Oliver St. John Gogarty
Oliver Joseph St. John Gogarty was an Irish poet, author, otolaryngologist, athlete, politician, and conversationalist. He served as the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in James Joyce's novel Ulysses.
Life
Early life
Gogarty was born 17 August 1878 in Rutland Square, Dublin, the eldest child of Henry Gogarty, a well-to-do Dublin physician, and Margaret Gogarty, the daughter of a Galway mill owner. Three siblings were born later. Gogarty's father, himself the son of a medical doctor, had been educated at Trinity College and owned two fashionable homes in Dublin, which set the Gogartys apart from other Irish Catholic families at that time and allowed them access to the same social circles as the Protestant Ascendancy.Gogarty was sent by his father to the Christian Brothers' O'Connell School, which he happily attended, 1890–92. When his father died suddenly in 1891, his family then sent him to Mungret College, a boarding school near Limerick. He was unhappy in his new school, and the following year he transferred to Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, England, which he liked a little better, later referring to it as "a religious jail".
Gogarty returned to Ireland in 1896 and boarded at Clongowes Wood College while studying for examinations with the Royal University of Ireland. He was a talented athlete; in England, he had briefly played for the Preston North End FC Reserve, and while at Clongowes he played for the Bohemian FC. He also played on Clongowes's soccer and cricket elevens. His extracurricular interests, which also included cycling and drinking, prevented him from being an attentive student, and in 1898 he switched to the medical school at Trinity College, having failed eight of his ten examinations at the Royal.
University days
As one of Dublin's "medicos", Gogarty was known to be fond of public pranks and midnight carousing in "the Kips", Dublin's red-light district. He had a talent for humorous and bawdy verse, which quickly made the rounds through the city, and sometimes composed mnemonic lyrics to aid his medical studies. He also enjoyed a highly successful cycling career before being banned from the tracks in 1901 for bad language. Between 1898 and 1901 he rescued at least four people from drowning. He became interested in Irish nationalism after meeting Arthur Griffith in 1899, and contributed propaganda pieces to The United Irishman over subsequent years.A serious interest in poetry and literature also began to manifest itself during his years at Trinity. His witty conversation made him a favourite with the dons, particularly John Pentland Mahaffy and Robert Yelverton Tyrrell, and between 1901 and 1903 he won three successive Vice-Chancellor's prizes for verse. In 1900 he made the acquaintance of W. B. Yeats and of George Moore and began to frequent Dublin literary circles. He also formed close friendships with other up-and-coming young poets, such as Seamus O'Sullivan and James Joyce. In 1904 he spent two terms at Oxford to compete for the Newdigate Prize, but lost to G.K.A. Bell, the future Bishop of Chichester, who became a friend and frequent correspondent over the next few years.
Upon returning to Dublin in the summer of 1904, Gogarty made arrangements to rent the Martello Tower in Sandycove. The primary goal of this scheme, as described by Gogarty in a letter to G.K.A. Bell, was to "house the Bard", who was without money and required "a year in which to finish his novel". The two friends quarrelled in August, however, and Joyce either failed to move in or left shortly after doing so. Joyce briefly took up residence in the Tower the following month, together with Gogarty and his Oxford friend Samuel Chenevix Trench but left again after only six days. Forty years later in America, Gogarty attributed Joyce's abrupt departure to his and S.C. Trench's midnight antics with a loaded revolver. Joyce and Gogarty corresponded intermittently during the early years of Joyce's continental exile and occasionally planned meetings, but contemporaneous letters from Joyce to his brother reveal deep distrust of Gogarty's motives, and their friendship was never fully renewed. Gogarty made use of the Martello Tower during the following year as a writing retreat and party venue, and officially held the lease until 1925.
In 1904 and 1905 Gogarty published several short poems in the London publication The Venture and in John Eglinton's journal Dana. His name also appeared in print as the renegade priest Fr. Oliver Gogarty in George Moore's 1905 novel The Lake'', an occurrence which upset Gogarty's devout mother. In 1905 Gogarty became one of the founding members of Arthur Griffith's Sinn Féin, a non-violent political movement with a plan for Irish autonomy modelled after the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy.
Medical career and family
In August 1906, Gogarty married Martha Duane, a girl from a landowning Connemara family. Eager to establish himself with a profession, he passed his final medical examinations in June 1907, several months after the death of his mother. In July 1907 his first son, Oliver Duane Odysseus Gogarty was born, and in autumn of that year, Gogarty left for Vienna to finish the practical phase of his medical training. Owing in part to the influence of his mentor, Sir Robert Woods, Gogarty had decided to specialise in otolaryngology, and in Vienna, he studied under Ottokar Chiari, Markus Hajek, and Robert Bárány.Returning to Dublin in 1908, Gogarty secured a post at Richmond Hospital, and shortly afterwards purchased a house in Ely Place opposite George Moore. Three years later, he joined the staff of the Meath Hospital and remained there for the remainder of his medical career. He became known for flamboyant theatrics in the operating room, including off-the-cuff witticisms and the flinging of recently removed larynxes at the viewing gallery. He also maintained ENT consulting rooms in Ely Place, attracting a number of wealthy clients and attending to less well-off patients for free.
Gogarty and his wife had two more children, Dermot and Brenda, and in 1917 Gogarty purchased Renvyle House, a large country house in Renvyle, Connemara, from Caroline Blake. He became a keen motorist during this time, purchasing a succession of automobiles that culminated with a buttercup-coloured Rolls-Royce. During the following decade he was also interested in aviation, earning a pilot's licence and helping to found the Irish Aero Club.
Free State Senator
As a Sinn Féiner during the Irish War of Independence, Gogarty participated in a variety of anti-Black and Tan schemes, allowing his home to be used as a safe house and transporting disguised IRA volunteers in his car. Following the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Gogarty sided with the pro-Treaty government and was made a Free State Senator. When Griffith fell ill during the summer of 1922, Gogarty frequently attended his bedside. His death on 12 August 1922 had a profound effect on Gogarty; W.T. Cosgrave later observed that "he was almost mortally wounded when Griffith died, he was so very, very much attached to him." Gogarty carried out Griffith's official autopsy and embalmment and went on to perform the same offices for Michael Collins, another close friend whom Gogarty had often sheltered in his Ely Place home prior to his assassination. It was rumoured that Griffith had been planning to make Gogarty the new Governor-General of the Irish Free State, but in his absence, the post went to Tim Healy.In November 1922, anti-Treaty IRA commander Liam Lynch issued a general order to his forces to shoot Free State senators. Two months later, Gogarty was kidnapped by a group of anti-Treaty militants, who lured him out of his house and into a waiting car under the pretext of bringing him to visit a sick patient. Gogarty was driven to an empty house near Chapelizod and held under armed guard. Aware that he might be in imminent danger of execution, Gogarty contrived to have himself led out into the garden, where he broke free from his captors and flung himself into the River Liffey; he then swam to shore and delivered himself to the protection of the police barracks in Phoenix Park. In February of that same year, Renvyle was burnt to the ground by anti-Treaty forces. Following these incidents, Gogarty relocated his family and practice to London, where he resided until February 1924. Upon returning to Ireland, he famously released two swans into the Liffey in gratitude for his life.
Gogarty remained a senator until the abolition of the Seanad in 1936, during which time he identified with none of the existing political parties and voted according to his own whims. He believed that Ireland should retain its dominion status in the British Commonwealth so as to "keep with nations who understand that the first principle of freedom is a freedom that does not permit interference with the personal liberties of the citizen". He supported rural electrification schemes, road improvement, reforestation and conservation, prevention of livestock cruelty, and educational reform. His views on controversial issues such as censorship and birth control were ambiguous; after expressing initial support for the Censorship Bill, he eventually went on to denounce it in scathing terms, and while generally professing to oppose the sale of prophylactics, he voiced support for their usage in certain cases. He was most passionate on the subject of sanitation in schools and in urban and rural housing, about which he spoke frequently. His speeches frequently contained puns, wordplays, and extended poetic quotations, and were sometimes given in favour of facetious schemes, such as his attempt to have the phoenix statue in Phoenix Park included in the 1929 Wild Birds Protection Bill. He was notoriously scornful of the government's attempts to reinstate the Irish language, proposing that funding be used instead for housing and school health services, and remained perpetually suspicious of Éamon de Valera, against whose economic policies, character, and personal appearance he often hurled invectives during Seanad proceedings. De Valera eventually dissolved the Seanad when it persisted in obstructing Government proposals, effectively ending Gogarty's political career.