Oenone's dearest friend, and colleague of many years, has written this beautiful and evocative tribute. It can be read in its entirety in this chapter, or one chapter at a time by clicking on the headings on the left. OENONE All who knew her use the word lady. And Oenone Venetia Carew-O’Sullivan was truly a ‘gentlewoman’ – which is not to say that she was incapable of expressing strong feelings of disgust or indignation at aspects of this imperfect world of ours. But, to use a word she respected, her ‘nature’ was a gentle one : intrinsically good and kind, caring, intelligent, and liberally interested in all things. And by nurture too, here was a Lady ( though titles meant little to her). Her parents were Sir Thomas and Lady Phyllis Carew of Haccombe in Devon, where the first of their two children, a daughter, was born in June 1929. She was given the name Venetia for its pleasant sound and associations, and Oenone also for sound and for classical associations – Oenone was wife of Paris, a nymph born on Mount Ida where the gods sequestered themselves during the Trojan War. Sir Thomas and Lady Carew valued classical learning and books. Oenone Venetia and her brother Rivers were beneficiaries of this, in more ways than one. Haccombe House, built in 1805 on the site of a much earlier manor-house is described in White’s Devonshire Directory of 1850 as “a large plain building, standing in a well wooded lawn at the bottom of a gradual descent, and near the church on the door of which two horse shoes were nailed, as the story goes, by a Carew who won a wager of a manor of land by swimming his horse further out to sea than his challenger”. Venetia was not a swimmer as I knew her, neither was she a horsewoman of note. But she had some of the independence and courage of that Carew ancestor, which spirit each of us witnessed, especially in her last years. Haccombe she would remember especially for its kitchen garden and the glass-house where her father grew plants from many parts of the world. Ten years after she was born, however, war came ; the house was occupied by a girls’ school evacuated for safety from Portsmouth. During that time Oenone Venetia attended that school, while the family lived in a large cottage nearby.. After the second world war her father decided they should move farther afield – to the West Indies. While Venetia did not take to the insect and especially the spider life, she loved the exotic plants, birds, and in particular the vibrant colours. And we all remember the woman who could surprise us on occasion, sometimes even shock us, by abandoning her usual black and appearing in her favourite brilliant red. In 1949 another family move took place - from the West Indies to Ireland, an arbitrary choice made by her father. She would laugh about this. Crossing and re-crossing the Atlantic by luxury liner, and then to find themselves in south county Dublin, just across the Irish Sea from their first home. But, I think she liked the Ireland she came to in early 1950s. One of her first encounters with a local was when a garda stopped her in her sporty car in Dalkey Main Street, and she rolled down the window and gave her name as required. “ Ven- ee-cia, you say” replied our garda with a tone of surprise. “ And now isn’t that a very euphonious name indeed ?” Any country that had a policeman (albeit Dalkey Policeman !) who knew the proper use of the word ‘euphonious’ could not be a bad country, thought this young woman who even then loved words and their correct use – as she was to do, vehemently, all her life. Indeed words became her livelihood at around this time. Independent minded, she knew she had to, and wanted to earn her living. And this independence of spirit combined with her striking good looks and obvious upper-class English accent attracted one or two of the right kind of people, the right Radio Eireann people. She was invited to write for the weekly Radio Review – a brief introduction to upcoming music programmes. Music was always an interest of hers. ( In London some years earlier she had moved in literary and music circles, becoming friend of among others, members of the Amadeus Quartet) Then, in that wonderful arbitrary way of the radio world, she was asked to present a programme. And she accepted. So, as a new voice of RE, the very English Carey Kent, began to invite the Irish listening public into her Opera Box - favourite opera recordings presented for half an hour, once a week ( with somebody radio people will remember – a young Gene Martin - as the disc jockey playing her records). The radio name was carefully chosen. Carey, she said, was for Carew ; and the Kent because tradition had it that one branch of the family built a castle there. These were days when dark-haired, dark-eyed and vivacious Carey Kent went up in the lift to the top floor in the GPO and walked the long corridor to Studio 10 in tailored, trim, alluring slacks ! – to the amazement of women, the confusion of men, even some of those men ( Sean O Riada, Sean Mac Reamoinn) who had introduced her into Radio Eireann. She was free-spirited, but as important she was free-lance : so, was above and beyond any civil-service or indeed, any John Charles Mc Quaid, directive about ‘appropriate female attire’. And indeed, added to the slacks, there might have been a Black Russian cigarette between the fingers of one of those lovely hands of hers. Certainly rings on those same fingers– the one piece of jewellery she was never without. So began a lifelong love-affair with Radio. Love in another form also, came at this time. Through some of the same RE friends, she was to meet the keyboard-player and London-born Irishman John O’Sullivan. For their first formal date, she remembered he hired a car. Carey Kent, or more to the point – Oenone Venetia Carew was impressed. They were married in 1957 After this time Venetia ‘ O Sullivan’ became known as a name below programme notes for orchestral concerts in the Saint Francis Xavier Hall, and for the subscription series in the Gaiety Theatre. Her broadcasting gradually gave way to concert-programme writing and the writing of scripts for announcements in ‘live’ or recorded concerts and recitals. Each week she might have five or six of these to supply, and she was still writing programme notes and notes for the Radio Review. And she had become a mother. Radio announcers remember her from this time, hair grown longer, tied-back, the handsome face un-madeup, bright eyed, exuberant, but possibly slightly harassed, very casually dressed(usually the black pants, black top) : with John, maybe, and one or all of their three children ( Rowan, Kilda and Marney) on a Saturday afternoon – in the record library in the GPO searching out recordings of works that were to be played in the coming weeks in concert or recital. She would then take the records home, listen to each of them and write, basing her words on her own impressions of each piece – no recourse to Grove’s Dictionary unless as reference, nor to record-sleeves ; no Google then......... just the judgement, good taste and discernment of Venetia O Sullivan. Her scripts were formal... ‘ We come now to a recital of music by ...’ maybe the content over-analytical by today’s taste ; but nothing was omitted that should be said, and there was always a sense that what was to follow was worth one’s attention. ( If it wasn’t , VOS would let you decide for yourself - script appropriately, if alarmingly, brief). Then came the era when Venetia collaborated in her radio work. This was from the late 1960s until her retirement ( as one of the longest-serving radio people) in the late 1990s. With the producer Jane Carty and presenter and friend Una Sheehy (and later Lorna Madigan, then myself) she compiled and scripted a weekly Music Magazine – which in 1979 gathered its material at the Salzburg, Bayreuth and Lucerne festivals. But annually the team went to Wexford Opera, and around Ireland to wherever music was generating some kind of real local interest. In the early 1980s she completed the radio-producer training course, and when I returned from a two-year world trip in 1982 she asked me to present a travel diary in such a way that she could compile a programme where music complemented word. This series – A Traveller’s Tunes’- won us a Jacobs’ Award. And it was to be a format Venetia would develop in such series as ‘Music Then and There’, ‘Opera Matters’ , ‘And Music Too’ , and in a series which won for herself alone another Jacobs’ Award. This series was ‘In Nature’s Realm’ - where music enhanced an expert’s description of vital, curious, or any way engaging aspects of the physical world. A ‘very’ Venetia enterprise – her belief in the expressive powers of music allied to her passionate (sometimes despairing) concern for our world and universe. She was an ardent traveller, in fact, and in the armchair. Her favourite books, alongside the detective novels she raced through, were by travel writers who went deepest and farthest throughout the planet, farther than work and family commitments ever allowed herself to do. But whenever she did manage to travel, she shared the experience. To get one of her wonderful tightly written but quite legible postcards was a great pleasure, and ample evidence that she herself could have been travel-writer par excellence, if fate had so ordained. Travel for work was a bonus in 1985. That year was the fourth centenary of the births of composers Bach, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti. And I’m not sure that it wasn’t that Scarlatti ( maybe by a hair’s breadth over Handel) was the most travelled of the three that influenced her to propose a series of commemorative programmes based on the life-itinerary of this lesser-known, almost exclusively keyboard-composer. She and I spent two months in continental Europe.... ‘In Search of Scarlatti’... in the spring of 1985, travelling through Italy, Portugal and Spain for a series of twelve programmes broadcast that summer. It says something for the RTE of the day, and for Venetia O Sullivan’s standing in the organisation, and persistence, that such a worthy enterprise was sanctioned. Working with her, or to be chosen to work with her was a privilege. One had to be patient, sometimes very patient. I remember the first night of our Scarlatti journey, when we were sitting in a small restaurant in Naples - Scarlatti’s birthplace – a restaurant that happened to be called Bocca del Inferno ( Mouth of Hell). And possibly I had let a certain unease about our enterprise to surface. I asked her “ What shape do you see these programmes taking. In other words, what are we searching for ?” Venetia sipped her wine, looked over the table at me, smiled and said “ We have to wait and see, dear. We’re here, where it all began. We have to wait, explore, see what happens. ” It was a bit that way, working with her, exploratory. That’s not to say that one didn’t prepare, or that research was not important. Quite the contrary. With Venetia O Sullivan one could never be sloppy, one could never be imprecise, woolly, inaccurate (the great sin ) . One could never ‘chance one’s arm’ or say ‘ ah sur’ ‘twill do’. And if she came to trust you, believed in you, that was everything. Then, out of any chaotic ‘Bocca del Inferno’ there could come satisfaction, fulfilment, once or twice magic. Broadening her music-programme horizon which she was always happy to do, she then began to look at other ‘musics’.. Jazz in particular. With Michael James Ford as script-writer and presenter there were programmes on Bix Beiderbecke, Jelly Roll Morton and other legends of the genre. And then there was her own broadcasting style, in scripting for herself, or in interviews she did. Sometimes in interviewing she could sound hesitant, but her questioning was always intelligent ; quirky at times, because she would think on her feet and wanted to get to the nub of the matter by hook or by crook. It was why interviews with such people as Wolfgang Wagner, Sir Peter Pears, Geoffrey Parsons, Howard Ferguson were so honest and so good, even very good. ( Here I use Venetia’s own ‘ top marks’. She was not one to over praise. ‘Okay’ was a little above pass mark : the programme would be broadcast but could have been better. ‘Good’ was honours, well done ! ‘Very good’ would be Venetia’s ‘excellent’ – but I never heard her use the word. It was as if she always left room for ‘better next time’. No “ all’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds ” for her. Although one might say she was a romantic, most times ; she was a deadly realist, frighteningly so at times. There were the programmes or interval talks when the realist took over, and she ‘engaged with the world’, or to put it another way - she got onto some of her favourite hobby-horses ; when during orchestral concerts or during opera broadcasts we would hear herself, or experts she had chosen, speak on subjects sometimes far removed from music.....The Environment, Dwindling fish-stocks, Sixteenth Century Medicine, Barrelorgans, Italian Ice-cream, The Amazon Rain-forest, The Making of Calf Vellum ( an interest borrowed from her timpanist son Marney), Sword-making, Castration ( of boy singers ), Champagne ( of course !) Mushrooms ( why not ?), Recipes of Ancient Rome. And here, we might take our final cue and remember Oenone Venetia at home ( Oenone to some, Venetia to others) : that wonderful warm and caring mother, the inspired cook and the jolly and generous hostess. Mother to us all, but special caring Mum-Mum to Rowan, Kilda and Marney and to their spouses and children, even to her brother Rivers a motherly sister. That warm kitchen of hers where one always ate : those raised pies with her distinctive pastry, that potato salad, those lambs kidneys, custards. And her careful choice of aperitif. Who else but Venetia would be able to tell one that the dry spicy French Vermouth was first devised by a Monsieur Noilly and an English Mr Prat, and so should properly be called Noilly Prat (the t sounded) ? Then there was her savouring of wine, and precise selection of same. And as well as opinions on the wine, at her table there would ever and always be the vigorous airing of contentious issues : burning enthusiasm for anything from Bird Migration to Association Football ( that late-vocation passion that became as important as Wimbledon tennis). Venetia could wax as lyrical about a long-distance Thierry Henry strike as about a Federer parting-shoot... and by then we might be nearing the Paddy or the Black Bush stage of the evening. The savouring of the good old Cork whiskey or of the Black stuff from the North, on any occasion... that’s another story...... for another time... Suffice to say that to be out with Venetia in a pub (without Muzak, mind you !) and to be watering her Paddy for her – (“ Just a tincture,dear. No! Stop!”) - that was a treat. But, to eat with her and her family in their own kitchen in Fitzwilliam Lane or Brighton Avenue, or even in the last years when she moved beside her dear Kilda, and Ciaran and Rosamund, in Royal Terrace West – to be her guest was an experience one does not forget. In fact, there is little about Oenone Venetia Carew – O Sullivan that will be, should be forgotten by those who knew and loved her. May she now imbue and enhance this poor imperfect earth of ours with some of her great goodness. Ray Lynott October 2008