h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Neat entry, Azara! Thought it might be yours when I started to read..

As far as I know, Dunsany had a pretty good relationship with his tenants(?). They were, I *think*, the ones to get him out of jail when he was had up on possessing a firearm, then a capital offence. Gogarty later helped to get him off. The whole thing was pretty funny, actually - do you know the story?

I've only ever read 'How Nuth would have..', some of his stuff being, as you say, pretty hard to find. I got a collection by him for a friend, though.


Nora

Hi, Nora!

I didn't actually know that story! When I said 'rebellious', I meant in terms of supporting independence - the tenants in The Curse of the Wise Woman are very polite to the landlord's family, but still prepared to shoot people if required. One of my sources did say that Dunsany was the only famous Irish person to get wounded in the 1916 rebellion fighting on the British side, but the present Lord Dunsany doesn't seem tot mention that on the family website. My impression certainly was, that like a lot of the old Irish gentry, he took a fairly dim view of the people in charge after independence.

His stuff is well worth reading - I'm actually very fond of the Jorkens stories as well as enjoying the fantasy tales.


Azara

Gogarty drove out to Dunsany Castle one day in 1921, to find his lordship was 'not at home'. When Maunders, the major-domo, eventually admitted that Dunsany had been arrested by the Black-and-Tans, Gogarty at first thought they had connected him to the revolutionary sentiments of Francis Ledwidge, whom he had been 'educating'.

Upon further investigation, it turned out that the charge was possession of weaponry, which included 'a gun, rock rifle.. and 1,500 rounds for these, also some artillery the gamekeeper forgot to send in... after 1916'. Dunsany had been informed on by a fellow member of the Kildare Street Club, when he had several times sent his friends in the club snipe he had shot. After being raided a couple of times by the Black-and-Tans, he was arrested and imprisoned in Dublin Castle. He was indeed strongly Unionist, and had been shot in 1916 while wearing a British uniform. This made it rather ironic that Gogarty, who had close Sinn Fein connections, was able to get him released. In this cause, he got his friend Seymour Leslie to write to the latter's cousin, Winston Churchill. He also interviewed two under-secretaries at the Castle. Dunsany's lawyers thought it best that Gogarty not actually bail him out - it might connect him with Sinn Fein.

On the other hand, he pointed out somewhat cruelly that, as a peer, Dunsany was entitled to a silken rope if hanged. This would, Gogarty said, be much more elastic than a regular rope, and Dunsany might find himself bobbing up and down like a yo-yo. To ensure this would not happen, Gogarty told his friend that he would suspend from the rope a sack of clay he had in his garden. If allowed to stand overnight, this would make the rope 'abrupt as a hempen collar'. Dunsany, understandably, did not appreciate this: 'There are some subjects which are not jokes, and one of them is my hanging'.

Between Gogarty's 'Sackville Street' and O'Connor's 'Oliver St. John Gogarty' (which draws heavily on the former), I can't make out whether Dunsany's tenants actually arrived to bail him out or whether there was only a rumour of it. It does seem clear, at least from Gogarty (whose allegiance was deeply confused - he was a landlord himself, and was in many ways Anglo-Irish, though Catholic), that
Dunsany's relationship with his tenants at this time was an unusually decent one.

Are the 'Jorkins' stories anything like P.G. Wodehouse's 'Mr. Mulliner'?


Nora

Hi, Nora!
Thanks for the story - I really must read Gogarty again, it's so long ago that I'd completely forgotten that he knew Dunsany.

The Jorkens stories are a bit like Mr. Mulliner, except that there's a touch of real weirdness about them, so that the Wodehouse cosiness is missing.

I was just thinking of Dunsany last week, when I was researching another entry about the Book of Kells - the last abbott of Kells was a Plunkett, and I'm sure he was related, so it sounds as though they came very close to having the Book of Kells as a family possession.

Azara

Well, an essential characteristic of Gogarty was that he knew everybody. He mixed with the nationalists, the literary revivalists, the Unionists, the old Trinity set, the constructive conservatives, Parnellites, anti-Parnellites... It would be unfair to say that who he knew is more important than what he did (as he said to his mother 'I am not George Moore'), but it's certainly right up there with his writings and achievements from an historical point of view. I should know - I just did a history paper on him!

I enjoy Gogarty, except in 'Rolling Down the Lea', in which he waxes most bitter about De Valera. No major disagreement, but it becomes painful to read.
I'll have a look out for Jorkens - sounds like fun. It'd be a bit different if the Book of Kells were held privately, wouldn't it? Admit that I haven't been in to see it, though, so I guess I wouldn't miss it much.


Nora