On Trinity Monday, the Monday after Trinity Sunday in the Christian Liturgical calendar, new Scholars and Fellows are elected to join the foundation which is the historic basis of Trinity College Dublin.

In this election, based on the outcome of special examinations, Junior Sophister undergraduates of all courses and faculties are in competition for a limited number of places. The pattern of election varies enormously from year to year. Some years a course may have no Scholarship candidates, in others, the same course might see a number of its students elected.

For the successful candidates, “Schol” offers an annual stipend, free rooms and commons, the right to wear a distinctive gown and to have first choice in some perks, such as the saying of the graces in commons, which carries a further small stipend.

The Trinity Monday ceremonies themselves begin with the announcement of the election results from the Examination Hall steps, an invitation to drinks in the Provost’s House or garden, and to the Scholars’ dinner in the evening, a dress affair in the dining hall, before which there is a group photo of the new Scholars and Fellows with their predecessors of the previous decade. Traditionally this photograph is published in the Irish Times newspaper with a full list of the election, including the schools in which the new Scholars were educated before entering Trinity.

I had seen at the Hist that the prestige of Scholars meant much more than the academic achievement and formal distinction. Having seen too that rooms in College would make me much more independent of home, I decided to apply myself as never before to doing well in the Scholarship examinations in Mental and Moral Science.

I knew the competition would be tough as at least four other class members were being encouraged by their tutors to take the special examinations and I felt in my bones that the staff expectation was that Hugh Glanville would be successful.

As I got down to work and looked at the examination papers of previous years I again felt that the structure of the examination would suit me. I could go for very high marks on those papers, such as the history of philosophy, where the replay of lecture notes and remembered facts could be recorded. Where the additional set books for the scholarship candidates were concerned, I would buy the texts at the earliest opportunity and make sure I knew them inside out and had developed my own ideas on what seemed to be the most important topics covered.

Fortunately the chosen books for the 1959 Scholarship examination were short and well written. The contemporary work, A.D. Woozley’s “Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge”, covered a lot of the ground already discussed in lectures (like causation and how we arrive at universal terms like “red” and “round” and how we know what they mean). It seemed deceptively clear and simple in its presentation. The classic text to be studied was Berkeley’s “Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous”.

George Berkeley (1685-1753) was a Trinity graduate who became Bishop of Cloyne, a diocese in the southern province of Muster, and was a historic figure not just in philosophy but in optics, pharmacology, economics and education. On the Mental and Moral syllabus Berkeley was at the centre of a course on empiricism, with the English philosopher John Locke, and the Scottish philosopher David Hume. In addition to Professor Furlong, the Faculty included a major Berkeleian, the elderly Dr. A.A. Luce, who in a series of special lectures presented the essence of Berkeley’s philosophy as “immaterialism”.

Even before the Scholarship examination forced me to think seriously about Berkeley I had been enchanted by the introduction to Berkeley’s “Principles of Human Knowledge”. There, in a couple of pages, I had a text that enabled me to give family and friends, particularly girlfriends, a taste of the excitement of studying philosophy.

Berkeley’s thesis was that we can know no more than what we perceive with our senses and that we do not need to know anything more, or to invent any other explanation, for the existence of the world around us. He summed up his central idea in the text as “esse est percipi”, to be is to be perceived. The question this poses for philosophy buffs – but which few others can take seriously – is “How do we know the horse is in the stable when the stable door is closed?”

Most people, and certainly Locke, who Berkeley sought to correct, believe there is some kind of material out there which causes us to have the sense experience we have and which provides our knowledge of the external world.

Neither Locke nor anyone else can prove that there is something “behind” or “under” what we see and feel so Berkeley seems to encourage us to say of “matter”, so what, we don’t need anything other than ideas to explain the world around us. But, if you read Berkeley’s “Three Dialogues” you find that the Bishop’s view is rather more complicated. Yes, to be is to be perceived, but the horse continues to exist when we can’t see it because it is perceived by God who, the Church tells us, perceives at every instant everything that ever was, is and will be.

I couldn’t see that this explanation was that much simpler and clearer than Locke’s and guessed that part of the challenge of the Scholarship examination would be to find a way of saying this – if the question came up – in a manner which did not sound dismissive of the Bishop (undoubtedly a great man and thinker in his time) or of the Trinity tradition which tended to stress the clarity and importance of his insights. (Eight years later, in 1967, Trinity would go on to name its newly-opened library “The Berkeley”.)

Both my strategy and tactics were clearly well targeted. When, preceded by the mace-bearer, the Provost emerged into the Front Square sunshine to stand at the microphone on the Examination Hall steps, it was to read from a list on which the Board had elected to Scholarship the three Mental and Moral Junior Sophisters who had achieved 1st Class Honours in the examination. My name was the first on the list. Immediately behind, marked equally, were Hugh Glanville and Hallam Johnston. My pulse raced. I felt the breathlessness of a great victory. I was close to tears. The rest of the day was a blur of congratulations and celebrations leaving little time for thoughts as to how to maximise the opportunities now open. My first priority would be to get a set of rooms in one of the best College locations.

A prompt visit to the friendly woman in charge of allocating rooms gave me the ground floor set at 25, The Rubrics. My hall door opened off the arched stairwell housing conveniently the single lavatory serving all the sets reached by the stairs. I had my own entry hall with coat hangers and the inner door opened out into a substantial L-shaped sitting-room with a gas fire in a closed fireplace and two sash windows looking out on Front Square.

There were two doors off the sitting room, the first led into a small kitchen with a sink and gas rings and access, no longer in use, to a coal hole which originally must have fuelled a stove and the main grate. The second opened into the bedroom. Both the bedroom and the kitchen had windows looking out onto the lawns of New Square.

Standard College furniture and shutters on the windows made the rooms immediately habitable. There was a solid wooden table and a set of chairs in the sitting room. The bedroom had an iron bedstead with a rather jaded mattress and a wash-stand. Instead of hot running water, each set of rooms then enjoyed the services of a “skip”, one of the company of College servants, mostly male, who appeared every morning to boil-up water for shaving and breakfast, to give whatever wake-up call might have been requested, and to do whatever washing-up, cleaning and other tasks seemed appropriate.

Each “skip” seemed to have acquired a customary name and reputation over the years. Most of the names were recognisably a Christian name or a surname and I initially acquired the services of Spinks, a rather dour and enigmatic character who always seemed to wear a business suit and often gave the impression that his real business was elsewhere.

No. 25 was available for immediate occupation and with the help of Florence and the family car I set about making the place look really comfortable, a home from home. Florence and Stephen had recently moved from Sandycove to the larger new house two miles further out in a small cul-de-sac estate on the side of Dalkey Hill. Both John and I had our own bedrooms and mine enjoyed a view of Dublin Bay. The move had meant some reorganisation of furniture so I easily acquired a corner bookcase from home, used old frames to mount some of my favourite reproductions, and profited from the gift or loan of a more comfortable mattress and the dishes, utensils and cutlery necessary to cater for at least four people.

Florence made curtains from cheap but colourful material. In short, before the end of term I was well-equipped to imagine the rooms as a love nest, a focus for afternoon tea and late night chats over drinks, and a regular cocktail party venue.

If the truth be told, only the latter could be said to have been fully realised, and again thanks to Florence’s generosity and organisation. Her own parties, whether birthday parties for her sons, or whist parties for her friends, were well known for the quality and generosity of the food and drink. (Meringues were the speciality which would, in time, charm even her grandchildren.)

To launch me in rooms she sought the advice of one of Dublin’s leading wine merchants and the quantities of Sylvaner (a light Alsatian white wine) and soda necessary to prepare a delightful summer cocktail were purchased. The party, for family friends, my student friends, and the staff of the philosophy department, was a great success, spilling out on to the cobbles between the Rubrics and the Front Square lawn. This early high point of my tenancy was gradually overshadowed by the gloom of those uncertainties which began to burden me in my final College years.

While the Rubrics still looks magnificent to summer tourists, the reality of winter on the ground floor in the fifties was of shadow and a penetrating cold which seemed to feed off the rising damp of centuries. I never gave passing pranksters the satisfaction of the slightest sign of curiosity or pursuit when on several occasions I was frightened to the core by loud and urgent tappings on my bedroom window in the middle of the night. For some reason I always suspected my classmate, Jack Daniels, of these terrifying staccato drummings.

Read more: 1960 – Too Many Choices