EAMONN O’DOHERTY was at the centre of the music, arts and literary scene in the late 1950s. Others are more competent to write of his later, more celebrated achievements, from his paintings and photography, his sculptures and his architecture, to his music.
I would like to recall for readers the man whom I met first in 1958 when I came to UCD to study. Eamonn was one of the many good reasons that the purpose changed from studying to enjoying life – in pubs, theatres, literary gatherings, and just the sheer full- time joy of being in the Dublin of those days.
He had come in 1957 to study architecture, a year before I enrolled in an Arts course. The societies in UCD,then in Earlsfort Terrace, were the places where we involved ourselves: for me it was the English Litt. and the French Society, where at one point I was simultaneously Auditor and President respectively.
We brought along artists and critics and writers, among them Paddy Kavanagh, Padraic Colum, Jim Plunkett, John Betjeman, Gus Martin, Sean O’Sullivan, Myles na gCopaleen, Ulick O’Connor, to evenings in Newman House. Eamonn appeared at many of these, often accompanied by his then girlfriend, known to all as The Bad Thought.
After the official business of the evening, we would adjourn to O’Dwyers, at the bottom of Lower Leeson Street, to continue our sometimes self-consciously erudite discussions. More often to get “extinguished” guests’ real views on matters trivial and serious. Eamonn was a vibrant part of all of this, and often suggested a move to O’Donohue’s pub where music had started to be performed on a regular but unorganised basis. At closing time (9.30pm in the first couple of years) a brown paper bag with six large screwtops would be the uncalled-for “ticket” to go along to Eamonn’s flat on the corner of Stephen’s Green at the top of Grafton Street, above Eamonn Rice’s pub. The singing and the drinking there would last well into the morning – with Ronnie Drew a regular, jotting down the words of songs that would later become the first successes of a group as yet unformed, the Dubliners. Eamonn would produce from an inside pocket a tin whistle and play solo pieces from his Derry background, or accompany some of the rousing cacophonies which followed, purporting to be the Black Velvet Band, or She Moved Through the Fair (written by Padraic Colum.) Eamonn had this wonderful gift of making and keeping friends. Once a friend, it would be for life. Over the 50 years since I left UCD – and the Dublin Scene – we met up no more than a dozen times, around Bloomsday in Dublin, by chance on the streets in the city, or by arrangement when he opened a vintage photographic exhibition I had organised at the Westport Arts Festival (after which we ended up in Matt Molloy’s pub, with Eamonn slipping out his flute from a specially designed narrow pocket inside his coat and starting up an impromptu session in the bar). We met at funerals, as the band of friends from those days dwindled. But the friendship went on.
I was privileged to meet him just 10 days before his death on August 4th at the wonderfully hospitable home near Ferns where he and his wife Barbara lived for the past eight years. Brian Vallely, the Armagh artist, had phoned me in Glasgow to tell me Eamonn had been given two months maximum to live, the throat cancer diagnosed and operated on nine years ago finally calling in his number. I phoned Eamonn. “You’ve heard the news , then?” he asked.
“I take it you have resorted to widow’s weeds, and are devoting yourself to prayer,” I responded. The answer was in the negative (and not printable in a respected newspaper). “I am going to enjoy as much as possible every minute I have got left.” He said.
I drove across Ireland, via Bunclody to Ferns, in Wexford, took the road as he had directed, to Boulavogue, and was welcomed by his son Eoin, and by Barbara. Eamonn was seated on a couch. His voice was thick from the problems in his throat, but strong and positive. We talked. Nothing maudlin. He had been working with a writer friend on a memoir, with a section devoted to each decade from the late 1950s on.
He hoped this would be published. We caught up with what has happened to mutual friends. He spoke of a certain weariness waiting for his death – but with neither fear nor anguish. “I have done everything I have ever wanted to, and a bit more. I am now ready to go.”
Eamonn told me of a commission he had done some years back for Bishop Magee of Cloyne. A Christ the King figure in bronze to sit atop the cathedral. After the sculpture was complete, cast and patinated, the bishop, just back from Milan, said he had to have the figure gilded (like the one above Milan cathedral). Eamonn explained this would not be possible or practical or inexpensive. In fact, it would cost as much again as the original work. The bishop was adamant. Eamonn went through the procedure that would be necessary involved in gilding the bronze figure. He would have to plate it with nickel, then apply gold leaf; the Irish climate would destroy the gilding in a relatively short time and it would turn black. The bishop still insisted.
The statue was installed, by helicopter. Soon the gold leaf began to peel – and the corroding nickel turned black.
The Vicar General ( a man like the bishop, recently in the news on other matters) demanded a meeting. He explained that he and his boss were unhappy – and that it was likely the matter would end up in litigation.
“Very well, then,” said Eamonn. “My defence is already prepared. I will tell the court that the changes in the statue are God’s judgment on what has been happening in the diocese and, only when these wrongs have been remedied, a miracle would return the statue to pristine gold, showing God’s favour.” He heard no more from the bishop or his minions.
The statue remains black.
In the few days he spent in the hospital in Gorey he was in typically, but amazingly, good form. An orderly came in to his room, offering tea for his visitors, Barbara and two of their children. “No tea, thanks. Just another three glasses. I have one already, and we are about to open a bottle of champagne.” Truffles and scrambled egg accompanied the champagne on his last couple of days.
The end came as he hoped. He went gently in his sleep.
He was a great friend. Perhaps Dublin, a city he loved so well, could honour him by putting his much loved Floozie in the Jacuzzi back in O’Connell Street, or is that just a Bad Thought?