Browse content similar to Nesca Robb. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
Northern Ireland has produced more than its fair share of world | 0:00:03 | 0:00:06 | |
class writers and poets, Nobel laureates and academics. | 0:00:06 | 0:00:10 | |
They have enriched our culture, examined our history | 0:00:12 | 0:00:16 | |
and drawn inspiration from the landscape they grew up in. | 0:00:16 | 0:00:19 | |
But there's one woman, a highly regarded academic, | 0:00:22 | 0:00:25 | |
writer and poet, whose work helped lay | 0:00:25 | 0:00:27 | |
the foundations for the success of those who came after her. | 0:00:27 | 0:00:31 | |
She isn't a household name and her contribution to the arts | 0:00:31 | 0:00:35 | |
and culture of Northern Ireland has been almost completely forgotten. | 0:00:35 | 0:00:39 | |
Her name was Nesca Robb. | 0:00:39 | 0:00:41 | |
In a life that spanned the launching of the Titanic to the | 0:00:43 | 0:00:47 | |
outbreak of the Troubles, | 0:00:47 | 0:00:48 | |
she witnessed history in the making, and what she saw | 0:00:48 | 0:00:52 | |
made her what she described as that anomalous thing, an Ulsterwoman. | 0:00:52 | 0:00:56 | |
Nesca Robb grew up at Ballyhackamore House in east Belfast, | 0:01:12 | 0:01:16 | |
the second daughter of a prosperous and influential Belfast family. | 0:01:16 | 0:01:20 | |
Her father's business, J Robb & Co, | 0:01:20 | 0:01:23 | |
was a city landmark for over a century. | 0:01:23 | 0:01:27 | |
But as well as wealth and privilege, Nesca inherited a rich | 0:01:27 | 0:01:30 | |
streak of independence from her Scots Presbyterian ancestors. | 0:01:30 | 0:01:34 | |
Nesca Robb didn't court publicity or notoriety. | 0:01:42 | 0:01:45 | |
I think she often found herself out of step with the society | 0:01:46 | 0:01:49 | |
she grew up in. | 0:01:49 | 0:01:51 | |
And yet, she was a trailblazer, so why do we know so little about her? | 0:01:51 | 0:01:55 | |
My name's Lesley Riddoch, I'm a journalist and broadcaster, | 0:01:55 | 0:01:58 | |
and as you can hear from my accent, I'm Scottish. | 0:01:58 | 0:02:01 | |
But until the age of 13, I lived here in east Belfast, | 0:02:01 | 0:02:04 | |
a stone's throw away from where Nesca Robb grew up. | 0:02:04 | 0:02:08 | |
I knew nothing about her then, but I'm going to put that right. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:11 | |
I'm going to find out who she was, what she did | 0:02:11 | 0:02:14 | |
and why Nesca Robb is a woman worth remembering. | 0:02:14 | 0:02:16 | |
At the Public Records Office in Belfast, | 0:02:22 | 0:02:25 | |
local historian Billy McCullough has been researching the Robb | 0:02:25 | 0:02:29 | |
family and he's discovered | 0:02:29 | 0:02:31 | |
a treasure trove of long-forgotten photos of Nesca, | 0:02:31 | 0:02:34 | |
her unpublished autobiography and notebooks full of her poetry. | 0:02:34 | 0:02:38 | |
If I'm wanting to find out about Nesca Robb, I've got to start here. | 0:02:40 | 0:02:45 | |
Yes. Anything that I or anybody else knows about Nesca is | 0:02:45 | 0:02:50 | |
basically contained within these pages. | 0:02:50 | 0:02:53 | |
There's, I think, part of her autobiography, there's poems. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:57 | |
There's different aspects of her life in each of the sections. | 0:02:57 | 0:03:02 | |
The very last section of them that we looked at were the poetry books. | 0:03:02 | 0:03:07 | |
And when you started looking in here, you didn't expect, did you, to | 0:03:07 | 0:03:11 | |
find this kind of literary heritage, tucked away amongst all the annals? | 0:03:11 | 0:03:15 | |
No. I wouldn't have gotten anything out of them | 0:03:15 | 0:03:18 | |
that would have enhanced my history of the family, | 0:03:18 | 0:03:20 | |
but they cover a vast selection of subjects | 0:03:20 | 0:03:24 | |
and she did issue two poetry books at a later stage. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:28 | |
-You've got a right stack of photos. What else is here? -Well... | 0:03:28 | 0:03:31 | |
Oh, there she is. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:32 | |
-She's a chubby wee lass. -She is a chubby wee lass. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:36 | |
As she gets older, she never regarded herself as being a beauty. | 0:03:36 | 0:03:39 | |
-Never. This is her sister, Mabel. -So there's quite an age gap there. | 0:03:39 | 0:03:44 | |
It's obviously her before the christening | 0:03:44 | 0:03:47 | |
at Castlereagh Presbyterian Church. That's obviously a posed picture. | 0:03:47 | 0:03:50 | |
Only the well-to-do or better class people could have afforded that. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:55 | |
So, this photo here is Nesca. | 0:03:55 | 0:03:57 | |
This is at the Ballyhackamore House, is it? | 0:03:57 | 0:04:00 | |
That is correct, yes, this particular photograph is the only | 0:04:00 | 0:04:03 | |
photograph that I have seen with Nesca's father. | 0:04:03 | 0:04:06 | |
The pony is called Robin and this is Nesca, I think, at maybe four, | 0:04:06 | 0:04:11 | |
five years of age. | 0:04:11 | 0:04:13 | |
Strandtown Primary, my old school. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:26 | |
100 years ago, Nesca Robb lived just down the road. | 0:04:28 | 0:04:32 | |
In fact, the connections between us are almost scary. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:36 | |
We grew up in the same part of town, walked the same streets, | 0:04:36 | 0:04:40 | |
went to a Presbyterian Church, had Scottish links, | 0:04:40 | 0:04:43 | |
went to the same university in England. | 0:04:43 | 0:04:46 | |
To me, this school hasn't changed one iota. | 0:04:46 | 0:04:49 | |
But to Nesca, the whole area would be completely unrecognisable. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:53 | |
Then, Ballyhackamore had only just been | 0:04:55 | 0:04:58 | |
incorporated into the city of Belfast. | 0:04:58 | 0:05:01 | |
And was home to many of its wealthy merchants and businessmen. | 0:05:01 | 0:05:04 | |
Nesca's family home no longer exists, | 0:05:04 | 0:05:07 | |
but I'd like to see where it was. | 0:05:07 | 0:05:09 | |
Well, I know Nesca's house was down here, number 44, | 0:05:09 | 0:05:13 | |
but actually, CS Lewis lived on this corner. | 0:05:13 | 0:05:17 | |
Well, this is Nesca's house, Ballyhackamore House, in 1910, | 0:05:24 | 0:05:28 | |
and I think it was here. | 0:05:28 | 0:05:30 | |
Just right there, where those houses are now. | 0:05:30 | 0:05:33 | |
Ballyhackamore House was more than bricks and mortar to Nesca. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:40 | |
It was the place where she was happier | 0:05:40 | 0:05:43 | |
than at any other time in her life. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:45 | |
Nesca was growing up at a time of enormous change. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:53 | |
Belfast was growing rapidly and from a very early age, | 0:05:53 | 0:05:57 | |
she was fascinated by life beyond the garden gate. | 0:05:57 | 0:06:01 | |
I love her description of the tram journey into Belfast, past rows of | 0:06:04 | 0:06:09 | |
precise, identical red brick houses and on across the Albert Bridge. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:14 | |
The way she writes about shipyard workers steaming | 0:06:15 | 0:06:18 | |
home from work like a river in space | 0:06:18 | 0:06:21 | |
and mill girls with black shawls folded nun-like | 0:06:21 | 0:06:24 | |
round their faces, filling the air with high-pitched talk and laughter. | 0:06:24 | 0:06:30 | |
She wrote of a winter evening | 0:06:30 | 0:06:32 | |
when the early dusk seemed to brim the streets like floodwater, | 0:06:32 | 0:06:37 | |
the lamp lighters like uncouth pantomime fairies, | 0:06:37 | 0:06:41 | |
with star-topped wands, touched lamps into blurs of gold, | 0:06:41 | 0:06:46 | |
suffusing the foggy air with fugitive melting blue. | 0:06:46 | 0:06:51 | |
And she describes how the city fed her imagination. | 0:06:54 | 0:06:58 | |
A vast kaleidoscope, filled with a shifting human pattern. | 0:06:58 | 0:07:02 | |
It made me irrevocably its child. | 0:07:02 | 0:07:05 | |
Time and again in her writing, Nesca returns to the subject of place, | 0:07:08 | 0:07:13 | |
of how she feels shaped by the city and the hills around Belfast. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:18 | |
And she lived through some of the most significant | 0:07:21 | 0:07:24 | |
events in its history. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:26 | |
Remembering the collective pride people | 0:07:26 | 0:07:29 | |
felt at the launching of the city's most famous ship, she writes, | 0:07:29 | 0:07:34 | |
"Half the town seemed to be there, packing the riverside, | 0:07:34 | 0:07:38 | |
"for Belfast took a proprietary interest in its ships | 0:07:38 | 0:07:42 | |
"and this was our masterpiece of design and skill, | 0:07:42 | 0:07:46 | |
"the largest liner in the world, the Titanic." | 0:07:46 | 0:07:50 | |
Years later, Nesca wondered if the fate that befell the Titanic was an | 0:07:53 | 0:07:57 | |
omen of things to come, of political unrest in Ireland and war in Europe. | 0:07:57 | 0:08:02 | |
In her memoirs, she recalls, "Those were unquiet days in Ireland. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:10 | |
"Whenever my elders got together, the talk was of the threatened | 0:08:10 | 0:08:15 | |
"Home Rule Bill and of ways and means of resisting it." | 0:08:15 | 0:08:18 | |
Nesca, in her memory of all of this, is very excited about the prospect. | 0:08:21 | 0:08:25 | |
What was the atmosphere like in Belfast at that time? | 0:08:25 | 0:08:28 | |
It certainly was a period of feverish excitement in Ireland. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:32 | |
It was THE topic of conversation at every meal. | 0:08:32 | 0:08:34 | |
It was something that dominated the newspaper headlines, | 0:08:34 | 0:08:38 | |
something that dominated the public discourse. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:41 | |
During the period of the third Home Rule crisis, we see mass rallies | 0:08:43 | 0:08:47 | |
being organised, demonstrations vehemently denouncing Home Rule. | 0:08:47 | 0:08:51 | |
With the organisation of the Ulster Volunteer Force in January 1913, | 0:08:51 | 0:08:57 | |
we have a sustained campaign against Home Rule. | 0:08:57 | 0:09:01 | |
What was the Robbs' take then on all of this? | 0:09:01 | 0:09:04 | |
Well, the Robbs, like many people from a similar background, were | 0:09:04 | 0:09:08 | |
vehemently opposed to the idea of a devolved parliament in Dublin. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:12 | |
They were concerned that the parliament would be ruled | 0:09:15 | 0:09:18 | |
over by the Catholic Church | 0:09:18 | 0:09:19 | |
and they were fearful for their own civil and religious liberties. | 0:09:19 | 0:09:23 | |
They were also fearful for the economic position of Ulster. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:27 | |
Ulster had become wealthy in the course of the 19th century, | 0:09:27 | 0:09:31 | |
Belfast in particular was growing at an astronomical rate. | 0:09:31 | 0:09:34 | |
It was very much a city that was trading with many | 0:09:34 | 0:09:36 | |
parts of the world. | 0:09:36 | 0:09:38 | |
And the Robbs were among that Presbyterian middle class | 0:09:38 | 0:09:41 | |
merchant class, | 0:09:41 | 0:09:42 | |
who had done extremely well in the course of the 19th century | 0:09:42 | 0:09:46 | |
and early 20th century | 0:09:46 | 0:09:47 | |
and they were fearful that this would be undermined by Home Rule. | 0:09:47 | 0:09:51 | |
Nesca talks about waking up one morning to discover her own | 0:09:53 | 0:09:57 | |
family have been involved in what appears to be gun running. | 0:09:57 | 0:10:00 | |
What was that all about? | 0:10:00 | 0:10:02 | |
Well, the Ulster Volunteer Force needed weapons. | 0:10:02 | 0:10:05 | |
The Ulster Unionist leadership arranged to have guns | 0:10:07 | 0:10:10 | |
brought from Germany and landed, particularly at Larne, | 0:10:10 | 0:10:14 | |
but also at Donaghadee and Bangor, in April 1914. | 0:10:14 | 0:10:17 | |
There is some debate as to just how much was brought in at that | 0:10:20 | 0:10:24 | |
time, but you see figures of 25,000 guns | 0:10:24 | 0:10:26 | |
and three million rounds of ammunition. | 0:10:26 | 0:10:29 | |
The guns are landed, from Larne and other distribution points, | 0:10:31 | 0:10:35 | |
they are taken out across the province of Ulster. | 0:10:35 | 0:10:37 | |
In a sense, the authorities turn a blind eye to it. | 0:10:37 | 0:10:41 | |
One of Nesca's cousins was a dispatch rider with the UVF | 0:10:41 | 0:10:45 | |
and her father provided support for his staff | 0:10:45 | 0:10:48 | |
when they helped unload the cargo of guns in April 1914. | 0:10:48 | 0:10:53 | |
For Nesca, as a young girl, I mean, she would have been just | 0:10:53 | 0:10:55 | |
on the eve of her ninth birthday at the time of the gun running. | 0:10:55 | 0:10:59 | |
And so it would have been a formative experience for her. | 0:10:59 | 0:11:02 | |
I mean, something that she was extremely | 0:11:02 | 0:11:04 | |
conscious of growing up in that household, | 0:11:04 | 0:11:06 | |
in which they were fearful of Home Rule, | 0:11:06 | 0:11:09 | |
they were concerned about what the implications it would have | 0:11:09 | 0:11:12 | |
had for their family and for their economic and social position. | 0:11:12 | 0:11:16 | |
And so it does leave a deep, deep impression on her | 0:11:16 | 0:11:18 | |
and it does help to shape her thinking of her | 0:11:18 | 0:11:21 | |
distinctiveness as an Ulsterwoman, | 0:11:21 | 0:11:23 | |
so distinctive from the rest of Ireland, | 0:11:23 | 0:11:25 | |
but even distinctive from the peoples across the British | 0:11:25 | 0:11:28 | |
Isles, that the people of Ulster are separate people. | 0:11:28 | 0:11:32 | |
But the threat of civil war | 0:11:33 | 0:11:35 | |
and Home Rule was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:40 | |
Nesca recalls, "From an upstairs window in the warehouse, | 0:11:40 | 0:11:44 | |
"we were to watch the division's farewell parade through | 0:11:44 | 0:11:48 | |
"the centre of Belfast. | 0:11:48 | 0:11:50 | |
"Sir Edward himself was there to see them off. | 0:11:50 | 0:11:53 | |
"And I nearly toppled headlong in my eagerness to see and hear him." | 0:11:53 | 0:11:58 | |
As the world around her busied itself with the war effort, | 0:12:02 | 0:12:07 | |
Nesca entered Richmond Lodge School For Girls. | 0:12:07 | 0:12:11 | |
But having been educated by a governess till she was 10, | 0:12:11 | 0:12:13 | |
she found it hard to fit in. | 0:12:13 | 0:12:16 | |
She was teased for her lisp and for having the wrong kind of shoes. | 0:12:16 | 0:12:21 | |
"Sometimes," she says, "nobody would speak to me, at others, | 0:12:21 | 0:12:24 | |
"they would only speak in insults." | 0:12:24 | 0:12:28 | |
Nesca found solace in books. | 0:12:30 | 0:12:33 | |
And by her mid-teens, she'd begun writing poetry. | 0:12:33 | 0:12:37 | |
Her inspiration came from the landscape of the Castlereagh hills and the Ards Peninsula. | 0:12:37 | 0:12:42 | |
And she drew on the words and language of the people who lived there. | 0:12:42 | 0:12:46 | |
English lecturer Kathryn White has been studying Nesca's | 0:12:49 | 0:12:52 | |
poetry and where it fits into the Ulster Scots tradition. | 0:12:52 | 0:12:56 | |
When you look at Nesca and think about, sort of, her story, | 0:12:59 | 0:13:02 | |
erm, she was very influenced by her Presbyterian grandmother. | 0:13:02 | 0:13:07 | |
She describes herself as being Scots to the marrow. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:11 | |
And when you think even about her roots, her family, | 0:13:11 | 0:13:13 | |
her ancestors were from the clan of MacFarlane, | 0:13:13 | 0:13:17 | |
who came over, and round about the 1620s, settled in Bangor | 0:13:17 | 0:13:21 | |
before eventually moving to the Castlereagh Hills. | 0:13:21 | 0:13:25 | |
So, that influence was very much there. | 0:13:25 | 0:13:28 | |
Nesca writes in standard English and she writes in Ulster Scots. | 0:13:30 | 0:13:34 | |
Is there any kind of rationale for what she writes when? | 0:13:34 | 0:13:38 | |
Yes, and I think it's interesting that she sort of goes between, | 0:13:38 | 0:13:40 | |
actually, the two languages. | 0:13:40 | 0:13:43 | |
But she turns to Ulster Scots and to the language, I suppose, of her | 0:13:43 | 0:13:47 | |
grandmother and her ancestors, when she has something important to say. | 0:13:47 | 0:13:53 | |
You can see this in a poem like Wishin', where Nesca | 0:13:54 | 0:13:58 | |
writes of an old man longing for home. | 0:13:58 | 0:14:01 | |
"All that's worth learnin', I got as a lump of a waen, | 0:14:01 | 0:14:04 | |
"In the loanins an' boglands an' fields." | 0:14:04 | 0:14:08 | |
So, the idea that she uses Ulster Scots | 0:14:08 | 0:14:11 | |
when she's writing about important points or important | 0:14:11 | 0:14:14 | |
periods of her life, | 0:14:14 | 0:14:16 | |
says a lot about what she thought of the language. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:19 | |
And that she thought Ulster Scots could perhaps express | 0:14:19 | 0:14:22 | |
something that couldn't be expressed in standard English. | 0:14:22 | 0:14:28 | |
"That there's no good in wishin's a thing that we all hae to learn, | 0:14:28 | 0:14:32 | |
"And it's no kind o' job for a man for to yammer an' girn. | 0:14:32 | 0:14:36 | |
"But the whins'll be out in the loanin and scentin' the air, | 0:14:36 | 0:14:40 | |
"And the lark mad wi' singin' o'erhead | 0:14:40 | 0:14:42 | |
"And I wisht I was there." | 0:14:42 | 0:14:46 | |
She says herself in her early poems, which she | 0:14:46 | 0:14:49 | |
was writing when she was very young, that she was sort of | 0:14:49 | 0:14:53 | |
experimenting as well with this sense of | 0:14:53 | 0:14:58 | |
the regional and the local. | 0:14:58 | 0:15:01 | |
And she describes her early poetry as a private indulgence. | 0:15:01 | 0:15:07 | |
Nesca's writing and her academic ability hadn't gone unnoticed | 0:15:09 | 0:15:13 | |
at school, where she was encouraged | 0:15:13 | 0:15:15 | |
to take the entrance exam for Oxford. | 0:15:15 | 0:15:18 | |
This was a time when few girls went to university. | 0:15:18 | 0:15:21 | |
As she said herself, "If a girl passed senior intermediate, she was branded clever. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:27 | |
"If she wished to go further, she was apt to be regarded as a freak." | 0:15:27 | 0:15:32 | |
Nesca's family were very supportive of her plans. | 0:15:32 | 0:15:36 | |
But in 1922, her home life was torn apart, as first her sister, | 0:15:36 | 0:15:41 | |
and then her mother, fell ill. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:43 | |
I'm looking through Nesca's notes of 1922. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:50 | |
She never included these in her autobiography. | 0:15:50 | 0:15:53 | |
And they're very hard to make out, | 0:15:53 | 0:15:56 | |
scribbled almost in some great haste. | 0:15:56 | 0:15:59 | |
But I see in March, 1922, | 0:15:59 | 0:16:01 | |
she records the death of her mother after a long illness. | 0:16:01 | 0:16:04 | |
She says, "Of the events of that day, most have vanished. | 0:16:04 | 0:16:09 | |
"But a few are as clear as yesterday. | 0:16:09 | 0:16:12 | |
"My father weeping speechlessly while holding me in his arms." | 0:16:12 | 0:16:17 | |
The loss of her mother, from whom she had inherited her | 0:16:19 | 0:16:22 | |
love of literature, was a terrible blow to Nesca. | 0:16:22 | 0:16:26 | |
But worse was to come. | 0:16:26 | 0:16:30 | |
And here, in July, she recalls, | 0:16:30 | 0:16:34 | |
"Auntie Katie entered with a troubled face. | 0:16:34 | 0:16:36 | |
"'Nesca,' she said painfully, 'it's your father. He's gone.'" | 0:16:36 | 0:16:40 | |
Just four months after burying his wife, | 0:16:43 | 0:16:46 | |
Charles Robb died suddenly of a heart attack. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:50 | |
The two girls are alone, Mabel and Nesca. | 0:16:50 | 0:16:55 | |
They are in St Leonards-on-Sea, a resort on the south coast | 0:16:55 | 0:16:58 | |
of England, where Mabel is recuperating. | 0:16:58 | 0:17:01 | |
Nesca recalls that she went out for a walk | 0:17:01 | 0:17:04 | |
and was greeted on her return by the hotel manager. | 0:17:04 | 0:17:07 | |
He says, "I'm very sorry, Miss Robb, but your sister..." | 0:17:11 | 0:17:16 | |
There was no need for him to say more. | 0:17:16 | 0:17:19 | |
So, in nine short months, | 0:17:19 | 0:17:21 | |
the three most important people to Nesca have died. | 0:17:21 | 0:17:24 | |
What an incredible loss in one so young. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
She was just 17 and now all on her own. | 0:17:27 | 0:17:31 | |
Little over a year later, Nesca left Belfast to study modern languages | 0:17:35 | 0:17:40 | |
at Somerville College, Oxford. | 0:17:40 | 0:17:44 | |
It's strange retracing Nesca's footsteps, how often her world | 0:17:50 | 0:17:54 | |
and mine cross over, first in Belfast and now in Oxford, | 0:17:54 | 0:17:58 | |
where I went to university too. | 0:17:58 | 0:18:01 | |
I've come here to meet college archivist Anne Manuel. | 0:18:01 | 0:18:04 | |
She's discovered that in the archives of another student, | 0:18:04 | 0:18:07 | |
Margaret Mann Phillips, there are dozens of letters | 0:18:07 | 0:18:10 | |
and photographs relating to Nesca. | 0:18:10 | 0:18:13 | |
She met Margaret Phillips in their Hilary term, | 0:18:13 | 0:18:16 | |
which is the second term of college. | 0:18:16 | 0:18:17 | |
And it was after that that I think she then started | 0:18:17 | 0:18:20 | |
to settle into Oxford and make some more friends. | 0:18:20 | 0:18:23 | |
There was a rather poignant story, actually, | 0:18:23 | 0:18:26 | |
of when she met Margaret Mann for the first time, | 0:18:26 | 0:18:29 | |
when they started to become really quite close, | 0:18:29 | 0:18:31 | |
and it obviously meant a lot to Margaret as well, | 0:18:31 | 0:18:33 | |
because she's written about it, | 0:18:33 | 0:18:35 | |
and she talks about before she really got to know Nesca, what her | 0:18:35 | 0:18:40 | |
impression was, that she was rather, erm... | 0:18:40 | 0:18:44 | |
aloof, I think, and separate, | 0:18:44 | 0:18:46 | |
and certainly that's what her contemporaries thought as well. | 0:18:46 | 0:18:48 | |
So she writes, "In common room and dining hall, they had seen | 0:18:48 | 0:18:51 | |
"each other and Margaret had once told another girl | 0:18:51 | 0:18:54 | |
"in their year that she was asking Nesca to come for a walk, | 0:18:54 | 0:18:57 | |
"at which the contemporary had replied, caustically, | 0:18:57 | 0:19:00 | |
"you might have a more congenial companion." | 0:19:00 | 0:19:03 | |
-Right. -Which is a little bit rude! -Yes. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:05 | |
"This remark showed the attitude of most of the year towards | 0:19:05 | 0:19:09 | |
"the silent Irish girl, whose reserve, awkward figure | 0:19:09 | 0:19:12 | |
"too mature for her years | 0:19:12 | 0:19:14 | |
"and suspected intellectual power kept the others away." | 0:19:14 | 0:19:18 | |
She was a dark horse, | 0:19:18 | 0:19:19 | |
so she must have felt very alone, I think, in a strange country, | 0:19:19 | 0:19:23 | |
a strange environment, and with people thinking | 0:19:23 | 0:19:25 | |
-that she was, somehow, a bit different. -Yes. | 0:19:25 | 0:19:28 | |
But Margaret took to the standoffish Irish girl, | 0:19:30 | 0:19:33 | |
who confided in her about the loss of her family. | 0:19:33 | 0:19:36 | |
The floodgates opened, she wept and wept, | 0:19:39 | 0:19:42 | |
they comforted each other for quite a long time, | 0:19:42 | 0:19:44 | |
and from that point on, they were the best of friends | 0:19:44 | 0:19:47 | |
and I think, from there, Nesca felt she had somebody to talk to, | 0:19:47 | 0:19:52 | |
and share her feelings and thoughts and spirituality, | 0:19:52 | 0:19:57 | |
I think this was a very spiritual time | 0:19:57 | 0:19:59 | |
for both Margaret and for Nesca. | 0:19:59 | 0:20:01 | |
That really is striking, | 0:20:06 | 0:20:07 | |
because we know that she has had such a terrible time | 0:20:07 | 0:20:10 | |
before she came to Oxford, | 0:20:10 | 0:20:12 | |
with her mother, father, sister dying one after the other, | 0:20:12 | 0:20:15 | |
and she's... There's no evidence of that in a lot of her formal writing, | 0:20:15 | 0:20:19 | |
later, about her time in England, | 0:20:19 | 0:20:22 | |
but it seems like this is the moment that the dam burst. | 0:20:22 | 0:20:24 | |
Yes, absolutely. Yes. | 0:20:24 | 0:20:26 | |
So here are some photographs of her and her friend Margaret Mann. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:30 | |
It's marvellous, because, actually, this is the first time we've | 0:20:30 | 0:20:33 | |
-really seen Nesca as a kind of adult woman. -Mm. | 0:20:33 | 0:20:35 | |
Up till now, all the pictures of her have been just as a child... | 0:20:35 | 0:20:38 | |
-As a child, yes. -..and with all her contemporaries. | 0:20:38 | 0:20:41 | |
Through Margaret, Nesca made many more good friends at Somerville. | 0:20:41 | 0:20:45 | |
She's got quite a lot of photographs in here | 0:20:45 | 0:20:49 | |
of her first few months at Somerville, | 0:20:49 | 0:20:52 | |
and some of the friends that she made while she was here. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:56 | |
I think there was a lot of humour in Nesca Robb, actually, | 0:20:56 | 0:20:59 | |
and her friends obviously saw that, because a lot of these photographs, | 0:20:59 | 0:21:05 | |
her friends are making odd faces at the cameras or smiling or giggling. | 0:21:05 | 0:21:09 | |
This was obviously a lovely afternoon | 0:21:09 | 0:21:14 | |
that several of them had on the river in Oxford. | 0:21:14 | 0:21:17 | |
Throughout her time at Oxford, Nesca continued to write poetry, | 0:21:19 | 0:21:24 | |
and the archive contains her published works | 0:21:24 | 0:21:27 | |
and evidence of how it was received by the literary establishment. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:31 | |
We have, in the collection, a couple of letters, one from TS Eliot. | 0:21:31 | 0:21:35 | |
-Really? -Yes, indeed. | 0:21:35 | 0:21:37 | |
TS Eliot writes to thank her for the book of poetry that she sent him. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:41 | |
"It has given me great pleasure and I am much pleased, also, | 0:21:41 | 0:21:45 | |
"to have your book of poems. | 0:21:45 | 0:21:47 | |
"I have appreciated the poem about George" - | 0:21:47 | 0:21:49 | |
not quite sure who George is - "but I should like to add | 0:21:49 | 0:21:51 | |
"that other of the poems of the book have given me pleasure." | 0:21:51 | 0:21:54 | |
She was also in correspondence with Walter de la Mare. | 0:21:54 | 0:21:57 | |
"They have been a great delight to me. | 0:21:57 | 0:21:59 | |
"If only I mention a few in particular - | 0:21:59 | 0:22:01 | |
"those on pages eight to 36 - | 0:22:01 | 0:22:05 | |
"it is not because many others have not been a joy to me, | 0:22:05 | 0:22:08 | |
"but because I should tire you with too long a list." | 0:22:08 | 0:22:10 | |
And he even says at the end, look, there, | 0:22:10 | 0:22:13 | |
"I wonder if you'd do me the kindness | 0:22:13 | 0:22:15 | |
"of putting my name in your book", so he'd like an inscription. | 0:22:15 | 0:22:19 | |
-So these are accolades from people that know about poetry. -Yes. | 0:22:19 | 0:22:24 | |
That archive was fascinating. | 0:22:29 | 0:22:31 | |
So much information that sheds a light on Nesca's personality | 0:22:31 | 0:22:36 | |
so far from home. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:37 | |
One thing's certain, though - she must have left this college | 0:22:37 | 0:22:40 | |
a very different woman from the grieving lass that arrived. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:44 | |
At Somerville, Nesca found friendship and literary endorsement, | 0:22:46 | 0:22:50 | |
and her PhD on the Italian Renaissance | 0:22:50 | 0:22:54 | |
became essential reading for Italian scholars. | 0:22:54 | 0:22:57 | |
But like so many other women, | 0:22:57 | 0:22:59 | |
she couldn't get a full-time teaching job, | 0:22:59 | 0:23:01 | |
so, in 1938, Nesca left Oxford for London. | 0:23:01 | 0:23:06 | |
Within a year, Britain was at war with Germany, | 0:23:06 | 0:23:10 | |
and eager to play her part, Nesca joined | 0:23:10 | 0:23:13 | |
the Women's Employment Federation, where she specialised in identifying | 0:23:13 | 0:23:17 | |
and recruiting skilled women for the war effort. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:22 | |
Once again an eyewitness to history, | 0:23:22 | 0:23:25 | |
she wrote of her experiences during the Blitz. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:27 | |
Later published as An Ulsterwoman In England, | 0:23:27 | 0:23:31 | |
it was well received, and Nesca was invited to join | 0:23:31 | 0:23:35 | |
the prestigious Royal Society of Literature. | 0:23:35 | 0:23:39 | |
But the book was as much about her cherished Ulster identity | 0:23:39 | 0:23:43 | |
as it was about London, | 0:23:43 | 0:23:45 | |
so perhaps it's unsurprising that, in 1947, Nesca returned to Belfast. | 0:23:45 | 0:23:51 | |
I've come to Cregagh Glen on the outskirts of east Belfast, | 0:24:01 | 0:24:05 | |
land that once belonged to the Robb family. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:07 | |
The council put up this plaque | 0:24:09 | 0:24:11 | |
as part of the Cregagh Glen Heritage Trail. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:14 | |
It is the only visible clue to Nesca, her life and her work. | 0:24:14 | 0:24:19 | |
It's an acknowledgement of Nesca's importance | 0:24:21 | 0:24:24 | |
as a writer and academic, | 0:24:24 | 0:24:26 | |
and also of her contribution to the National Trust. | 0:24:26 | 0:24:29 | |
For when Nesca inherited this land, and Lisnabreeny House, | 0:24:32 | 0:24:35 | |
from her uncle in 1937, she did something unheard of at that time - | 0:24:35 | 0:24:40 | |
she donated it to the National Trust. | 0:24:40 | 0:24:43 | |
Lisnabreeny was one of the Trust's very first acquisitions here, | 0:24:46 | 0:24:50 | |
and one of its most important. | 0:24:50 | 0:24:52 | |
But it was the income it derived from renting out the land | 0:24:52 | 0:24:55 | |
at Lisnabreeny that kept the Trust afloat in its early years. | 0:24:55 | 0:24:59 | |
Without it, we might not have the stately homes | 0:24:59 | 0:25:03 | |
and Areas of Natural Beauty | 0:25:03 | 0:25:05 | |
we associate with the National Trust today. | 0:25:05 | 0:25:08 | |
Nesca joined the National Trust Committee on her return to Belfast | 0:25:12 | 0:25:16 | |
and became a prominent figure in the arts community, | 0:25:16 | 0:25:20 | |
promoting Ulster writers and artists here and abroad. | 0:25:20 | 0:25:24 | |
She was working alongside well-known writers | 0:25:24 | 0:25:27 | |
John Hewitt and Sam Hanna Bell. | 0:25:27 | 0:25:29 | |
In fact, it was through John Hewitt that writer Patricia Craig | 0:25:29 | 0:25:33 | |
first became aware of Nesca. | 0:25:33 | 0:25:37 | |
I think I was first introduced to her little booklet | 0:25:37 | 0:25:40 | |
by John Hewitt. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:43 | |
He thought quite highly of her, and so did I when I read the book, | 0:25:43 | 0:25:48 | |
which was very humourless. | 0:25:48 | 0:25:50 | |
There was a lovely bit in one of her poems | 0:25:50 | 0:25:53 | |
where she has two old country people talking and discussing | 0:25:53 | 0:25:58 | |
the terrible pass that the world has come to | 0:25:58 | 0:26:00 | |
and they're saying how disgraceful it is, | 0:26:00 | 0:26:03 | |
all these young women bathing in July | 0:26:03 | 0:26:06 | |
and they weren't wearing as much as we'd dust a flute... | 0:26:06 | 0:26:11 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:26:11 | 0:26:12 | |
..which was a nice Ulster expression! | 0:26:12 | 0:26:14 | |
You've been speaking about Nesca in the same breath | 0:26:14 | 0:26:17 | |
as some of the luminaries of Northern Irish writing. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:20 | |
Why was she the one who seemed to be forgotten? | 0:26:20 | 0:26:23 | |
It was to do with the times, I would say. | 0:26:23 | 0:26:26 | |
The '50s was male-dominated | 0:26:26 | 0:26:29 | |
and women had a very hard time trying to get anywhere. | 0:26:29 | 0:26:33 | |
She had a lot of professions, if you like. | 0:26:33 | 0:26:35 | |
You know, she was a scholar, she was a historian, | 0:26:35 | 0:26:38 | |
a poet, a woman of letters, and autobiographer, | 0:26:38 | 0:26:42 | |
a teacher and committee member, | 0:26:42 | 0:26:45 | |
and so she didn't really concentrate on any one of these | 0:26:45 | 0:26:47 | |
to the exclusion of all the others. | 0:26:47 | 0:26:49 | |
If you try to think of an outstanding woman writer | 0:26:49 | 0:26:53 | |
of the 1950s, it's just a blank, | 0:26:53 | 0:26:56 | |
you know, which is why I think, in a way, | 0:26:56 | 0:26:58 | |
that Nesca Robb might have filled that gap, if she had gone in more | 0:26:58 | 0:27:03 | |
for self-promotion or if she hadn't tried to do so many things at once. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:07 | |
So how would you place Nesca Robb's contribution, then, | 0:27:11 | 0:27:15 | |
to Northern Irish culture? | 0:27:15 | 0:27:16 | |
I would place her quite highly, actually. | 0:27:16 | 0:27:18 | |
I mean, she was ahead of her time. | 0:27:18 | 0:27:20 | |
I wish someone would publish her unpublished autobiography. | 0:27:22 | 0:27:27 | |
It is so interesting and so good and so well-written | 0:27:27 | 0:27:31 | |
that it's time that some attention was paid to this woman. | 0:27:31 | 0:27:34 | |
But by the mid-'50s, | 0:27:36 | 0:27:38 | |
Nesca was beginning to make a name for herself - | 0:27:38 | 0:27:42 | |
writing a radio play, books of literary criticism | 0:27:42 | 0:27:45 | |
and a biography of William III. | 0:27:45 | 0:27:49 | |
And in a rare interview for the Belfast Telegraph, | 0:27:49 | 0:27:52 | |
she revealed a little more of her personality. | 0:27:52 | 0:27:55 | |
She said she "loved all good things in life - | 0:27:55 | 0:27:58 | |
"friends, music, art and writing...and a good joke." | 0:27:58 | 0:28:01 | |
She hated "tripe, sweet tea, rhubarb and the bulldozer." | 0:28:01 | 0:28:07 | |
Nesca continued to work until her death in 1976. | 0:28:07 | 0:28:13 | |
Nesca Robb was a forthright and interesting woman, | 0:28:13 | 0:28:16 | |
who contributed across a whole range of the arts in Northern Ireland | 0:28:16 | 0:28:20 | |
and lived through some of the most momentous years | 0:28:20 | 0:28:23 | |
in European and Irish history. | 0:28:23 | 0:28:26 | |
And yet her own reputation here | 0:28:26 | 0:28:27 | |
seems to have been slightly forgotten, | 0:28:27 | 0:28:30 | |
and I think that's a mistake, | 0:28:30 | 0:28:31 | |
because Nesca Robb was, without question, an important woman. | 0:28:31 | 0:28:35 |