J.P. Donleavy

by J. P. Donleavy

  But Ryan was even more than a helping hand. Over the years of which he writes, he grew into a central figure to become a touchstone who was always sought out by those returning to Dublin. And when found, he would be a ready repository for news or able to report that which was soon to become news, which was usually gossip turned into a fine art. He listened to all mouths and spoke into all ears. And without snobbery he would never ignore, as many did, the awestruck gas meter readers who edged near to be in the intellectual vicinity of the greatness of poets. Nor would a deaf ear ever be turned to the ‘chancers’ who swarmed about him exerting their charm looking for loans or trying to launch their money making schemes. Thus, with Ryan invariably remaining imperturbably benign to and indulgent of all, did he become himself a dependable focus in a land where begrudgers abounded during a period of censorship and religious repression and when the philistine and pompous pedant held full sway, albeit with all kinds of shockingly prurient behaviour omnipresent.

  As a diplomat in a Dublin where undiplomatic behaviour was invented, Ryan has no peer. The fact that he was able to keep as life long friends many of those who detested even hearing another’s name mentioned is proof. But he was not to be, in the literal sense, pushed too far. He could and did, when required, mete out plenty of unpoetic justice, especially when it was required to aid a friend in battle. And unlike the slight self congratulatory slaps one might be expected to give oneself in distant reminiscence, it is amusing to read Ryan’s accounts of his being constantly saved from extinction in various brawls by other hands such as those of the fair minded Gainor Stephen Crist, the patron saint of Dublin tourists and stickler for justice. It is true Crist was possessed of incredible strength and would administer punishment to the unworthy by levering them on their backs and bouncing their heads on the floor. But from my own recollection of watching Ryan’s fists fly and innumerable adversaries in the briefest of seconds be poleaxed to the deck, there was never any question in my mind that here was, in spite of his well behaved diplomatic retiring nature, one of the world’s all time best light heavyweights. And even now these considerable years later I can still feel the wind over my shoulder as the whoosh of his straight right fist rent the air like a thundering freight train to put manners upon some nearby vulgarian.

  Perhaps because of this Ryan himself has become one of the strangest characters Dublin has ever found in its bosom. As host and friend to an astonishing array and cross section of men, including princes, criminals, revolutionaries and movie stars. For Ryan was forever in Dublin’s midst. As an occasional surveying visitor to one of his mother’s many shops. Or as proprietor of the Bailey restaurant and pub. Or as friend and comforter to both sides in libel actions, these so often erupting from the endlessly circulating letters and slanderous reporting of the greatest series of soap operas ever to run concurrently in the history of mankind. And as a dedicated Irish nationalist and patriot, Ryan sailed the most treacherous of these bohemian seas with the same skill he used as a mariner when navigating his yacht around the unpredictable and hostile waters of this island. Ryan survived it all. And without, as few of his contemporaries avoided doing, ever, even semi permanently, leaving these shores.

  But alas, I suppose, with stories retold and in their telling added to and embellished, it’s not surprising I might find, on a minor point or two, that my memory does not quite jibe with his. And I must say that I have never known Gainor Stephen Crist ever to despoil an alcoholic beverage, or to enter, sit down or drink a cup of coffee in a Dublin coffee house. Yet here it is in black and white, in Remembering How We Stood, and perhaps it’s true, the unbelievable. Also that Crist set elaborate traps for comely females. And I reel back in surprise. And maybe that’s true, too. But what I do remember is that Crist, whose compassion for and loyalty to women were a saintly obsession, was always pursued by them and himself stepped into many an elaborate ensnarement. Ah but what matter. There’s plenty of time later for disputing facts if a little bit of fiction has you enthralled with the truth of entertainment said for the time being for your listening pleasure. And that is how John Ryan has always told his tales.

  Now as one reads his words, dressed in their wonderful finery of irony, the world he speaks of reblossoms to be back again awhile. To see, feel and smell that Dublin of that day. Drawn from his encyclopaedic knowledge of the streets he loved and daily lived in. His erudition always used to entertain but never to impress. His savouring of language, rolled about on the tongue, tasted for its vintage and measuredly poured out into waiting ears. His words sounding with the same deft intimate solemnity which he himself uses when with a gently perceptible signal he orders a drink at a bar. Among the begrudgers, he is the least begrudging of men. And even oft accused of lacking malice in a city so noted for such. Indeed it was unknown for him to take a friend’s name in vain in a Dublin where no man’s name was sacred. But there could always be his nod of the head and his wry dry chuckle. Which would tell you as much as any oath of condemnation shouted from the roof tops.

  In a masterpiece of reminiscence, he gives a touching tolerant account of Brendan Behan, under whose laughing vaudevillian behaviour lurked much hidden haunted suffering and whose nightmarish soul blazed its brief blasphemy in Dublin. And always between the lines of John Ryan’s words, the ghosts abound, sorrow and sadness pervade. His words ‘It was a bleak February in a bad year’ might be, with their timeless profundity, another sub title for this book. But bleak Februaries or bad years, Ryan was always there alertly listening. To the nonsense spouting and the great bards thundering their daily complaint while all present were existentially hoping there would be no delay in the buying of another round.

  We can now, before our own time comes, pick over dead men’s bones with our own silver plated utensils. Sentimentally to live again in this city as it does in this book. Where the graves of the departed dead are never visited because they still live alive on our lips. If nothing else John Ryan must be said to be your true Dubliner, a man of humanity and kindness. Who will be attentive to your sorrows long after they are spoken. And if this city were ever thought to have had a king, he is and was John Ryan. Who was always one of its princes. And in the years ahead, he, who has for so many others provided memorials, is one of the very few who deserves one himself. And with the epitaph I once heard said of him.

  Ah you’d always

  Feel kind of safe

  In his presence

  1987

  Review of John de St Jorre’s The Good Ship Venus

  As this work reveals many previously secret facts which affected one’s own life and death existence for many years, I suppose one should be conscious to show restraint in one’s utter fascination in reading John de St Jorre’s The Good Ship Venus: The Erotic Voyage of The Olympia Press, Paris, which is the history of this pornography publishing enterprise and its founder, Maurice Girodias, who became one of one’s greatest of lifetime enemies. And I also wonder who else will be equally fascinated to have disclosed the background workings of the supplier of erotic writings to those many bookshops of Soho who catered for furtive browsers in mackintoshes where these Paris Olympia Press green coloured tomes were for sale under the counter.

  Maurice Girodias was the first publisher of The Ginger Man and Lolita and also works such as The Sexual Life of Robinson Crusoe, The Whip Angels and White Thighs, produced by an assorted pseudonymous team of pornographers. But lurking as well in the background of The Olympia Press and responsible for some of its more sophisticated tomes were some considerably distinguished literary figures, such as Apollinaire, Beckett, Burroughs, Miller, Durrell and the poet Christopher Logue, who when he heard I was writing The History of the Ginger Man, and my own account of dealings with The Olympia Press and in knowing first hand that I had much to complain about, said concerning Maurice Girodias, ‘Mike you must treat him gently. Don’t be too harsh on him.’ And it was the sombrely sad but fond tone of Logue’s voice which said it all about this man. And John de St Jorre’s marv
ellously vivid biography and history says all the rest.

  The Good Ship Venus gives a captivatingly readable and comprehensive account of what now must be the world’s most famed publishing house. De St Jorre tells of Girodias’s father, Jack Kahane, who in 1932 founded and ran the Obelisk Press, the first publisher of Henry Miller. Girodias changing his name from Kahane to his mother’s surname continued the tradition of publishing the exotic and erotic when founding The Olympia Press in 1953, publishing commissioned pornography which he claimed subsidized more serious work likely to be prosecuted and banned. But ironically it was from publishing the latter work that The Olympia Press and its publisher gathered praise, fame and profit.

  However, as yours truly knows well in litigation over The Ginger Man, Girodias invariably made an enemy of his authors, not paying royalties and selling rights behind their backs and claiming editorial influence in the writing of these famed works while attempting to denigrate the author’s other work he had not published. But justice intervened. For it seems that as he planned to rat he was also being ratted upon, by even bigger smarter rats. And but for the two or three books which brought world fame to both himself and the other works he published, Girodias would have died, as he did in penury, but also in well deserved pornographer’s obscurity.

  Ah but lo and behold, roguery would seem to have its posthumous rewards. Judging by his recent publicity Maurice Girodias may now possibly end up being the most memorably incredible publishing figure of all time. And as Christopher Logue asked me to be not unkind to his memory I may have failed a little in this, but not a most fair minded John de St Jorre. Whose marvellously aristocratic name Girodias would surely have commandeered as a pseudonym for one of his dirty books. And for anyone interested in writing and publishing, The Good Ship Venus is a marvellous traveller to take with you as a companion. For here is work to fulfil Logue’s request and whose charm is to be found in John de St Jorre’s words, which I quote concerning the exotic voyage of The Olympia Press, and what such voyage symbolized.

  The story of the last great flowering of Paris as a crucible for creative expatriate talent, when words had power and everything was possible. When it took bravery to go into literary battle.

  My own battle with The Olympia Press lasted twenty one years and ended up with my becoming owner of this Press which Girodias describes from his grave as a ‘mythical entity’ knowing I bought it, so forgive me if I now make it seem too full of profit and glory. But why not, I may plan to sell it.

  1994

  A Voyage to the Swiftian City – an Introduction to Gulliver’s Travels

  Even now, be it winter or summer in Dublin, as the weather moves from the west, the ancient toll of its church bells and the squawk and squeal of its seagulls still echo back and forth under its morning pearl grey heavens and its evening blue pink tinted skies. The River Liffey which divides Dublin north and south remains flowing brownly by beneath the Ha’penny Bridge under which the salmon lurk darkly in the water. On the bleak pavements still sit here and there the begrimed faces of this city’s faithfully poor with hand and hat held out begging. And by dint of destiny, done with an ancient dignity (for civility is all in this unique city), the chancers and cads still abound just as they did these hundreds of years past, when Jonathan Swift’s pen lampooned the human condition.

  This erudite gentleman resided in Dublin when its dead babies were often enough to be seen floating in the River Liffey’s waters out to sea. And even as one of the major cities of Europe, its slums were reputed to rival those of Naples. Its tenement streets remained little changed up until the end of the Second World War, and there was still very little in these poverty stricken districts to be seen of pleasure, and much more of deprivation, disease and death. Escape was the tavern and entertainment was but to listen to the connivers with their conundrums, who suffering the same woes and telling and hearing stories of others’ despairs, became anaesthetized over their vessels of grog. However, in your better places, there were your intellectuals and wits, each of them cautiously arriving among the assembled, hoping not to be snubbed and armed with their own words available to assail and parry the ridicule always ready to be administered by the company present. Even with Ireland having since Swift’s day entered the modern world and undergoing two great revolutions in the past fifty years, and ridding itself of its social sores, much of the old Dublin is still there, and nothing changed in the Irish character.

  Swift’s satire has, by its own duration and recognition in the rest of the world, become sacred, but in the country where he spent most of his life, his words arising out of Ireland’s writhing bowels of begrudgement, still arouse a bemused ire and awe, and his causticity of thought has remained in this country’s strange conscience. His bones and epitaph anciently inciting rebellion to oppression and inspiring Ireland, a land long shackled in its own repression and held in another’s subjugation, to achieve its sovereignty. But in another way the native Irish, finally becoming confident of their own destiny, and to whom Swift proposed that you can cook, boil, fry and eat babies, he has been looked upon with less than endearment until now. For the nation has at last come to cease censoring and instead to celebrate its exiled authors. And awakened, too, to the attractiveness Swift has proved to have for tourists who presently pour in their hordes into St Patrick’s Cathedral where they tread, largely indifferent, upon this brilliant satirist’s bones resting under its cold floor.

  This present edition of Gulliver’s Travels makes for me a poignant reminder of my now long association with Ireland and Dublin. I never entered St Patrick’s Cathedral till this recent day, but I a thousand times patrolled the byways which its steeple surveyed. Following other authors in their footsteps through its dear dirty, shabby streets, so long unloved but which also made this city a never forgotten place. And perhaps more ghosts such as Swift’s roam Baile Atha Cliath than any other conurbation on earth, where its inmates carried as they did their dreams which, daily dismembered, left their souls adrift on its sea of despair. But even so those many who, tail between their legs, retreated, spending years away in foreign parts, always dreamt of return, and in doing so found that their only satisfaction was to be back.

  My own arrival in Dublin came when Ireland had been frozen, isolated by the years of the Second World War, with most of its teeming tenements much as they must have been in Swift’s time. In my sometimes nightly winter strolls through these slum streets, the front elevations of these houses were a mosaic of poverty, windows shattered and patched like missing eyes. By the cold evening’s darkness, the red glow of a votive light to the Virgin Blessed or to Jesus Christ wearing his crown of thorns was the only sign of life to be seen. And passing the long terraces of Georgian mansions, their doorless entrances to the once sumptuous hallways opening to the winds and rain, rats scuttled across debris strewn floors. And descending the steps of one of these houses, one might confront a white coffin of a child borne aloft on someone’s shoulders. Such scenes of sorrow in Swift’s time must have provoked his sense of injustice cruel and omnipresent and aroused the scatological writings of this monumentally satiric man.

  As one progresses towards the River Liffey from St Patrick’s Cathedral and down the grim slope, as it was then, of Winetavern Street, one reaches the ancient hostelry of the Brazen Head, Dublin’s oldest inn. It would have been one of the few such places in existence in Swift’s time and one to which one can imagine someone of Swift’s curious mind going to find in it a redoubt of meditation and solitariness near the river, as it was to Sebastian Dangerfield quaffing bottles of stout who made his way there, as was reflected in The Ginger Man.

  O the Winetavern Street

  Is the silliest

  Of the streets full of fury

  O the very, very best

  For this moo from Missouri

  But there was an underlying humanity and camaraderie to the discomfort and harsh reality of the wretched poverty in Dublin which helped its surviving souls endure and in wh
om it bred a buoyant defiance to the grimness of its tenements choked by a dozen bodies alive to a room, with malnutrition and tuberculosis providing an ever present death. I learned of such from two of my contemporaries, Ernest Gebler* and Brendan Behan, both writers who knew this world intimately. And of the defiance found in the mouths and minds making words in the pubs, where flowed the thick and sweet ‘red biddy’, a drink that could stupefy the brain to the verge of insanity, or excite it to the extreme of attempting insults in their own homemade language. And if you did so inebriate yourself beyond soundness of mind onwards to death, no better place existed for mourners to mourn or to witness the solemn beauty of your remains tugged by teams of plumed black horses and followed by gleaming broughams bearing the bereaved. And if there were to be seen happy faces galore, be assured no sympathy or commiseration was lacking as they trundled to take your corpse to its final resting place, a glass or two of grog on the way, a ritual unchanged since Swift’s day.

  But rotund of cheeks, life for Swift would have been vastly different from the hollow faced, cowed and thwarted sea of Catholic poor and should he so choose, he could keep far distant from the lower orders of doubly shrewd connivers, twisters and shysters. For as a member of the dominating Protestant Church he would be among those who habitually dined at the great tables in the great mansions of Dublin, where music could be heard as the candles glowed and crinoline swirled and servants ministrated, and the beeves came rare upon their silver platters while crystal goblets of the best grog were put to lips. And there were many who, aware of the hordes of the hungry abroad throughout the city, would take such knowledge as merely an incitement to the appetite.