Whenever Hubert Butler was asked to fill out a form requiring him to state his occupation, he replied: "Market gardener".
He wasn't joking. Butler was an enthusiastic gardener who sold his own vegetables in the Market Yard in Kilkenny and sent truckloads of apples to the markets in Dublin.
It is his work as a writer, however, which will be examined this weekend at a conference in Kilkenny marking the centenary of Butler's birth in Bennetts bridge.
Since his death nine years ago, Butler's essays on a wide variety of subjects, from the abortion debates in Ireland to events in wartime Yugoslavia, have earned him a growing international reputation.
That recognition has been slow in coming is not unusual for a writer of his calibre, but Butler had to live with an additional burden: ostracism from his community.
His daughter, Julia, was away from Maidenhall, the Butler family home, and was 17 at the time of the "Papal Nuncio incident" in 1952.
"I was visiting friends in Co Offaly when I saw the headlines in the paper and I knew it was not good . . . I think the headline said something like `Kilkenny man insults Papal Nuncio'."
The incident took place at a public meeting in Dublin at which Butler, who had travelled extensively in the Balkans and spoke Serbo-Croat, attempted to raise the enforced conversion of Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism in wartime Croatia. The Papal Nuncio, who was present at the meeting, walked out.
Although Julia, who was in boarding school at the time, was insulated from much of the fallout, she remembers what happened. "There was pretty much across-the-board condemnation by neighbours, people who were friends, one thought . . . it ranged down from the creamery boards, the mayors, the aldermen, every committee he belonged to. Everybody condemned him."
Her father was forced to resign from the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, of which he was secretary and which he had helped to revive in 1944.
It could be assumed such local outrage would carry little significance for a man who, after all, had taught English in Leningrad, worked in Vienna for the liberation of Austrian Jews, investigated the deportation of children from Vichy France, and honeymooned in 1930 in Latvia, Estonia and East Prussia.
Butler, however, had chosen not only to live in his home county but to be an active participant in the community. "He had a very strong desire to live in Ireland and live in Kilkenny at a time when most other people like him did not," says Julia, who, with her husband Richard Crampton, divides her time between Maidenhall and the United States.
"At the same time, he tried to make something of his life here. He did not want to be a superficial resident. He wanted to be an involved, constructive resident. But he couldn't bend his principles."
Butler stayed put. Three years after the incident, he ran for Kilkenny County Council to offer a "minority voice", knowing he would be heavily defeated.
A year later, he visited China with an Irish cultural delegation and also returned to the Soviet Union. In the 1960s, he travelled in the American south during the Civil Rights campaign. He also founded the Butler Society with Lord Dunboyne and began editing The Journal of the Butler Society.
It was not until 1985, six years before his death, that Butler's essays began to be published in book form. They include brilliant contemporaneous insights into the major events of the century, both international and national. In his essay on the Fethard-on-Sea boycott of Protestant businesses in 1958, he was as critical of the Protestant hierarchy for its failure to stand up to the perpetrators as he was of the boycott.
"We like to think that, left to themselves, our difficulties will all `blow over', `peter out', `die down'. There is a rich vein of synonyms for the disappearance of evil and we seldom commit the folly of sticking out our necks or poking in our noses."
An inveterate seeker of the truth, Butler was not afraid to poke his nose in. At the outset of the centenary celebration, the Mayor of Kilkenny, Mr Paul Cuddihy, is to issue a public apology for the way Butler was treated. "We were wrong and he was right," Mr Cuddihy said last week.
Writer Mr Chris Agee, one of the organisers of the event, says the mayor's gesture is an important closing of a historical circle which will facilitate recognition of Butler as a writer.
He was a prolific writer. "He was an insomniac," says Julia Crampton. "He would write at all kinds of strange times of the day and night. He was always a poor sleeper and this meant he had extra time to write, which he put to good use because he had so many projects going."
The 1950s controversy was a difficult time for her mother, Peggy. "She was a remarkable person in her own right. She was a painter and a good one, and she gave all that up to support my father in his writing and running a market garden."
Due to the demand for tickets, the venue for the event which opens on Friday and ends on Sunday, has been switched from Butler House to the Parade Tower at Kilkenny Castle. Speakers include Neal Ascherson, John Banville, Tim Robinson, Roy Foster and Fintan O'Toole.
Inquiries about tickets can be made to Ms Jane Wright at 05627305.
Contact number
Readers who wish to contact Chris Dooley can leave messages by dialling 01-6707711, extension 6298 e-mail address: cdooley@irish-times.ie
