St. Connell’s Museum Glenties is the proud home of a vast collection of the works of Patrick MacGill, and many beautiful images taken at important moments in his life. MacGill has left quite a legacy in his hometown and in his surviving family, beyond what he could have invisioned in his own life.
Patrick MacGill was born on December 24, 1891, in Glenties, Co. Donegal, Ireland. The first of eleven siblings, he grew up on a small farm a few miles from the town center, in a place called The Glen. Like many other children of his generation, he attended school for short periods of time and then left home for the hiring fair in Strabane in the neighboring county of Tyrone.
His parents, like most parents in this area of Donegal, had no choice but to send their children away to be "hired" as employees on large farms in the Lagan - a prosperous agricultural region that stretches from eastern Donegal and includes Derry, Tyrone and Fermanagh. Generally speaking, these children were eleven years old and upwards, but the forced departure from their homes meant fewer mouths to feed and the money they earned (around 5 pounds for six months of work) would help buy food for the rest of the family and pay the rent to the landlord.
Not all boys and girls were hired. The farmers who attended the fair that took place twice a year in this region would carefully inspect the state of the young people standing on the streets of the town and, if they appeared sick or weak, there was little chance of them being hired.
Patrick MacGill would be among the first to write about his experience, and later, he would refer to the Strabane fair as "the slave market" (MacGill, Children of the Dead End 48). Young people hired like MacGill would normally spend a few years on the Lagan farms, although some preferred to stay with the same master, before heading to the Lowlands of Scotland, where they would secure work on the farms there and, particularly, in the potato and turnip fields. Scottish workers preferred to dedicate themselves to industry because they were paid better, leaving that work for workers from Donegal and other western coastal counties who desperately needed it to survive. The immigrant potato-picking crews became known as the "tatie hokers". After a while, many of them moved on to industry and construction, a constant in Scotland in this period and for decades to come.
The young MacGill, after working in the potato harvest and traveling the roads of Scotland working here and there, finally got a job on the Glasgow-Greenock railway line when he was 18 years old. Thus, he followed in the footsteps of the young men of Donegal from decades before and after, and his story would have been the same as the others if it had not been for the fact that he was a sensitive, talented young man, eager for knowledge, with a knack for writing and ambition to improve. Although he had a basic education, he read voraciously. His favorite poet was Kipling, who was very popular at that time throughout the British Empire. In prose, what particularly attracted him was the social realism of Tolstoy, Gogol, Zola and Victor Hugo because he identified with them.
His poetry, mostly based on his own experiences as a navvy, reflected his growing interest in the poor and the oppressed and in those navvies who, like him, worked hard in the dirt to build "civilization" while they lived on the margins of society. In 1910, he published his first collection of poetry, Gleanings from a Navvy's Scrapbook, which he published himself and sold for sixpence a copy from door to door in Greenock, where he lived at the time. One of the doors he knocked on was that of the novelist and journalist Neil Munro, who wrote about MacGill in The Glasgow Evening:
He has done even better than the majority of modern poets who venture upon the publication of their own works under more favourable circumstances than his, for he has induced a good many people to buy his poetry who never indulged in any such extravagance before, and he is likely to have a modest profit left after meeting with his printer […] MacGill is a native of Ulster, as his tongue betrays. “The fact that everything has been said about everything does not naturally suggest that everything has been sung about everything”, he remarks in his Introduction to his booklet. “Some day – when I become famous – I will take immense pleasure in reminding the world, like Mr. Carnegie, that I started on the lowest run of the ladder, or, as is more correct, in looking for the spot where the ladder was placed”. (The Glasgow Evening, 13 February, 1911)
This review, along with the articles he had sent to the London Daily Express, resulted in a job offer from the newspaper, as MacGill himself commented in an interview with the newspaper:
When I was 19 I published a volume of verses, which I called “Gleanings from a Navvy’s Scrap Book” and between 8,000 and 9,000 copies were sold. The book was got out very cheaply, and it paid me well. It is realism that pays nowadays. Poems on heathen gods and mythology are not saleable; people want a spice of realism, and I gave it to them.
While I was at work on a new volume, Mr. Pearson, of The Daily Express, who had read one of my books forwarded for review, wrote and offered me a post on his editorial staff. I replied that although I was a writer among navvies, I was only a navvy among writers, but he persisted in my coming to London, and so I became a journalist. […] I see that a Scottish reviewer, in speaking of my verses, says that I have neither religion, creed nor God. Well, I think we all have a god of some sort. Life is full of ironies, and truth is not a marketable commodity. (Daily Express, 19 February, 1913)
This event marked a turning point in his life, which changed radically. In the course of a few weeks, the navvy had become a Fleet Street journalist with a book of poetry to his credit.
His journalistic career was short-lived, but the legend of the Navvy Poet grew and was embellished when the eccentric and influential Canon Sir John Dalton (Rev. J. N. Dalton), chaplain to Queen Victoria and tutor to Princes Edward and George, offered him accommodation at Windsor Castle and a job as a manuscript translator to support himself, to which MacGill replied on January 18, 1912:
Dear Canon,
[…] Regarding your offer of a job for which I am very grateful will you tell me?
(1) If I wasn’t idle, would you require another to do it?
(2) If so, what pay would you give? You know there are hundreds who would do the work, working 10 hours a day, for 25/a week and less.
If I take the job will I have to stop in Windsor. I would be awful pleased to accept the work, but I’m half suspicious that is merely because I’m idle you’ve found the job.
The fact is, if I could stop in London, until the book is published and sold, I would be very pleased. Then thank goodness I can work.
Yours sincerely,
Patrick MacGill
It has been suggested that MacGill sent Dalton a copy of his first book of poems (and another book, but by another author because the only one MacGill had published to date was Gleanings from a Navvy's Scrapbook), and it is likely that he did so, according to a letter he sent to Dalton on November 24, 1911:
Dear Canon,
I have just sent you the books as desired. You wanted some excuse to send me that 10/. I am liking my job a little better now.
Thanks for your order.
Very sincerely,
Patrick MacGill
Some critics, such as O'Sullivan (208), have even commented that Dalton had a homoerotic interest in young working-class men, and MacGill was a handsome man, judging by the photograph that appears on a page of Gleanings. However, Dalton's main interest was to befriend people who had nothing to do with his social status because he did not feel comfortable within that elite and to shock the more formal members of his own social class. His son Hugh Dalton speaks of his father as follows:
My father did not like Liberals. He was a Tory Democrat. No one I have ever known was less of a snob and less like the traditional picture of a courtier. He made friends, on equal terms, with all sorts and conditions of men. He had no use for lords, or rich men, as such […] Among his friends, with whom he maintained contact and correspondence for many years, were Edward Carpenter, a friend of his undergraduate days at Cambridge, known to British Socialists as the author of England, Arise; and Towards Democracy; Patrick MacGill, the “Navvy Poet” from County Donegal; and Arthur Benson, Eton Master, Public School Reformer, Poet and Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. (Greacen 6)
Under Dalton's patronage, the young Donegal worker was now able to pursue his writing in a more pleasant environment than that of a laborer's cottage or a guest house. Another book of poetry, Songs of a Navy (1912), with more accomplished verses and again published by himself, appeared shortly afterwards. The following year, MacGill had no trouble finding a London publisher, Herbert Jenkins, for his third book of poetry, Songs of the Dead End, a collection of his two previous works to which was added some later poetry.
Inspired by his many readings, MacGill turned from poetry to prose, and in 1914 his first novel, Children of the Dead End, caused a sensation to the point that approximately 10,000 copies were sold in three months in Great Britain and the United States, but not in Donegal, where it was not well received according to MacGill himself:
“In my own place”, writes Mr. Patrick MacGill, speaking of his Children of the Dead End, “I am looked upon with suspicion, all because ‘I wrote a book, a bad one makin’ fun of the priest’, as an old countryman remarke to me last summer when I was at home. ‘You don’t like it, then?’ I said. ‘Like it! I wouldn’t read it for a hundred pounds, money down’ was the answer”. (The New York Tribune, 29 july, 1915)
The subtitle of the work was "The Autobiography of a Navvy," and in it, the 23-year-old author gives a colorful and intense description of the life that Dermod Flynn (his alter ego in the novel) had led until then, his family's struggle for survival, his days as a hired boy in Tyrone, the harsh conditions he had to endure in the Scottish fields, and the characters he met in the Scottish laborers' huts. As the workers' organization was taking hold in the land, MacGill found a new and formidable voice in favor of the working class because he was from that social class and had shared, albeit briefly, the harsh conditions and isolation to which they were subjected. However, MacGill also attacked the system, not only in Great Britain but also in Ireland, for the appalling conditions in which he and so many of his compatriots lived and worked at that time. This criticism was focused not only on the landowners, but also on the priest and his friend, the local merchant, whom he accused of exploiting the people:
[…] It is a paradox to pretend that the thing called Christianity was what the Carpenter of Galilee lived and died to establish. The Church allows a criminal commercial system to continue, and wastes its time trying to save the souls of the victim of that system. Christianity preaches contentment to the wage-slaves, and hob-nobs with the slave drivers; therefore, the Church is a betrayer of people. The Church soothes those who are robbed and never condemns the robber, who is usually a pillar of Christianity [....] To me the industrial system is a great fraud, and the Church which does not condemn it is unfaithful and unjust to the working people. (MacGill, Children of the Dead End 57)
When World War I broke out in 1914, MacGill enlisted that same year in The London Irish Rifles.Despite belonging to this regiment, he felt as Irish as anyone else, although he was an atypical Irishman because he felt quite comfortable fighting in the British Army. Being a soldier did not necessarily replace being Irish, and MacGill tries to show this, but both facts overlapped, at least in the public eye, because many Irish nationalists came to think that MacGill's supposed lack of "Irishness" was caused by military life, by the army he was in, and because being anti-Irish sold, as MacGill's contemporary, Patrick McCarry, wrote in a letter published in the Derry Journal in 1979:
Sir- Regarding the long flowery blown up story about the prince of Donegal writers, Patrick MacGill, written in the Derry Journal on Friday, January 18, I am a man who forever regrets paying a half-crown to go in and hear a lecture given by MacGill, when he was given the freedom of Rothesay, Isle of Bute. A dozen of us Donegalmen believed we were supporting a great man from home. We were in for a shock. With the Lord Mayor and all the Council dressed in evening suits, on stage, out came MacGill. He started telling of hard times at home as a boy, criticizing his own father and mother, giving all secrets of their private lives, telling of his father writing him to send a £1 right away as another baby was born. Anything anti-Irish at that time sold like hot cakes, so he blamed the parish priest for the big family and this was his sure winner. He followed the road to success. I sincerely hope I am hurting no one by my knowing more than most about how the long story in your paper should have read. (Greacen 14)
The nationalists themselves came to consider those who joined the army as “not Irish but English soldiers, more English than the English themselves”, but there is no doubt that MacGill loved Ireland and that his idea of returning to His country after the war was always in his thoughts, because his roots were there and he felt like one of them.
From the front, he writes articles for the Daily Mail and other British newspapers. During the Battle of Loos (1915), he is wounded and works for the intelligence service until the end of the war, probably because the army did not want his possible denunciations after Loos.
It was in 1915 that MacGill married Margaret Gibbons, a romantic novel writer and great-granddaughter of Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore. Furthermore, in this same year two of his books were published: The Rat-Pit and The Amateur Army. The story of The Rat-Pit is similar to that of Children of the Dead End, but from the perspective of Norah Ryan, one of the characters who appear in that novel.In The Rat-Pit, MacGill presents Norah as a devout and intelligent girl from Donegal who leaves home after her father's death hoping to find a better life in Scotland. Unable to avoid the cycle of poverty, Norah's fate is doomed when she becomes pregnant by Alec Morrison, the son of a farmer on whose land she lived and worked in harsh conditions. Despite her high ideals and views on social justice, Alec abandons her and, too proud to accept his offer of financial help, Norah finds herself alone with a son wandering the streets of Glasgow and has to go into prostitution to try to get ahead.
The way in which MacGill presents all the characters, and especially the women, shows his ability to delve into their thoughts, inspired by the material he collected when his mother's neighbors came to the house to gossip, about the women who he met while harvesting potatoes or from the prostitutes he interviewed. His wife Margaret Gibbons was also of great help to him, to the point that Dudley Edwards considers that The Rat-Pit owes much of its strength as a work of feminist literature to the American girl who helped Macgill develop the novel (83). MacGill feels more comfortable and confident with his feminine material after his wife helped him analyze it and delve deeper into the study of all that information he had because she gave him the feminine point of view, although not belonging to the same social class as the women. women who appear in the novel, because the social conditions of the suburbs of Glasgow are far from her great-uncle's residence in Baltimore or her father's prosperous businesses in New Orleans.
The same year that The Rat-Pit was published, MacGill published The Amateur Army, where at the time of its publication, MacGill was still a member of the London Irish Rifles and, due to his criticism of the training regime in the army, he was threatened with a court-martial, although the matter did not escalate and he was able to continue writing.
In 1916, MacGill published two more novels related to the First World War: The Red Horizon and The Great Push. In the first, MacGill shows the power of the man who depended more on social class than on ethnicity or religion and who maintained a strong feeling of the so-called “romanticism of war” because when MacGill reflects on his experience in the trenches, he talks about “ his heart stirred with the romance of his mission” (MacGill, The Red Horizon 301) and of “mystery, the enchantment and the glamour” (MacGill, The Red Horizon 302). However, this romanticism is broken when MacGill considers certain situations that occur in war, such as killing a man with the bayonet:
“To the war! To the war!” I said under my breath. “Out to France and the fighting!” The thought raised a certain expectancy in my mind. “Did I think three years ago that I should ever be a soldier?” I asked myself. “Now that I am, can I kill a man; run a bayonet through his body; right through, so that the point, blood red and cruelly keen, comes out at the back? I’ll not think of it”. (The Red Horizon 14)
The censored passage from "Out There," which appears reprinted in the opening chapters of The Red Horizon, seems to indicate, according to Edwards (75), a link between MacGill and the war dissident poets, because MacGill did not support the war, but rather saw it as the irrationality of human beings, where the poor classes died in contrast to the upper classes who remained peacefully in their homes oblivious to the pain and suffering of the conflict. The new Irish nationalism never liked the debate about the support of its supporters for the British war effort and had learned from their mistakes: they wanted Irishmen who were committed to the cause and unrelated to Britain. For all this, MacGill had little to do with his autobiographical method.
In The Great Push, as in the rest of his war novels, MacGill continues to show the concepts of camaraderie, courage, and sacrifice, which were initially shattered by the reality of war, just as it shattered MacGill's own self-confidence, which he had shown during the first months at the front, to turn him into a stretcher-bearer full of doubts and with the moral dilemma of who to attend to first:
And up the street, down in the cellars, at the base of the Twin Towers, they were dying. How futile it was to trouble about one when thousands needed help. Where should I begin? Who should I help first? Any help I might be able to give seemed so useless. I had been at work all the morning dressing the wounded, but there were so many. I was a mere child emptying the sea with a tablespoon. (MacGill, The Great Push 60)
This very year, McGill publishes Soldier Songs,his only collection of poetry about World War I. In them we can find the idea of songs as an informal channel of protest against circumstances and against the oppressive, incompetent and unpopular political and military authority.
MacGill, who is the narrator of his Soldier Songs, plays the same role as a storyteller would. He learns from a convenient source, that of his companions and his own experience, and from there he interprets them, perhaps changing and enriching their content. The interpretation itself is quite informal and is usually accompanied by the consumption of some type of alcoholic beverage, especially liquor or wine, which contribute to reaffirming friendships, exchanging anecdotes and singing in chorus, which is one of the pillars on which the Soldier Songs are based. These differ from many other texts or poems written about World War I in that MacGill gives us a different view of war in the sense that action is important, but the feelings of the people who take part in the conflict are more so. Perhaps this is what leads us to consider Soldier Songs not as war poetry itself, but as "a poetry of human feelings in times of war."
In 1917, MacGill published The Brown Brethren, a novel written as propaganda and whose purpose, according to Starr (94), was not only to entertain but a means to persuade the British and American public of the effectiveness of the Allied cause and to encourage for more men to take up arms. The Australian newspaper The Catholic Press in its edition of May 30, 1918 is very critical of the quality of MacGill's work: “If some friend of Patrick MacGill could have persuaded him not to publish 'The Brown Brethren', that Irish soldier's literary reputation would be higher than it is now. The book is composed of the ribald conversations and coarse pranks of a party of British trenchmen.”
For its part, The Sunday Times of Sydney makes a more constructive criticism of this novel, showing the lights and shadows of MacGill's narrative:
Mr. Patrick MacGill’s verse is now better than his prose, and as to his prose of the war it looks at times as if his vein is being worked thin. There is no lack of good stuff in this new book about soldiers and the actual strain of war, but there is not the consistent grip notable in some earlier books by the same writer. There are even signs here and there that Mr. MacGill is in danger of succumbing to the literary conventions […] It is a vividly interesting book – not quite the peer of its precursors, but very well worth a place on the shelf. (The Sunday Times, 20 January 1918)
In 1919, MacGill published Glenmornan, which was not well received in Ireland due to its anticlericalism. The character of Fr. Devaney, whom MacGill describes as "a little potbellied man with white shiny teeth, who smoked ninepeeny cigars and always traveled first-class in a railway train" (Children of the Dead End 11), is based on a negative view of Canon Macfadden of Iniskeel.
Canon Macfadden was an important figure in the Land League and the author of pamphlets on the subject of land ownership. He was imprisoned for supporting rent-hiding in 1888. During a second attempt to arrest him on February 3, 1889, a riot broke out that resulted in the death of the District Inspector. He was charged along with twelve others, but was released; he retired to Iniskeel and refrained from any agitation. Known as An Sagart Mór for his despotic treatment of his parishioners, he is also harshly treated in MacGill's narrative in this novel (he had already criticized the Church in The Rat-Pit and in Children of the Dead End) because there was no change in attitude towards the parishioners. MacGill himself, in his prologue to The Rat-Pit, speaks of the Church's opinion of his novels: “[…] The references to a tyrannical village priest gave great offence to a number of clergy, but on the other hand several wrote to me speaking very highly of the book, and I have been told that a Roman Catholic Bishop sat up all night to read it” (The Rat-Pit XVI).
The same year (1919), MacGill published The Diggers: The Australian in France, with an introduction by Rt. Hon. W.M. Hughes and under the pseudonym John O'Gorman, published The Dough-boys, but the war was already over and the novel's main purpose, propaganda, faded. MacGill speaks of this novel in a letter written to Canon Dalton on February 27, 1919 and anticipates the publication of his next two novels: Maureen (1920) and Fear (1921):
My dear John,
Please to find herein my latest book, a story dealing with the visit which I paid to the ground over which the Australians fought in the offensive of last Summer and Autumn. It is a bit incoherent and lacking in the finish, but such a thing can be forgiven in the days of stress and war. It was written as propaganda, but served no purpose in that direction for the war stopped just as it was completed and it was a case of either throwing it in the wate paper basket or using it in any way I though fit for my own purpose. […] I am writing as usual and have two books on the stocks now, one dealing with Ireland and another with war. This second will have a certain pacific tendency and will deal with the stark realism of war, not with that Jingo-spouting, flat−wagging, doing-your-bit pattern, but with the more real human heart, crucifiying aspects of the contest. I shall do my best to make this book of my greatest […]
With fondest love, my dear John,
Patrick
In Maureen (1920), the eponymous heroine is an illegitimate daughter and works for Mrs. Thornton in County Tyrone, who makes her living caring for orphaned children who are dying of hunger and lack hygiene. The publication of this novel coincides with the decree of the Irish Government that advocates separating the parliaments of the North and South of the island and the editors promoted this novel as a “Sinn Fein novel”: MacGill never showed interest in Irish nationalism, but, one of the characters in this novel did it, such as MacGill, comments in a letter to John Dalton on April 30, 1919:
My dear John,
[…] Of course both of us are working, Margaret at her stories and myself at my new Donegal book which will be out in the late Autumn. I have all manner of queer characters in the pages, shoemakers, makers of potheen, farmers, servant girls, Sinn Feiners, policeman and priests. This priest, the one who comes in for special attention, is a very good fellow and I’m sure that Irish people will like him. I describe as far as I am able the outlook of the country under Sinn Fein and to this end tell how the old woman, Peggy Ribbig, fears the coming of an Irish Republic, ¡because if it comes she says “The King iv England will never send me the Old Age pension!” But her husband, the ancient Condy Heelagh thinks differently. He is the owner of an antique fowling piece which might have been used by The Man in the Garden at the beginning of time. “Maybe I’ll get some one to buy it when the war comes”, he says hopefully. Of course the book is not near an end yet, but by hard work I hope to have it completed by the end of June. […]
With the best love
As always,
Patrick
In 1921, his last book of poetry, Songs of Donegal, appeared. In a letter written to Herbert Jenkins, his publisher, and dated November 5, 1920, MacGill thanks him for publishing the book on Armistice Day, and in a long postscript talks about sending copies to critics in the broadest sense of the word:
My Dear Jenkins: -
Glad you’re bringing out SONGS OF DONEGAL on Armistice Anniversary. The League of Nations will certainly look kindly on it. […] I am sorry that I haven’t a second copy of FEAR in my possession. The one you got was my last. Shall write a descriptive paragraph for your Spring List over week-end and you shall have same on Sunday morning.
Yours sincerely,
P.S.: By the way I would like to autograph three review copies of SONGS OF DONEGAL which you can send out in the usual way: one for Miss Norah Heald, who will do a review for Weekly Dispatch, one for the proprieter in whole part of several papers of South England, the Liverpool Courier (or Pest), the Notthinghan Guardian (?) and others. […] Also one to Dr Crone of Irish Book Lover. The Derry Journal would be worth bearing in mind, for it’s the paper read by all the priests in Donegal, Tyrone and Derry. These clergy hate me so much that they buy my books for the pleasure of burning them. Will call to autograph on Monday. P.M
In 1921, MacGill published Fear, his last war novel, which is not autobiographical but does contain a significant number of Irish characters, such as McMahon, who share some characteristics with MacGill himself, "the face of a poet and tussling with matters of religious beliefs" (Fear, 160-3). According to Philips (34), MacGill gives this character complete freedom to show an anti-English sentiment, which MacGill does not express in previous writings. In fact, in Fear MacGill gives his own inclusive definition of Englishness: "It's always our brave boys, our brave English boys, and it doesn't matter a damn whether their skins are black, white or piebald, whether they wear kilts or loin-cloths, they're still English" (56).
In 1923 he published Lanty Hanlon and Moleskin Joe - the latter being one of the memorable characters who appears in The Rat-Pit and Children of the Dead End - who was well known to many of the Irish people who worked in Britain in the 20th century and whose philosophy of life was "there's a good time comin', although we may never live to see it". Most of the articles written about MacGill overlook an interesting detail: Moleskin Joe, before appearing as a novel, was a play, performed at the Ambassador's Theatre in London, according to Wearing (77), in a matinee performance on February 7, 1921 (two years before the novel was published).
On February 8, 1921, one day after the premiere of the play, the critic of the newspaper The Scotsman writes:
[…] The play introduced yesterday was by Mr Patrick MacGill and its title is “Moleskin Joe”. The scene is laid in the Highlands, and the action oscillates between Dunrobin Farm and a neighbouring navvie’s shack. […] The faults of the play are palpable; there is not sufficient action, and what action there is is not sustained; the acts are arbitrarily conceived, and do not follow from one another, but are simply disconnected tableaux vivants, and the dialogue, amusing as it is, has a habit of not helping forward the action. […] The author seems to have concentrated all his powers upon the portrayal of the navvy, and the result is that he has created one striking figure, but that he has left his other characters as mere amiable ciphers. Moleskin Joe is so good, however, that it is worth while, we should say, to give him a better chance, and no doubt Mr MacGill can do it.
We do not know if MacGill read this review or not, but what is certain is that the author gave the character of Moleskin another chance, making him the absolute protagonist of his novel.
In September 1923 his twins Patricia and Christine were born. A year later, The Carpenter of Orra appeared on the market. In this novel, MacGill presents the arrival of Christ in a 20th century Irish town to spread his message of love and service to others. It is paradoxical that MacGill presents the arrival of a Christ figure in a supposedly Catholic Ireland (Dudley Edwards 79), although perhaps we should go a little further and consider this novel as an attempt by MacGill to "purge the sins committed" for his attacks on certain types of priest in previous novels and reconcile with the ecclesiastical establishment that looked favorably on this novel:
[…] “What”, I asked, “is the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church to a book like ‘The Carpenter of Orra’?”
“Well, I am not now what one might call “a good Roman Catholic” […] They looked upon ‘The Carpenter of Orra’ as a welcome return to orthodoxy on the part of one who in his extreme youth had kicked over the traces”. […] I left with an impression of an artist, singularly unacademic in mind and outlook, in close touch with the experiences of common men, who has a clear vision of the power and purpose of divine Love in human life. […] (The Methodist Times, 17 February 1927)
In 1926, Sid Puddiefoot, the story of a white man who carves out a kingdom in Africa, is published. Joe Sherrie (1971) believes that "the professional novelist with the established reputation was at work, competent but unoriginal". In 1928 his daughter Sheila is born and he published The Black Bonar, which tells the love story of Una Cassidy, abandoned by her father at the age of 15 and living with her widowed mother, and the son of the tyrannical landlord, Kevin Bonar. In this novel, MacGill repeats himself in the story model he already used in The Rat-Pit: poor girl falls in love with the landlord's son and criticizes the "gombeen man".
Despite this lack of new ideas for his novels, MacGill's future seemed assured by a hard-earned reputation and a partner who was beginning to be successful, at least in terms of sales. However, bad news also reached the MacGill family: his daughter Christine contracted glandular tuberculosis and, in 1927, when she was 5 years old, the family moved to Leysin (Switzerland) on medical advice, spending 2 years before heading to the United States in 1929.
MacGill and his family moved to the United States because MacGill had reached an agreement to give several conferences there and because he saw the possibility of writing scripts for the flourishing film industry, but in reality it was not like that and the only foray into Hollywood was his daughter Sheila's in the movie Calvacade. The press echoes this fact:
Two years ago, Patrick MacGill, eminent Irish playwright and author, emigrated to Hollywood with his wife and three charming young daughters with the announced intention of “breaking into pictures”. Neither MacGill nor his wife, also a popular author abroad, has succeeded in forcing open the Hollywood gates, but success has come to the MacGill family, nevertheless. Ironically enough, the one who has “made good in pictures” is Sheila, six-year old daugther of the talented couple. (Glenn Innes Examiner, 1 April 1933)
At the time of the MacGills' arrival in the United States, the Great Depression was underway, the conferences he had planned were canceled, and MacGill and his family suffered the rigors of immigration in California as his granddaughter Lucy McGowan recounts:
In 1929, my grandfather was offered a lecture tour of the United States and Canada. They happily agreed, loaded up the three girls and set sail for California. During the two or three weeks it took to sail from England to America the American stock market had crashed. Frivolous events like British authors going on tour took a back seat to trying to get the country off of its ear. My eight-year-old mother went from being a rich and pampered little girl to being a penniless immigrant just by stepping off the boat. They were stuck. My grandparents had been counting on the money from the lectures to finance their return passage. My mother said that they ate apricots −and only apricots− for an entire three month period. […] My mother said that whenever a money transfer would arrive from the Mountbattens my grandmother would kiss the envelope and say, “Edwina has come up trumps!” My grandparents would then take the entire sum and blow it on something useless. They bought a car, for instance, when neither of them drove. (Open House, June/July 2013)
MacGill wrote a play, Suspense (1930), which premiered at the Duke of York's Theater on April 8 of that same year of publication, with Robert Douglas, Roland Culver and Gordon Harker as featured actors. The New Statesman critic compares Suspense to E.C.'s hit work. Sheriff, Journey's End (Greacen 13):
In both plays we watch a group of men desperately adjusting their wills and minds to cope with an abnormal situation which threatens to overwhelm them. I am bound to admit that the men in Suspense seemed to be good deal less real than those in the other dug-out. They have no background of suburban hollyhocks and playing-fields and all the warm, rich life of middle-class rural England to suggest their normal as distinct from their war personalities. MacGill’s crowd of Tommies are men without pasts of futures, suffering entities flattened to a single aspect.
In August of that same year, Suspense arrived on Broadway and on November 3, 1930, the film directed by Walter Summers premiered in the United Kingdom. Variety magazine in its July 23, 1930 edition talks about the reason for the failure of the play, compares MacGill's script with the film's script and predicts little success in the United States:
As a war play, Suspense flopped in London, although the critics generally rated it very high. The reason for its quick death was generally attributed to its outspokenness and that it was too strong for London taste. The talker version, as far as it goes, is a good piece of work. The problem is whether it represents entertainment in the ordinary sense. MacGill’s original, even after licked by the censor, was pretty raw. In the talker it’s been watered down to an occasional “ruddy”, with a snatch of a naughty song. […] Dialog has been stripped of the poetic values MacGill’s original contained, and the whittling-down of the shell-shock sequences take away from the drama the atmosphere of futility and the antiwar propaganda with which it was filled. Suspense should do pretty well here with the better neighbourhood audiences, but it doesn’t look like material for the States
The author of this review, by describing Suspense as “flopped in London” ignores that the play was performed 62 times in London from March 8, 1930 to May 31 of that same year (Wearing 22), being a number of performances not inconsiderable for the London scene and for a non-theatrical author, although he is correct in the prediction of its failure in the United States: we do not know for sure how many times it was screened, but the work was only performed seven times in August 1930 at the Fulton Theater in New York.
After this theatrical foray, MacGill continued to write novels for Herbert Jenkins, including Tulliver's Mill (1934), which tells the story of Dorcote Mill, who is going through financial problems that could be solved by selling the mill, but her husband, Tulliver, is opposed to selling a mill that has been passed down through generations. MacGill's idea is original because it is related to the descendants of the Tullivers, who appear in George Eliot's novel The Mill on the Floss, but, unlike other novels, MacGill is not able to delve into the psychology of his characters and the novel loses that aura of genuineness that he did achieve in his Donegal-themed novels.
In The Glen of Carra (1934), MacGill returns to Ireland for his novel to tell the love story between a young Englishman and the daughter of the owner of the castle where he is staying, Moira O'Donnell. In this novel, MacGill's imagination is mixed with harsh moments of realism, but the roughness that appears in other novels of his has evaporated. In 1935, MacGill published The House at the World's End, which is set shortly after World War I and where MacGill describes the extreme poverty of the Gallagher family. In this novel, he resorts to Irish mythology to present the reader with a fairy (actually a neighbor of the protagonists) who will become the savior of the family by providing them with food and adopting Hugie after his mother's death. According to Sherrie (1971),“[…] Gone is MacGill’s cynicism of his earlier years. The story is told with complete sympathy and compassion”.
Helen Spenser (1937) was the last novel published by Herbert Jenkins for MacGill and in correspondence from Herbert Jenkins Limited sent to MacGill's address − 1320-4 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles − to be signed, it is striking that MacGill gives up the rights to Helen Spenser and The Diary of an Unwanted Girl in exchange for 150 pounds and undertakes to revise this latest novel: “I undertake to deliver to Herbert Jenkins, Ltd, by the 30th June 1936 a carefully revised and written version of THE DIARY OF AN UNWANTED GIRL, and I also agree to read the proofs of both books and make the necessary corrections” (O'Sullivan 212). The whereabouts of the manuscript of this book and why it was not published by Jenkins is unknown, although Edwards (79) suggests that the year of publication of Helen Spenser coincides with the death of Jenkins' companion, John Grimsdick, on December 27, 1937. (Jenkins had died on June 8, 1923) and Grimsdick's son, “lacked the memory of great days.” For his part, O'Sullivan (212) believes that it was not published because MacGill had returned to the themes and techniques of The Rat-Pit.
The last years of MacGill's life were years of poverty and deteriorating health. Patrick contracted multiple sclerosis, which left him lame and eventually bedridden. He continued writing until the end, although his articles were not interesting to be published. Once the daughters were old enough to work and support the family, his wife made him believe that he was still receiving royalties. Most of the family's book collection had to be sold. His daughter Christine said of that situation: “When times were hardest we would be sent to the second-hand bookstore to sell them, sometimes for as little as ten cents each. Then we’d go to the grocery store with the pennies and buy the necessities” (MacGill, Children of the Dead End IX).
Margaret Gibbons, MacGill's wife, tried to exploit his dramatic talent by opening a theater school, first in Los Angeles and then in Miami, where the family moved in 1941, but once the United States joined the war, the young people disappeared. and the school had to close. MacGill died on November 22, 1963 in complete ostracism. His death did not appear in British newspapers such as The Times or The Glasgow Herald – partly because he had been silent as an author for many years and also because news of JFK's assassination was reported. Kennedy on November 22 was of more concern to editors at the time.
Patrick MacGill is buried next to his wife in St. Patrick's Cemetery in Fall River, Massachusetts. As an epitaph, his daughters wrote one of his verses: “The old life fails, but the new life comes.
Author's note: MacGill deserves a place in the history of Irish literature and this article serves as a small tribute (I keep researching about MacGill). Thanks to the MacGill family, especially Lucy and Cris McGowan for all the information provided about their grandfather for my thesis and for their friendship despite the distance between the United States and Madrid, thanks to St Connell's museum, (Laura and Anne) for welcoming me with open arms as one of their own and thanks to Ireland, for giving me so much. I always like to say: "I don't have Irish blood, but I feel Irish by conviction."
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“A Talk with Patrick MacGill. Irish Poet on The Need for Brotherhood”. The Methodist Times. 17 February 1927.
“Calvacade: The Picture of A Generation”. The Glen Innes Examiner. 1 April 1933, 4.
Cuseo, Lucy. “Family Memories”. Open House 230 (2013): 7.
Dudley Edwards, Owen. “Patrick MacGill and the Making of a Historical Source: with a Handlist of His Works.” The Innes Review 37. 2 (1986): 73-100.
Greacen, Robert. Patrick MacGill: Champion of The Underdog. Glenties: Glenties Development Association, 1981.
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MacGill, Patrick. Black Bonar. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1928.
_______. Children of the Dead End. 1914. London: Caliban Books, 1985.
_______. Fear. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1921.
_______. Gleanings from a Navvy’s Scrapbook. Greenock: P. MacGill, 1910.
_______. Glenmornan. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1918.
_______. Helen Spenser. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1937.
_______. Lanty Hanlon: a Comedy of Irish life. 1922. Dingle: Brandon, 1983.
_______. Maureen. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1919.
_______. Moleskin Joe. 1923. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2000.
_______. Sid Puddiefoot. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1926.
_______. Soldier Songs. 1916. London: Caliban Books, 1984.
_______. Songs of a Navvy. Windsor: P. MacGill, 1912.
_______. Songs of Donegal. 1921. London: Caliban Books, 1984.
_______. Songs of the Dead End. 1913. London: Caliban Books, 1984.
_______. Suspense. A Play in Three Acts. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1930.
_______. The Amateur Army. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1915.
_______. The Brown Brethren. New York: George H. Doran, 1917.
_______. The Carpenter of Orra. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1924.
_______. The Diggers: The Australians in France. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1919.
_______. The Dough-Boys. New York: George H. Doran, 1919.
_______. The Glen of Carra. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1934.
_______. The Great Push. 1916. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2000.
_______. The Rat-Pit. 1915. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 1999.
_______. The Red Horizon. Dingle: Brandon, 1984.
_______. The House at the World’s End. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1935.
_______. Tulliver’s Mill. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1934.
_______. Letter to Canon Dalton. 24 November 1911. Oxford University: Worcester College Library.
_______. Letter to Canon Dalton. 18 January 1912. Oxford University: Worcester College Library. _______. Letter to Herbert Jenkins. 27 February 1919. Berg Collection, New York Public Library _______. Letter to Canon Dalton. 30 April 1919. Oxford University: Worcester College Library.
_______. Letter to Herbert Jenkins. 5 November 1920. Berg Collection, New York Public Library
“MacGill, Patrick. The Navvy Poet at Windsor: Interview with Mr. Patrick MacGill”. Daily Express. 19 February 1913.
O’Sullivan, Patrick. “Patrick MacGill: The Making of A Writer”. Ireland Histories: Aspects of State, Society and Ideology. Ed. S. Hutton and P. Stewart. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. 203-222.
Phillips, Terry. “The Wisdom of Experience: Patrick MacGill’s Irishness Reassessed”. SubVersions, Transnational Readings of Modern Irish Literature. Ed. Ciaran Ross. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2010. 29-52.
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Sherrie, Joe. “The Voice of the Inarticulate”. Irish Press. 28 July 1971.
Starr, Robert. Nailed to The Rolls of Honour, Crucified: Irish Literary Responses to the Great War: The War Writings of Patrick MacGill, James Hanley, and Liam O'Flaherty. Diss. University of Warwick, 2017. Stuttgart, Germany: ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon, 2019.
“Still MacGill”. The Sunday Times. 20 January 1918, 13.
Wearing, John Peter. A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD, United States: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2014.
_______. The London Stage: 1930-1939. A Calendar of Productions Performer and Personnel. Lanham, MD, United States: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2014. “Suspense”. Variety. 23 July 1930, 31.