02 July 2019

A house on Rathgar Avenue
that played a key role in
the Irish Literary Revival

No 17 Rathgar Avenue, Dublin … the home of George Russell (Æ) from 1906 to 1932 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

During a recent stroll through Rathgar on my way to work on some research at the Representative Church Body Library, I passed the home at No 17 Rathgar Avenue of George Russell (Æ).

Although Russell is now often forgotten as a poet and writer, he one of the important figures in the Irish Literary Renaissance. He was a poet, writer, editor and critic, but was also an acclaimed painter, a founder with Sir Horace Plunkett of the Co-Operative movement, and in the 1930 advised Franklin D Roosevelt on his ‘New Deal.’

George William Russell, who wrote with the pseudonym Æ (sometimes written AE or A.E.), was born in Lurgan, Co Armagh, on 10 April 1867, the second son of Thomas Russell and Mary Armstrong. His father worked for Thomas Bell and Co, linen drapers, and the family moved to Dublin when George was an 11-year-old.

In Dublin, he went to school at Rathmines School, run by the Revd Dr Charles Benson. Later, he went to the Metropolitan School of Art, where he began his friendship with the poet William Butler Yeats. In the 1880s, Russell lived at the Theosophical Society lodge at 3 Upper Ely Place, sharing rooms with HM Magee.

Russell began working as a draper’s clerk, then worked for many years for the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS), an agricultural co-operative society founded by Sir Horace Plunkett in 1894. Plunkett needed an able organiser in 1897, and Yeats suggested Russell.

Russell travelled throughout Ireland, speaking on behalf of the IAOS, helping set up credit societies and establishing Co-operative Banks.

He used the pseudonym ‘AE’ or ‘Æ,’ derived from an earlier Æon, signifying the lifelong human quest subsequently abbreviated. His first book of poems, Homeward: Songs by the Way (1894), established his place as a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival.

When Lord Curzon was the Viceroy of India (1899-1905), he said that whenever he was feeling ill from the tropical heat. he would cure himself by reading Russell’s poems.

Russell moved to 25 Coulson Avenue, Rathgar, in 1900. He met James Joyce in 1902 and introduced him to other Irish literary figures, including William Butler Yeats. He appears as a character in the ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ episode in Joyce’s Ulysses, where he dismisses Stephen Dedalus for his theories on Shakespeare. Dedalus borrows money from him and then remarks: ‘A.E.I.O.U.’

Russell moved around the corner to 17 Rathgar Avenue in early 1906. He was living there with his wife Violet and their sons, Bryan and Diarmuid, during the 1911 census. Under the heading ‘occupation,’ he wrote ‘artist and writer,’ with the words ‘oil paintings’ added underneath as if to affirm this statement.

During the 1913 Dublin Lock-out, he wrote an open letter to The Irish Times, criticising the attitude of the employers. He accused the employers of ‘refusing to consider any solution except that fixed by their pride’ and he accused them of seeking ‘in cold anger to starve one-third of this city, to break the manhood of the men by the sight of the suffering of their wives and the hunger of their children.’

His collected poems were published in 1913.

As a pacifist, Russell had no sympathy for the aims of the Easter Rising or the methods chosen the leaders of the rising. Yet he was deeply moved by the deaths of the leading rebels, and wrote of them in his poem ‘To the memory of some I knew who are dead and loved Ireland’ (1917):

And yet my spirit rose in pride
Refashioning in burnished gold
The images of those who died
Or were shut up in penal cell
Here’s to you Pearse, your dream, not mine
And yet the thought – for this you fell
Has turned life’s water into wine.


Russell was an independent delegate to the Irish Convention in 1917-1918, when he opposed John Redmond’s compromise on Home Rule. He became involved in the anti-partition Irish Dominion League, which was founded by Plunkett 100 years ago in 1919.

His house at 17 Rathgar Avenue became a meeting-place for people interested in the economic and artistic future of Ireland, and his Sunday evenings ‘at home’ became a fixture in Dublin literary life.

Frank O’Connor called him ‘the man who was the father to three generations of Irish writers.’ Patrick Kavanagh called him ‘a great and holy man.’ He also influenced PL Travers, the writer who created Mary Poppins.

Russell was the editor of the Irish Homestead, the journal of the IAOS, from 1905 to 1923. He then became editor of the Irish Statesman, the paper of the Irish Dominion League, which merged with the Irish Homestead, from 1923 to 1930.

Although a second edition of his poems was published in 1926, he had never earned much from his paintings or books, and when the Irish Statesman folded in 1930 he was without a job and faced poverty. But a fund-raising effort by friends and supporters allowed him to visit the US, where his books sold in large numbers.

Russell became increasingly disillusioned with the Irish Free State and the New Ireland. Soon after his wife Violet died, he sold his house at 17 Rathgar Avenue in 1932, gave away most of his possessions, and left Ireland. His move to London was arranged by Charles Weekes, and he settled at 41 Sussex Gardens.

Despite failing health, he went on a final lecture tour in the US, but returned physically and mentally exhausted. He moved to 14 Tavistock Place, London, on 16 March 1935. He signed his last will on 14 June 1935, leaving everything to his second son. He died of cancer at Havenhurst nursing home in Bournemouth on 17 July 1935. CP Curran, Charles Weekes, Oliver St John Gogarty and WK Magee (John Eglinton) were at his bedside.

James Stephens, Helen Waddell and others accompanied his coffin to Holyhead. His Anglican funeral in Dublin on 19 July was attended by Eamon de Valera, WT Cosgave, WB Yeats, and other leading figures in Irish public life.

The oration was delivered by Frank O’Connor, Yeats having declined because he would ‘have to speak the truth.’ He was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold’s Cross, following a mile-long procession.

The commemorative plaque was unveiled at his former home at 17 Rathgar Avenue in 1965.

The plaque unveiled at AE’s former home at 17 Rathgar Avenue in 1965 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

When Sergeant Pepper
and a taste of Italy came
to Bray in the summer

Despite the clouds, summer has come to Bray, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Despite the grey clouds that disguise this is the beginning of July, summer must be here. This is the season of barbecues, cool white wine, and walks on the beach followed by real Italian ice cream.

After Sunday’s barbecue in the Rectory in Askeaton, I travelled to Dublin late in the afternoon for another barbecue in the grounds of Christ Church Cathedral to mark the end of term for the cathedral choir and the imminent move of the organist and director of music, Ian Keatley, to Southwark Cathedral.

If the weather was not as warm and sunny as you might expect at this time of the year, then there was more than adequate compensation in the warmth of the welcome back to the cathedral, where I had been a canon for ten years.

If the sun was still not providing evidence this afternoon that summer had truly arrived, their was evidence of its arrival in Bray where mothers were taking children to the seashore, with beach equipment in tow, although it looked like it might never be used; a sailing class was going through its manoeuvres outside the harbour; and young Italian students here on English-language summer courses were queueing up outside the ice cream parlours for real Italian ice cream.

Good advice on the seafront in Bray this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Bray has gone through many changes over the decades. When the railway line from Dublin opened in the 19th century, Bray developed as a sedate and very proper bathing resort at Co Wicklow’s nearest point to Co Dublin, complete with its own Victorian Turkish baths.

By the middle of the 20th century, things were beginning to change. After they married at the end of World War II, my parents lived briefly at the south end of Bray, and my mother’s cousin ran a small hotel on the seafront.

By the 1950s and 1960s, long before package holidays gained popularity, Bray had become a popular seaside resort for middle-class English tourists, especially for families from Liverpool, who found Bray accessible because of the short crossing on the Irish Sea.

It is said that in those days, Bray’s very English-looking bandstand on the seafront regularly hosted performances by an act known as Sergeant Pepper’s Big Brass Band during the summer season.

Some people in Bray like to say that these holidaymakers brought their memories and the name of Sergeant Pepper’s Big Brass Band back to Liverpool, and that their tales inspired the name of the Beatles’ best-known album, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, released in the summer of 1967.

The title track of Sergeant Pepper starts with 10 seconds of the combined sounds of a pit orchestra warming up and an audience waiting for a concert, creating the illusion of a live performance. The use of a brass ensemble with distorted electric guitars is an early example of rock fusion, and may also be a concession to the memory of the seafront band in Bray that once entertained holidaymakers from Liverpool in decades that had passed.

Sergeant Pepper may just be a fictional character that the Beatles built a narrative around. Indeed, it may just be local storytelling and mythmaking that the Bray bandstand house band partially inspired the best-known album of all time. But why not? After all, the legendary circus owner Pablo Fanque, who is named in one of the album tracks, ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite!’, performed nearby in Dún Laoghaire for one week in 1850.

A glass of Italian wine to go with real Italian food in Carpe Diem on Albert Avenue this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Two of us had lunch in the early afternoon in Carpe Diem on Albert Avenue, where the food and the wines are authentically Italian.

Although, sadly, some of the neighbouring restaurants have closed in recent months, this remains Bray’s own Italian quarter, with a smattering of Italian restaurants, vinoteche, enoteche and gelateria, all within a short distance of Albert Avenue.

Nobody knows quite why this Little Italy developed when and where it did, but it adds a taste of summer sunshine to Bray at any time of the year.

After a short walk on the beach, we sat down to ice creams at Gelateria on the seafront for another taste of real Italian delights. Even if the sun had not come to the east coast today, the Mediterranean had come to Bray.

A taste of authentic Italian ice cream at Gelateria on the seafront (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)