ABSTRACT
After crossing from Montreal, the Berrymans spent the first week of September in the Majestic Hotel, Dublin, a place Kate found ‘so public for this kind of falling-apart family’ that she was happy when they moved into a modest semi-detached house at 55 Lansdowne Park, in the suburb of Ballsbridge. For the span of what she called their ‘voluntary exile’, Kate assumed the role of ‘a good Irish Housewife – shop everyday, wash clothes by hand, & don’t wear slacks,’ while Berryman feverishly wrote Songs and steeped himself in alcohol. To outsiders he gave the entirely credible impression that the poet John Montague records.
