"Auberon Waugh Visits J.P. Donleavy - A Singular Man"

by Auberon Waugh

My invitation to J.P. Donleavy's vast and beautiful mansion in Westmeath had been cordial enough, but it was not a pilgrimage to be undertaken lightly. The fierceness with which he defends his own privacy can be divined by anyone who read A Singular Man, where the hero, a mysterious Howard Hughes figure, sits alone playing an applause machine to himself in a doomed attempt to confound the forces of despair. Levington Park, near Mullingar, deep in the centre of Ireland's finest foxhunting country, is guarded by three Irish wolfhounds whose eyes glow in the dark and who set up a howl at night which echoes through the long corridors and empty drawing rooms where peat fires smoulder and bright little buttons of dry rot push their way up between the floorboards.

"Walk now over this little bridge, where the brook tumbles under. And grey speckled trout speed for cover....The road here starts up. Between the trees of the demesne. Out there far away the rest of the world has gone modern with whole new jumping generations. And holy hell is the only thing we have up to date here. To make the stars bark when the west's awake. Over the cliffs and roaring sea. Where the moon hides and weeps at night.

And
The Weary
Wind
Bewilders me."

As well it might. With these cryptic lines, J.P. Donleavy ends what I have always judged one of his best, although least regarded, novels, The Onion Eaters.

The invitation to walk over his little bridge has been transmitted over the phone by Mrs. Epps, Donleavy's secretary and guardian of the lodge gates. It is confirmed by his wife next day. Donleavy himself practically never speaks on the telephone and very seldom writes a letter. There is a wonderful road which runs straight from the airport 60-odd miles to Mullingar and the gates of Levington Park. I can't miss them, she says.

The Hertz man at Dublin airport denies all this. Mullingar is a very tricky place to find, he says, because there are about six ways to get there and nobody knows which is the best one. It's dark now and no time to be setting off on a strange journey of this sort. Many turn back, but the return route is no easier. He is the only person who tries to discourage me from my pilgrimage. Everybody else is most encouraging. Sure, this is the best road to Ballinagar, they say. Did I say Mullingar? In that case it is even better.

Eventually I pick up what look like two attractive colleens but they're civil servants and one of them is a man. They know exactly where Mullingar is, they've even made a study of it. I'll have heard of the terrible Ginger Man who lives there, no doubt. Easily the best way to Mullingar is to go first to a little town called Navan they know about which, oddly enough, is just where they're going themselves.

Three hours later, having driven most of the way around the Republic of Ireland, I sweep into the great gates of Levington Park, feeling distinctly nervous. I have just finished reading the Terrible Ginger Man's Unexpurgated Code, A Complete Manual of Survival and Manners a sort of burlesque commonplace book of advice on how to conduct yourself as a country house guest, how to deliver insults, how to get rid of unwanted guests, even how to conduct yourself while being interviewed for a newspaper. I am late, and can't remember exactly what punishment is laid down for guests who keep their hosts waiting for dinner. Something lingering with boiling oil in it. I fancy. As I ring the doorbell, I half expect to hear a ferocious American-Irish voice screaming insults and obscenities, I expect whiskey bottles to be thrown or to find my host comatose on the floor being fanned by a weeping wife while sickly undernourished children cower in the corner.

J.P. Donleavy created Sebastian Dangerfield, the Ginger Man of the novel and play which is still banned in the Republic of Ireland where he lives. Dangerfield is one of the archetypal heroes of our time, a man whose abundant energies are consumed in a battle for the survival of his own violent, selfish soul against a hostile universe. He lies, cheats, charms and drinks himself into lonely, voluble corners in a desperate struggle to assert his own dignity. He is an angry man, but his anger is of cosmic proportions, bearing no more relation t the petulant underdog spite of the British working class school - Osbourne, Wain, Sillitoe, early Braine, Wesker and their imitators, on called the Angry Young Men - than the bad-tempored Duchess of Alice in Wonderland has to the wrath of God as Sodom. Many of his main characters - George Smith in A Singular Man, Samuel S., in The Saddest Summer, even Cornelius Christian in A Fairy Tale of New York, illustrate different aspects of a similar predicament, a man in contemporary society battling against the desolation in his own soul, but it is the character of Dangerfield in The Ginger Man which has stuck.

Anyone who has not met J.P. Donleavy is bound to imagine his as a loud-mouthed, womanizing, self-pitying tragicomic drunk. To this image he has deliberately added his own touches, hinting at a voluptuous gothic horror-comic lifestyle in The Onion Eaters, that of an eccentric, randy, wife-beating parvenu nineteenth century squire in The Unexpurgated Code.

So I stand at the great front door and shiver as the bell sets up a howl from the Irish wolfhounds. The front of this fine early eighteenth century pile has nine windows in a row. There is a light on in the pillared porch, so plainly I am still expected, but I am afraid the door will swing open on its own, I will walk into a hall decourated by suits of armour and with a maniacal laugh J.P. Donleavy will jump out of one of them, wearing nothing but an athletic supporter and brandishing a double handed sword....

The door does open, and before I know what is happening a mild, courteous, slightly shy man - a mature 49 with tidy grey hair and polite beard - is apologizing for the difficulties of the journey.

They were not of his making, I assure him. No doubt I would like a drink, he says sadly. Well, yes, who knows? that might be agreeable. He nods philosophically. Most guests have these feelings. There the matter rests for a while. Do you know my wife, he asks suspiciously. No I don't think I have yet had the pleasure. Donleavy's wife comes out of one of the drawing rooms, a first glance a handsome, nervous, thorough-bred filly some 17 years his junior, her physical aura protected by a certain defensive, self-doubt, even aggressiveness.

"I am called M.W., what should I call you?" she asks. I tell her, but she never quite takes it in, preferring various combinations of her own choosing. Later these first impressions mellow, and she emerges as an extraordinarily attractive, most unusual woman with a reckless East Coast aristocratic candour. Her mother was a Baltimore Wallis and her father was something almost as good in Baltimore, called Wilson Price.

"Michael, are you getting Oberon a drink?" she asks. Michael is short for James Patrick, "Yes, " Michael says.

No, her parents were not pleased when their lovely young actress daughter married, as his second wife, someone who was represented as a middle-aged Irish pornographer from the Bronx. But there can be no doubt that Michael Donleavy has been making up for this. Now he has assembled everything needed for what he calls in The Unexpurgated Code, "one's ultimate kit" : Levington Park, a mansion nudging its way into the stately home bracket; its furniture; its 170 acres of valuable agricultural land; its heated indoor swimming pool and sauna; its tax free concessions to creative artists; its sheep, cattle and a mare called Rosie (about whom, more later) - all this and a beautiful aristocratic wife to run it for him. "I expect he would like to see his bedroom," he says, meaning me.

It is a fine room, with a Victorian mahogany half-teaser bed and a paneled bathroom leading off, well equipped with sweet smelling essences. The one I choose still has its price ticket attached, 47 new pence, which seems surprisingly reasonable, the way prices are going nowadays. Mrs. Donleavy - or Michael, perhaps - I am not quite sure - will expect me down to dinner when I have performed whatever ablutions may seem desirable or prudent. I hastily reread the chapter of Unexpurgated Code devoted to "Vilenesses Various" : farting, bodily stench, bad breath, other orifices. It is about half an hour before I descend, fragrant as an alpine valley in springtime.

By now they might easily be growing peckish, but Michael's exquisite politeness never falters. Would I perhaps like another drink before eating? We walk to one more elegant room with an unusual, deep bow window and two dining tables. M.W. and I fall on our food like Irish wolfhounds - a crab bisque, leg of lamb and chocolate mousse, but Michael is more restrained. M.W. opens a bottle of good Burgundy - a Gevrey Chambertin - which she has somehow found in Dublin. Our conversation grows more animated and louder, but Michael, who is sipping a glass of apple juice, grows if anything more reserved and quieter. Is he on a cure, I ask cheekily. No, he never drinks while working, finds it spoils the concentration.

Aha, I think, a greyhound in the slips, we are in the throes of composition - a novel, a new play, a poem? I have always wished he would write more poetry, while quite understanding that no self-respecting writer will have anything to do with this art form at present.No, he sighs, he in composing a Contract. He does not employ an agent, and much of his creative energy seems to be spent on these Contracts. Perhaps it is because of this habit that so much of his time has been taken up in the past 15 years in litigation against various publishers. Nothing can persuade him that these things are best left to professionals. The, and the de fence of his property against usurpers, seem to have replaced in him all the more familiar symptoms of literary machismo which led Hemingway to such excesses.

The evening wears on, with brandy and liqueurs for M.W. and me, more apple juice for Michael. His eyes grow more and more hooded, he seems to find our chatter less absorbing. I remember the item in Unexpurgated Code about interviewers who spend valuable time talking about themselves (in fact we had been talking talking about M.W.'s mare called Rosie) and it occurs to me that I may be neglecting him. It is a terrible thing to tell writers how much you enjoy their work - often, I find, it makes them confused and bitter - and the only way is to drop hints. In fact, I have reviewed several of his books in London and said so in no uncertain terms, but he seems to need reassurance. It is an American idea that enjoyment and understanding of a writer's work can be increased by a study of the intensely private, often psychotically withdrawn person who produces them (although it is also an appetite for which most writers are willing to cater) and I am quite happy to sit at the feet of the Master discussing cart horses with his extremely attractive young wife. But I am here to work, so we make an appointment for an interview in depth at lunchtime next day. "I have asked some young people tomorrow evening to come and amuse you," he says mournfully.

The time has surely come to go to bed, but first we must all go and visit Rosie in her stables. She is a rather plump carthorse taken by M.W. from a butcher in Mullingar, where she has been in familiar sight on delivery rounds for a for as long as most people can remember. She stands placidly in her stable, only revealing by the twitch of an ear that she is not stuffed. In fact if she had been stuffed I fear many people would have been tempted to send her back to the taxidermist because she seems to bulge in curious and inappropriate places. But Rosie's effect on M.W. is instantaneous. With a rapturous love cry she throws her arms around the carthorse's neck and starts smothering its nose with kisses. It is a beautiful and affecting sight, in this stable off the courtyard of a great Irish house at midnight, but when I glance at my host I see it has a different effect on him. For the first time since I arrived there is a glint of powerful emotion from under his hooded eyes as he watches his wife and the carthorse. There can be no doubt it is jealousy.

Later that night, in the solitude of my bedroom, I turn over the pages of his Complete Manual of Survival and Manners once again. There is plenty of advice for the husband who finds himself cuckolded, but not a word about how a man finds his wife's affections appropriated by a female carthorse. I think I may have chanced upon the secret of J.P. Donleavy's inner being, as I close my eyes and the Irish wolfhounds set up a howl outside. Next morning, unfortunately, I find that my notes of the night before are largely illegible and, where legible, totally incomprehensible.

Donleavy does not present himself to his guests before luncheon, so M.W. and I have Rosie put into a pony trap for the short ride into Mullingar, where she stands like Patience on a monument for several hours outside Canton Casey's bar. M.W. tells me she thinks Michael is a much more settled person now, with a regular sex life and all those acres. The first wife - and mother of two children - lives in Venezuela now, but M.W. is not sure whether she has re-married. Nor is Michael, when I ask him. Nor is their son Philip, when I finally run him to ground in London - a quiet, self-contained 24 year old with Mick Jagger lips, who works in films and is thinking of settling in the United States because he can't get a union card in Britain. The product of a progressive education and an extraordinarily independent childhood, he plainly doesn't see parents as a young man's responsibility. I never get to see Donleavy's daughter, Karen, described as a willowy, youthful 21-year-old. She makes pottery in Harrow, which is apparently the best place to do it. Specimens of her decorated earthenware are to be seen at Levington Park along with her pictures. They strike me as being talented, attractive and unusual, but, I am no judge. All the pictures at Levington are modern - an unusual feature in Irish country houses - and nearly all are by members of the Donleavy family: his brother, Thomas, whom he described as a New York recluse with his faithful following, his son Philip, his daughter Karen and himself. None of them strikes me as coming up to Karen's standard but then, as I say, I am no judge. It looks to me as if I shall never find out whether the first Mrs. Donleavy has re-married or not.

On the return journey from Mullingar I question M.W. closely about her husband while she complains about the muscles she has developed haymaking. I am beginning to feel slightly nervous about the interview. Plainly, like all writers he is anxious to talk about himself, but is there anything he can usefully say which has not been better said already in his books?

Donleavy's critical reputation still rests to a considerable degree on The Ginger Man, of which one of the best studies was written by Ihab Hassan in Radical Innocence: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel (Princeton, 1961). Subsequent works sold better, and the automatic reference to The Ginger Man in any study of them is probably no more than a monument to the traditional timidity - not to say idleness - of academic criticism. Thus John Deedy, writing in Commonweal, describes Beastly Beatitudes as "warmed-up Ginger Man." Gerald Wealey (Contemporary American Novelists) on A Singular Man, concludes that much of it is a hangover from his earlier book. Vivian Mercier, reviewing the whole Donleavy oeuvre in World (July 18, 1972) concludes, "Sad to say, J.P. Donleavy remains the author of The Ginger Man; the Ginger Man style has become his prison."

If I may say so, this is patent drivel. It is true that a strain of defiant nihilism can be traced through all his work (except Unexpurgated Code, about which more later) but his style, which ranges from sedated, clarified Joyce to joked-up John Barth, changes perceptibly with every book, and so does the expression of his particular level of disquiet. His is a robust imagination, wedded to this awareness of the absurdity of despair, and the only robust imagination, I would say, surviving in what British critics all the Modern Movement. The inadequacy of contemporary British criticism to absorb his peculiar, violent rage is best summed up in The Times Literary Supplement (July 23, 1971), which describes Onion Eaters as "anything but tender, compassionate or celebratory," thereby neatly encapsulating three vogue words in one inept sentence. Why the hell should it be any of these things? Because London fashion decreed we would wear our novels this way in July, 1971?

But none of these things are easy to bring up in an interview, partly because many writers become self-conc ious and spout rubbish when asked to talk about their books (Graham Greene), in my experience, is the exception; Anthony Powell, the prime example of this tendency). When I join Donleavy after the agony and ecstasy of his morning's creative exertions on the Contract, we talk about his childhood and family life. I forget to ask him whether he beats his wife, as some of his writing might suggest, but I doubt that he does. He says he is shy with women, has never been to a massage parlour. Why does he live in such a huge house and ape the lifestyle of an Edwardian country gentleman?

Mr. Donleavy answers all my questions patiently and at great length but most of his answers strike me as either obvious, inadequate or untrue. I long to break in "But where is your defiant nihilism, Sir?" Show me this 'sense of the absurd which is despair refusing to take itself seriously' (Arland Ussher)."

Levington Park represents no more and no less than his search for ideal working conditions, he says. It also marks the establishment of a a structure keeping the rest of the world at bay. He is a shy person by nature, no good at self-projection, but admires Truman Capote for being able to project himself, for making authors feel socially important. For his own part he just likes wearing tweeds and plus twos around the house. As for this last book of his, The Unexpurgated Code, he wrote it as a sort of linguistic and cultural experiment, rubbing together American, Irish and English public school vernacular to produce a bum's eye view of the European good life which is satirical but at the same time, yes, celebratory....

No, Donleavy hasn't said that last sentence. The terrible truth is that I have stopped listening, but this is just the sort of sentence I am waiting for him to produce. Obviously he hasn't the faintest idea why he writes the way he does, nor is there any reason why he should. It is not a writer's job to explain his own work. My visit has been an intrusion and an impertinence. It was bad enough to expect a shy, intensely private man to talk about himself for two and a half hours, but it was inexcusable not to have listened while he did so.

The evening's young people turn out to include an old friend from fox-hunting days in West Somerset. We reminisce happily and noisily into the small hours about foxes we seen in odd or uncomfortable situations. Michael's courtesy never fails, but I can see he's brooding over his apple juice: did he do himself justice? Will his answers look good in print, or would such-and-such a passage, taken out of context, make him look boastful or callow or bitter or smug? Lovely M.W. asks if Owberon and the young people would like to go for a midnight ride with Rosie in the pony trap, and the Artist walks off alone to his bedroom, a small, sad, slightly ridiculous figure in those expensive tweeds which fit much better than tweeds should fit. He remains the writer whom I admire almost as much as any writer alive, but he guards his privacy well, and I feel I know less about the inner man than I did when I set out. The mystery of J.P. Donleavy accompanies him up the stairs like a cloud of peat smoke.

But one useful sentence has stuck in my mind as he babbled on in that upstairs room. He described how he had not lost his temper in three years, when a neighbouring farmer tried to expropriate some of his land; if this land was threatened with nationalization, he would fight with his life:

"I will always act swiftly, incisively and lethally over any infringement of my rights." he said to me, looking incredibly fierce in the leather-cushioned sofa of his workroom on the first floor.

Haven't I heard those accents before somewhere? Suddenly on my aeroplane back to London, safely away from the Irish wolfhounds, away from the awkwardness of this bogus conversation, it all comes back to me. Pocketa-pocketa-pocketa: "Throw on the power lights. Rev her up to 8.500. We're going through." Why, it's my old friend Walter Mitty.

To purchase books by J.P. Donleavy, go to the Buyers' Guide.