Charming, idyllic novel by a devoted son of Trinity College

This article was published in Trinity News on 20 October, 2009, the thirteenth 'Old Trinity' column.

(Henry Albert Hinkson, author of O’Grady of Trinity: A Story of Irish University Life.)

Charming, idyllic novel by a devoted son of Trinity College

MOST Trinity undergraduates are more familiar with The Ginger Man at the back of college than they are with the novel after which it is named. I’m the same: I haven’t read JP Donleavy’s The Ginger Man in a couple of years, but it’s only a few days since I last had a pint of “Writer’s Block” in the Fenian Street pub.

Despite pub overtaking book in the mind of the Dublin student, Donleavy’s work is still popularly considered the archetypal “Trinity novel”, a kind of Dublin Brideshead Revisited. But while The Ginger Man may be the most well known book with a Trinity connection, it is hardly the Trinity novel par excellence. Dangerfield is a student here, but the plot does not revolve around his life within these walls.

Donleavy is far from alone: many novels are partly set in Trinity College. Charles O’Malley and Life of a Collegian, from 1841 and 1853, are early examples. Mason Jones’s Old Trinity: A Story of Real Life from 1867 was probably the first to use the college’s name in its title. Many books of the last century also touched upon life here, and new Trinity-related novels continue to appear: All Names Have Been Changed by Claire Kilroy being the latest.

There is one forgotten novel in which undergraduate life is the defining characteristic – and it deserves the affections of more Trinity students and graduates. This book’s author is Henry Albert Hinkson.

A Trinity Scholar and graduate, Hinkson, born in 1865, was a writer in love with this university, and we have him to thank for several entertaining Trinity-related books. His Student Life at Trinity College, Dublin, a valuable and unique record of college life in the late 19th century, was written from the unusual perspective of the young graduate rather than the don. He also compiled a volume of poetry, Dublin Verses by Members of Trinity College, to which Oscar Wilde contributed.

Hinkson penned a book which has a true claim to the title of the Trinity novel. O’Grady of Trinity: A Story of Irish University Life (1896) follows the adventures of young Hubert O’Grady as he enters Trinity and becomes involved in everything student life has to offer: good friends, sport, girls, academia and more. Imperfect and sometimes predictable, the book nevertheless captures the languid, naive and hopeful spirit of a young man enjoying the extended adolescence which university permits. And O’Grady of Trinity doesn’t lack the love story which all good narratives need.

Hubert is our protagonist, but Ned Daly is the novel’s hero. Hinkson has given Daly the attributes of the perfect Trinity student: he is erudite, intelligent and accomplished, but, above all, fun. Surrounding Daly are Trinity’s best, and it is into this set that Hubert is welcomed.

A contemporaneous review in The Sketch magazine praised both author and novel. Hinkson, says the reviewer, “shows himself a devoted son of Trinity College, and such patriotism is essential to success in such a book.” He continued:

“Mr Hinkson’s strength lies in his dramatic or humorous scenes: a boat race, a steeplechase, a cricket match, a fight, the night after a ball, interviews with an eccentric tutor and a wily bursar; these are excellently described in direct and telling language.”

The novel, says the Sketch review, could do with “a more definite picture of the college itself, its grounds and buildings, and a more studied impression of its ... intellectual life.” I wouldn’t consider these huge drawbacks: a Trinity man can easily paint a picture in his head of the scenes where the novel’s events are set, and the intellectual life is surely less interesting fodder for a novel than an Enniskerry party, the College Races, rowing, rugger, and the other diversions of Hubert and his friends.

Professor Stanford, writing in TCD: A College Miscellany in 1965, described O’Grady of Trinity as “that most idyllic of books”, with a “happy-go-lucky, carefree mood”. It is, he says, “a charming, unmawkish, happy, well-written book, redolent of the ease and opulence and gaiety and leisure of the college’s Indian summer, which lasted for a decade or so before and after the [1892] tercentenary.”

Hubert O’Grady, like Hinkson, is from an Anglo-Irish family, but an unlikely affection for Catholics can be detected in the novel. Hubert is pals with an ill-fated seminarist from his part of Ireland. Cardinal Newman’s Idea of a University is quoted on the novel’s title page – the eminent ecclesiastic, who had been the first rector of the Catholic University of Ireland, had only gone to his reward six years previously, and he is unlikely to have been the toast of Trinity.

These mentions make sense when one learns that Hinkson had been received into the Catholic Church. His wife, Katharine Tynan (they married in May of 1893), was a far more famous author than her now-forgotten husband – she had even once been amorously pursued by WB Yeats. It seems that it was she who encouraged Henry to cross the Tiber.

This observation is an aside. Further biographical information on Hinkson is scarce. If more information can be unearthed then I will return to the subject of his life in the future: until then, we can surely get a glimpse of the man’s personality in his memorable book and its protagonist, Hubert O’Grady.

HOW MANY of today’s students have read O’Grady of Trinity? It can’t be a large number. One Dublin bookseller wants nearly €200 for a copy, and most people aren’t keen on spending a day in Early Printed Books. Hinkson died in 1919 (requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine) so the book is long out of copyright, allowing me to put it on the internet. Visit trinitynews.ie/oldtrinity to download a copy.