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GAZETTE
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1994
Ref l ect ions on t he Li fe and Wr i t i ngs of
Terence de \fere White
By Daire Hogan*
There cannot be many novels which
commence in the manner of Terence de
Vere White's
Mr Stephen
(published in
1971) with a dinner given at his home
by the President of the Law Society to
the members of the Council (or,
indeed, conclude with another dinner
hosted by the President, in the zoo).
One guest, the eponymous "Mr
Stephen" Foster reflects that "There
was nothing creative about the life [of
the average attorney]. All one left after
one was the money that showed what
you had earned and how you had
looked after it, and a name that was
forgotten in five years. A hall porter in
a large hotel had more fame in life and
as long in memory."
The obituaries and appreciations
published on the death in June of Mr
de Vere White demonstrated the
remarkable respect and affection in
which he was held by his friends and
colleagues, the breadth of his interests
and his contribution to many walks of
Irish life. He will be remembered for
very much longer and for being very
much more than the average attorney.
He wrote over 25 books, including a
dozen novels. A number of these deal
with legal themes or personalities, and
an aspect of his work in which lawyers
might take a particular interest is the
depiction of professional life in Dublin
in the mid-century in a number of his
earlier novels, published between 1957
and 1971. Much of their physical
landscape has disappeared or changed
- his characters dine in Jammet's,
following which one of them wishes to
climb up to the top of the Nelson
Pillar, or at the Russell Hotel, or meet
for drinks at the Hibernian - but his
portrayal of states of minds of lawyers,
apprentices, law clerks, secretaries and
clients will endure.
These books include some of his best
writing and - irrespective of any legal
connection - certainly appeal to a
, 1
Daire
Hogan
wider audience than that contemplated
by the curious note on the dust-jacket
of
The Remainderman
(1963) advising
the prospective reader that it will
interest "people bored with vast
American novels and with the cult of
sexual grossness."
Mr de Vere White, who was the son of
a solicitor, was admitted as a solicitor
in 1933 and practised for over 30
years, from 1947 in partnership in
McCann White and FitzGerald. His
offices were initially in Nassau Street
and thereafter in St. Stephen's Green.
He was elected to membership of the
Council of the Law Society between
1954 and 1961. In that year, having for
some time, like Trollope, written early
in the morning before attending at his
office, he left the law to become
Literary Editor of
The Irish Times.
He can be found in the diaries of
Evelyn Waugh,
obtaining "written
instructions" in 1946 to bid at an
auction of a castle on behalf of Waugh,
a sensible precaution since the diarist
was "in a sort of stupor" after a long
lunch at the Unicorn. Twenty-five
years later
Mr Stephen
would contain a
description of that lunchtime institution
in Merrion Row. At about this time Mr
de Vere White also acted for
JP
Donleavy
in the purchase for £350, of a
rather derelict cottage and four acres at
Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow, and was
consulted by his friend,
Gainor
Stephen Crist,
the original "Ginger
Man", about the establishment of a
private drinking club. Donleavy writes
that "one imagines that Mr de Vere
White cautioned upon the licensing
difficulties and expense of such a
venture for Crist failed to pursue the
matter."
In
The Remainderman,
a law clerk
writes to an apprentice, dispirited by
his initial contact with the law, that he
should persist and "later on you may
give up this life which I can see does
not attract you much". That in due
course his literary career developed to
the exclusion of law in his life should
not obscure the fact that he had a full
legal career in itself. The novels with a
particular legal interest were informed
and animated by a very thorough
knowledge of legal practice.
An Affair with the Moon
(1959) is
narrated by an English solicitor who
moves to Ireland, and is advised when
purchasing a property to do so not in
his own name but through a defunct
company (Fit U Limited) supplied by
his solicitor, to save an enormous sum
in stamp duty.
Mr Stephen
is a splendid
account of legal manoeuvres in
property development or site assembly
in north County Dublin.
His first book, written as the preface
indicates with unusual precision in
these matters between October 1943
and November 1945, was a life of
Isaac Butt.
Between November 1946
and May 1948 he wrote his biography
of
Kevin O'Higgins.
In 1957 he
published the strange
A Fretful Midge,
nominally or supposedly the memoirs
of one Bernard Vandeleur, but in fact
an autobiographical account of Irish
!
life in the 1940s and 1950s.
j
A sense of fun in small matters is very !
strong in his books; an old solicitor in '
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