Kevin FitzGerald, With O’Leary in the Grave

Abstract

Born in London to a well-to-do family of Irish descent, Kevin FitzGerald (1902–1993) grew up in Radlett, Hertfordshire, where his father owned land and property. His autobiography covers the first three decades of his life, beginning with a detailed recollection of his middle-class Catholic upbringing and English public school education, and ending with an account of his experiences as a farm labourer in Western Canada in the 1920s. FitzGerald explains that his decision to emigrate was provoked by a row with his father, who is memorably portrayed as a man of Dickensian eccentricity, given to haggling over the price of restaurant meals and publicly berating complete strangers for their perceived shortcomings. In 1919 this formidable patriarch purchased a large estate in County Tipperary for his son, who had by then decided upon a career in farming. FitzGerald’s memories of his time on the farm are among his most treasured. Amplifying the note of wistful nostalgia suggested by the book’s Yeatsian title, he reflects: ‘I never found anything to beat the pleasure of ploughing with a pair of horses, on a fine October day in a vanished Ireland.’ When the War of Independence made life in Tipperary untenable, FitzGerald was sent to study agriculture at Seale Hayne College in Newton Abbot, Devonshire. In the following extract he describes his first, fractious encounter with the college principal, Lieutenant Colonel D. R. Edwardes-Ker, which took place in the summer of 1921 against a backdrop of intense political activity that was the prelude to the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations of the autumn. As FitzGerald presents it, this larger political conflict was played out in miniature during a testy battle of wills.

With an introduction by Philip Mason (Salisbury: Michael Russell, 1986). 175pp.; pp. 103–6.