Life
1878-1857; b. 17 Aug., Rutland Sq., into an established professional family;
Dublin; ed. North Richmond St. CBS; Mungret, Stonyhurst, Clongowes, Royal
Univ., moving quickly to TCD, and later Oxon; befriended by John Pentland
Mahaffy, R. T. Tyrrell, and later George Moore, whose neighbour he was
at 15 Ely Place [appearing as Cahan in Hail & Farewell]; Vice-Chancellor’s
Poetry Prize, 1902, 1903, 1905; rented and shared Martello with Trench
and Joyce, autumn 1904; m. Martha Duane of a Galway landed family, 1 Aug.
1906; MD, 1907, undertaking post-graduate studies in otolaryngology in
Vienna; became successful ear, nose, and throat surgeon; Gogarty spoke
at annual convention of Sinn Fein, Nov. 1905, supporting motion that ‘the
people of Ireland are a free people, and that no law made without their
authority or consent, is or ever can be binding on their conscience’;
Abbey plays, Blight: Tthe Tragedy of Dublin (1917), anonymously
by ‘Alpha and Omega’ but in reality by Gogarty with Joseph O’Connor,
being the first slum play at the Abbey and an attack on Blight hit
at the religious and capitalist systems behind ‘charity’s ineffectual
farce’; it was antecedent to Sean O’Casey’s drama in featuring
the poetry of working-class Dublin speech; also A Serious Thing
(1919), and The Enchanted Trousers (1919); gave shelter to Michael
Collins in his house; appt. Senator 1922-26; his house Renvyle in west
of Ireland (a ‘long, long house in the ultimate land of the undiscovered
West’, formerly the home of the Blakes, burnt in civil war, and subseq.
rebuilt as hotel); escaped from Republican kidnappers in civil war by
diving in Liffey; returned a pair of swans; organised first Tailteann
Games; toasted W. B. Yeats as ‘the arch poet’ at an 70th birthday
banquet, 1935; Yeats included 17 of his lyrics in his Oxford Book of
Modern Verse (1936), describing him as an example of ‘soft indifferent
men’; lost libel action for alleged anti-semitic remarks about Sinclair
in As I Was Going Down Sackville Street (1937), in which Beckett
stood as witness and was cross-examined by J. M. Fitzgerald for the defendant,
Gogarty being fined £900, and further costs to value of £2,000; caused
suppression of Patrick Kavanagh’s The Green Fool (1938) arising
from reference to his door at Ely Place being opened by Gogarty’s
‘mistress’; moved to London, then America, during 1939; having
given his name to the priest in Moore’s The Lake, he appeared
as ‘Cahan’ in Salve; wrote obituary of W. B. Yeats (Evening
Standard, 30 Jan. 1939); there is a Gogarty Society, based at Renvyle;
Gogarty informed Philip Toynbee that ‘James Joyce is not a gentleman’;
when Joyce died, a copy of Gogarty’s I Followed St. Patrick was
on his bedside table; d. 22 Sept. New York; appears in Stephen Hero
as Doherty and in Ulysses as Buck Mulligan; George Moore took
his name for the priest in The Lake (‘skipping dactyls’);
the Collected Works are edited by A. N. Jeffares (Gerrards Cross
2001). PI IF DIB DIW DIH DIL KUN HAM OCIL FDA
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Works
Poetry, Hyperthuleana (Dublin: Gaelic 1916); The Ship
and Other Poems (Dublin: Talbot 1918); An Offering of Swans
(Dublin: Cuala Press 1924; London: Eyre & Spottiswoode 1934), pref.
W. B. Yeats; Wild Apples (Dublin: Cuala 1928, 1930; NY: J. Cape
and H. Smith [1929]), pref. W. B. Yeats; Elbow Room (Dublin: Cuala
1939), [8] 34pp. [ltd. edn. 450 copies], and Do. (NY: Duell, Sloan
& Pearce 1940), [7] 52pp.; Selected Poems (NY, Macmillan 1933),
xxxvi, 177pp. [with forewords: “AE”/George Russell, ‘The
Poetry of My Friend’, and another by Horace Reynolds]; Others
to Adorn, Preface by W. B. Yeats with forewords by “AE” [George Russell] and Horace Reynolds (London: Rich & Cowan 1938), 185pp.; Perennial (London:
Constable 1946); The Collected Poems of Oliver St John Gogarty
(London: Constable 1951), xxvii, 212pp., and Do. (NY: Devin-Adair 1954);
Unselected Poems (Baltimore: Contemporary 1954).
Plays, Alpha and Omega [Gogarty and Joseph K. O’Connor], Blight: The Tragedy of Dublin: An Exposition in 3 Acts [Talbot Press plays] (Dublin: Talbot Press 1917), 74pp.; The Enchanted Trousers (Dublin: [author] 1919); A Serious Thing (Dublin: [author] 1919); James F. Carens, ed., The Plays of Oliver St John Gogarty (Newark: Proscenium 1971) [ltd. edn. 500 ].
Novels, Going Native (NY: Duell, Sloan & Pearce 1940), [8], 294pp.; Do. [another edn.] (London: Constable 1941), 294pp.; Mad Grandeur: A Novel (Philadelphia & NY: J. B. Lippincott 1941; London: Constable 1943), 406pp.; Mr. Petunia (NY: Creative Age 1945; London: Constable 1946).
Miscellaneous, Imitations (NY: Abelard 1950); Mourning Becomes Mr. Spendlove, and Other Portraits, Grave and Gay (NY: Creative Age 1948), 250pp. [also 1952]; James F. Carens, ed., Many Lines to Thee: Letters of Oliver St John Gogarty to G. K. A. Bell (Dublin: Dolmen 1971); also W. B. Yeats, A Memoir (Dublin: Dolmen 1963); see reviews critical ripostes in James Joyce, The Critical Heritage (Routledge and Kegan Paul 1970). Also, contrib. to Commemoration of Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins (1922) and James Augustine Joyce (Dallas: Times Herald 1949), [8]pp. [ltd. edn. 1050 copies; prev. in Times Herald/Book News, 3 April 1949]; Start from Somewhere Else: A Exposition of Wit and Humor, Polite and Perilous (NY: Doubleday 1955), 189pp.
Memoirs (autobiographical prose), As I Was Going Down Sackville Street: A Phantasy in Fact (London: Rich & Cowan; NY: Reynal & Hitchcock 1937) [epigram from Bishop Berkeley]; Do., rep. (Dublin: O’Brien Press 1994; Chester Springs: Dufour 1995), 330pp.; I Follow St. Patrick (London: Rich & Cowan; NY, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1938; London: Constable 1950); It Isn’t This Time of Year At All! (Lon, MacGibbon & Kee; NY: Doubleday 1954); Tumbling in the Hay (London: Constable; NY: Reynal & Hitchcock 1939); Do., rep. edn., (O’Brien Press, 1996).
Collected Works, A. N. Jeffares, coll., ed. & intro., The Poems & Plays of Oliver St John Gogarty (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 2001), xxxi, 861pp.
Omnibus Edn., Sackville Street and Other Stories (London: Sphere 1988), 334, 182, 245pp. Correspondence, Guy St John Williams, comp. & ed., The Renvyle Letters: Gogarty Family Correspondence 1939-1957 (Monasterevan: Daletta Press 2000), 355pp.
On Joyce: review of Finnegans Wake, Observer ( 7 May 1939), p.4 [infra]; see also ‘A Fellow Dubliner’ [auth.], ‘The Veritable James Joyce According to Stuart Gilbert & Oliver St. John Gogarty’, in International Forum, 1 (July 1931), pp.13-17 [infra]; ‘The Joyce I Knew’, in Saturday Review of Literature, XXIII (25 Jan. 1941), pp.3-4, 15-16 [infra]; ‘They Think They Know Joyce’, in Saturday Review of Literature, XXXIII (18 March 1950), pp.8, 9, 36, 37 [abbrev. in Irish Digest, Aug. 1950, pp.19-23; infra].
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- W. R. Rodgers, A Portrait of Oliver St John Gogarty (BBC 1961) [rep. in Irish Literary Portraits, 1972];
- Ulick O’Connor, The Times I’ve Seen: Oliver St John Gogarty (NY: Oblensky 1963), 365pp.; rep. as Oliver St John Gogarty: A Poet and his Times (London: Cape 1964), Do. (London: New America Library 1967), Do. (London: Granada 1981), Do. (London: Mandarin 1990), Do. (Dublin: O’Brien 2000);
- A. N. Jeffares, in The Circus Animals: Essays on W. B. Yeats (London: Macmillan 1970); J. B. Lyons, Oliver St John Gogarty (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP; London: Associated University Presses 1976);
- James F. Carens, Surpassing Wit, Oliver St John Gogarty, His Poetry and Prose (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan; NY: Columbia UP 1979);
- J. B. Lyons, Oliver St John Gogarty: The Man of Many Talents, a Biography (Dublin: Blackwater Press 1980), 348pp.;
- Mary Riley, ‘Joyce, Gogarty, and the Irish Hero’, in Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 10 (1984), pp.45-54;
- Ulick O’Connor, ‘Joyce and Gogarty: Royal and Ancient, Two Hangers-On’, in James Joyce: The Artist and the Labyrinth (London: Ryan 1990), pp.330-54;
- Mary J. Regan, ‘Beyond the Pale: A Wider Reading of Oliver St. John Gogarty’s Mock-Heroic Poems’, in Notes on Modern Irish Literature, 2 (1990), pp.12-18;
- Denis Johnson, ‘The Progress of Joyceanity’, in Envoy, (April 1951), pp.13ff., and Do., rep. in John Ryan, ed., A Bash in the Tunnel (Brighton: Clifton Books 1970), pp.163-98 [a discussion of Gogarty’s article of 1941 on Joyce, infra];
- Ulick O’Connor, ‘Joyce and Gogarty’, in Ryan, op. cit., pp.73-100 [see note, infra.];
- Benedict Kiely, review of James F. Carens, Surpassing Wit: Oliver St John Gogarty, His Poetry and Prose (1979), in The Irish Times (16 June 1979).
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Notes
High praise: W. B. Yeats called Gogarty’s poetry ‘high,
insolent, passionate’, in a letter to Dorothy Wellesley (Letters
... to D. W., 1946, 1964, p.151.)
Actionable stuff: The passage and verses in Gogarty’s As I Was Going down Sackville Street which occasioned the Sinclair libel case are quoted in Anthony Cronin, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist (1996), p.259, together with an account of Beckett’s testimony and the circumstance that Boss Sinclair requested that Gogarty be sued before he died.
Stephen Gwynn, Irish Literature and Drama in the English Language [1927], speaks of Gogarty’s An Offering of Swans and Wild Apples as ‘high poetry, yet not specifically marked with the impress of any period.’ [p. 218].
In the dock: Gogarty’s As I Was Going Down Sackville Street subject of libel case in Four Courts brought by Henry Sinclair in 1937, with Beckett appearing as his witness; Albert Wood for Sinclair. J. M. Fitzgerald, appearing Gogarty examined Beckett [‘Prowst’]; jury found for Sinclair against Gogarty and awarded £900, which was reduced by the judge, Justice O’Byrne. An anonymous juryman explained the verdict, ‘Whatever about the jewman, he [Gogarty] must be made to pay for what he said about de Valera.’ [Harrington, quoting JB Lyons’s biography in The Irish Beckett, p. 84.]
Great pals: Gogarty castigated James Joyce while in New York, to the amazement of a reverent literary public - as he revealed in a review of Finnegans Wake for the Observer ( Observer, 7 May 1939, p.4) where he called Finnegans Wake ‘the most colossal leg-pull in literature since MacPherson’s Ossian’. But note that Gogarty’s I Follow Saint Patrick was on Joyce’s desk at Pension Delphin when he died on 13 Jan. 1941.
Oliver (‘Nol’) D. Gogarty, obit. 25 Dec. 1999; b. and raised Renvyle; ed. Downside and Oxford; bar 1931; midland circuit to 1948; Inner Bar. (Obit, Irish Times, 14 Feb. 2000; signed ‘T.A.F.’)
Kinsman?: Dermot St. John Joseph Gogarty, Education for conflict - education for apartheid: with particular reference to the causes of the Soweto riots of 1976 (Durham Univ. School of Education 1984), MA.
Portrait gallery: Oil portrait by William Orpen, signed New Years Eve, London 1911 [in possession of his son Oliver D. Gogarty]. Another portrait, possibly of Gogarty, by Orpen hangs in the Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin [ill. on front of Gogarty Soc. brochure (Heather Island, Tully Lake, Renvyle, Connemara, Co. Galway].
Errata? Peter Costello (James Joyce: The Years of Growth, Kyle Cathie 1992), records that Gogarty married in September and quotes Joyce: ‘I fancy as he emerged from the church door his agile eye went right and left a little anxiously in search of a certain lean myopic face in the crowd [viz., Joyce’s, but he will rapidly grow out of that remaining sensitivity’ (p.263.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)