The Dublin barrister Charles Lysaght believes that, with their recent publication of The Old Munster Circuit by Maurice Healy KC, booksellers and stationers Messrs Wildy Sons of Lincoln's Inn have restored part of Ireland's literary heritage. It's difficult to disagree.
Healy's father was an MP and solicitor in Cork city, younger brother of the anti-Parnellite Tim Healy KC, first Governor General of the Irish Free State. His maternal grandfather was the barrister A.M. Healy, best known as editor of The Nation. His maternal uncle and benefactor was Serjeant Sullivan, author of The Last Serjeant, and among his cousins was Alex Sullivan, who led for the defence in the trial of Roger Casement.
Earliest recollection
In his introduction to the new edition (the work was first published, with lamentable timing, in 1939), Lysaght explains that Maurice Healy was of Cork: "His earliest recollection was the burning of the old Cork courthouse. He went to school at Christians before going on to Clongowes. He ran a paper called the Cork Free Press for the All-for-Ireland party. When, after serving with distinction in the Great War, he made his life at the English Bar he never forgot where he came from and he never lost his Cork accent. It is right that Cork should not forget him."
And although Healy died, aged 55, in London in 1942, it is clear that Cork has not forgotten him. The book was launched at Lovett's Restaurant because of its "Wine Geese" room honouring those Irish emigrΘs who left their mark on the vineyards of Europe; its centrepiece is a portrait of the young Maurice Healy, whose second book was the renowned Stay Me with Flagons, first published in 1940.
Linking these two remarkable books, Charles Lysaght quoted Healy's reference (in The Old Munster Circuit) to his legal sponsor Mr Justice Dunbar Plunkett Barton, founder of the Barton Cup in golf. Sir Dunbar was a descendant of the Bartons of Barton and Guestier in Bordeaux, and Healy noted that the firm's partnership agreement of 1694 never had to be reduced to writing and there was never a shadow of difference between the descendants. "I cannot refrain," Healy writes, "from quoting this example of the admirable benignity of claret".
My 1949 edition of Stay Me with Flagons is on loan from Kate Sweetman of Annesbrook, in Co Meath, and includes a memoir by Sir Norman Birkett; the fact that this posthumous publication is annotated by Ian Maxwell Campbell is another reason why this later edition is so special: "Of all the links which unite friendship and hospitality none is stronger or more free from petty self-interest than the common enjoyment of wine. Wine radiates a goodwill to all, be they host or guest, giver or receiver: Maurice was delightful in either role."
Heady evocation
Comprehensive in its coverage, with chapter after chapter of sparkling erudition, among the many delights of the book is a heady evocation of a wine dinner, properly approached by abstinence from alcoholic drink until 6 p.m. One takes the soup - nothing better than a consommΘ -- and refuses the hors d'oeuvre. Only the most discreet of fish must be served - "although John Dory can behave very modestly" - with a good white Burgundy such as Batard Montrachet; for the roast only the best of the Claret, "ignoring the rule propounded by that ignorant butler at Cana".
Irish readers of Stay Me with Flagons will relish Healy's conversion from total abstention. Of particular interest is his understanding of Irish drunkenness: "They were forbidden all forms of culture, and wine and all fermented drinks call for culture in their use, else they will be abused."
Like any barrister, Healy enjoys dispute and introduces his theme with a discussion on the Vulgate and Douai translations of the fifth verse of the second chapter of the Canticle of Canticles. One offers: "Stay me up with flowers, compass me about with apples"; while the other has: "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples". Whatever the textual differences between the creeds, "they agree", he writes, "in giving us a Song in which the use of wine is praised and exalted the whole way through".
Which is what Maurice Healy, too, has given us. In thanking Wildy and Sons, Charles Lysaght reminded his listeners that this company also rescued from extinction Forensic Fables, by Theodore Mathew. This is another book with Cork links - in fact to Father Mathew, the apostle of temperance himself - and was written by the Director of Public Prosecutions who later encouraged Rebecca West to attend the trial of William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) which resulted in The New Meaning of Treason (1947). Lysaght did not plead openly on behalf of Stay Me with Flagons, but perhaps his hints will be recognised?
Family memories
"I never met Maurice Healy," Lysaght admitted at Lovetts, "but I was honoured to number Eoin O'Mahony and Ralph Sutton among my friends. Ralph should be doing the honours tonight. I miss him and am consoled only by being able to share memories of him with members of his family who are here. There are names like Barry Galvin and Stephen Ronan that are still extant in Cork, and some like Henry Connor represented by descendants, but there are others long forgotten like George Lawrence and Matt Bourke, the Recorder, or Redmond Barry, the Lord Chancellor who died at the age of 46, or his successor Ignatius (known as Pugnacious) O'Brien, a former journalist.
"There are two judges who share the surname of my old friend Harvey Kenny, one Matt Kenny the Circuit Judge for Cork, and Paddy Fleming from Kilfinane in Limerick who had taken a first in English at Trinity with no obvious effects on his spoken word."
These, in Ireland, were the men of the Old Munster Circuit - but Healy made his life in London and to such effect that, to quote Sir Norman Birkett, to have known him was to have known the English Bar at its very best. "When Maurice died, many a man found himself echoing the words of Johnson on the death of Garrick - 'I am disappointed by that stroke of death, which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.' "