This first undertaking (co-founded with his friend Terence Smith) ran to 28 issues, and acquired a supplement, Poetry Ireland, somewhere along the way. When the first issue appeared, its list of contributors stood as a testimony to the young editor’s temerity and flair. It included Seán O’Faoláin, Louis MacNeice and Myles na gCopaleen, among others.
Only one writer said no to David Marcus’s request – George Bernard Shaw , whose famous refusal came in the form of that one word, NO, printed on a postcard in capital letters. Marcus was not too discomposed by Shaw’s rebuff: after all, he’d secured a contribution to his magazine from one of his most revered authors, Edith Somerville, who was then nearly 90 and something of a recluse. Before the deal was settled, he received an invitation to Drishane House to meet the surviving partner of the Somerville-and-Ross duo of Irish RM fame.
[ Stronger by Nicola Hanney: An unputdownable memoir about escaping coercive control Opens in new window ] The occasion, when it happened, was filled with social anxiety bordering on panic, along with culinary pitfalls. At one point the well-brought-up Jewish boy found himself seated before a plate of non-kosher meat, and – what was worse – a full tumbler of whiskey. Throwing orthodoxy to the winds, he ate and drank the lot.
He was fortunate, he felt, not to pass out beneath the table, though he dimly registered some curious glances cast in his direction by his host, the Oxford don .