Poet, Madman, Scoundrel

by David Slattery

  Barnacle married Joyce in London in July 1931. This came as a shock to her virtuous mother, Annie Barnacle, who had been led to believe that they were already married. It was embarrassing for her to find out through the media that they hadn’t been. Whatever about Joyce’s happiness, Barnacle seemed to have been happy in Paris with Joyce when he had become successful and recognised. I assume marriage to Joyce was measurably better than washing and ironing piles of laundry.

  Barnacle never read Ulysses, which makes her typical of most Irish people. Critics hold this against her, which is unfair. Between disparaging his writing, making him jealous, the poor standards in ironing and the constant arguments, she produced in him creativity born of anxiety and misery that inspired his writing. What more could he have wanted?

  Shot of Love

  In Irish romantic history love and violence often go together like a horse and carriage full of armed servants. Violent love is the perfect inspiration for poetry. George Fitzgerald (c.1746–1786) was both Ireland’s leading duelist, with over twelve recorded duels, and a writer of one poem, “The Riddle” (but it is a long one). He had the right attributes for dueling – a short temper combined with being a womaniser. While stationed with the army in Galway, he was ready to quarrel over the slightest insult, real or, the even better kind, imagined.

  He left the army to marry Jane Connolly, against her brother’s wishes of course. They moved to Paris to lead decadent lives funded by borrowings because credit was scarce in Galway, and decadence was not yet in vogue in the West of Ireland. He had the brilliant business idea of killing one of his creditors in a duel. However, his opponent was a better shot so Fitzgerald had to run from the dueling field. In London in 1773, Fitzgerald tried to redeem his reputation as an honourable scoundrel by challenging Captain John Scawen to a duel. Scawen chose pistols but, as Fitzgerald already had had unhappy experiences with pistols, he wanted to use sabers. An unofficial fight ensued between the pair over which weapons they would use in their official conflict. The duel finally got under way with pistols. When Fitzgerald missed with his shot, he was obliged to throw himself on his knees and beg for mercy, which is preferable for the professional scoundrel to getting a bullet through the skull.

  In 1776 Fitzgerald returned to Ireland to live off his father. While the father was campaigning for a seat in Parliament, the son shot and killed a popular member of the constituency in a duel in Ballinrobe, thereby alienating many of the voters. He then fought fellow scoundrel (but non-poetry-writing) “Buck” English with swords in St Stephen’s Green in Dublin. Fitzgerald had to be rescued by his seconds when English skewered him several times with his sword. When his father became less enthusiastic about maintaining his son’s dissolute lifestyle, Fitzgerald chained him to his bed and forced him to support him. His brother Charles sued over his treatment of their father, and was awarded £500, which probably came out of the old man’s funds. Fitzgerald was sentenced to two years in gaol. He escaped and took his father hostage. I admit that he had a limited imagination for a potential poet. He was recaptured and eventually released early for good behaviour.

  In 1782 he was back in funds, allowing him to pursue his poetic ambitions. He had married a wealthy heiress after his wife agreeably died in 1779. He anonymously published his magnum opus, “The Riddle”.118 He then had a final duel against animal rights activist and lawyer “Humanity Dick” Martin (1754–1834).119 The only case Humanity Dick ever took was to prosecute Fitzgerald when he shot the wolfhound of Lord Altamount. When Fitzgerald was convicted, he challenged Humanity Dick to a duel to get revenge against justice. By now Fitzgerald had become skeptical about his abilities with sabers, so the two fought with pistols. Humanity Dick wounded Fitzgerald twice; he himself was wounded once.

  Fitzgerald murdered an attorney in 1786, an act that apparently was against the law. But we should remember that attorneys were actually writing the laws so were bound to look after their own interests. Fitzgerald was imprisoned but the gaol was attacked by a surprisingly large mob of friends of the dead attorney, who were probably other attorneys. Fitzgerald was beaten to a pulp. However, he survived long enough to be hanged, quartered and beheaded at Castlebar, Co. Mayo.

  You Don’t Have to Be Mad . . .

  His many critics, including the influential later writers William Makepeace Thackeray and Thomas Babington Macaulay, thought Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) was insane. Seemingly, only a madman could have written Gulliver’s Travels. However, we now know that he suffered from the then unrecognised form of labyrinthine vertigo known as Ménière’s disease.

  Swift was a conservative who wrote radical books without being radical himself. In this he was like the creator of Dracula, Abraham Stoker (1847–1912), who wrote about a vampire without being one himself, though he had first-hand experience of bloodsuckers, having trained as a barrister in 1890. Stoker had been a clerk. He wrote The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, in which some horror fans have seen a foreshadowing of some of the means used to defeat Dracula in his best-known book.

  Swift was born in Dublin. There is mystery around his parentage but we do know that his mother left him in Ireland with an uncle, Godwin Swift, when he was three. He studied at Kilkenny School, and then entered Trinners when he was fourteen. He graduated with a BA “by special grace”, which we now call “passing by compensation”, so we know that he didn’t impress his examiners. But in 1702, a mere twenty years later, he took a degree of Doctor of Divinity.

  Swift proposed to Jane Waring, who turned him down because he wasn’t rich enough for her. Despairing of ever having the resources to marry, he settled for having a girlfriend, Esther Johnson, known to history as Stella.

  Swift worked as a personal secretary, and was ordained while completing his studies. He nearly always published anonymously. His first satire, Tale of a Tub, appeared in 1704. After a period in Parliament in London, he became a member of the Scriblerus Club, which was dedicated to the satirical arts. While in London, he corresponded daily with Stella in Dublin. He eventually returned to Stella when he became dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin in 1714, a post that turned out to be a huge disappointment to him.

  Perhaps to cheer him up, Dublin Corporation made Swift a freeman of the city as a reward for his political pamphleteering. In 1726 Gulliver’s Travels – Travels into Several Nations of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver was published. It was an instant success all over Europe. However, Stella died in 1728, dampening his new happiness because, unusually for the times, he lived with Stella for love rather than money.

  In 1729 he wrote the last of his political pamphlets, on the Irish human economy, which was a savage attack on administrative failures. He then wrote satirical poetry about the potential reaction of the public to hearing of his death. He was declared to be of unsound mind but not insane because he had aphasia, which is the intermittent loss of the ability to speak or understand speech. Besides, he hadn’t killed anyone, which was the principal diagnostic criterion for insanity at that time.

  Having endured so much public speculation about his sanity, he was willing to do something to help the actually insane. In his will Swift left £12,000 for the establishment of a “lunatic asylum”, St Patrick’s Hospital, which opened for business in 1746, the year following his death.

  Like Swift, Charles Robert Maturin (1780–1824) was both a Protestant clergyman and a writer. Maturin was obsessed from youth with religiously motivated torture, which inspired his gothic horror stories. However, no one doubted his sanity. He went to Trinners in 1795, which was a time of exciting political tension in the college caused by the United Irishmen who were on campus.120 His 1808 novel, The Wild Irish Boy, denounced the union with Britain, and his 1812 work, The Milesian Chief, is ambivalent towards the United Irishmen. However, ambivalence at that time was practically the equivalent of hysterical support.

  He really wanted to be an actor rather than either a writer or a clergyman. B
ut he was persuaded that acting and giving sermons were closely related occupations, so he entered the Church instead of the theatre in 1803. He rightly neglected his parish duties to concentrate on his writing.

  He married the extraordinarily beautiful Henrietta Kingsbury in 1803. He was tremendously proud of both her looks and her musical accomplishments. However, their poverty and his frequent public insistence that she wear even more make-up at parties were the principal marital strains. The make-up issue was his second obsession after religious torture. But his marital life was happy enough to cause him to denounce clerical celibacy and recommend early marriage to everyone. His son Basil William Maturin (1847–1915) ignored this advice. Basil became a celibate Catholic priest and a writer, sadly not of gothic horror like his father but on spiritualism and self-discipline.

  On those few occasions when he did turn up for work and preach from the pulpit, Charles Maturin was interested in promoting moral conformity. However, in his novels he was fascinated by moral deviance. He wrote the gothic novel The Family of Montorio, or, The Fatal Revenge, which is set in Italy in 1807. He published under the pen name Denis Jasper Murphy to avoid shocking his parishioners.

  Maturin, along with his wife and children, lived off his father. But that was an appropriate financial strategy for the struggling gothic author of that time, or any time. However, the father became impoverished after being falsely accused of embezzlement, so he had, in turn, to try to live off his son. But while this financial inversion was underway, Maturin guaranteed a huge loan for his brother, who promptly defaulted, as you do when a family member helps you out, leaving him with a massive liability. In response, Maturin opened a school that specialised in tutoring students for entry to Trinners, from which he occasionally made money.

  When his play Bertram became a hit, Maturin revealed his true identity and travelled to London for the adulation. However, the money was absorbed by his debts and the necessary extravagances typical of the poverty-stricken author who suddenly makes good. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a famously scathing review of the play, so that was that.

  Having come out of the closet as the clerical author of a semi-sympathetic portrayal of an adulterous anti-hero in Bertram, he added to his reputation as a suspect cleric by satirising evangelicals in his next work, Women; or, Pour Et Contre, in 1818. But then he immediately brought out a book of sermons to offset the growing risk of being sacked. The Church authorities were understandably confused.

  His next two novels and a play were not positively received. However, his novel Melmont the Wanderer became famous in 1820. The hero, Melmont, sells himself to the devil in return for 150 years of life, and can only be redeemed by persuading someone else to take up the bargain in his place. When Maturin’s critics accused him of being the devil they churlishly drew the conclusion that, as the devil, he was not deserving of promotion within the church. Maturin protested that these were only stories, but his clerical colleagues didn’t believe him and thought that he had written himself into the book in the form of the devil. He argued that he was interested in writing about and exploring evil without being so. His fellow clergymen didn’t understand any such distinction between life and art.

  However, many of his fans still see him as a Faustian figure secretly enthralled by the devil. A recurring theme in his work is the disturbing attraction of a man to another man who turns out to be a woman in disguise. This may be evidence that he was a suppressed homosexual heterosexual. Another constant theme is night fears and how to resist them. We haven’t suffered from these kinds of fears since the invention of the light bulb, so it is difficult for the contemporary reader to relate to this important theme in his work. In general, electricity has ruined the gothic genre.

  The money Maturin made from his work did nothing to help his finances because he was so deeply in debt. He died from an overdose of laudanum, which sadly is no longer available over the counter at the apothecary. But despite the manner of his leaving it, and the suspicions of his fellow clerics that he was Beelzebub, Maturin’s literary life was not the best model of dissolution. Others achieved higher standards of moral decay.

  For example, James Clarence Mangan (1803–1849) practically singlehandedly invented the model of the dissipated Irish nationalist poet. His family ran a grocery shop on Fishamble St in Dublin but property speculation wiped them out. Property speculation, a rare example of a historical constant in Irish history, remains an ineluctable cause of ruin. If you don’t lose your shirt in chancery121 you could try losing it on property.

  Following his family’s ruin, Mangan managed to attend school but only with the help of his mother’s relations. In 1818 he became an apprentice scrivener.122 In the same year he adopted the name Clarence as his nom de plume, under which he published his first verse.

  Mangan had a distinctive appearance. He dressed in a blue cloak in summer and winter, and a fantastically shaped hat. He had long golden unkempt hair framing a pale face – the de rigueur style for the romantic poet – and blue eyes sometimes hidden under green goggles. When it rained he carried two umbrellas. He was extremely shy and reclusive. He proposed marriage once to Margaret Stackpoole in 1834. She said no, and so ended his interest in all women.

  In all, Mangan wrote nearly 1,000 poems. His reputation rests on twenty-two separate articles, Anthologia Germanica, that were translations from the German romantic poets. These were accompanied by witty prose commentaries. He was self-taught in German, though he had never visited Germany and never met a German. In fact, he never got further than Meath. He also published a series of oriental “translations” called Literae Orientales, which he purported to be from Persian, Turkish and Coptic verse. But these were either originals that he composed himself or loose adaptations of actual German poems. He described this technique as the “antithesis of plagiarism”, that is, original work that he claimed to belong to someone else. He anti-plagiarised Serbian, Polish, Chinese, Hindostanee, Chippewawian and Tartarian compositions. He used these supposed translations of both real and unreal peoples to comment on Irish history and identity. Who would have thought that the Tartarians were obsessed with Irish affairs?

  Mangan became a legal copyist in 1826. This was employment that understandably drove him to excessive drinking. While drinking on the job, he contributed pieces to a wide range of periodicals. He wrote his most substantial work for the Dublin University Magazine. Heroically, his friends got him a job as a copyist at the Ordnance Survey Office from 1838 to 1841 when even they couldn’t justify his relevance to mapping. He wasn’t competent in Irish so he confined himself to giving poetic translations to the literal translations from Irish into English that were handed to him. When that didn’t suffice he made up whatever he couldn’t understand to fill in the gaps. His friends were obliged to move him from the Ordnance Survey Office to a job cataloguing books in Trinners library, where he spent his time reading.

  While at Trinners, he wrote depressingly political poems and inventive verse satires under titles such as “To the Ingleezee Khafir Calling Himself Djaun Bool Djenkinzun”. He had a dysfunctional younger brother who depended on him, and who lived with Mangan whenever he had somewhere to live himself. We can only imagine what this brother was like to be classed as dysfunctional by Mangan. Eventually, Mangan became homeless, sick, depressed and alcoholic, all of which he readily admitted to. But he denied being an opium addict. He was actually fired from Trinners library in 1846. He was reduced to writing poems for immediate payment, perhaps the lowest occupation imaginable. In 1849 he was found in a state of malnutrition and admitted to Meath Hospital. There he wrote his last poems. His impatient nurse, who may have been moonlighting as a literary critic, burned these. When he died after a week under her care, three people attended his funeral. Such obscurity is real proof of his genius.

  Like many after him, his death was a massive career move. His life was easily rendered into that of a romantic nationalist martyr. Yeat
s described him as “our one poet raised to the first rank by intensity”.

  Dublin-born Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873) started his professional life as a lawyer but began writing novels in 1845. His wife, Susan Bennett, suffered intense depression and a loss of faith before she died. She dreamed of her father’s ghost inviting her to join him in the family vault, which she promptly did. Such a spouse can be an inspiration for the horror writer. These macabre troubles had a role in inspiring his lesbian vampire story, Carmilla, which was made into the film The Vampire Lovers in 1970, after lesbians had been officially invented.

  Le Fanu wrote sixteen novels in the final ten years of his life. He wrote horror and detective novels, including the first-ever novel with a plot based in plastic surgery, Checkmate, in 1871. His reputation, however, is based on his ghost stories. His character Dr Martin Hesselius, from the 1872 collection In a Glass Darkly, is the model for Abraham Stoker’s Van Helsing character in Dracula.

  Le Fanu’s son became his publicity agent after his death. To increase his father’s gothic credentials, he claimed that Le Fanu had become a recluse. “Reclusing” was an essential career move for the horror writer. His son did such a good job in promoting his father that, even today, Le Fanu is highly regarded amongst fans of gothic literature and ghost stories.

  But Irish fathers and sons don’t always support each other like the Le Fanus. Writer and professional liar Thomas Reid’s (1818–1883) father wanted his son to follow him into the Church, but Reid had other plans. He emigrated to America in 1839 to escape his narrow spiritual environment. First, he was a corn factor, or dealer, in New York but left because he refused to whip slaves. He then worked as a teacher, a clerk and an Indian fighter, on the basis that shooting Indians was more in keeping with his literary integrity than hitting slaves. He met the American gothic writer Edgar Allen Poe, and they became close friends. Poe, who was impressed by Reid’s brilliant storytelling, said of him that he was a “colossal but most picturesque liar”.