(Cur L 30) Ink and crayon drawing at the head of the letter by A. E. 1867-1935
As it is nearing the end of my fifth month here in Special Collections, I have come across the ways in which the collection greatly inspires people in their academic endeavours, however, I believe the collection can also inspire you on a personal level in small ways every day. A lot of the collection rests in cool grey archive boxes. There is something tantalising about the boxes as they sit on shelves in a mirror image of each other. Their neutral exterior keeps the great vastness and uniqueness of their contents hidden from the unsuspecting eye. One afternoon I found myself sifting through one of the boxes. This one contained some of the letters from the Curran-Laird collection. Each leaf of paper slipped carefully into a mylar sleeve. I took my time as I checked the order of the items, making small adjustments to their sequence when needed. As I conducted this mundane activity a new world opened up to me. A vibrant and diverse social circle of artists, historians, playwrights, actors and writers lay before me and I began to get a glimpse into the Celtic Revival of the late 19th/ early 20th century.
The Curran–Laird collection here in Special Collections is the personal papers of a married couple Constantine Curran (1883-1972) a lawyer and historian and Helen Laird (1874-1957) an actress, costumier, teacher, and suffragist. Amongst their collection of manuscripts, books, photographs, and ephemera are a collection of letters corresponding with significant theatrical and creative figures in Ireland at that time. As I perused them, I found myself nostalgic for a time I was not born into, a time when letter writing was a significant and vital way to communicate. I’m sure I’m romanticising this form of connection, but in an era when our conversations and interactions feel so urgent and immediate, I cannot help but envy this slower way of sharing and receiving information.
I believe that part of what appeals to me is the physicality of the letters themselves. The texture of the paper, the handwriting, the sense of someone having taken time and care to write the letter. In many ways, this longing mirrors the recent trend of people returning to physical media such as records, CDs, and DVDs. For so long we’ve delighted in the overwhelming access to music and entertainment that digital platforms offer, but this convenience has come at a price. We’ve been renting our collections and storing them out in the ether somewhere, often without questioning the ethics or fragility of that system. Now, we seem to be remembering the joy of collecting, of holding a piece of art in our hands, of savouring the cover art and the object itself. I believe that placing value on physical things and forming bonds with them, changes how we consume them. Rather than getting lost in the endless void of unlimited content, delving deeply into a single record we own brings a different, perhaps richer, kind of joy.
Working in Special Collections has further inspired this sentiment within me. As I observe my colleagues and those who come to visit the collection, I witness the great care that is shown to each item and the joy and intrigue experienced through the collections. Some of these items being the Curran-Laird letters which have such a richness to them and are a reminder to me to slow down. Simply in the difficulty I sometimes have in reading the handwriting I am prompted to temper my pace, a signal to my brain that to consume something quickly is often not the most effective way to experience it.
(CUR L 3) Letter: has not the time to visit Cambridge, may he visit later; proposes speaking instead of giving a paper. Yeats, W. B. (William Butler), 1865-1939
Each letter is like a timestamp. I begin to gather clues of its provenance for example, the paper it’s written on, whether it’s headed with the writer’s location, perhaps indicating a holiday, the hotel they are staying in, or the place they work.
(Cur L 138) Letter to Constantine P. Curran about judging a play competition. Robinson, Lennox, 1886-1958.
Some of these letters contain blunt, direct messages meant to convey information quickly, like the letter above in which Robinson requests that Curran be there at 5 o’clock to judge a play competition. Others are far more flowery and poetic, expressing ideas and memories, like the letter below in which T.S. Eliot confirms that his poem Little Gidding “contains reminiscences” of his visit to Glendalough. Whatever the purpose, I can’t help but think that the authors of these letters wrote them with one person in mind, not the significant audience they have now garnered. Is this not the beauty of collecting? The thing you cherish today, or perhaps something that seems insignificant, merely part of your daily routine, might be cared for by someone else years from now. They may learn something about you, themselves, or the world through it.
(Cur L 7) Letter to Constantine P. Curran, from T.S Elliot about Little Gidding and his visit to Glendalough with Curran. Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965.
How lucky we are to experience this form of intimacy with so many artists and creatives such asTom Kettle, George William Russell (Æ),W. B. Yeats, Harriet Weaver, and Maria Jolas through their correspondence with the Curran–Lairds. Former UCD Special Collections library assistant Katy Milligan captures this sense of intimacy beautifully in her blog post on Curran’s correspondence with James Joyce. She explores their warm and touching friendship through Joyce’s letters to Curran, including one particularly poignant moment in which Joyce encloses a manuscript for Curran to review. He writes that if Curran is “too busy to read the novel now, no harm,” but asks that once he has read it, he should “send me word to meet you on some altitude where we can utter our souls unmolested.” Signed with the name of his alter ego Stephen Deadalus. How incredible it is to bear witness to displays of friendship for which we so rarely have examples.
Page from a letter from James Joyce to Constantine Curran, UCD Digital Library.
For me personally the letters of one of my favourite artists Jack B. Yeats excite me the most. To hold something that he once held makes me feel connected to him. Not to glorify him but to remember his ordinariness. The day to day of his life. This richness is noted by Evelyn Flanagan, Director of Cultural Heritage, in a blog post marking the lifting of restrictions on the letters, allowing them to be read in full for the first time. Drawing on the words of Helen Solterer, Flanagan underscores the value of unedited correspondence; as Solterer observed in an Irish Times feature, such letters challenge our assumptions about familiar figures and invite us “to meet new people in old things released from decades of cold storage.”
(Cur L 42) Letter to Constantine P. Curran, hoping to arrange for Curran to buy ‘The Pavement Artist’. Yeats, Jack Butler, 1871-1957.
We are not so far from the art or artists that we admire. It does however thrill me to see a little doodle of Yeats’s on the side of a letter, a spelling mistake crossed out and corrected, or a beautiful Pegasus drawn on to a New Year’s card. Even just to admire the curves and lines of his handwriting which remind me of his paintings. Okay, maybe I’m fangirling over a very dead 20th century artist.
(CUR L 64) Card to Constantine P. Curran and family. Yeats, Jack Butler, 1871-1957.
In an era where we have so much access to each other and greater expectations of how quickly people should respond to us, the simple process of writing a letter completely slows that down. To take out a paper and pen and find a place to sit and write is quite different to sending a quick text between meetings or holding a phone to our ear as we push a trolley through the supermarket. In my personal experience writing a sweet note to someone or a birthday card has allowed me to express far deeper thoughts and feelings. I am of course not saying that we must all take out our quill pen and look wistfully out the window before reaching out to a friend. It can, however, function as inspiration, as a reminder to savour the process and to elevate us from some of the pressure and immediacy of today’s culture.
(Cur L 8) Card to Helen Laird [later Curran] consisting of poem ‘A little grey house in the bogland’, signed Páid; illustration at head of poem, signed Máire.
Geraghty, A. (2020, May 20). The Celtic Revival: The movement that ‘saved’ Irish culture. Gifts of Ireland. https://giftsofireland.com/blogs/news/the-celtic-revival-the-movement-that-saved-irish-culture
UCD Library Cultural Heritage Collections. (2020, February 2). Classmates, correspondents, counterparts: James Joyce and Conn Curran. UCD Library Cultural Heritage Collections. https://ucdculturalheritagecollections.com/2020/02/02/classmates-correspondents-counterparts-james-joyce-and-conn-curran/
UCD Library Cultural Heritage Collections. (2022, November 10). ‘Yours heroically’: James Joyce and the Curran/Laird letter collection. UCD Library Cultural Heritage Collections. https://ucdculturalheritagecollections.com/2022/11/10/yours-heroically-james-joyce-and-the-curran-laird-letter-collection/
University of Cincinnati Libraries. (n.d.). The Irish Literary Revival. UC’s Irish Literature Collection. https://libapps.libraries.uc.edu/exhibits/irish-lit/sample-page/
This post was written by Hannah Matthews, Library Assistant, Special Collections.
A lovely and timely reminder of the joy of simple ink and paper as a means of communication