Life
1839-1916; b. Dublin, ed. Mountmellick and York; entered TCD and studied
medicine after clerking at Pim’s and Bewley’s; studied Vienna
and Paris practiced medicine in Dublin; contrib. Kottabos and Cornhill
Magazine (under editorship of W. M. Thackeray); Prof. of English at
Alexandra College, following Dowden; travelled to Egypt; settled in London,
1875; friend of John Butler Yeats; wrote A Comedy of Sighs, a four-act
play set in ‘drawing room at Southwood Manor’; taken off when
played on 19 March 1894 at the Avenue Theatre with W. B. Yeats’s
Land of Hearts Desire; also wrote plays such as A Black Cat,
et al.; issued a Life of Patrick Sarsfield (1895) in the New Irish
Library series; best-known for a lecture published as The Theory of
the Beautiful (1872); notable poetry incl. The Fate of the Sons
of Usna, and “A Dream of Egypt”; d. Chiswick; portrait by
H. M. Paget in national Gallery of Ireland; papers held in Trinity College,
Dublin (Dowden correspondence), and Reading Univ. Library. CAB PI DIB
DIL JMC DBIV FDA OCIL
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Works
Laurella and Other Poems (London 1876), Alcestis: A Dramatic
Poem (London 1878); The True Tragedy of Rienzi; Tribune
of Rome (London: Kegan Paul 1881); Forest Songs & Other
Poems (London: Kegan Paul 1881); Helena in Troas (London: Kegan
Paul 1886); The Banshee and Other Poems (London: Kegan Paul 1888);
How Dreams Come True (1890) [PI only]; A Sicilian Idyll
(London: Elkin Mathews 1891), pastoral play in verse; The Poison Flower
( (London 1891), phantasy in 3 scenes; The Legend of Stauffenberg
(1890), dramatic cantata; The Irish Bardic Tales (London: J. M.
Dent 1896), in verse; Sounds and Sweet Airs (London 1904); The
Life of Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan [New Irish Library] (London:
Unwin; Dublin: Sealy, Bryers, & Walker 1901); T. W. Rolleston, intro.,
From the Land of Dreams, (Dublin: Talbot; London: Unwin 1918),
Irish poems; Essays, foreword by Standish J O’Grady (London:
Elkin Mathews 1920); Isolt of Ireland: A Legend in a Prologue and Three
Acts [and] The Poison Flower (London & Toronto: J. M. Dent
1927); Trivium Amoris [and] The Wooing of Artemis (London
& Toronto: J. M. Dent 1927); E. L. Todhunter and A. P. Graves, ed.,
Selected Poems (London: E. Mathews & Marrot 1929); A Study
of Shelley (London: Kegan Paul 1881) [var. 1880 PI].
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Criticism Christina Hunt Mahony, ‘John Todhunter: An Examination of His Works and His Place in the Irish Literary Revival’ (NUI [doct. thesis] Dublin 1988).
A. N. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats: A New Life (London: Macmillan 1988), remarks on Theory of the Beautiful (1872); note on Todhunter in John Kelly, ed., Letters of W. B. Yeats: 1865-95 (Vol. 1; OUP 1986); Irish Book Lover 8, 9.
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Notes
W. P. Ryan, The Irish Literary Revival (1894), Yeats introduced
Todhunter to the Irish Literary Club, in 1888 [33]. Further, offers a literary sketch:‘he leads us round a world of dreams, legends, forest-songs, old tragedies and mysteries; through a world sometimes antique, often haunting, often idyllic’ [98].
W. B. Yeats (Autobiographies), ‘The Tragic Generation’, Bk. IV: ‘If he had like anything strongly he might have been a famous man, for a few years later he was to write under some casual patriotic impulse, certain excellent verses now in all Irish anthologies; but with him every book was a new planting, and not a new bud on an old bough.’[117] ‘I persuaded JT to write a pastoral play [Sicilian Idyll] ... the one unmistakeable success of his life.’ [120] ‘incapable of any emotion that could give life to a cause.’ A Comedy of Sighs, pro-uced and withdrawn by Forence Farr, after a humiliating failure, was ‘a rambling story ... with a little paradoxical wit.’ He was ‘melancholy’ and ‘dejected’ in temperament. FURTHER from ibid [Field Day Anthology, gen. ed. Seamus Deane, Derry: Field Day 1991, Vol. 3, p.422], ‘.. a rambling tale told with a little paradoxical wit ... for two hours and a half, pit and gallery drowned the voices of the players with boos and jeers that were meant to be bitter to the author who sat visible to all in his box surrounded by his family, and to the actress ... then pit and gallery went home to spread their lying story that the actress had a fit of hysterics in her dressing-room. / Todhunter has sat on to the end, and there were, I think, four acts of it, listing to the howling of his enemies, while his friends slipped out one by one, till onse say everythere their empty seats, but nothing could arose the fighting instincts of that melancholy man ... I tried to get him to publish his book of words with satirical designs and illustrations by Beardsley ... He shared the superstition still current in the theatre, that the public wnats sincere drama, but is kept from it by some conspiracy of managers or newapapers, and could not get it out of his head that the actors were to blame. Shaw, &c.’ (See further under Shaw, supra.)
W. B. Yeats ‘[Todhunter] looked exactly like God in an illustrated family Bible’; further, on Sicilian Idyll, in Boston Pilot: ‘I have rarely heard better verse spoken than by the lady who takes the part of the sherpherdess heroine, Amaryllis.’ (Quoted in Frank Tuohy, Yeats, 1976, p.56) Note that Yeats wrote on Todhunter for Providence Sunday Journal in 1899 (cited in Louis MacNeice, Yeats, 1944, p.48).
Douglas Hyde: on meeting John Todhunter, a neighbour of Yeats at Bedford Park, Hyde offers this description: ‘A thin, distinguished looking man, of medium build, with finely chiselled features. His wife is one of the Digbys; I know her sister. We had a long talk, and Dr Todhunter told me a Norse tale, and told it very well.’ (Diary, 30 March 1892; quoted in Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde, 1974, p.152.)
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; 1984), writes of John Todhunter’s Alcestis (1879) and Helena in Troas (1886), ‘hardly more than academic exercises’ (p.92).
Brian Cleeve & Anne Brady, A Dictionary of Irish Writers (Dublin: Lilliput 1985), note that he contrib. Thackeray’s Cornhill
Magazine; gave up med. and went to London, 1874; influenced by Standish
[Hayes] O’Grady.
Peter Kavanagh, The Irish Theatre (Tralee: The Kerryman 1946), lists Alcestis, dram. poem (1897); The True Tragedy of Rienzi, Tribune of Rome (1881); Helena in Troas, dram. poem (1886); How Dreams Come True, dram. sketch in 2 scenes (1890); The Legend of Stauffenberg, dram. cantata (1890), mus. by J. C. Culwick; A Sicilian Idyll, past. (5 May 1890); The Poison Flower, phantasy (1891); Isolt of Ireland, legend in a prologue and three acts (1907); A Comedy of Sighs; The Black Cat, 3 act play (Independent Theatre at Opera Comique, 8 Dec. [but see also Yeats, Autobiog. and FDA3 note, p.421, Florence Farr, Avenue Theatre, March 1894]) 1893; Isolt set on deck of ship on Irish sea, incl. Syngean dialogue.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, p.473; A Comedy of Signs (1894) put on at the Avenue Theatre as a curtain raiser to Yeats’s Land of Heart’s Desire; play failed and was replaced by Shaw’s Arms and the Man. Further, Vol. 3, p.172 selects lines in Johnstone’s Old Lady Says ‘No’! avowedly from Todhunter; p.421 [with A Comedy of Sighs with The Land of Heart’s Desire, and taken off, March 1894; but see Kavanagh, supra]; pp.422-24 [Todhunter in Yeats’s Autobiography, ‘The Tragic Generation’, Bk IV, extract]; p.625 [Thomas Kinsella characterises ‘John Todhunter’s lyrics’ with Robert Dwyer Joyce’s political ballads as a relief from the incompetence in ‘hideous anthologies’ during a hundred years (‘The Irish Writer’, in Mangan, Davis, Ferguson?, 1969].
Hyland Books (Cat. 214), An Essay in Search of a Subject (1904) [priv. opuscula issued to Members of the Sette of Odd Volumes; ltd. edn. 199 copies.
Ulster Libraries: Belfast Linen Hall Library holds Life of Patrick Sarsfield (1895). Belfast Public Library holds Banshee (1888); Essays, with pref. by Standish O’Grady (1920).
Florence Farr appeared as Amaryllis in A Sicilian Idyll, performed at Bedford Park Clubhouse, May 1890, greatly impressing Yeats with her verse-speaking. (See A. N. Jeffares, W B Yeats: A New Life, 1988, p.51.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)