Honor Lilbush Wingfield Tracy (1913-1989)
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Honor Lilbush Wingfield Tracy was born on October 19, 1913 or December
19, 1915, in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England, the daughter of a surgeon Humphrey
Ernest Wingfield Tracy and artist Chrystabel May Clare Miner. 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 briefly and divorced and had no children. She died 13th 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 |
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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
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
Herbert Mitgang collection of papers, 1967-1975. New York Library
Manuscript box (Tracy)
Tracy, Honor. Letters to 1967 -
1975 corr. out ( 1 folder ) With replies and articles
contributed to The New York Times
Family Notes:
John Tracy & Mary Tracy
George Wingfield Tracy birth 5 Oct 1832 bapt. 3 Nov 1834 Whiting Street Independent, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Humphrey Wingfield Tracy, Dentist, 6, Hatter street, Bury St. Edmonds, 1878-1889?
Tracy, Humphrey Wingfield, LDS, 6, Hatter Street, Bury S.
Edmund's.
1897 Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of
Archaeology, Volume 9
Hugh Wingfield Tracy, of Emmanuel College, Cambridge and of Tyre House, Branford (19) only son of Major H-L-T-, of Scamford, Suffolk, dental surgeon, Called 17 Nov., 1939.
Register of admissions
to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, from the fifteenth century to
the year 1944, Volume 3]
102. TRACY Horace Ernest Humphrey. Son of Humphrey Wingfield Tracy of Bury St. Edmunds, surgeon detist. At Bury school 1892-. Now practising with his father.
Biographical list of boys educated at King Edward
VI. Free Grammar School, Bury St. Edmunds: From
1550 to 1900
Last update: 18
April 2012