J.P. Donleavy

by J. P. Donleavy

  1996

  Love Letters Straight to the Heart

  The saga which led to my soul searing loneliness publicized at least half way around the world found its first seed in the most innocuous manner of a journalist telephoning from London with a pleasantly enquiring voice and hint of an Irish accent asking me to elaborate on Brendan Behan’s diet, a single example of it appearing in my book J. P. Donleavy’s Ireland. Amid chuckles from my listener, I repeated the recipe of one of the most astonishing combinations of foodstuffs ever put together in one mushy mélange. Behan, after an ice cold swim in the sea off the coast of Wicklow, poured and dumped into a large mixing bowl a portion of every ingredient I had in my cottage and drank it off in a dozen or so uninterrupted gulps.

  Now then. Finished telling of the incident of Behan’s impromptu lunch, the journalist asked whatever happened to that incredibly beautiful girl Rachel, a picture of whom with your good self we have in our files. I said she had with her little daughter moved off to Dublin where she was pursuing a successful career as a designer and an art dealer and was even helping the old boy out back in Mullingar in selling an occasional watercolour and painting of his own. A day or two later, knocking the Royal Family off the gossip page, appeared the stunning picture of the now famed Rachel along with a headline ‘Donleavy Left in the Lurch’. Variations of this report promptly appeared in the gossip columns of the other tabloids. Next there was a bidding war for Rachel’s story, who besieged rang me in alarm and voiced her reluctance to speak of her departure from the author’s mansion to Dublin, even in the light of their offering to pay money. Of course hearing that word money, and as a long time adherent to the principles of a peasant farmer, I said, my God, take the money and feel free as to what you’d like to say about me.

  Well now, old Rachel (very young) coming from a most respected and refined family background finally at my insistence relented but selected the more serious and prominent of lady journalists to write the story. Which indeed was brilliant enough, for after its appearance it had perfect strangers shouting praise to me in Dublin’s streets.

  ‘Jaysus, J.P., that’s a great story.’

  Of course I could take no credit for this marvellously written interview but then unexpectedly my turn came. A lady from one of the more conservative broadsheet papers rang from London. She sounded mightily suspicious that I might not be able to write the story of being left in the lurch and to describe surviving thereafter lonely in my mansion. However, they would give me a chance and would even pay for it, but only a fraction of that paid to the beautiful Rachel Murray, whose picture alone could wipe the Royal Family off the tabloid pages, and followed by her forthright opinions give a further sweep of the broom. And one presumes such family would be more than glad for a moment to be so gone. And I suggested that old hat novelists stood no chance in such competition but I would do my serious best to paint my predicament of the lonely old man shuffling about in his empty mansion and how he coped now he was left in the lurch. And by God, I was surprised that what I’d got down on paper, including barking out military commands to himself marching the long halls, seemed to give a pretty good account of the author’s brave if curmudgeonly survival.

  Ah but there was more to the story so told. Although Rachel was the most amazing and enchanting of all, she wasn’t the first beauty to decamp from the mansion and leave the author in the lurch. And so, going back in the years, I recounted the saga of what in retrospect seemed to amount to a free of charge ladies’ finishing school over which I unintentionally reigned. And how, as the seasons passed, the swarms of playful, charming cuckolders in gents’ natty suiting and cavalry twill riding kit made their attempts to sweep the ladies in residence off their feet. And some successfully did, as it is a signal truth that ladies quite like that. Especially if the sweeping comes in the form of four wheels like a Ferrari and substantial bank drafts from your better banks to pay for the petrol.

  But in matters of enticement you realize that you are not yourself, in this respect, free of blame. Although you take care to keep overheads low, you also pay attention to keeping the lawns mowed, the wine cellar locked but not empty, the pool sparkling clean and the sauna full of rare scents and fluffy towels. Foxhunting season comes. The blood gets up. Their horses frisky, the cuckolders get bolder. You know that at all costs you must keep calm and that as a pugilist not lose your temper. There are other and bigger battles. That you’re stuck up to your neck in your mansion with bills and the price of cattle and advances to authors are not what they were. But all you know is that you continue to follow that faithful dictum that the author must always remember. That writing is turning one’s own worst moments into money. And by which precept you must, through all tribulations, abide. And it’s presto, how the novels The Onion Eaters, The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman, Leila and That Darcy‚ That Dancer, That Gentleman flowed from my pen. And things still rough, more are on the way.

  Ah but now the last of the ladies had left. I was teetering over my abyss of solitude so deep that it dries up the soul. And so, for the broadsheet, I wrote of how one coped with such long term ordeal. Then following one false start after another, it seemed a long time before the piece was actually published. I thought the editor, as they sometimes do, had second thoughts. Has your poor man crazed by loneliness now gone slightly nuts or at least incommunicably and irretrievably eccentric. But then the article finally appeared, spread over a whole page along with a large photo of the author at the side of his mansion. Another insert photograph also revealed the writer forlorn, standing in his empty dining room, with the most glum and gloomy of expressions on his face and his candelabra on the table drooping. And you’d never believe the variety of people who end up reading newspapers. Or indeed where they encounter them. Under the cat’s bowl blotting up the milk. Or pages prepared to be rolled into firelighters. But the article ‘Pasha of Heartache House’ as it was entitled was also spotted and read. And my God, didn’t the letters of reaction come.

  Some correspondents were savvy enough to refer to a Who’s Who to get my address and wrote direct. And now the women could be heard. Drawing attention to things as seemingly mundane as doesn’t the poor old sod realize that with the bimbos gone his life’s a bargain not having to be paying for anyone else to be enjoying it with him. But what provoked most response was my predicament worn on my face of sadness. And without even the faintest twinkle of an eye. However, one or two discreetly pointed out that they wouldn’t mind to join me in my ordeal in the spacious freedom of rural surroundings which seemed enviably attractive. But never in the history of opinions came so many. From all over Britain, from France and even a midnight phone call from a distinguished actor and playwright in the USA, the only man to reply, but who did so marvellously and fervently to say the piece had ‘touched him infinitely’. Ah but not one single murmur of any description did there come from this dear old place, Ireland herself. Now there’s a matter I’m still examining.

  Of the written overtures made to get better acquainted one found oneself reverting to one’s own lessons learned about women. Which in any case have long come from watching heifers and cows in the herd. Either to jump up on each other or to give a roar to the bull. And it’s why farmers know a thing or two about life. And also perhaps why such wise counsel comes from the Irish matchmaker out in rural climes, who was once asked to explain his success in bringing about so many life long unions and replied that it was because all his clients in their anticipations expected nothing and as a result got more. But if I put myself forward as a candidate, I can hear the matchmaker’s voice now. Ah Jaysus stay away from that lonely old bugger, sure in the photograph of the dilapidated mansion hasn’t he got a big enough roof over his head that you might find yourself out up on a ladder helping him to replace a slate, or worse having to drag across the fields old bed springs to block up the gaps in the hedges.

  But also in the avalanche of mail arriving, there were other opinions. Some alluding to their own
loneliness. Others to suggest that I seemed to enjoy being taken for a ride. But there were those, too, who were shocked with wonderment at the destruction of an image. Was this the famed novelist as seen on TV elegantly riding out to hunt the fox or with white chamois gloves driving his gleaming Daimler, and who wrote the romantic saga such as that of the poignant romance of Fitzdare and Balthazar in The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B and the splendour of their love in the troth they pledged. And why isn’t the author now seen standing alongside one such reincarnated magic chatelaine principled in her life long fidelity. Instead of consorting with fly by night ladies who saw greener and richer pastures in bouncing out of his life. Ah but in aloneness, as you cry out in anguished pain, where do any of us go to find love. When no one wants anyone who wants to be wanted. And so rests the heart in that painful verity.

  1996

  PART 5

  Gone But Not Forgotten

  W. B. Yeats Commemoration

  As the modern world’s aesthetic eye focuses ever more intently on Ireland and as one who lives mid way and only a stone’s throw from the road and train tracks to Sligo over which W. B. Yeats must have passed on many an occasion and peeked to see this mansion up on its hill, I hereby contribute my tuppence worth to his commemoration. Having oft listened to the singing of his praises and only having to read a word or two of his work full of all kinds of imaginative mystery, one feels Yeats to have been an early pioneer reawakening the north west of Ireland out of its monkish past and instilling there a spirit that has since made it a mystically erogenous zone. Which, who knows, may have also even grown to inhabit the whole of this once saintly celibate land. And together with the profundity of the epitaph over his remains where he now finally lies, Ireland has W. B. Yeats to thank for introducing heavenly apparition into the most bereft and haunted of this isle’s landscapes, making them places of romance and enchantment of the same that lurks indelible with every Irishman departed to the corners of the world and yearning for home. And let me tell you your gombeen man selling this place to the tourist has made the most of it. And why not, as, were W.B. alive today, he would have been tax free with the rest of us in this now only mildly repressed and rapidly becoming enlightened nation where every man, woman and child who can string three words together is getting in on the act.

  1989

  Christmas Recollections – for Better or Worse

  My first ever published comments about Christmas appeared unexpurgatedly in a painting catalogue written near the sea at Kilcool, Co. Wicklow, the year 1961. I composed it from notes and letters. And the catalogue was for sale for six pence at an exhibition I gave in the Dublin Painters’ gallery then existing upstairs in a back room of 7 St Stephen’s Green. Although I did not sell many pictures I sold plenty of catalogues promptly translated into rounds of stout in the nearest pub. My opinions have not much changed since then but have been mitigated over the years by the fact that Christmas is not for the disillusioned adult but for children’s anticipated dreams of pleasure. My manifesto of those years ago reading,

  We are not dead yet. Where there is life there is success. Two days till Christmas the most vulgar and vicious time of the year. The time of the big kill, adultery and commerce when only the child has any purity or love. I have just come from the pub where they are drunk and fighting. In Ireland friendship is on the lips but not in the heart. But then when hatred turns to love, the will to kill is lost and that’s bad in these hard times.

  Of course any of you who have ever met him will think these words sound, as I now think they do, like the poet Patrick Kavanagh, who sits presently so calmly quiet in bronze grandeur on the banks of Dublin’s Royal Canal and near where you might have met him when he was ambulatory coming across the Baggot Street bridge beneath which went that slowly flowing water. And over which often came Kavanagh ploughing like a battleship. I ran smack into him one late morning cursing at his personal condition in the world, mumbling, grunting and grumbling as he would, especially at this moment of approaching Yuletide and who said with his first salvo of words.

  ‘You see before you the soul of a man fighting through the raging waves of misfortune.’

  Upon Kavanagh’s head was his trilby hat worn in the squashed down dirty grey form of the battered crown long worn by Ireland’s small farmers. And Kavanagh without a fork over his shoulder to head with to the field to dig up a few spuds for breakfast was instead set on a relentless course to his turf accountant to place the day’s bet. And by way of attempting to instil optimism in the mind of the spiritually pessimistic, I said.

  ‘Cheer up Christmas is coming.’

  ‘Well if it’s Christmas that devout time of the year, what have you got to give me before I tell you to fuck off if you have nothing.’

  Well known for my American sensitivity and for my violence at the merest suggestion of insult and lest I might take offence, Kavanagh already had put out his farmer’s big hand on my shoulder. And with a beatific smile bid me join him in the Waterloo Lounge where I would be permitted the honour and pleasure of buying him two double whiskies, not necessarily in immediate succession as he might want a pint of plain in between. And in return for which I would get a tip for a sure thing at Leopardstown races.

  ‘Now, Donleavy, don’t mind what the others say. Trust me when I tell you it’s a nag who when let loose upon this peerless day to be, the brakes will be well and truly off.’

  American bred and of that bland tradition of behaviour, and a non betting man, I have never been as bluntly rude as the poet. Nor had Christmas yet seemed a vulgar and vicious time of the year. But I knew Kavanagh’s gruff brusqueness and indelicacy of language was in his case a defence of his loneliness lest someone in the coming Yuletide be too close and sense the despair of the privacy in which he dwelled. But he was, as we all were, walking the cold wet granite pavements of Dublin under its sodden smoky sky, looking for somewhere with light and warmth. And dare I say it, even cheerful companionship. But little of this latter was to be had in this normally non convivial city without first knocking back several short ones or many foaming pints, and resorting to the Catacombs in the middle of the night. And by God then it was Christmas with a vengeance, with the insults and fists flying, ‘Cheer up or I’ll break your face, and you’ll be needing my good wishes for a happy recuperation in the New Year.’ And this somewhat dismal circumstance was as unlike anything could ever be from my own Christmases growing up in America.

  The small town atmosphere in which I was reared was an enclave of streets in the uttermost northern reaches of the Bronx where, isolated by large tracts of woods, parklands and cemetery from the rest of New York, you might consider yourself as in fact living in Potosi, Missouri. Friends hunted with bow and arrow, had trapping lines and sold furs to the Hudson Bay Company. There were autumn venison parties and some neighbours galloped by on their horses. And here upon the eve of the birth of Jesus, Yule was a magically nostalgic time of sentiment so overwhelming that it could be painful. And one’s anticipation so intense that the aura of Christmas Eve could make one’s heart start and stop with its magic. You might have upon your mind faithfulness and trust, going to midnight mass with the other devout and the enjoyment of the incense and chasubles and the hymns sung. Then nearing this hour you might call upon friends in their house, the Christmas tree alight in the window. A wreath of holly hanging on their door. A knock. And the words you’d say. ‘How deeply glad I am I see you.’

  It was not the shopping, the toys, the gifts nor presents. But it was the moment when you came closest to your closest friends. As if either of you were soon to die. A time waited for with bated breath, and savoured, so to make it pass as slowly as possible. As if such moments could not happen ever again. And you would cling to them to stop them fading, just as did the jingle bells in the Christmas music on the gramophone that one could still hear as we’d walk away down the street all white and silent with snow. On our way towards the ice cream parlour called Stellings. Or one further dista
nt called Kutches. And there to convivicate with our less closer friends and to suck up pineapple sodas with paper straws. And all such so as to make you say, I love you. Please stay close as we wander this night. And please, please don’t die. You kissed her. And shook hands with him. And they did. They were dead before the next Christmas. For they went to war. And the wreaths hung on front doors were in requiem.

  Later after that Second World conflict was over, the Main Street soda fountain hangouts were also gone. And I had vanished to Ireland never again to find Christmas so saccharine sweet. The time of year seemed to come as Kavanagh did over Baggot Street bridge, without warning, and was aflow with whiskey, beer and wine. But happily too in my early Dublin days there was much solace for both body and soul. For I lived then in the very centre of this now proclaimed Joycean city in the grey sanctum of 38 Trinity College. Along with an invitation from the Provost I also had one from one of my first Irish girlfriends inviting me to Christmas dinner. And enamoured of this lady I chose the latter. But such was Dublin then and me so naïve to this place that I was unaware until sitting at the dining room table that her brother John Ryan was also my good friend. And anything more unlike America never was.

  I dislodged late from a chill bed and discomfortingly dressed to shiver out of my damply cold rooms. A taxi summoned by a porter from the boulevard of Dame Street ferried me to Stillorgan village from whence tall granite walled laneways threaded through green fields and under ancient oaks, ash and elms. Deposited on the gravel apron I was saved from frozen death by climbing the wide steps and entering this large country house called Burton Hall. Centrally heated no less. And great hearth fires roaring in every numerous reception room. In this mansion sumptuosity reigned, that poor poets dream of and students too. Mulled wine warmed the hand. In flowing gowns the Ryan stunning sisters appeared as if by magic. Along with democracy, the rose petals floated innocently in the finger bowls. With the likes of Lead Pipe Daniel the Dangerous more thirsty than innocent drinking down the contents and smacking his lips. And amid ham, turkey and trifle there was much to smack lips over. For most of the foods known to mankind lay displayed festooned with gleaming silverware and your genuine Meissen. And if it wasn’t on sideboards there was even more to come via the pantry out of the steamy kitchens. And not to worry either. There was plenty of crystal, too, ready willing and waiting to be filled by the booming burgundies and the long laid down clarets poured.