9 .sx The Debate .sx GERALD O'DONOVAN HAD , wrote his wife Beryl , " exceptionally thick , heavy eyebrows , shadowing his keen blue eyes .sx " In one sharp glance he could signal the presence of what Rose Macaulay described as his " sardonic wit " .sx H.G. Wells once found the exact simile for that arresting image :sx " Look at O'Donovan , his eye like a rifle barrel through a bush .sx " But his piercing intelligence was not the whole self ; in her unpublished memoirs Beryl O'Donovan described her husband as a man " who could not be other than stimulating and interesting , and whose unconscious charm nobody ever " .sx And his oldest daughter Brigid testified , " He was an extremely affectionate man .sx " .sx To Rose Macaulay's astonishment and against her reason , within months of their meeting at the Ministry of War in 1918 she was overwhelmed by her responses to his searching mind , his power of sympathy , and his sardonic wit .sx In What Not , her novel written that year , the spirited and independent heroine Kitty Grammont speculates helplessly , " What was it , this extraordinary driving pressure of emotion , this quite disproportionate desire for companionship with , for contact with , one person out of all the world of people and things , which made , while it lasted , all other desires , all other emotions , pale and faint beside it ?sx " .sx But before she became entangled in feelings which were so at odds with her principles and her good sense , Miss Macaulay spent the year 1917 as a junior administrative clerk in the Exemptions Bureau of the Ministry of War in London .sx In her twelve-month tour of duty in this maze of hidebound officialdom , she created a departmental reputation for bold ad hoc solutions .sx It was perhaps her unbureaucratic common sense that first attracted Gerald O'Donovan to her when , in February 1918 , he became Head of the Italian Section of the Department for Propaganda in Enemy Countries in the new Ministry of Information .sx The Ministry was founded on a new concept of warfare :sx the dissemination of persuasive rhetoric and misinformation .sx The Department for Propaganda attracted such literary and journalistic celebrities as H.G. Wells , Arnold Bennett , and Wickham Steed .sx In 1918 its Italian Section was distributing messages to Austrian citizens through England's Mediterranean ally .sx Gerald and Rose were both chosen to serve in it because they were writers ; Rose's knowledge of Italy and Italians made her particularly valuable .sx ( Her tendency to inject a caustic and personal note into the turgid official correspondence of the Bureau of Exemptions may also have contributed to this shift of assignment .sx ) The question of how Gerald O'Donovan and Rose Macaulay would revise their lives to accommodate the intense friendship that grew out of this close association would face them both for the next three years .sx In January 1917 Rose Macaulay had joined many other well-educated and well-connected young women to work in the grey buildings of the wartime civil service .sx The routine was tedious ; the days were long ; oddly , the war could be kept distant .sx Rose worked ten hours a day at Crewe House and spent three more hours commuting to and from Hedgerley near Beaconsfield , her weekday journey between present and past .sx Contrasting Old Beaconsfield with new wartime London she described the former as " an enchanted city ; as it was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries .sx ..an ancient country town , full of brick walls and old houses , and courtyards and coaching inns , and dignity and romance and great " .sx Part of the island magic of place for her was the quiet and beauty of the surrounding beech forest where at weekends she enjoyed long , brisk walks .sx But her life at Hedgerley with her mother was not enchanting .sx Rose's friends believed that she was devoted to Grace , and when she took a few carefully chosen intimates home with her for a visit she allowed her mother to be the garrulous , anecdotal hostess .sx Yet Jean reported that in private the exhausted Rose - often irritated by Grace's emotionalism and the repetitious parade of her prejudices - interrupted , contradicted , and patronized her mother .sx The hypersensitive Grace , who craved emotional support , became miserably conscious of Rose's impatience with her .sx With characteristic exaggeration she asked Jean , " Why does Rose hate me so ?sx " Rose may have believed she was paying a dept to her father by keeping up a vestige of the old home life , but her sacrifice was misguided , made at the expense of both of the survivors .sx Yet Rose was not socially isolated in Hedgerley ; she kept in touch with her London literary friends , many of whom were also in government work .sx She had reluctantly given up her London flat when she was tied to Great Shelford , first by her VAD duty and then by her land-girl work , but now she often spent weekends at Naomi's country cottage in Sussex and after a time rented a room in Naomi's flat for occasional overnight stays during the week .sx By 1918 , the London Miss Macaulay had acquired a worldly air .sx Her deep griefs were hidden ; her manner was urbane .sx She was described as 'rather argumentative' , but her conversational challenges , though brisk , were impersonal and entertaining .sx The main character of What Not , which she wrote during the last war years as a satire of the imagined regimented peacetime life to come , suggests her new ideal identity .sx Her heroine Kitty Grammont is a synthesis of the lively , nonchalant Edwardian Rosamond Ilbert of Macaulay's first novel and of Macaulay's image of what the future career woman would be - accomplished at her professional duties but a little cynical about male ambition , and at all times independent , playful , amused , and amusing .sx This sophisticated young civil servant reads the New Statesman and the Tatler with equal interest as she takes the Tube to her middle-level job in the Ministry of Brains .sx Her creator says she is " a learned worldling .sx ..something of the elegant rake , something of the gamin , something of the adventuress , something of the scholar .sx ..[and with] a travelled manner , and an excellent brain , adequately , as people go , equipped for the business of living .sx " Although she is a 'gamin' and not a 'gamine' , the post-war Kitty has an unmistakably female name and an unmistakably female charm .sx Her defining modernity - in contrast to the occasional unconventionality of the turn-of-the-century Rosamond Ilbert - is her complete freedom to live as an intelligent , insouciant bachelor , wearing 'cap and bells' in a changing , insecure world .sx Yet Kitty differs from Rose herself ; she is long-lashed and lovely , smartly dressed and stylishly made up .sx Here Macaulay breaks new ground ; it is difficult to know whether this character , a blend of fashion and wit , was Rose's fantasy alter ego , a rare bow to popular novelistic convention , a sign of self-confidence , or all three .sx Perhaps Macaulay , now socially successful and outwardly assured , was by this time less at odds with feminine beauty .sx She had , as a friend said , developed her own style .sx Some years later Compton Mackenzie praised her appearance in a battered jockey cap , which made her look , he said , " like a faded print of William Archer running the Derby in 1878 , " and on another occasion he admired her tailleur as that of " a Light Blue Hungarian Hussar " .sx The descriptions of Kitty as a fashion-plate are always interwoven with those of her intelligence and her insouciance ; indeed , her cool powers of decision almost protect her from falling in love .sx Her character clearly has the author's sympathy ; the vivid , gallant Miss Grammont comes to life in What Not .sx And the Miss Macaulay whom Gerald O'Donovan met in February 1918 was quite as independent and incisive as Kitty .sx Gerald said he was attracted to Rose because she had a " mind like a man's " .sx But who was Gerald O'Donovan , the man whose companionship the self-possessed Miss Macaulay came to desire with " an extraordinary driving power of emotion " ?sx In February 1918 he was 46 years old ; Rose was 36 .sx The two were thrown together in their work .sx Rose had opportunities to observe the discrepancy between his background and his look and manner .sx Although born in Western Ireland , the son of a Supervisor of Public Works who built municipal piers along the Atlantic coast , Gerald had an upper-class British accent and the manners of an English gentleman .sx He was 5 feet 8 inches tall ; his dark reddish hair had not greyed ( although it formed the fringe around a balding head ) ; he had kept the figure and the energy of his youth .sx His voice was melodious and his conversational allusions reflected his experience as a novelist and a publisher's reader .sx As a member of his staff , Rose would before long have learned that he was married and had a daughter and son and perhaps she might have heard through office gossip that his wife was expecting a third child .sx In fact , she may have met Mrs O'Donovan .sx Although Gerald's family was living in Cromer , his wife Beryl , fluent in Italian , was for a brief time an employee of the Ministry , acting as her husband's translator on an official trip to Rome .sx And in the course of her duties Miss Macaulay could assess Mr O'Donovan in his role of fellow civil servant .sx She discovered that he was an able administrator and an excellent speaker .sx He had a quick and critical mind and a forceful presence ; Brigid O'Donovan said he had a photographic memory .sx Like Rose , he was skilled in repartee .sx What most surely won her notice and then her sympathy as she came to know him was his passion for social justice and his record of failure as an impatient battler for near-hopeless causes .sx In 1918 she witnessed one manifestation of his quixotic behaviour :sx the Ministry recalled him from a diplomatic mission to Italy because , although only a minor representative of the British government with a well-defined brief for action , he had exceeded his authority .sx He attempted to participate in the premature planning of the post-war partition of the Austro-Hungarian Empire by calling for the independence of the oppressed southern Yugoslavs .sx Harold Nicolson had written tactfully :sx " The energy and enthusiasm which made him so valuable a propagandist rendered him somewhat dangerous as a diplomat .sx " Like Rose , Gerald was independent , impatient with authority .sx The impulsive Gerald and the impulsive Rose came to understand each other quickly , and as new friends and potential lovers do , gradually unfolded their life stories to each other .sx But Gerald's oral autobiography may have come forth slowly and disjointedly - his past was buried in secrecy .sx Even his children did not know the events of his early life until they were adults .sx He might have offered Rose some of his story , disguised , by lending her his first novel of Irish life , Father Ralph ( Heinemann , 1913) .sx At the turn of the century he had been Jeremiah O'Donovan , a young Roman Catholic priest of national prominence - a man of spiritual , economic , political , cultural , and social influence in Irish life .sx But thwarted in his local reform projects by his bishop , reprimanded and suspended for neglecting his parish duties in favour of activism in nationwide liberal causes , he had in 1904 given up his leadership in the Irish revival movement .sx Disheartened , he had left his post as administrator of St Brendan's Cathedral in Laughrea , and , like Father Ralph , had eventually left the priesthood , an apostasy then almost unheard of in Ireland .sx In 1901 D.P. Moran , editor of The Irish Leader , wrote that Jeremiah O'Donovan " is admitted on all hands to be one of the most vigorous and gifted of the Irishmen of these times .sx " The Irish Catholic called him " a patriot " , and in February 1903 Edward Martyn described him as " a leader of opinion in Ireland " .sx But in 1942 there was no notice of his death in any Irish newspaper .sx However , in 1985 , across the space of over eighty years , he was still remembered as a young priest in Loughrea by Mrs Mary Conlon :sx " A very handsome , good-lookin' man .sx You'd love to look at him , a fine , lively , lively lookin' man .sx Everyone loved him .sx Lovely man .sx He was loved and liked in this town and why wouldn't they for what he done in this town ?sx "