Walter Fitzwilliam StarkieCMG,CBE,Litt.D (9 August 1894 – 2 November 1976) was an Irish scholar,Hispanist, writer, and musician. His reputation is principally based on his popular travel writing:Raggle-Taggle (1933),Spanish Raggle-Taggle (1934) andDon Gypsy (1936).
He is known as a translator ofSpanish literature, and as a leading authority on theRomani people (Gypsies). He spoke theRomani language fluently.
Born inBallybrack,Killiney,County Dublin, he was the eldest son ofWilliam Joseph Myles Starkie (1860–1920) and May Caroline Walsh. His father was a noted Greek scholar and translator ofAristophanes and the last Resident Commissioner of National Education for Ireland in theUnited Kingdom (1899–1920). His aunt,Edyth Starkie, was an established painter married toArthur Rackham.[1] His godfather wasJohn Pentland Mahaffy, the tutor ofOscar Wilde. The academicEnid Starkie was his sister. Starkie grew up surrounded by writers, artists, and academicians.
He was educated atShrewsbury School andTrinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1920, taking first-class honours in classics, history, and political science. After winning first prize for violin at theRoyal Irish Academy of Music in 1913, his father, wanting a more traditional career for his son, turned down an opportunity for Walter to audition forSir Henry Wood, conductor of theLondon Symphony Orchestra. His violin teacher was the celebrated Italian virtuoso and composer,Achille Simonetti, a master who had been taught byCamillo Sivori, the only pupil ofNiccolo Paganini.[2]
He became a fellow of Trinity College in 1926 and the first Professor of Spanish in 1926; his position covered both Spanish and Italian (there was an earlier "Professorship of Modern Languages" created in 1776 also covering both Italian and Spanish[3][4]). One of his pupils at Trinity wasSamuel Beckett.[5][6][7]
As Starkie suffered with chronicasthma throughout his life, he was sent to the warmer climate of Italy during World War I where he joined theYMCA providing entertainment for the British troops. After thearmistice in November 1918, he befriended in the town ofMontebello Vicentino fiveHungarian Gypsyprisoners of war and aided them in acquiring wood to construct makeshift fiddles. To one of them, Farkas, he became a bloodbrother and he swore that he would someday visit Farkas inHungary and mix with the Gypsy's tribe. That oath would affect the course of his life.[8] While on tour in northern Italy he met Italia Augusta Porchietti, anItalian Red Cross nurse and amateur opera singer who was singing to patients and wounded soldiers at a hospital ward inGenoa. They were married on 10 August 1921 and had a son, Landi William, and a daughter, Alma Delfina.
After the publication of his book onLuigi Pirandello, Starkie became a director of theAbbey Theatre in 1927 at the invitation ofW. B. Yeats.[9][10] Recent productions had been fraught with controversy, and one of his roles was to act as arbiter among the factions.[11] In 1928, while Starkie was away in Italy, Yeats, along withLady Gregory andLennox Robinson, the other two board members, rejectedSeán O'Casey's fourth play,The Silver Tassie, his lament of the First World War. When he returned to Dublin he voiced his disagreement with the other board members saying that, "This play was written with the purpose of showing the useless brutality of war and the public should be allowed to judge it for themselves. O'Casey is groping for a new kind of drama and the Abbey should produce the play".[12] In light of his previous successes at the Abbey Theatre the rejection caused much controversy and O'Casey severed his relations with the theatre and took the play to London where it premiered on 11 October 1929 at theApollo Theatre withCharles Laughton andBarry Fitzgerald under the direction ofRaymond Massey.[13] To many observers the loss of O'Casey marked the beginning of a decline in the fortunes of the Abbey.[14]
The following year (1928) the board rejectedDenis Johnston's modernist playShadowdance, and Starkie was charged with giving Johnston the bad news. In his spindly handwriting he wrote on the draft title-page the five words (referring to Lady Gregory), "The Old Lady Says NO", which Johnston used to retitle the play before putting on at Dublin'sGate Theatre the following year to considerable critical acclaim.[15]
At the start of World War II, Britain chose to send Catholics to Spain as their representatives, and so the Irish-Catholic, fiddle-playing Starkie was sent to Madrid as theBritish Council representative, which took him away from the theatre and nightlife of Dublin, and intoWorld War II Spain. He resigned from the Abbey Theatre on 17 September 1942 and on the same day he accepted the invitation ofHilton Edwards andMicheál MacLiammóir to be on the board of directors at the Gate Theatre.
He was one of the founders of theCentre International des Études Fascistes (CINEF).[16] Its only publication,A Survey of Fascism (1928), had an article by him, "Whither is Ireland Heading – Is It Fascism? Thoughts on the Irish Free State."[17][18] During the 1930s, he was an apologist forBenito Mussolini, whom he had interviewed in 1927.[19] In general terms he was influenced by the Irish poet and mysticGeorge William Russell (AE) in his writing onco-operatives. He travelled toAbyssinia in 1935 and later wrote in favour of the Italian campaign there, opposingÉamon de Valera's call forsanctions,[18][20] fearing they would further isolate Italy and driveBenito Mussolini into an alliance withAdolf Hitler.[21] However soon after his appointment inMadrid his wife dropped her first name "Italia" to avoid being branded an agent of Mussolini.[22][23] In the mid-1930s, he was involved in a pro-Nazi international network, the Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Nationalisten, where he chaired the Akademie für die Rechte der Völker.[24]
Sent to Spain as the British cultural representative he was the founder and first director of the British Institute in Madrid (1940–1954), and went on to open branches inBarcelona,Bilbao,Seville andValencia. The institute was backed by theBritish Council and through lectures and exhibitions worked to influence Spanish opinion during World War II and help maintain Spanish neutrality.[25] Upon accepting this position he made a promise toLord Lloyd not to write any new books and to put the "Raggle-Taggle Gypsies" to rest for the duration of the war. However, Spain, owing to her non-belligerent status, became anasylum for refugees from all over Europe, so his promise to curtail hobnobbing with Gypsies became impractical.[26] The Institute stood apart from the British Embassy, which tended to be stand-offish toward their local nationals. It was in itself an embassy to the survivors of Spain's intellectual eclipse following theSpanish Civil War. One of Starkie's early triumphs was organising a recital by the Czech pianistRudolf Firkušný, who in October 1940 was passing through Madrid on his way to the United States. Starkie was able to locate a newSteinway and the concert went ahead, bringing together a significant gathering of Madrid society as well as representatives from the American Embassy and Dutch, Polish, Egyptian, Turkish, and Czech Ministers.[27]
In May 1943, the actorLeslie Howard came to Madrid to present a lecture onHamlet in which he showed similarities between the play and the actions of Hitler. On his return trip to London from Lisbon, the plane on which he was travelling,BOAC Flight 777, was shot down over theBay of Biscay. Among the four crew and thirteen passengers who died was the prominent Anglo-German and Jewish activistWilfrid Israel, Francis German Cowlrick, and Gordon Thomas MacLean, who had lunched together at the British Institute in Madrid.[28]
On any one evening, Starkie could count on finding in the Institute at Calle Almagro 5, a great novelist such asPío Baroja, a rising star likeCamilo José Cela (Winner of theNobel Prize in Literature, 1989), the essayistAzorín, composers likeJoaquín Rodrigo and painters such asIgnacio Zuloaga.[29] He left behind him a thriving Institute. During the war he also helped organise and operate an escape route across thePyrenees for British airmen shot down over France.[30] Walter and Augusta Starkie also allowed their large flat at number 24 Calle del Prado to be used as asafe house for escapingprisoners of war andJewish refugees.[31][32]
From 1947 to 1956, Starkie was professor ofcomparative literature at theComplutense University of Madrid. In 1954, he was elected an honorary fellow of Trinity College, Dublin.[3] After he retired from the British Institute, he accepted a university position in the United States. It was his third American tour, taking him to theUniversity of Texas, Austin (1957–58),New York University (1959), theUniversity of Kansas (1960),University of Colorado (1961), and finally to theUniversity of California, Los Angeles (1961–70) where as Professor-in-Residence he was assigned to lecture in six Departments (English, Folklore-Mythology, Italian, Music, Spanish-Portuguese, and Theatre).[33]
After his retirement from U.C.L.A., Starkie returned with his wife, Italia Augusta, to live in Madrid. After suffering from a severecardiac asthma attack he died there on 2 November 1976. Italia followed him six months later on 10 May 1977. They are buried in theBritish Cemetery in Madrid.
He won fame for his travels and was profiled byTime Magazine as a modern-day 'gypsy'.[34] He published accounts of his experiences as a university vacation vagabond following the trail of theGypsies inRaggle Taggle, subtitled "Adventures with a fiddle in Hungary and Roumania" and sequels,Spanish Raggle Taggle andDon Gypsy which are picaresque accounts in the tradition ofGeorge Borrow, with frontispieces byArthur Rackham. His observations of Gypsy life, while more anecdotal than scholarly, provide insights into these nomadic people.[11]
Julian Moynahan said of Starkie in reviewingScholars and Gypsies forThe New York Times Book Review (24 November 1963):[11]
"Many lives have been more interesting and enviable in the telling than the living, but not so here. Emerging from the shadow of a somewhat blighted inheritance, Walter Starkie chose and enjoyed a lifelong freedom which most of us throw away with both hands on the day we leave school and take our first jobs."[11]
Starkie was the President of theGypsy Lore Society from 1962 to 1973.[35]
In addition to publishing a 1964 translation of plays from theSpanish Golden Age in theModern Library volume asEight Spanish Plays of the Golden Age, he published an abridged translation ofDon Quixote in hardcover forMacmillan Publishers in London in 1954. Illustrated with drawings done byGustave Doré in 1863 for the French language edition, Starkie's biographical introduction ofCervantes was 116 pages long.[36] In 1957 the abridged version of his translation was published for Mentor Books in the United States with the introduction shortened to seven pages.[37] In 1964 Starkie published his complete and unabridged version of his translation forNew American Library.[38][39][40] Written in contemporary English, both unabridged and abridged versions have been in print since their publications, and are considered highly accurate, but Starkie does occasionally putIrish slang and phrase construction (e.g. the phrase "I'm thinking", instead of "I think", and the oath "Bad 'cess to you!") into the mouths of itspeasant characters. This is a trait he repeats in his translation ofThe Mask, a brief one-acter byLope de Rueda published inEight Spanish Plays of the Golden Age.
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