Gogarty: Last of the Wits

Oliver St. John Gogarty belonged in the tradition of Congreve and Swift, a tradition tempered by Sheridan and split and attenuated to its apparent conclusion by the time it reached Wilde. Gogarty recreated it briefly. He was a throwback, a buck of the eighteenth century born into a more pallid age. That he was the least as well as the last of the great Anglo- Irish tradition was the fault of the century rather than his own.

He himself was not Anglo-Irish by inheritance, but Celtic and Catholic. The name Oliver came from his mother, not from the Protector. His portrait by Augustus John shows the pure Celt: the long nose, the distinctive outline of the upper lip, the wavy hair. As for his Catholicism, it was of the type of Pope or less, and certainly never interfered with his activities—though any self-conscious gesture of repudiation would have been alien to him.

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Francis Russell

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Oliver St. John Gogarty belonged in the tradition of Congreve and Swift, a tradition tempered by Sheridan and split and attenuated to its apparent conclusion by the time it reached Wilde. Gogarty recreated it briefly. He was a throwback, a buck of the eighteenth century born into a more pallid age. That he was the least as well as the last of the great Anglo- Irish tradition was the fault of the century rather than his own.

He himself was not Anglo-Irish by inheritance, but Celtic and Catholic. The name Oliver came from his mother, not from the Protector. His portrait by Augustus John shows the pure Celt: the long nose, the distinctive outline of the upper lip, the wavy hair. As for his Catholicism, it was of the type of Pope or less, and certainly never interfered with his activities—though any self-conscious gesture of repudiation would have been alien to him.