Colm Tóibín’s novels include The South, The Master and, most recently, Brooklyn.
Biography and memoirs, Diaries, Nationalism, Revolution, Europe, Western Europe, Ireland, 1900-1999, 1900-1945, 1900-1909, 1900-1999, 1900-1945, 1910-1919, Homosexuality
Jessie Conrad remembered his visit:
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print this articleVol. 19 No. 21 · 30 October 1997
From Norman Moss
Colm Tóibín, in his interesting discussion of Roger Casement’s Black and White Diaries (LRB, 2 October), leaves out two additional reasons for believing that the Black Diaries with their account of homosexual activities are genuine. One is that in New York in 1914, Casement employed a young companion, Adler Christensen, a Norwegian sailor. Christensen went with him to Germany and remained with him for the next two years until he left on his last secret journey to Ireland. It was not unusual in those days for a man of means to employ a manservant to travel with him, but Casement was not wealthy, Christensen had no experience as a servant, and his behaviour in Germany was such that the German authorities found him an embarrassment. The second is that Casement was addicted to writing. As a British consular official he wrote two or three dispatches a week of several thousand words and ten and twenty-page letters. He wrote countless articles and poems, under a pseudonym when he could not use his own name, published and unpublished. If such a man had a secret life, with passions and excitements that he could not reveal, it is very likely that he would record them.
Norman Moss
London W12