The Curious Case of the Mayo Librarian (9 page)

In the early years of the Free State the development of county-wide library services was still in its infancy. In the previous decades Andrew Carnegie, as a personal gift, contributed financial support to the establishment of libraries in Ireland. He offered grants to fund the library buildings and once the money had been paid over he ceased to have any connection with the library authority.
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Library growth in Ireland was a haphazard area, very much dependent on organisations or individuals with the knowledge and initiative to apply to Carnegie for funding.

Andrew Carnegie had made vast sums of money in America as a steel manufacturer. In later years he became involved in charitable works, principally in giving financial support to the building of libraries. According to Mr Carnegie himself, he had spent a great deal of time in a library during his youth and it had both instilled in him a love of literature and ‘steered him clear of low fellowship and bad habits.' Not only that, it had also revealed to him ‘the precious treasures of knowledge and imagination through which youth can ascend.'
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After the Carnegie Trust was set up in 1913, an Irish committee was established and the writer Lennox Robinson was appointed organiser. As Lennox Robinson himself confessed, ‘When I was appointed manager and producer at the Abbey Theatre I knew nothing of stage work; in this case I knew nothing of library work. But the appointment was not quite insane, not as insane as the Abbey one.'
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Robinson was of the opinion that much of Andrew Carnegie's original financial support of libraries had been in vain. ‘His benefactions were generous and well-meaning but often ill-judged … I believe Mr Jack Yeats once painted a picture of an Irish village hiding behind a hill to try to escape a library.'
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The Trust decided to change its policy. Previously it had concentrated on a library-building programme. It was decided to spend less on buildings and more on administration and also to ‘keep a certain amount of friendly control and supervision over library schemes for some years.'
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It was felt they could get better value for their money by supplying books, equipment and administration rather than just buildings. The result was the rural library movement. The aim became ‘books and buildings, books for the villages and townlands, for the schools, village clubs, the family and the individual student.'
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Numerous small communities managed ‘to secure a small building which they boldly named a library but the “librarian” was only a badly paid caretaker and there were few or no books.' Many of the original Carnegie libraries fell into disrepair due to a lack of funding for their maintenance and upkeep. The Trust recognised that there was a particular problem when it came to rural counties. The secretary of the United Kingdom Carnegie Trust highlighted the challenge facing large remote areas. ‘In the county,' he said, ‘the essential fact is that no matter how much you might like to have a big central library, you can never place it near enough to all the people to make it genuinely accessible.'
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It was this problem that led to a change of emphasis in the Trust's grants from fixed buildings, which by their nature tended to be located in urban areas, to book stock that could be moved around from library to library and region to region.

According to a 1929 report by the Library Association of Ireland, there was still great room for improvement. ‘The shortcomings of libraries in Ireland was due to one main cause – poverty.'
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One of the problems was that ‘it was clear that in the majority of cases Mr Carnegie's grants had been given without very complete knowledge of local conditions …' and many of the original library buildings had fallen into disuse.

The Local Government Act of 1925 made county councils the new unit of rural library administration. They were given the power to levy a library rate thus permitting them to become statutory library authorities. Within the next decade ‘county followed county in rapid succession' in setting up a library scheme, and by 1935 only Longford and Westmeath were without a service.
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The Carnegie trustees continually reminded the local authorities of ‘the necessity of appointing only professionally skilled librarians and of paying salaries commensurate with the position.'
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The Trust made it a condition attached to their grants that the librarian should be paid not less than £250 a year.

The library service that Miss Dunbar Harrison was set to inherit had only a short existence. Like most county libraries it was a recent innovation and had only been set up in 1926 by Miss Dunbar Harrison's immediate predecessor and Mayo's first county librarian, Miss Brigid Redmond. Mayo County Council had hesitated for eighteen months before finally deciding to accept a grant from the Carnegie Trust to establish a county-circulating library. The councillors were divided, with ‘one section eager to welcome the gift of free books for the people, another fearful lest the promised gift should mask a dangerous weapon of imperialistic propaganda.'
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In its early formative years the Irish Free State tended to look inwards, with a pronounced protectionist attitude, especially with regard to social and moral matters. Censorship was one by-product of this desire to shelter the citizens of the new state from the baleful influence of the outside world. The Catholic church in Ireland was especially wary of external influences. Libraries could be dangerous places, and librarians could be the means by which innocent people might become infected by dangerous and subversive ideas such as Communism. The following 1931 Lenten pastoral of Rev. Dr Finnegan is a typical example of this attitude:

It is said that thirty tons of literature, consisting principally of the scandals of the world, reach this country every week. If this literature be read in such quantities it will very soon undermine both the morals and the faith of the people. It is also stated that there are circulating, weekly, in Ireland, twenty papers of this dangerous description.

Since my last Lenten letter, steps have been taken to establish a public library in the counties of Cavan and Leitrim. If carefully and cautiously managed, these may become a means of instruction, enlightenment and even of edification. They do require cautious management. The greater number of the books must necessarily come from publishers outside Ireland. It is a well-known fact that literature subversive of faith and morals issues in great quantities from the English press. Should such literature to any extent get into them, the public libraries, instead of a blessing, would become a curse.
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It was unfortunate that during this period of expansion, Lennox Robinson, who was the Trust's organiser in Ireland, fell foul of the country's moral guardians. One of his literary endeavours stirred up a controversy in 1924. Robinson contributed a short story on a religious theme, written many years previously, to a literary paper edited by Francis Stuart. ‘The Madonna of Slieve Dun' was a mild enough tale, a slice of rural miserabilism about a young, naïve and religious country girl, Mary Creedon, who imagines herself to be another Blessed Virgin come to save the town of Liscree from the wickedness of drinking, gambling and horse-racing, but on publication it caused outrage. ‘A first-rate row blew up' when W.B. Yeats got involved.
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As Mr Robinson himself put it, ‘On account of my story a Catholic cleric resigned from the Carnegie advisory committee. He was important and strongly backed by the provost … my resignation was demanded. I refused it. I preferred to be dismissed and after a lot of haggling and trying to save everyone's face, dismissed I was. The whole thing was inexpressively painful to me. It alienated many of my Catholic friends and with some the breach will never be healed.'
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To suspicious minds this incident raised yet another question mark over the motives of the Carnegie Trust; its organiser in Ireland was seen as a purveyor of blasphemous yarns. Despite these vicissitudes, the Trust continued its work in Ireland throughout the 1920s, concentrating mainly on the previously neglected country areas. Its scheme for rural library services treated a county as one unit with centralised control and a circulating book system. This type of plan had proved quite successful in England and was now being tried out in many Irish counties. As the county librarian for Dublin described it, ‘The chief characteristic of these county library schemes is a central distributing depot, from which books are sent out to small centres in schools and village halls or small town libraries and changed every three months.'
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Operating through these modest centres a negligible outlay of funding could provide a basic library service over a large area.

The choice of location for these distribution centres was crucial. Dermot Foley's experiences in Clare could be regarded as typical. ‘A school, especially if it stood near a church,' he said, ‘was the only choice in rural parts, and a corner shop or post office was the best bet in villages. A few towns had a club hall, but the trouble there was that every conceivable group used it, from tin-whistle bands to snooker players to card schools, so chicken-wired frames to protect the books at all times, except for an hour or two in the week set aside for the library, had to be made.'
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Some counties came up with more innovative solutions. At least one library centre was based in a pub; it was run by a Mr T. Moran in Drumshambo.
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This type of haphazard organisation, which was almost entirely dependent on voluntary help, worked surprisingly well. Roísín Walsh, Dublin county librarian, expressed the doubts she initially felt. ‘You cannot believe,' she said, ‘that books passing through the hands of untrained workers in small centres to rural readers in remote corners of the county will ever find their way back to the haven of headquarters again. Strange to say, your fears are quite unfounded, for the books come back, up to time, and certainly looking no worse than if they had been circulating for the same period in a highly respectable suburb.'
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In July 1925 the Carnegie Trust wrote to all the county councils who had not set up a library service, intimating that their offer of grants would be withdrawn in December 1930, after which date no further grants would be available.
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Essentially the Trust was setting a deadline for these tardy councils to avail of their funding. There was, however, a certain residual distrust of the motives of a foreign body funding services in Ireland, despite the Trust's apparently philanthropic roots. During the often acrimonious debates in Leitrim, Councillor Pat Kilkenny asserted that he was against the adoption of the Public Libraries Act in his county as ‘old Carnegie was an Englishman and he made all his money in America on the sweat of the workers.'
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Carnegie, of course, was of Scottish descent but suspicion of his motives remained a political fact in much of rural, conservative Ireland.

Councillor Kilkenny from Aughavas had strong views on libraries. He was of the view that ‘books were alright in their own way but it would be better to give the starving people of the countryside bags of flour than start lumping volumes on them.'
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Many local councillors were hostile to libraries simply because in the long run they would have to pay for them. They believed there were more needy projects deserving of their scarce funding. The Clare experience was not untypical. Dermot Foley was told by one politician of the agricultural persuasion, ‘'Tisn't a book a man should have in his hands, Mister Librarian, but a pair of horses. Three years I'm looking for a grant to build a shed for the cattle. I was to find that the Clare County Council could breed more non-sequiturs in one season than a dog has fleas.'
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Some councillors were also sceptical of who would use the service. ‘It is all very well to be talking about literature,' Councillor James Creamer of Ballinamore asserted, ‘but if those who advocate it had to go into a gripe or a ditch to earn a living it would be a different matter. Shopkeepers who have an easy way of making money, and others who are gorged with big salaries, may be in favour of it, but I say it is an outrage and intolerable on the ratepayers to bring it forward now.' Councillor Michael McGrath from Carrick-on-Shannon was equally unconvinced with regard to the literary interests of his county people. ‘I think all who are conversant with this subject,' he said, ‘know that the library will serve about two dozen people in County Leitrim.'
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Brigid Redmond was appointed the first county librarian of Mayo in 1926. The library scheme was to be under probation for a period of two years, financed by the Carnegie Trust. If at the end of that period, the scheme was found to be successful, it would be adopted by the County Council, and a rate would be struck for the permanent maintenance of the library service. Essentially, Brigid Redmond was a pioneer setting out into uncharted territory, and that certainly seems to be how she felt. As she herself described it, ‘One grim November day I left the cheery homelights of Dublin behind and went westwards to Mayo.'
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Her first task was to secure premises for the new library service. Two towns had contended for the honour of housing the headquarters – Claremorris and Ballinrobe. Miss Redmond inspected the Claremorris building first. It was situated about a mile outside of the town, ‘in the middle of a windy desolate plain … the disused workhouse and fever hospital. Here the council had indicated certain rooms which might be used for the purpose of a library. As I looked round the dank walls and through the bleak deserted passages, I fancied that I could hear the sad plaints of the Famine victims in the weird moaning of the wind sweeping down the chimneys and out through the creaking, barred windows. “Ye'd have no neighbours here but the rats, Miss,” remarked the caretaker. I agreed and fled precipitately to Ballinrobe.'
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