I must first of all declare an interest, like all good politicians these days. I have known the author Rose Doyle for a number of years: she was a student of mine at Trinity College in the post-graduate diploma in Anglo-Irish Literature. Subsequently I followed her career with interest as she became an accomplished popular novelist. She is also the author of several books for children.
With Friends Indeed, Doyle has perhaps taken on a bigger challenge in weaving the fabric of a novel from some of the darker strands of 19th-century Irish historical reality. It is essentially the story of three women: Allie, the wilful, French-educated daughter of Leonard and Harriet Buckley (who are trying to put memories of the inner city pub on which their fortunes rested behind them, while Mrs Buckley in particular attempts a little social climbing); Sarah Rooney, their domestic servant and friend to Allie; and the Madam of a brothel off Henrietta Street, Breezy Reilly. The story is narrated in a series of chapters each seen from the separate viewpoint of one of the three principal female characters.
The book is divided into two sections, the first dealing with the complications that ensue in the Buckley and Rooney households when Allie returns from finishing school in Paris to find that her embittered and sadistic mother has introduced a malformed and malignant housekeeper, Mary Connor, into their home.
Attempts are made to marry off the troublesome daughter to a disgusting drunken doctor, MacDermott. She, however, has decided to break new grounds of female emancipation by attempting to pursue a medical career and rejects his patronising advances.
In the ensuing tension, both Sarah Rooney and her mother lose their jobs with the Buckleys. Pregnant by her soldier lover, James Vance, and disgraced in the eyes of her family and neighbours, Sarah sets off, accompanied by Allie and Breezy Reilly, whose brothel has been burnt down by a crazed prostitute, to follow her soldier boy to the Curragh of Kildare.
Part two of the book deals with their adventures as camp followers. It is a fascinating story, rivettingly told, and Doyle wonderfully captures the malice of the twisted housekeeper and the acid, self-absorbed mother. There is indeed a Gothic quality to some of the scenes, but that is surely appropriate for the mid-19th century. The characters are lively and engage our sympathies quickly, although I did wonder at the refinement of the expression shown by Sarah who occasionally talks as if she had been educated in Alexandra College rather than being a servant girl from Henrietta Street. Occasionally her reflections seem to me to have more of Jane Austen than the inner city about them. But this is a slight criticism in the context of the whole book as is my feeling that the ending is slightly tacked on to the main narrative as all the loose ends are tied up neatly in a curious reconciliation in San Francisco.
The camp followers were known as the Wrens of the Curragh. These women, with no income except that which they had from prostitution, made for themselves dwellings out of sods of turf and furze bushes which, especially in the winter, can hardly have been either comfortable or sanitary.
Indeed, it is astonishing to think of human beings in our recent past on this island living in such circumstances and destitution. Few people, I think, will have come across this sad chapter and we should be grateful to Doyle for having so imaginatively reclaimed this period for us.
Coincidentally, I came across this phenomenon twice in the last year, once in a collection of Charles Dickens's journalism for he published articles on the Wrens in the journal All the Year Round he was editing in the 1860s. Further and more exact details were discovered in a book that was presented to me after I spoke to the officer training wing at the military college in the Curragh in March of last year.
The book is a fascinating account of the British army at the Curragh from 1855-1922, entitled A Most Delightful Station by Con Costello. In a chapter entitled 'Crimes of Prostitution', Costello gives an account of the squalid conditions in which these women lived, their wretched lives and the brutality to which they were subjected.
He quotes from an article published by Dickens in which an eye-witness describes the activities of an officious local priest commandeering a squad of soldiers to burn the unfortunate women out and recounts how this same reverend gentleman made it a habit of carrying a large scissors with him so that if he met one of the Wrens he would assault her and sheer off her hair.
In 1845, a priest in Newbridge, encountering one of these women, threw her down in the mud, ripped the clothes from her back and laid into her with his riding whip until the blood spurted over her boots. A crowd assembled but no one protested.
Such incidents form the basis for several powerful scenes in Doyle's novel but she has fleshed out the bones of the story in a remarkable and convincing way. She also makes use of an incident in autumn 1863 when a girl named Rosanna Doyle died in the Naas workhouse as a result of neglect by the medical authorities.
I am glad to be able to report that this newspaper acquitted itself reasonably well at the time. The Irish Times on November 24th, 1864, printed a report of the case and in a leading article dealing with Rosanna Doyle's death, although deploring the element of prostitution involved, said "but surely it is the duty of the workhouse authorities to arrange some system by which the wretched human beings who frequent the Curragh should be relieved as soon as possible. We trust that early next session a Bill will be introduced to give the Crown complete authority over the Curragh, and to prevent, if possible, the vice and misery which now infects the place".
Rose Doyle has written an accomplished and fascinating novel with compassion and irony. By the exercise of her imagination she has given a voice to a group of unjustly outcast and despised women of whom otherwise the public would know very little.
David Norris is an Independent Senator representing the graduates of Trinity College Dublin