Newsletter of the Munster Literature Centre Sullivan's Quay Cork

A First Meeting with Frank O'Connor

Dalkey, Monday, March 14th, 1994, Aisling Meade interviews Harriet O' Donovan Sheehy about her first encounter with Frank O'Connor (Michael O' Donovan) whom she was later  to marry.

A.
We'll start with when you first met Michael. Can you tell us what you thought of him, what were your
first impressions?

H.
I first met him in Harvard where I was a student in summer school. I'd gone there to make up my mind whether or not I was going to marry someone I was going out with at the time. I was very dubious, but I didn't have any good reasons for being dubious, so I thought, I'll go to Harvard  Summer School and I won't see this fellow for six or eight weeks and then that'll give me an idea.   I didn't know what courses to take at the time, but the first story I ever read of Michael's was a story called 'The Saint', which is not very well known. It's  about a little boy who was always lighting candles to the Blessed Virgin. One time when he was home with his father, he said "Could I have another penny?"  and his father said "What d'you want a penny for?" and he said "Well I just want to light another candle".  His mother said "Aw sure isn't the child fine, wouldn't you give him the penny for that".  But the father said "They buy ten of those for one penny, they're making a fortune off us", and so the little boy decides, well, that being the case, he would light ten candles for one penny.  He's caught by the sacristan and the sacristan makes him pay for all ten, without lighting any more candles, and he kind of loses his faith in women at that point because he thinks the Blessed Virgin should have intervened.
Frank O'Connor with Harriet in London                    

It's a very slight story, but it was in a women's magazine and the fellow I was going out with at the time was a very devout convert to Catholicism.  He thought anything about Catholicism was wonderful, and I thought well, here's someone writing about it from a sort of amused light point of view. So when I got to Harvard and saw that Michael was giving a course, I thought I might as well try it. 

We were allowed to sit in on the courses and see if we wanted to do it or not before we registered, and I went in, and here was this man with..........he had on this seersucker suit and his hair was standing up on his head, he had two pairs of glasses and he kept forgetting which he wanted. One was for reading and one was for long distance; he had the most wonderful voice and he was talking about P Celts and Q Celts. I had never heard of them in my life, but I thought yeah this is grand, I'll take this course. So I enrolled and I took it, and things went along quietly, nothing much happened except that he was such a good teacher, he was a wonderful teacher. But one time he was teaching Synge's "Deirdre of the Sorrows", and after class I was walking down the stairs with a friend and I said loudly, "Well I don't care what Mr. O'Connor says, I think Deirdre was a bitch". He was right ahead of me and I didn't know it. He turned around and he said "Why don't you come and have coffee with us and tell us about your theories?" And of course I was amazed and I thought Oh my God, I can't go.... So I said "Oh no no. I'm sorry.  I can't," missing that good opportunity.

Then about two weeks later the class gave a party and I was one of the few people in the class who had a car.  One of the girls asked me to pick up Mr. O' Connor and bring him to the party and I said "Yeah, sure."  So I picked him up, and in the car driving to the party we started just talking, talking, talking; he was so easy to talk to and so interesting.  As we got to the party he said, "Don't offer anyone else a lift when we're leaving and we'll go out and have supper together." So I thought, that's fine.  We went out to a place called Haysins which was kind of a student place, and we sat and we talked and talked until they closed, literally closed the place around us. I remember I dropped him home and I remember thinking, 'this man is bound to be married, he's twenty years older than me, he's got to be married.' 

Of course I hadn't asked him anything, in fact, we had been talking about literature and things. So I went to the public library next day and I looked him up in the 'Who's Who' and it said married and three children and I thought 'Oh, no'.                                                               

Frank O'Connor by Richard Noonan

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