Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Thackeray in his inn, me in my study....

It's official, I have the back of a one-hundred year old woman! Was in pain all night and woke up stiff with aches radiating down my arms.  Spent time on the treadmill, tried ice and heat and ultimately resigned myself to it.

Sitting down to the computer I wasn't quite sure where to start in writing/rewriting Chapter One (On Thackeray and Irish Catholicism).  So I reread a paper I wrote several years ago on Thackeray & Ireland, reread all of my notes from my field exam on Irish lit, and settled into reading his personal letters about Ireland.

It's hard to imagine him my age (a year or two younger) with two young daughters (4 and 1?), having already been through the loss of a third.  His wife had long surpassed postpartum depression and childlike and insane, several times trying to kill herself.  The London publishing house, Chapman  & Hall, paid him in advance to write a travelbook on Ireland, and he finally boarded the boat to Ireland with his entirely family in tow, hoping seeing her mother and sister in Ireland would help his wife, Isabella, regain some semblance of her former self.  Sadly she repeatedly tried to throw herself overboard and he finally tied a ribbon around her waist and the other around his wrist so he could sleep without worry...

With Isabella in and institution and his daughters finally living safely with his mother in Paris, Thackeray did his tour of Ireland, writing humorous tidbits in the book and sad letters about his loneliness and how much he missed his daughters.  I'm focusing on tidbits about the poverty he witnessed and his thoughts on the Irish Catholics he encountered.

It's interesting that before his journey he reprimanded his mother for her anti-Catholic sentiments, but once in Ireland he acknowledged his aversions priests, the Eucharist, convents, etc.  In specific letter he describes a dinner conversation with a group of Irish Protestants where they are telling a story about a corrupt priest.  Thackeray jumps in, lambasting the man and the Catholic faith, but then realizes the story is entirely false. It seems to be a moment of awakening for him as he questions his preconceived prejudice all over again.  Nowadays it seems bizarre that Catholics would be so ill-treated, but it was only during his college days that King George IV signed the Catholic Emancipation Bill allowing Catholics into public office...

And so I sit in my makeshift study here in Erie, watching the snow fall heavily out of the draped window, sometimes feeling like I've been having conversations with Willy T, holed up in a small room in some inn outside Cork, grateful that the rain kept him from venturing out to dinner, forcing him to finally get some writing done...

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