The Arts:Well, there's the Irish writer and teacher Desmond O'Grady, then there's the Desmond O'Grady who wrote about St John of God, then there's the one - or was it two? - who went to Harvard. and all living in Rome, writes a confused Desmond O'Grady
FOR WRITERS, some names seem more suitable than others. There is a satisfying balance between straightforward John and the more exotic Le Carré, whereas Sheridan Le Fanu is too much of a good thing. Why the novelist and poet, Theodore Kusmich Teternicov, chose Theodore Sologub as a pseudonym is a mystery, unless it sounds more elegant in Russian. Think what a battle an Eric Hemingway would have to hack out his own territory.
Desmond O'Grady, however, would seem an acceptable and distinctive writer's moniker, particularly in a non-English-language city such as Rome. But for many years in Rome there were two writers of this name, creating a confusion of myself with the Irish poet and teacher, Desmond O'Grady, which still persists, even though he left years ago for Alexandria, Egypt, perhaps seeking a city where his name would be unique.
Sometimes we are confused, sometimes our books are conflated: when I gave a lecture in San Diego, an information sheet about the lecturer added the other O'Grady's books to mine, making a respectable swag. On another lecture tour to the United States in 1999, Fordham University advertised that I was the author of my namesake's The Limerick Rake. Sure enough, after my talk the first request was to tell the audience about The Limerick Rake. I declined, explaining that I was the Melbourne rake.
Google confuses our books. An American friend wrote from Singapore to compliment me on my translation of a book about Roman Jewry. I had not even known of its existence - my literary lookalike had struck again. I was flattered when an Oxford history lecturer spending a few weeks in Rome rang to say that he appreciated my writing. But then he added: "A student you taught said that I should meet you." I have been woken by 4am calls from women in Boston who, when I explain that I am not the Irish bard, angrily ask why I have answered the phone. I have letters in which all I understand is the repetitive lieben, from frauleins trying to reach the Limerick lover.
After the Washington Postpublished my interview with Nadine Gordimer, I received a note from an American PhD student in literature who confessed that I (or rather, he - that is, the other Desmond O'Grady) had inspired her with lessons at an English-language school in Rome. How can one explain Desmond O'Grady's effect on females? Female ex-students from around the world send friends to him in Rome who, instead, find me.
He formed relations with the young and old, including Caresse, the widow of poet Harry Crosby. In France, the American couple had founded and run the Black Sun Press, which, in the 1920s and 1930s, published leading expatriate writers. But Caresse may have obtained more fame by patenting the brassiere in 1914; at least it won her inclusion, in 2002, in an English BBC Radio 4 series on women who have changed the world.
Also in 2002, another Rome resident, American art historian Milton Gendel, rang me to say that he had bought, for a few euro at the Porta Portese flea market, my handwritten poem to Caresse Crosby. Of course, it was by my namesake. In a regular, sloping hand, it paid tribute to Caresse's "persistent refusal to be bored". She had come to Italy in the 1950s and lived her last years in a 17th-century fortress-castle (which, seen from above, has the shape of an eagle) she had bought at Rocca Sinibalda, 86km east of Rome. The poem, dated May 1968 to February 1969, when she was 76 and Desmond 35, shows that he had known her for years. He gave readings at the castle and tried to arrange a visiting writers' programme there.
MANY PRESUMED THATI was the O'Grady who read poetry, along with Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso and others, on a notorious occasion at Rome's Castelfusano Beach when, in fact, it was my namesake. Stocky, fair-haired O'Grady, standing by a fireplace, also read poetry in Federico Fellini's film, La Dolce Vita.
The scene was in the apartment of the intellectual, Steiner, and O'Grady's black wife (in fact as well as in the film) was seated by the fireplace. On a visit to Australia I found confused word of it had arrived there: in Sydney, presuming my wife was black, an acquaintance asked how I managed to get her into the country.
In Melbourne, a friend who had travelled with me to Europe but then returned to teach in Australia, said ruefully: 'Some of us end as teachers while others go on to act in Fellini films." I did not meet Desmond O'Grady in Italy, although I did catch sight of him across the Spoleto Cathedral square during a festival, where he organised the poetry readings in which John Berryman participated.
However on receiving a money order for 10,000 lira and a note of thanks from a woman for help given during unspecified trouble, I rang O'Grady to say it must have been for him. The signature on the note was illegible. O'Grady was as bemused as I was at being cast as a good Samaritan, and advised me to cash the order and spend the money.
About that time, O'Gradys proliferated in Rome. I heard that another, resident on the Tiber Island, had published a book about St John of God, who founded the hospital that still functions there. And I began to receive appeals for donations from Harvard University, where there is an unshakable conviction that I am their alumnus, Desmond Bernard O'Grady. When Harvard offered, for $10, a microfilm of what they described as my PhD thesis on classical archaeology, I asked my son, Kieran, who was doing a Harvard PhD in mathematics, to tell university officials that I had never darkened their portals.
The final twist in the Harvard-O'Grady confusion is that Desmond O'Grady - that is, the Limerick Desmond O'Grady - has a Harvard PhD and lectured there.
But to return to Rome: finally my wife, exasperated by the recurrent confusion, rang the Limerick O'Grady's wife - not the one who had appeared with him in La Dolce Vitabut a succeeding one, an American named Florence. After hearing my wife's complaint, Florence said: "What about the trouble we've had, such as the Australian who arrived at our door - because he couldn't find your husband, he stayed with us for three nightmarish weeks."
Fr Leonard Boyle, an Irishman who was prefect of the Vatican Library, asked me when we met: "Are you the journalist O'Grady now? Aren't you the fellow who was assigned to cover the Irish Davis Cup team playing Italy in Calabria and rang me to ask how tennis scores are kept?"
No, that must have been the other fellow, the poet masquerading as a journalist.
The poet with my name was surely the reason why Ezra Pound came to meet me in Venice shortly before his death. I had seen Pound, over 80 at the time but upright, face like fissured marble, striding through the Venetian night, but had not met him. My friend, Bernard Hickey, who was teaching Commonwealth literature at the University of Venice, gave a Sunday morning reception for me during one of my visits. Late on Saturday, he went to his friends' apartments, telling them of the reception or leaving a note, as he did for Pound and his companion, Olga Rudge. Quite a few people were present at 11.30 the next morning when up the stairs came Ezra and Olga.
Pound sat in a corner. Guests spoke to him, but he maintained the silence which, during his last years, added to his aura; there was not even a flicker of response from his blue eyes. On the other side of the room Olga talked about articles of mine which had appeared in the Sunday Times. She had presumed they were written by the Irish O'Grady, who knew Ezra. When she found out that I was Australian, she called across the crowded room: "Ezra, would you like to go to Australia for a holiday?"
MY TROUBLESOME TWINhad his say about me during a burial at an Irish country graveyard, where he stood alongside Aidan Mathews, who was producing my play, Randall's Choice, for Radio Éireann. Mathews told him he was at work on a play by his namesake who lived in Rome. "That's the man," said long-suffering O'Grady, raising his eyes to the heavens, "who's usurped my good name."
Fast-forward to 2007. My Italian friends, Francesco Drago and his wife, Maria Casini, who coordinated Italian archaeological missions in Egypt, invited me to stay with them in Cairo, and I sent them my arrival date. Shortly before that date, my friends visited the new library of Alexandria, where Dr Mohammed Awad, director of its Alexandria and Mediterranean Research Centre, mentioned that Desmond O'Grady's book, My Alexandria, published by the library, was to be launched there on March 18th. When they said Desmond O'Grady was a friend, Dr Awad offered to book them a hotel for the night of the launch. Don't worry, was their answer, he's staying with us.
Confusion was worse confounded.
As a magazine editor wanted an article on the library, I decided to visit it on March 18th. Dr Awad had been advised by my friends that I was coming, but Desmond O'Grady was not informed. As I reached the library before them, I browsed in the periodicals section until I was told they had arrived. I was accompanied to the office of Dr Awad, expecting that he would introduce us. However, there was only Desmond O'Grady, wispy hair standing straight, with soft-edged features and a ruddy complexion. He was looking at the floor when I entered and said: "Desmond, I'm Desmond O'Grady." Here was the quare fellow who was brazen about me usurping his name, but he took it well, although a mite bewildered and with a mildness which inspired a protective instinct.
A courteous female staffer asked if we would like a coffee. Saying that coffee destroyed the liver, Desmond requested wine, but eventually we were both served orange juice. Dr Awad arrived, there was laughter about the confusion and photos were taken of the odd couple. Dr Awad said he would find someone to accompany me to his exhibition about old Alexandria on another floor.
While Dr Awad was out of the room, Desmond told me that he had taught in Alexandria for more than a decade but that he had now "put down anchor" in Kinsale, Co Cork, whence my mariner great-grandfather had sailed to Melbourne in the 1850s.
