‘He was small in stature, massive in achievement’

“WHEN you shall these unlucky deeds relate, speak of me as I am.”

The quote is also from Othello but not the one that Charles J Haughey chose to use when he retired from the Dáil. It is the passage in the Shakespeare play that immediately follows the one that he did use: “I have done the State some service. They know’t.”

Taken together they sum up the paradox and contradictions of the most controversial and divisive public figure Ireland has produced in the modern era.

Statesman. Rogue. Visionary. Self-serving. Feted. Hated.

Yesterday, Mr Haughey was mourned not in Kinsealy — the grand Gandon mansion that personified his excesses — but in Donnycarney, the solid working class neighbourhood where he was born and which was his political heartland.

All afternoon, mourners filed past the open coffin in the church. But that too spoke volumes. Many were elderly.

Yes, there were thousands but not as many as had been expected.

As the State funeral got under way, just after 5pm, surprisingly small groups of people gathered.

The ceremony bore all the panoply of a State funeral, with a military party and the country’s top civic and religious leaders in attendance.

For all that it was very personal and moving, with the strains of the Seán Ó Riada Mass and the prayers punctuated by powerful speeches by his brother, Fr Eoghan Haughey, and the poet Anthony Cronin, a lifelong friend. Both gave fresh, deeply personal insights into a man whose life seemed to have been analysed beyond exhaustion.

The Haughey family arrived shortly after 5pm. His widow Maureen looked frail and drawn and was supported by her four children, Ciarán, Eimear, Conor and Sean.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, in the opening prayer, said that those who attended came under different titles.

“We are here as a nation led by President Mary McAleese remembering one whose many years of public life impacted upon the economy and the society,” he said.

Fr Eoghan Haughey sounded incredibly like his late brother in accent, cadence and the elongated delivery of key words.

Many had known his brother as CJH, he said, but to his family, he had always been Cathal.

He delivered a rich and concise line to sum up his brother.

“Cathal Ó hEochaidh. He was small in stature, massive in achievement,” he said.

“He was larger than life in his capacity, his accomplishments, his kindness, his triumphs and defeats, his victories and failures.”

Later, he made a tangential reference to his failings but put it in the context of his undoubted charisma: “His was an extraordinary life, a talent and personality that dominated, and seemed fascinating, in the age in which he lived, probably more than any other politician in his time.

“We thank God for his great gifts and achievements. We ask pardon and forgiveness for his human frailties.”

Anthony Cronin, in a rich personal reflection, also spoke touchingly of that charismatic quality, saying biographers and historians would love the contradictions that were undeniable in Haughey, rather than make them diminish him.

Describing the man who was his friend for 60 years as a very complex man, he said he was one who, in his own way, was also a very simple person, being both a man of action and a contemplative man.

Recalling a young CJ Haughey and Maureen Lemass during their days in UCD, Cronin said she was very noticeable in that milieu because she had dark, dark hair and was one of the beauties of college.

As for her future husband, he said: “Charlie was always noticeable in any company. He had that rare type of vitality. It is very rare. I knew only three or four who had it in my lifetime, which gives personality a magnetic pull like a field of force.”

As a young man, he said that CJH “already had a mark of destiny, whatever that destiny would turn out to be”.

A mark of destiny, yes. But there will always be divisions on what that destiny turned out to be.