Patrick Kavanagh, a Biography

by Antoinette Quinn

  20

  THE CUT WORM

  (1954–1955)

  The cut worm forgives the plough.

  (William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)

  By late 1954, Kavanagh was hounding John A. Costello who had promised to find him some employment. That Christmas he sent him his as yet unpublished poem ‘From a Prelude’ (later ‘Prelude’). The Taoiseach’s answering letter, reassuring the poet that he had not forgotten his promise of assistance, was accompanied by a Christmas card with the gracious message:

  Dear Patrick Kavanagh,

  I wish I could acknowledge more gracefully and more substantially the grace and substance of ‘From a Prelude’.

  Ironically, given that its first audience was the most powerful man in the State, ‘Prelude’ concludes:

  Walk on serenely, do not mind

  That Promised Land you thought to find

  Where the worldly-wise and rich take over

  The mundane problems of the lover.

  Ignore Power’s schismatic sect,

  Lovers alone lovers protect.

  The difficulty of reconciling Kavanagh’s person and his poetry, his often loutish behaviour and the lyrical poise of his printed lines, was remarked on by many of his contemporaries. A gulf between his poetic sentiments and his personal actions is evident in the sending of the above lines to the Taoiseach as part of a strategy of coaxing or coercing him into providing the writer with a livelihood.

  ‘Prelude’, one of his finest poems, recalls ‘Auditors In’ in the intimacy of its self-analysis, its flexible command of a variety of tones and moods, its deployment of a vernacular that modulates easily from demotic to literary allusion. Here again the poet abjures satire, and in the final celebratory section the lines sing out confidently, counterpointed by playful phrasing, revamped clichés, unexpected rhymes, a poetry that verges on doggerel yet ‘soars in summer air’.

  The Irish Times paid him six guineas when ‘From a Prelude’ was published there on 12 February, but he still had a longer-term investment in mind. Four days later he wrote to jog the Taoiseach’s memory; it was time to acknowledge that Christmas gift ‘substantially’. His economic position had now ‘reached the impossible’, he wrote, and he was considering emigrating. In this extremity he was turning to ‘the man who of all people in Ireland probably’ knew him ‘most intimately’. He suggested three possible ways in which the Taoiseach could help. One was to endorse his application for an Arts Council grant; the second was to find him employment on the news staff of Radio Éireann; the third was to create an opening for him in the publicity division of Aer Lingus.

  Costello immediately sent a handwritten reply, sympathetic and helpful in tenor and tone. He had approached Dr Tierney, President of University College Dublin, with a view to creating a lectureship for the poet. Tierney had countered with the suggestion that Kavanagh be appointed as a travelling lecturer touring the Irish countryside, a project which the Arts Council could be asked to fund. The suggestion recalls the satiric jibe in ‘Irish Stew’ about the state-sponsored art emissary who would

  . . . spread in Naas and Clonakilty

  News of Gigli and R. M. Rilke . . .

  Costello promised that he would enquire into the feasibility of Tierney’s suggestion and, if it failed, try something else.

  Over the coming months Costello continued to pursue a two-pronged approach, involving both Tierney and the Arts Council in negotiations. Tierney was persuaded to have Kavanagh hired as a part-time lecturer by the university’s Board of Extra-Mural Studies; his duties might include giving a course of evening lectures if the poet so wished, but essentially the post was a sinecure. The Arts Council later agreed to commission a pamphlet, which could be based on the material from a course of lectures, for its series of booklets on the arts in Ireland. The burden of financially supporting Kavanagh was thus divided between two institutions, with the university paying the lion’s share and the Arts Council providing a financial injection in the form of a £100 advance on the commissioned pamphlet. The poet’s serious illness in March lent considerable urgency to the negotiations with UCD and no doubt contributed to their successful conclusion.

  That he was suffering from lung cancer came as a shock to Kavanagh himself and to others, though, given his lifestyle, it was not altogether unexpected. A heavy smoker since his early twenties, he had recently been skimping on food and drinking excessively; he had also been under terrible stress from the court case, but most of all from his continued poverty and the failure of all his efforts to obtain gainful employment. By 1954, coughing, hawking and spitting had become inseparable from his public image. In February 1955 he was so troubled by catarrh that he asked Dr Brendan O’Brien to examine his sinuses. O’Brien sent him to have his lungs X-rayed.1

  The X-ray revealed a shadow on the left lung, possibly TB, possibly a carcinoma, and an appointment was made for a bronchoscopy in the Rialto Hospital on the morning of Saturday, 26 February. The evening before, some of his friends, including John Ryan and Dinny Dwyer, gathered at his apartment for a late night boozing session to cheer him up. Next morning Patrick O’Connor collected the hung-over poet as arranged and drove him to the hospital. A first glance at the test result indicated that there was a problem with the left lung, possibly a tumour, but the full result would not be known until after the weekend. He would have to go into hospital immediately for observation and further diagnosis.

  Kavanagh was very pessimistic about the outcome and for the next few days he lived like a condemned man. Over the weekend he distracted himself as best he could, dining with the O’Connors on Saturday evening and lunching with Joan and Eoin Ryan on Sunday. On Sunday evening he was a guest speaker at a Bray Literary and Debating Society symposium on the cinema and he not only kept this engagement but appeared in top form. Called to order for repeatedly interrupting other speakers, he walked out in protest, accompanied by his brother who, on learning of his illness, had come over from London. The doctor wanted him in hospital on Monday evening, but he postponed going in until Tuesday; he would like to have postponed it another day so that he could attend the Leopardstown Races by way of a last fling. He spent Monday socialising in the pubs, sobering up for long enough to make his will, a home-made document which he took down to Searson’s pub to have witnessed. This resulted in further drinking and the purchase of supplies for home consumption.

  Next morning he made some final preparations. The Behan episode at the libel trial was evidently still preying on his mind and he wrote down his version of events. To make amends for his rather grouchy treatment of Peter over the past few days and show that he really appreciated his coming over to Dublin, he wrote a new stanza for the recently published ‘Prelude’, recalling affectionate memories of kicking a ragball with his kid brother. He had asked Sheila O’Grady to visit him and, though she had flu, she left her sick bed to spend an hour with him. After lunch in Bewley’s of Grafton Street and a trip to the confessional in the Carmelite church in Clarendon Street he came back to No. 62 and packed his scattered typescripts in a suitcase. This he brought to Patrick and Marthe O’Connor’s apartment at 57 Fitzwilliam Square for safekeeping and, as arranged, Patrick drove him to the Rialto Hospital where he was given a bed in Ward 4.

  Since he was a noted poet and personality and known to be rather disruptive on occasion, the matron arrived to greet her new patient and attempt to coax him into being well behaved. She reiterated the hospital rules which he had refused to abide by for the ward sister. He continued to object to the fixed visiting hours and a compromise was arrived at. The matron saw that behind his belligerence he was jumpy and frightened, ready to bolt, and she calmed him. Apart from his preference for having visitors outside prescribed times, he was to prove a model patient, submissive and law-abiding.

  The bronchoscopy results proved inconclusive and there was still some hope that he had TB rather than cancer. (TB was no longer feared as a killer disease in 1955; the recent census had shown
that the mortality rate from TB in Ireland was down to 0.78 per cent of the population, the lowest figure ever recorded.) It was decided to administer penicillin for a few weeks and observe whether the shadow on his lung decreased in response.

  Three days into his hospital stay, on 4 March, the verdict in Kavanagh’s appeal was announced to a packed courtroom. The appeal had been allowed, with the judges split three-two on the verdict. Mr Justice Lavery, Mr Justice Kingsmill Moore and Mr Justice Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh were of the opinion that there should be a new trial; the Chief Justice, Mr Conor Maguire and Mr Justice Martin Maguire were in favour of dismissing the appeal. The costs of the appeal were awarded to Kavanagh with the costs of the original trial dependent on the outcome of the next. It was a welcome tonic for a very sick man.

  When the shadow on his lung had not decreased by late March, his specialist, Keith Shaw, decided that surgery was necessary. He told him that it would be an exploratory operation and gave him a weekend to decide. Kavanagh was apprehensive but, since further exploration was unavoidable if he was to have any chance of recovery, he signed the consent form and the operation went ahead on 31 March. His only stipulation was that the time be changed from 8 a.m., the hanging hour, to 9 a.m. Shaw found the cancer so advanced that he had to remove the entire left lung and one rib.

  Immediately after the operation Kavanagh was very poorly for a couple of weeks, but by the third weekend he was more cheerful. Years later he would look back on the two months he spent in the Rialto Hospital as among the happiest in his life. It was the happiness of feeling safe and secure. Once he had adapted to the hospital regimen, he liked the fixed routines. He was protected from all the financial anxieties that had harassed him in recent years, the unpaid bills, the endless cadging, the sometimes dishonest ruses he had resorted to in order to get by. He was delighted to find himself a star performer, the centre of attention. Friends flocked to see him, some of them beautiful women; bottles of whiskey stood on his locker. Mrs Burrows from the garden-level flat at No. 62 brought him two red roses, all she could afford. His neighbour Elinor O’Brien was a daily caller. Everyone was loving and caring. He lapped up all the pampering. His main complaint was loss of appetite; he had no sense of taste. Keith Shaw assured him that he would soon recover it; meantime he tried to eat to build up his strength.

  During these weeks he received several distinguished visitors, among them Archbishop McQuaid, the Taoiseach, and the President of University College Dublin, Dr Tierney. The two last came separately, though the main purpose of both their visits was to allay the invalid’s financial anxieties. Finding Kavanagh so pitifully weak and ill may have resolved Tierney to clinch the UCD deal. He was put on the university’s payroll with effect from 1 May at a salary of £400 p.a.

  One of Kavanagh’s finest sonnets, written the following year, a love poem to Ward 4 of the Rialto Hospital, begins:

  A year ago I fell in love with the functional ward

  Of a chest hospital: square cubicles in a row

  Plain concrete, wash basins — an art lover’s woe,

  Not counting how the fellow in the next bed snored.

  But nothing whatever is by love debarred,

  The common and banal her heat can know . . . 2

  Once again the discontinuity between the poet and the man was manifest in the poet’s rhapsodic insistence on love and cherishing and the actual petulant behaviour of the convalescent patient. It was evident that when he was discharged from hospital he would be far too ill to fend for himself for some time. The ever generous John Ryan offered to treat him to three or four weeks in the Merrion Nursing Home. It was an expensive nursing home, costing fourteen guineas a week, with a good reputation for nursing care, a pleasant garden and a lift. Situated in Herbert Street, near Baggot Street Bridge, it also had the advantage of being in Kavanagh’s ‘Pembrokeshire’. He did not like unfamiliar places. John Ryan made a flexible arrangement with the nursing home to have him admitted on whatever day he was discharged.

  Kavanagh demurred at this plan, however, and wanted Ryan to treat him to a week in the luxurious Royal Hibernian Hotel instead. He had become spoilt with all the fuss and attention during his long stay in hospital and his fantasies as to how he would spend his convalescence included going on a luxury cruise. A few weeks in a good nursing home would have been ideal at this juncture, but Ryan yielded to his wishes and booked him into the Royal Hibernian for a week from 21 April, the day he left hospital.

  Kavanagh, who was revelling in the luxury of hotel life, wanted to stay on longer. He thought that by trading a week in the Hibernian for a month in the nursing home Ryan was getting off too cheaply. Ryan, for his part, felt that he had done his bit; he could not afford to put him up at the highly expensive Hibernian indefinitely. They quarrelled when Ryan visited on 25 April and Kavanagh tried to manipulate his wealthy friend into feeling that he still owed him. The hotel management tactfully resolved the matter by saying that they were fully booked for the Spring Show from Sunday, 31 April. He had to be content to compromise on staying ten days and emotionally blackmailing Ryan into a recognition that further favours were expected and would be exacted in due course.3

  His family suggested that he move to his sister Annie’s home in Longford for his convalescence, but he strenuously resisted leaving Dublin and instead took himself to Mrs Burrows’ flat at No. 62 on the Sunday. It was a far cry from the stylish Royal Hibernian but as near as he could get to home. He was still too weak to walk about much: moving very slowly and stopping to rest every few minutes, and the stairs up to his own flat were too much for him. Much as she would have liked to, Mrs Burrows could not look after him even on a short-term basis. She took in lodgers to help make ends meet and his room was pre-let from Tuesday, 2 May. When no alternative accommodation presented itself, he reluctantly set out for Longford on Tuesday evening.

  Once installed with his sister Annie at 8 Church Street, Longford, he refused to make any effort to be sociable or even civil. He isolated himself by keeping to his room or, as he became more mobile, walking round the town on his own. His nephew, John Quinn, Lucy’s son, was also staying in the house at the time, but for all his vaunted love of children, Kavanagh paid no attention to him. John, now the Rev. J. Quinn, PP, recalls that Kavanagh came down the stairs from his room, went up the town, came back and went up the stairs again, without addressing a word to anyone in the household. He was in Longford against his will and he behaved as if Annie’s home were an open prison where he was serving time. To friends back in Dublin, such as Joan and Eoin Ryan, he sent a postcard of the town with the ironic greeting: ‘Wish you were here.’ In about a month, as soon as he was well enough to return to No. 62, he took off.

  The re-trial of the libel action had been listed for hearing as a jury action before Mr Justice Murnaghan on 23 May, during Kavanagh’s stay in Longford. However, his counsel, Sir John Esmonde, told the bench it had been settled and might be struck out. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed then or in the next day’s press. Kavanagh, too, was reticent about the settlement, but let it be understood that the defendants were unable to meet the costs and that there was nothing left over for him. He also told his brother that the Argus was ‘broke’ and ‘everyone lost costs’. In fact, an unposted letter to his solicitor, asking that the lawyers pare their costs a little so as to leave more money for him, reveals that the lawyers were paid and that he, too, received a lump sum. Such concealment of his assets was typical and, in this instance, poor-mouthing about the outcome of the case was also politic because, following on his recent illness, the flow of goodwill coming his way sometimes took the form of cash donations.

  The summer of 1955 was warm and sunny; July was one of the hottest on record, with temperatures of up to 80 degrees. In Dublin Kavanagh convalesced out of doors.4 Like hundreds of his fellow citizens he spent the afternoon lying on the grass in St Stephen’s Green, his favourite spot being near the Grafton Street entrance, from where he could observe the clock on
Roberts’ café. When four o’clock arrived he donned his panama and went for a coffee. There was a barmen’s strike that summer which lasted for five weeks and finished in the first week of August, but one of the side-effects of his illness was that he had temporarily lost his craving for alcohol. He no longer enjoyed a cigarettte either.

  The place most associated with Kavanagh’s convalescence, the place he chose to immortalise in verse, is neither Longford nor St Stephen’s Green, but the bank of the Grand Canal just to the west of Baggot Street Bridge. He stripped off his jacket, socks and shoes and lay there during that warm summer in what he described as ‘an ante-natal roll’ with a hand under his head, sometimes raising himself on an elbow to contemplate Leeson Street Bridge. He could be utterly idle for hours on end without any sense of guilt, and this he thought hastened his cure. The canal bank, with its dry wiry grass, was like ‘a little sample’ of the fields of Drumnagrella or Shancoduff.

  Two years later he would immortalise his canal convalescence in two celebratory sonnets. The first, ‘Canal Bank Walk’, despite its urban setting, abounds in rural images: leafy trees, green water and grass, breeze, bird and bird’s nest. The canal is here baptismal, ‘Pouring redemption’, offering the poet a fresh start, a second chance at youth and happiness and poetry. The hyphenated opening phrase, ‘Leafy-with-love’, establishes the mood of the poem, passionate, profuse, generous:

  Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal

  Pouring redemption for me, that I do

  The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,

  Grow with nature again as before I grew . . .

  Whereas ‘Canal Bank Walk’ looks forward to a reburgeoning of his poetic energies, its companion-piece, ‘Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin’, by contrast, evokes death and the hereafter, subjects that inevitably came to mind during his long illness. The sonnet focuses on his choice of a canal bank seat in lieu of a tombstone as his personal monument. The opening line