Midsummer Night Madness by Seán O'Faoláin

First published: 1932

Type of plot: Social realism

Time of work: 1920

Locale: The countryside near Cork, Ireland

Principal Characters:

• John, the narrator, a young Irish revolutionary
• Alec Henn, an old Anglo-Irish bachelor
• Stevey Long, the commander of a guerrilla battalion
• Gypsy Gammle, a maidservant in Henn's mansion and the lover of both Henn and Long

The Story

A young guerrilla leader leaves his headquarters in the city to investigate the recent inactivity of a battalion out in the countryside from which his parents had moved when he was a young boy. As he sets off, nostalgic images of that place occupy him, and he anticipates a period of freedom from the tension of his underground life in the city. His pleasure in the sights and sounds of the countryside is mixed with his ambivalent childhood impressions of a legendary Anglo-Irish gentleman, Alec Henn, who "lived by the things of the body—women, wine, hunting, fishing, shooting." This "madman" and his mansion, the "Red House," are associated with images of ogres from fairy tales, but the narrator now reflects on what may have become of him after so many years. He wonders if the old Don Juan of Henn Hall is still alive, or if he is, what female company he could have; perhaps he has been reduced to finding a woman of the passing tinkers. This thought of the humiliation of Henn and of the end of a once prosperous Anglo-Irish family pleases John, for he has "nothing in my heart for him but hate" because Henn is a member of the establishment class against whose interests and their allegiance with English power in Ireland the revolution is directed.

As the narrator draws near Henn Hall, where his comrade Stevey Long will secretly accommodate him, he is confronted in the semidarkness by a woman, Gypsy Gammle, who mistakes him for Stevey. From her anxious questions, he discovers that she is having a love affair with Stevey. She forces John to admit that Stevey may have another girlfriend, and she vows not to marry him. The narrator is reluctant to become involved in this "unpleasant, real life," and when he sees Gypsy and Stevey embracing without inhibition in the kitchen of the hall, he is angry. As "investigator of Stevey's shortcomings," he has realized that Stevey's energy and attention have been going into this affair rather than into the revolution, but he is also jealous of Stevey's personal freedom in the countryside.

Henn now appears, a rather infirm and heavy-drinking old man who confronts the narrator with "I suppose you're another one of our new patriots." In spite of Henn's sarcasm, the narrator is courteous to him and Henn invites him to stay. Henn tells him that the revolutionaries are naïve to assume that they can create a new people whose attitudes will reverse the material and social decay in the country. From his cosmopolitan European experience, Henn has concluded that, unlike the Anglo-Irish and other European nations that value practicality and enterprise, the Irish prefer a self-pitying passivity and have little interest in the pleasures of material things. John is angered by such comments and skeptical of the "old libertine's" talk, for the culture and prosperity of Henn's family have served his life of pleasure seeking rather than a life of creative industry. When Gypsy returns, John realizes how much the old man is charmed by her beauty, but when Henn's desire for her becomes evident, a violent argument erupts between Henn and Stevey. The young Don Juan confronts the old Don Juan in a battle for Gypsy, but the narrator feels drawn to the lovemaking of Henn and Gypsy. He continues to think with "bitterness" of Henn as a pathetic figure, whose desire for beauty and pleasure is mocked by the decay of his body and of his house, and he discovers that Henn has taken in Gypsy, a tinker from the roads.

Later, in the middle of the night, John follows Henn out of the house and finds him comforting the distraught Gypsy; John realizes that she is pregnant. At first, John is frustrated by the impossible dilemma of discovering which of the men is responsible but soon realizes that their complex experience of passion and sorrow is more real than his self-centered wish for peace and freedom in the countryside.

Following this realization, the narrator becomes witness to the sudden revolutionary activity of Stevey's battalion of "incendiaries." First an old mansion across the valley is set on fire and its old virginal inhabitants driven out, and then they come to burn Henn Hall. It is evident to John that the political justification for the burning—as a reprisal for actions of the British Army—is not the truth; Stevey's action has been motivated by his personal anger against Henn. Gypsy is shown to be the frightened victim of the men's personal war. The narrator now finds himself more in sympathy with Henn than with Stevey when they discover that Stevey's intention is to blackmail Henn into marrying Gypsy. Henn refuses at first to give into the blackmail but agrees eventually when he sees that Gypsy would prefer to marry him rather than Stevey, who has betrayed her.

John leaves a few days later, unwilling to pass judgment on Stevey and Henn, having no cause "to believe or disbelieve anybody." It is evident that he has become bitter and disillusioned by the egotistical and romantic desires that made "madness" of his "dream" on political and personal levels. However, he is forced to admit later that the passionate madness of this night that he remembers so vividly has more of the truth of life in it than does the ideological simplifications that inspired him earlier.