Limerick in the thirties, the backdrop for Angelas Ashes

 

 

Readers of `Angela’s Ashes,’ by Frank McCourt, will still find plenty of atmospheric literary history in the city of Limerick. This is despite the fact that it has hugely developed and changed into a thriving city since the 1930s and 1940s – when it acted as the background to the Pulitzer Prize winning book.

 

The book is a best selling memoir by Irish American author Frank McCourt, who won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Biography/Autobiography. McCourt was born in New York in 1930. From the start he experienced one of the great tragedies of family life in those days – the death of siblings. His baby sister Margaret died shortly after birth. His twin brothers died in Ireland, where his youngest brothers, Michael and Alfie were born after the family emigrated to Limerick, when Frank was four.

 

The first page includes the now famous assertion that ``Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish catholic childhood.’’ It pulls no punches. All of impoverished life at that time is in the book – the cold, wet tenement home in unpaved Lanes district, with shared outdoor toilet, as well as rats and vermin, which doubtless contributed to Frank’s bout of typhoid fever. Life included living on the dole in the Economic Depression of the 1930s, surviving on bread and tea, plus religious devotions.

 

They suffered from his father’s alcoholism, and later, absence, when he left to work in England. No money however - his mother was reduced, at one stage, to applying for charity. Rejection from neighbours, the effects of snobbery and a repressive Church were part of the family experience as the young Frank was reduced to odd jobs. As a youngster, he worked as a post office delivery boy, but some of the book’s most memorable pictures come of the young boy’s dealing with the rejection that his poverty and circimstances brought him.

 

It is an evocative and powerful account, ending with the author as a nineteen year old, emigrating to the United States. Unsurprisingly, the book has provoked equally powerful controversy and strong feelings. McCourt was accused of starting a line of `Misery Memoirs.’ Many locals have claimed that it exaggerated the living conditions at the time. Some felt that McCourt was a bitter man, with ideas beyond his station. Whatever the feelings, the Angela’s Ashes Tour in Limerick quickly became popular, encouraged by the popularity of the film of the book.

 

McCourt had mixed fortunes back in the United States. Later books, `Tis Early’ and `Teacher Man’ continue his life story. His life would be changed by serving in the Korean War, and later on, the GI Bill in the United States, which allowed ex-servicemen to attend university. McCourt became a teacher, and worked at six New York schools.

 

 

Devotees of both book and the tour agree that if it is raining while you are visiting Limerick, then that is the time to take the tour! Most of the area relating to the story is contained west of the People’s Park, and south of Hartstonge Street. The tour is excellent, but if you miss it, then armed with a map, you can explore some of the streets, and feel something of the atmosphere. Bear in mind that many streets have gone to re-development, including Roden Lane, home to the McCourt family. However, integral sites remain – the Post Office, Railway Station, Arthur’s Quay, Sutton’s Coal, Windmill Street, Barrack Hill, Parnell Street, Leamy’s School and The Dock Road, plus of course, St. Joseph’s Church, which had such a presence in his young life

 

It is still possible to get some ideas of the stratified layers of society which existed at the times - the wealth and comfort of some inhabitants, in Pery Square, or St. Michael’s Church of Ireland. The Georgian houses, with their elegant fanlights, and the order and harmony provide contrast, which was clear to the young boy, and doubtless spurred him on. While parts of Limerick have changed beyond recognition of those who lived through those times, on a cold wet day, something of the history can easily be sensed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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