It was a strange feeling, being nervous about meeting someone for the first time.
In response to my asking about the Brewster family, Honora Faul, the lady then in charge of the NLI collection of Gordon's cartoons, told me they would be over from England at the weekend and would love to meet me. Apparently they came over every so often to visit Gordon's grave in Kilbarrack.
I jumped at the opportunity and that's how I found myself sitting in my car, outside the Marine Hotel in Sutton on 23th March 2013, feeling nervous.
But why nervous? That puzzled me. I don't normally have any difficulty meeting new people. So what was going on here?
I think I finally worked it out. Gordon Brewster had been a sort of ghostly presence in the family over the years. I knew his name, that he was an artist, and that he had died in the Mammy's shop. But who was he really? What was he doing in the shop? Had he known my parents? And if so, what was the connection.
There was so much about him that I didn't know. I had fleshed him out a little bit when I went through his cartoons in the National Library, but now I was to meet the family. I desperately hoped that this meeting would lead to me getting to know Gordon better. After all, I had come to like him from being through the cartoons. What if his family didn't like me? Or me them? What then? Was that the end of the line? I figured that was what was bugging me.
In the end, I needn't have worried. Four generations of Brewsters turned up that night: Dolores, Gordon's daughter then in her eighties; Lynne, Dolores' daughter; Katrina, Lynne's daughter; and Lottie, Katrina's daughter. And we all got on like a house on fire.
Dolores was really something and she and I chatted into the night. I was to meet her again a few times over the few years until she died in 2016 and we got on so well that she was still passing on information to me virtually from her death bed; she was gone within a week of our last communication.
RIP
Flowers by Dolores
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