The extraordinary creative activity of Dublin's Abbey Theatre in the opening decades of the last century was the work not only of notable figures of literary and theatrical stature but, also of lesser figures who contributed in minor ways as their lives intersected for perhaps a year or two with the visionary project of Yeats and Lady Gregory. Edward F. Barrett, an accountant, wrote plays in his spare time, one of which was produced at the Abbey Theatre in 1918. His story is essentially that of an amateur who, in different circumstance, may have flourished as a playwright. Barrett was born on St. Valentine's Day, 1869. His mother was a Fitzmaurice from Listowel and his father was a publican. When Edward was a young boy, his father sold his pub and moved the family out to Newtown Sandes, a small village in the townland of Coolleen in North Kerry. As he grew up Barrett was interested in books and literature. After leaving school he trained as an accountant. He also taught for a time at St. Michael's College in Listowel. Dublin was an attractive prospect for an ambitious young man, and he soon obtained a position as business manager with Messrs. Smith and Sons, Silversmiths, of Wicklow Street. Although his move to Dublin was permanent, Barrett retained strong ties to Kerry and in 1898, at the age of twenty-nine, he married Nora Hunt, whose family farm at Knockanure was also in the townland of Coolleen. It was, by all accounts, a happy marriage. Nora and Eddie had one daughter, Maura, born in Dublin on October 15, 1906. Eddie Barrett grew up in North Kerry during a time of considerable political and social agitation. Farmers there suffered much hardship as they struggled to pay high rents to landlords' agents or faced eviction from their farms. The Land League was formed in 1871 by Michael Davitt, the Land League advocated the three F's—fair rent, fixity of tenure, and freedom from eviction. The Land War was not divorced from the greater struggle for independence, but its concerns were local. The passions it ignited often set neighbor against neighbor. These were the circumstances in which Barrett grew up. In his father's pub in Listowel he would have heard a lot of political talk by drinking men. In Newtown [End Page 139] Sandes, the plight of small farmers was apparent to everyone. The landlord Sandes and his agents were particularly tough customers. Part of the farm of Barrett's future wife was grabbed. Later, in his journals, Barrett mused on everything from politics and philosophy to medicine and religion, and it is clear he was exercised by "the problem of Ireland." In one entry Barrett suggests that the worst misfortune in a colonized country is the lack of manufacturing industries. Ireland was enslaved to the "shopocracy" of Britain. One sector of Irish society had prospered in the second half of the nineteenth century: the Catholic church. The church had embarked on a building program that saw the construction of most of the churches extant today. Barrett's firm, Messrs. Smith and Son, developed a thriving business in outfitting altars and fashioning monstrances and other religious items. Edward Barrett was their manager for almost half a century. He became a member of the Dublin middle classes, buying a house in Glasnevin and a family plot in Glasnevin cemetery. When his parents died, he brought them from Kerry to be buried. The house in St. Alphonsus Road was next to St. Alphonsus Church, which had been fitted in ornate gold by the silversmiths of Wicklow Street. Barrett's early experiences in Kerry continued to haunt him. He began writing bits of plays and poems in notebooks. "The Trance," "Resurrection," and "Thou Shalt Not Covet" are the titles of some plays begun but left unfinished. Both Barrett and his wife Nora came from mixed marriages—Protestant fathers and Catholic mothers—which...
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Jun 17, 2021
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