Honor Lilbush Wingfield Tracy (1913-1989)

Life

Honor Lilbush Wingfield Tracy was born on October 19, 1913 in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England, the daughter of a dental surgeon Horace Ernest Humphrey Tracy and artist Chrystabel May Clare Miller. She had one sister and two brothers. She was educated privately and at the Grove School in London, Madchenscochschule Dresden Germany and she spent two years at the Sorbonne studying French civilization. In later years, she lived much of her life in rural Ireland, in Achill Island, County Mayo. She was married in 1938 to Rudolph C Liebmann, whom she divorced and had no children. She died 13^th June 1989 in a nursing home in Oxford, England, 75 years of age.

She started her career as an assistant in a London publishing house. She then became Foreign reader to Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer’s London office. During the war she did intelligence work in the British Women's Auxiliary Air Force from 1939 to 1941, rising to sergeant, and was a specialist on Japan in London's Ministry of Information from 1941 to 1945.

After the war, she spent two years in Dublin where she was worked for Sean O'Faolain, subsequently her lover, on the Irish Digest. She was also an editorial assistant with The Bell. In 1947, she went to France and then roamed East Europe for the Observer. In 1948 she went to Japan for eight months and on her return to Ireland wrote ‘Kakemono’, an account of her travels there. She then became a newspaper correspondent in Dublin.

She was a correspondent for The Observer, then The Sunday Times and was a longtime contributor of talks and features for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). She was a renowned travel writer, columnist and novelist, who satirized Irish and English society. Her best novels were hailed by reviewers for wittily dissecting the nonsense in which people allow themselves to be immersed. With astringent mockery, she revelled in lampooning false pretensions, snobbery and intellectual muddles.

Reviewers and readers repeatedly praised Miss Tracy's incisive travel accounts, particularly those from Japan, Spain and the West Indies, and her newspaper columns in The Sunday Times of London, The Daily Telegraph and other papers.

In 1950, she returned to Ireland, and on her leaving after six months, the Irish Times “An Irishman’s Diary”, described her as “a nice person, full of intelligence and with a delicious sense of humour” and also described her as “a Roman catholic of Irish extraction”. During her stay, she had been writing articles for the Sunday Times. The article concludes with the hope that she will not write a book about the Irish.

In April 1954, she won considerable damages from The Sunday Times for impugning her journalistic integrity in conceding a libel case passed on her true reportage on the number of priests in Ireland. The newspaper had published her account of a Canon O'Connell's attempt to raise funds for a parish house in Doneraile, Co. Cork. O'Connell took exception and the Sunday Times printed an apology, paying £750 to charity. Tracy in turn sued the Sunday Times for damaging her professional integrity by acting without her permission. She eventually won £3,000 and costs in the London high court. Justice Glyn-Jones instructed an English jury that:

"Her views were that there were too many priests, and that they lived on a scale which was quite disproportionately high, having regard to the comparative poverty of the majority of their parishioners; and that, in fact, too much money was being taken from the pockets of the poor to pay for so many priests to live on the standard on which they did live." (8/4/54)

In August 1954, in a portrait piece in the Irish Times, she was described as “a brilliant linguist (she speaks French, German, Russian, Italian and some Japanese)”. The article also states that “Nobody can deny her courage. It takes some courage for an individual journalist to take the financial and professional risk of launching legal action against a great newspaper.”

Her specialty in more than a dozen novels was mocking English-Irish antagonisms. Her third novel, ‘The Prospects Are Pleasing’ (1958), included this exchange between Tommy, an Irishman, and Felix, an Englishman:

''No wonder your empire is crumbling,'' Tommy said. ''Empires do,'' replied Felix cheerfully. ''It's a little way of theirs. Be glad you never got one.'' ''Who says we didn't?'' said Tommy angrily. ''Our empire is spiritual and intellectual and extends all over the world. It existed already when you fellows were running about painted blue. Yours was a little tinpot affair of guns and Bibles and trade.''

In an interview, Miss Tracy remarked, “If something interests, pleases or amuses me, I imagine it may do the same for other people and I try to pass it on. Also, I have an orderly mind, and writing is a sort of tidying up and clarifying of life.”

Harold H. Watts, quoted in the 1972 book ‘Contemporary Novelists’, concluded that “her novels are designed to be read with a glass of sherry in the hand, preferably in the company of persons as basically sensible as the ideal reader of Miss Tracy's work.”

Honor Tracey 1953

Works

Her travel works included:

Kakemono: A Sketchbook of Postwar Japan (Methuen/New York, Coward-McCann, 1950)

Silk hats and no breakfast (Random House 1958) a journey from Algeciras to the Basque country

Spanish Leaves (Methuen/Random House, 1964)

Winter in Castille (Eyre methuen, 1973, Random House 1974)

The Heart of England (London, Hamish Hamiliton, 1983).

Her Irish books included:

Mind You, I’ve Said Nothing (London Methuen 1953), with sketches of Behan, Smyllie, et al., comically scathing both the Irish and Anglo-Irish, and characterised as ‘brilliant and unjust book’ by Louis MacNeice

The Straight and Narrow Path (1956), a rowdy Irish farce;

The Prospects Are Pleasing (Random House 1958)

Her novels included:

The Deserters (1954)

A Number of Things (London: Methuen; NY, Random House 1960)

A Season of Mists (London: Methuen; NY: Random House 1961)

The First Day of Friday (London: Methuen; NY: Random House 1963)

Men at Work (London: Methuen; NY: Random House 1966)

The Beauty of the World (London: Methuen; NY: Random House 1967)

Settled in Chambers (London: Methuen; NY: Random House 1967)

Butterflies of the Province (NY: Random House; London: Eyre Methuen 1970)

The Quiet End of Evening (NY: Random House; London: Eyre Methuen 1972)

In a Year of Grace (Random House 1975)

The Man from Next Door (Random House 1977)

The Ballad of Castle Reef (Random House 1980)

Ref:

Oct 14, 1950 Irish Times. An Irishman’s Diary. Honor Tracy

April 1, 1954 Glasgow Herald. Woman Journalist Sues Newspaper Firm [link]

Apr 9, 1954 Irish Times. £3,000 Award for Miss Tracy

Aug 7, 1954 Irish Times. Portrait Gallery. Miss Honor Tracy

Edgar Duchin, solicitor per British Records Association: Legal papers in libel action Honor Tracy v. Kemsley Newspapers Ltd, 1950s. (1067/9). National Archives, Dublin

Sean O’Casey Papers 16 Aug. 1946 - 16 Apr. 1955 MS 37,998 - Correspondence between Honor Tracy, assistant editor and novelist, Peadar O’Donnell, editor, and O’Casey, inviting O'Casey to contribute articles to The Bell. See LO’C v.2, pp.393; 395; 415, 751. 11 items

Smyth, Kevin (1958) Priests and People in Ireland. The Furrow, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Mar., 1958), pp. 135-152

http://www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/authors/t/Tracy_H/life.htm

Peter B. Flint. Honor Tracy, Travel Writer, Is Dead at 75. New York Times, June 16, 1989

Wilson library bulletin, Volume 37. 1962

RKP 19/7

Title: Letters to and from Honor Tracy

Contents: letters between George Routledge & Sons Ltd (later Routledge & Kegan Paul) and Tracy concerning and including her reader's reports on the possible publication of English translations of 3 titles by Henry de Montherlant, Service inutile, Les jeunes filles, Pitié pour les femmes.

Date: 1937