neutrality, based largely on German documents; and it is said that even ministers of state may figure in the list of witnesses.