Life
1894-1954 [Robert Maire Smyllie; err. Smylie; fam. “Bertie”],
b. Glasgow, son of a Scottish journalist who moved to Sligo to edit the
Sligo Times; ed. Sligo Grammar School; entered TCD 1912; vacation
tutor to American boy in Germany; interned in Ruhleben, nr. Berlin, during
World War I; engaged in drama productions with other cosmopolitan interns
and gleaned wide political education; on returning reported on the Versailles
Treaty for John E. Healy, ed. of Irish Times; scooped interview
with Lloyd George; contrib. “Irishman’s Diary” to Irish
Times from 1927; appointed ed., in succession to Healy, 1934; established
non-partisan profile and modern Irish character of the erstwhile ascendancy
paper, e.g., dropping “Kingstown Harbour” for “Dun Laoghaire”;
assisted by Alec Newman and Lionel Fleming; recruited Patrick (“Paddy”)
Campbell; backed C. S. Andrew’s Bord na Mona [turf] scheme, 1936;
enlisted Flann O’Brien to write his thrice-weekly column “Cruiskeen
Lawn” as Myles na gCopaleen; contributed his own column as “Nichevo”;
patronised the Palace Bar, where he is included with literary num. contemps.
in Alan Reeve’s framed cartoon, but later frequented the Pearl after
a rift with the former; for Patrick Kavanagh he was ‘a gasbag with
no talent’ but held otherwise by Paddy Campbell and others who worked
with him; there is a biography by John Gray.
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Commentary
Brian Inglis, Downstart (London: Chatto &
Windus 1990), “Smyllie” [Chap. 7]; commences with quotation
from Patrick Campbell’s column in the Spectator during
1959: ‘When, in these trying times, it’s possible to work on
the lower slopes of a national newspaper for several weeks without discovering
which of the scurrying executives is the editor, I count myself fortunate
to have served under one who wore a green sombrero, weighed twenty-two
stone, sang part of his leading articles in operative recitative, and
grew the nail on his little finger into the shape of a pen nib, like Keats.’
(Inglis, op. cit. p.93.) Cites C. S. (Todd) Andrews writing of Smyllie:
‘He integrated the Irish Times and what it stood for with
the Irish nation’, in A Man of No Property (here p.95.)
Smyllie at war: ‘Smyllie, I found, was showing signs of wear and
tear. The Irish Times was down to a single folded sheet - four pages;
and he had been involved in a protracted battle with the Censors. A couple
of notable victories had been gained, including one which had featured
in newspapers all over the English-speaking world. Commenting on one of
Churchill’s speeches, in which he had named nine militatry commanders
who had won fame in the Middle East, an Irishman’s Diary paragraph
noted that only one of them had [133] been British. Three, it went on
- Generals Wilson, Dill and Brooke - were Japanese (North Island); four
- Generals O’Connor and O’Moore Creagh; Admirals Somerville
and Cunningham - were Japanese (South Island). Nobody was later able to
discover how this spoof got past the Censors, but they retaliated by becoming
even more tough than before.’ (pp.133-34.) Relates that Smyllie reached
an accommodation with the Censors (‘promising not to play any more
tricks on him if they would play none on him’) but quit the game
with a ‘Parthian shot’ in printing the pictures of the Allied
leaders in the shape of a “V” on the front page in edition
on announce victory in Europe. (p.150.)
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Notes
Not inglorious: Smyllie is the probable subject of Yeats’s
phrase, ‘a drunken journalist’ in ‘Why Should Not Old Men
Be Mad?’ Note that Smyllie wrote [a leader] in The Irish Times (7 Feb. 1939) contesting a report
that W. B. Yeats was incapable of familiarity with friends. (See under St. John Ervine, supra.)
‘Romance and Reality’, an Irish Times leader of 29 Sept. 1943, exposes the hollowness of the language revival movement: ‘The revival of Irish aroused popular enthusiasm when it was a political catch-cry, the symbol of revolt; but the British power has left Ireland, the revolt is over.’ Smyllie was answered by Eamon de Valera who castigated The Irish Times as the embodiment of colonial oppression and an organ of ‘foreign civilisation’, urging that ‘enemies of the language’ should be regarded in the same light as ‘enemies of the national advance to political freedom’ (30 Sept & 11 Oct. 1943.) See also under Vivian Mercier, supra.
The Irish Times: fnd. by Major Lawrence Knox, as a six-pager appearing three times a week; acquired by Sir John Arnott in 1873; early editors incl. James Scott, 1877-99, John Healy, 1904-34, and R. M. Smyllie, 1934-54; subsequent editors incl. Douglas Gageby (twice), Fergus Pyle (briefly between Gageby’s reigns); News eds. incl. Donal Foley; current ed. Geraldine Kennedy and current man. dir. Maeve Donovan, in 2008. (See Hugh Oram review of Dermot James, From the Margin to the Centre: A History of the Irish Times, in Books Ireland, May 2008, p.117f.; note that Oram finds the work thin on narratives of Irish Times staff and the ethos of the paper.)
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