Emma Donoghue interview, copyright Victoria Mary Clarke 2004
“I probably shouldn’t mention this in female company,’ said the Earl of Derby, conspiratorially.  ‘But I met a real Sapphist once, a German Countess.  She was an extraordinary creature, leering at all the maids and mannish in the extreme, with a hairy mole on her chin!’
The Sapphist, the lesbo, the dyke.  She was capable of exciting gossip and scandal in the eighteenth century.  Nearly three hundred years later, she still threatens a frisson.  Sharon Stone drove Michael Douglas to distraction, when she flashed him her bush and then stuck her tongue down her lesbian lover’s neck.  The thrill of lesbianism looks set to run and run.
Emma Donoghue is a Sapphist, to put it delicately.  She is also an award-winning and hugely talented young Irish authoress, who writes about high scandal, often set in historical settings and often involving lesbians and their lovers.  Her last novel ‘Slammerkin’ was about a young servant girl who murdered her mistress in cold blood, with a meat cleaver, just so that she could have fine clothes.  Her previous two novels ‘Hood’ and ‘Stir Fry’, featured lesbian love as their central themes.  And her latest centres on the love triangle between a man and two women. 
Emma Donoghue is statuesque, with a dark, chin length bob and she is wearing a long red linen coat dress, over a black shift.  She holds her head high and strides into the hotel, swinging a bright red bag, in the shape of a watering can.  Confident, she is.  Quirky, perhaps.  And thankfully, good humoured.  She orders a large sticky Danish and settles down to talk about scandal.  
‘Life Mask’, her latest novel,  is based on a real story of a love triangle, in eighteenth century London, between the Earl of Derby (who is married), an actress called Eliza Farren, (who is unmarried, of humble birth) and a lady called Ann Damer, who is the only sculptress of her day.  Their story is set against a scintillating backdrop of social intrigue which would make much of what we read in ‘Heat’ seem decidedly dull.  The ‘Beau Monde Inquirer’ of 1787 openly declares that the Prince of Wales is ‘first among sinners, whether we speak of gluttony, drunkenness, prodigality, gambling or fleshly passion.’  The Prince, who has secretly married his mistress, Mrs Fitzherbert and had their love-child sent off to Spain to be raised, does make Prince Charles, Diana and Camilla look like nursery school amateurs.
 The characters in Emma’s book ‘Life Mask’ inhabit a rarefied clique nicknamed ‘The World’.   They behave atrociously and are hounded by the tabloid Press of their day, who do not have long lenses, but who do have cartoonists and lampoonists. The central character, Eliza has to walk a tightrope, socially because not only is she low born, but she is also a woman, and as she rightly points out ‘the slightest tug at our skirts and our name, our reputation is mud.’
Being a woman herself, and being a lesbian, Emma is fascinated with the degree to which women were free to express themselves and their sexuality throughout history.  She is particularly attracted to the eighteenth century, she says, because it was a time when women had a degree of  sexual freedom.
‘The men at that time did not prize virgins, they wanted women who had been around the block and had a few notches on the bedpost!’ she says.  ‘That’s something that I love about them.’ 
Emma comes from a scholarly family, her father Denis Donoghue was a respected professor of English at UCD who has, himself published books.  Her mother is a former English teacher.  Because of this, she got a great deal of encouragement and support in the beginning of her writing career.
‘I wrote dreadful poetry about fairies and the holy spirit’ she says.
‘Everything I wrote they said was wonderful.  They were full of encouragement.  How could they have kept a straight face?”
Because her father had written books, it was very easy for her to imagine her own name on the spine of a book. And she was given eight years to practice her art, when she won an all-expenses paid scholarship to Cambridge.
‘It was a special scholarship which was meant for the sons of the Irish Protestant clergy.  But they ran out of those, so they had to take female papists!’ she laughs.
          Originally, the intention was to write a thesis on the friendships between men and women in the eighteenth century fiction. She got bored with the subject before she finished the thesis, but was delighted to discover a lifelong fascination with the eighteenth century.
‘It was the beginning of civilisation as we know it,’ she says.  ‘They began to ask the big questions like are women real people?  Are black people human beings?  Should we have democracy?  But they had some truly awful food.’
She gives me some of the recipes which she has discovered, such as one for boiled asparagus on wet toast, to illustrate this point.  It is her passion for these details which makes her work so colourful, so visceral.  While she was at Cambridge, she began to develop her writing talent and her first novel ‘Stir Fry’, set in Dublin, was written.  And instantly sold.
 ‘I have been incredibly lucky,’ she admits. ‘I don’t have any novels in the bottom drawer.  My first novel was published by Penguin, who also bought the second.’  From that time, she was able to make writing her sole occupation.
          At Cambridge, Emma met Chris, an academic from Canada, and the couple fell in love.  There was a period of commuting between continents before Emma decided to commit to Chris and to Canada.  They have been happy together for ten years now, and have recently had a child.  Although this could sound peculiar, given that they are both women, Emma insists that it is perfectly ordinary.
‘Would that it were extremely glamorous,’ she laughs.  ‘But it’s not.  Partner, mortgage, kids.  We don’t have an opium den.  Just lots of cups of tea and squabbling about time.  As an Irish person, I believe that it is part of my heritage to be late for things.  I think it comes from having such bad weather, you never know when the skies might open up on top of you and you might be delayed, looking for an umbrella.  Chris doesn’t see it that way.’
          Of the two, it was Emma who wanted to actually give birth, Chris was happy not to.  And after considering the options, Emma chose to use an anonymous sperm donor, which naturally brought up issues about whether their son Finn, who is now eight months old will demand to know who his father is.
‘I am sure that at some point he will ask about it.  But kids are likely to give you grief at some point, no matter what your circumstances are.  I don’t think we will get more grief than anyone else.’
Could he find out who his dad is, if he wanted to?
‘No.  But I always think that where there is deception involved, that’s what messes with the child’s head.  At least Finn will be told it from the beginning.’
Chris, Emma’s partner is entitled to be Finn’s legal mother, in Canada, just as much as Emma is.  Finn will take her surname.
‘The birth mother is so easily connected to the child,’ Emma explains.  ‘I look like him.  So for the other mother it will be very helpful to have that clear connection.  And in Canada, any parent can take six months full paid leave, which made it much easier for both of us!’
Same sex marriage is becoming legal in Canada, but the couple don’t want to get married.
‘It doesn’t attract us, people break up if they want to, even if they are married.  And we have the same rights as a married couple because we have common law status.’
Supposing you two break up?  I ask.
‘We will have shared custody.’
But technically, he’s yours?
‘Yes, we would be like any couple.  You might like to get rid of the ex, but you cant.  Before I got pregnant with Finn, I remember thinking this is the true moment of commitment.  Because I will have to stay in Canada for at least twenty years!’
Will it be the same for him as having a mum and dad?  I ask, intrigued.  Does one of you play good cop and the other one play bad cop?
‘Any two adults will have different personalities, so it’s not like we are two identical moms.  Chris is called Maman, and I am Mum.’ 
Not Chris and Emma?
‘No.  He needs to name us as parents.  And I cook and she cleans!  She will teach him how to drive, I will teach him to dance.  Of course there will be areas we don’t cover, but he will have lots of men in his life.’
When Finn goes to school, it will be completely acceptable for him to have two mummies.
‘It will be unusual, but acceptable.  We have a local lesbian mother’s group, so he will have friends with the same background.’
Will he be wearing an apron and baking?
‘Probably the opposite.  He will be a complete macho thug! But we do hope he gets good at computers quickly, but maybe we are already stereotyping him as a boy, maybe he will be useless!”
          Emma might be unusual, but Finn is growing up with two totally committed parents who wanted him, who planned him, hoped for him, and that’s what’s important, she says.  ‘I think that’s a fairly good set up.  But I do get some grief for it, especially here.  It’s still quite a shocking idea.  It still sounds freaky to a lot of people and it makes them nervous!’
Even though she swears that her life with Chris and her baby is as ordinary as they come, and that it keeps her grounded, one senses that there is an urge to be noticed.  In an interview with an American newspaper, Emma once said that she would rather be Bono, than be a respected writer.
‘Being a writer has very little glamour,’ she said.  But today she’s having second thoughts.
‘I’m sure it’s hard to be Bono.  It would be very annoying to have to wear sunglasses all the time, especially in Ireland.  You must be stumbling along.’
          ‘Ah, fame,’ says Bunbury, a character from Emma’s new book.  ‘That legendary hussy whose favours, like those of a postulating whore, unfit us for ordinary life.’  Having written about the dark side of celebrity, it appears that Emma flirts with it only in her imagination and not in her real life.
‘I would like to be noticed, I fantasise about winning the Booker prize, which is pathetic.  But I don’t to have a face that is instantly recognised, I don’t want hordes of fans!”
Finn, who is eight months old, will be needing his lunch now, so we have to part company.  I am allowed only one more question.  Could her personal situation be the stuff of scandal in one of her books?
‘If I were to write it as high scandal, I would set it in Cork, in 1963!’ she laughs.   ‘I am not sure that I am quite scandalous enough now.’

‘Life Mask’ is published by Virago, 20 euros.