sadbh@irish-times.ie
This week, RTE Radio 1 started its Oscar Wilde drama season, produced by Kate Minogue. Running until December 10th, it includes plays, children's stories, and prison stories. Altogether, 71 actors and five directors are involved in the Wilde season. Among the work being broadcast is The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband, and A Woman of No Importance. Next week, you can hear his darkly charming children's stories; one a day, at 2.45 p.m. Among the offerings will be Alan Stanford reading The Happy Prince on Tuesday, and Bill Golding reading The Nightingale and the Rose on Wednesday. There will also be a repeat of the Oscar Wilde Thomas Davis lectures, by Declan Kiberd, Thomas Kilroy, Davis Coakley and Terry Eagleton, as well as grandson Merlin Holland's memoir of his grandfather.
SADBH usually gets missives about books but this week came news not just of a tablecoth - but of napkins as well. In Melosina Lenox Conyngham's family, there is a family heirloom of rare value. It is a damask tablecloth, with 12 matching napkins. A stained damask tablecloth, at that. It once belonged to Dr Samuel Johnson. Melosina Lenox Conyngham's great-great-grandfather was a curate in Staffordshire, England, at the same time as a lady by the name of Lucy Porter, the stepdaughter of the great man, Dr Johnson. When Lucy Porter died, she left the Conyngham great-great-grandfather an estate - and some items that had belonged to her step-father.
Thus the family inherited the manuscript of Johnson's dictionary, a bust, a walking stick and the table linen. Melosina Lenox Conynygham tells the full glorious story in Town House's recently published Sunday Miscellany; a selection from 1995- 2000. Sadly, mice and neglect took possession of all but the linen. The writer Adam Sisman, whose new biography of Boswell was recently reviewed on these pages, is now planning to celebrate the book's publication with a dozen lucky Johnson fans at a very special dinner, hopefully using the tablecloth. Among the invitees will be Melosina Lenox Conynygham, Beryl Bainbridge and Andrew O'Hagan. The menu? From Johnson's period naturally - veal pie, huge roasts and, no doubt, plenty of fine claret.
Sadbh