Sir, – Sarah Keating writes that Samuel Beckett "never made reference to his alma mater [Portora Royal School, Enniskillen] as a shaping influence in his life and work" ( "Happy Days on bleak sets", August 3rd). That statement is true but it would be a mistake to suppose that Portora is absent from Beckett's work. The late Vivian Mercier arrived at Portora five years after Beckett left in 1923 and in due course he followed him to Trinity College Dublin. In his Beckett/Beckett (1977) Mercier traced many of the influences on Beckett's work. among them that of his school. As an Old Portoran, Mercier was able to recognise the appearance of school slang in Beckett's work (the phrase "shit and misery" in Malone Dies) and his employment of the names of other old boys (in his novel Mercier et Camier).
I recall that in a talk he gave at Portora in 1982 Mercier came up with other examples of Portora language which appear in Beckett – such as the use in Molloy of the phrase "cogging in the synod" ( used by boys to refer to cheating in a general synod religious knowledge examination). Given the school's influence on Beckett, it is an interesting question why he had so little to do with Portora after he left. – Yours, etc,
CDC ARMSTRONG,
Belfast.