Short Fiction of Flann O'Brien

by Flann O'Brien

  “Who was our friend with the walking-stick?”

  “Him?” said Mr. Cullen.

  “Who is this, Martin?” asked Mr. Murtagh.

  “O a very important gentleman.”

  “[And] Who is he when he is at home?” asked Mr. Murtagh.

  “His name is Hogan,” said Mr. Cullen. “I knew [her] [his mamma] well and [I] knew him, too. And when I met him five minutes ago in the street and gave him the time of day, he presented me with a look very few men would throw to a dog. ‘Who the hell are you[?] [, if you understand me.] [Who the bloody hell are you to say good-day to me?] How would you like that, Ned? A man that was old enough to be his father.”

  “The word for that, Martin,[”] [said Mr. Murtagh] is bad manners,” [said Mr. Murtagh]. It is not a nice thing at all.”

  “[It is not] [Certainly I will say it is not what I would expect from him],” Mr. Cullen agreed, drinking heavily.

  Mr. Murtagh slid his right hand [meditatively] along [a] [his] thigh.

  “Hogan?” he said slowly. “Surely not the Harold’s Cross crowd?”

  “Not at all,” said Mr. Cullen.

  “Hogan?” said Mr. Murtagh. He frowned very darkly, weighing the word carefully in his mind. He seemed to be holding it up against every light that was in his memory. Suddenly he disengaged himself from the counter and went away to pull a bottle of stout for a customer at a distant part of the premises. Mr. Cullen turned to me.

  “Hogan’s mother,” he said, “was one of the best. Ireland never had a better daughter. It was Ireland or nothing. There’s a well-known saying about touching nothing that she did not adorn. [Well] She was one lady that filled the bill. It made you proud you were an Irishman.”

  “I suppose she did great work?”

  “Great work?”

  As if appalled by the limitations of human speech, he turned to his drink and finished it. Mr. Murtagh had returned and resumed his [attitude of] sidelong attention.

  “By God I can’t place that particular Hogan high or low,” he said.

  “As a matter of fact,” said Mr. Cullen quickly, “his name isn’t Hogan at all!”

  “What?”

  “A fact.”

  “Well Holy God, Martin,” said Mr. Murtagh looking with mock anger at both of us, “what class of talk is that to be giving out?”

  “Fill these glasses again,” I said.

  “What sort of a story is that?” he asked again, moving away to draw the porter.

  Mr. Cullen smiled. He was the centre of mystery and was pleased with his importance.

  “Now, Martin, fair is fair,” said Mr. Murtagh, bringing up the drinks. He took my money absently in his right hand and fell into the side[w]ays [attitude] [stance] again.

  “I will tell you the story,” said Mr. Cullen. “Do you remember the Camden Street affair?”

  “Which affair was that?” I asked.

  “The famous ambush—Lord save us, surely you remember the day we lost Paddy Carroll the Lord have mercy on him. It was a party of military in three lorries. Paddy Carroll was in charge. The boys were in doorways and hanging out of the windows of tenement houses. There was holy bloody murder. If Paddy lost his life the other side paid a stiff price for it. There were more dead men in Camden Street that day than I ever laid my eyes on in my life. I happened to be present on the historic occasion.”

  I found myself wondering whether he had been living in Camden Street at the time. Looking into his earnest face as it looked brightly at the two of us, I felt ashamed of myself.

  “It was a desperate piece of work. It was the most unmerciful shooting-match I ever witnessed.”

  He drank to fortify his mind.

  “They rose in dark and evil days,” said Mr. Murtagh, nodding.

  “The next day,” said Mr. Cullen, “the fun started in earnest. There were comb-outs and house-to-house searches. Every second man you met was a policeman or a soldier or a black-and-tan. They were like maggots under a stone. Thousands of people were arrested and most of them were given an unmerciful beating free of charge to show there was no ill-feeling.

  “They were dark days,” said Mr. Murtagh [gloomily].

  [I knew that Mr. Cullen’s superior grasp of tactics had brought him safely through all harm but I asked the question lightly as if I did not know the answer.]

  “Did they get you?” I asked.

  Mr. Cullen shook his head solemnly.

  “They did not sir. And that’s what I’m coming to. Myself and four of the boys were lying low. We knew what was good for us. It was Mick Hennessy that brought us to Mrs. Hogan’s. She had a big house in Sandymount at the time. We had the run of the place, with first-class beds and the best to eat. I made out afterwards that it would cost you a pound a day for the same treatment at a good hotel.”

  “Tell me this,” said Mr. Murtagh. [He looked as if some thought of considerable importance had suddenly lit upon his brain.] “Was there any husband there at all or what sort was this lady if you get my meaning?”

  Mr. Cullen’s face clouded.

  “O Lord save us nothing like that,” he said seriously, “nothing like that at all. O God no. She had any amount of cushions and curtains about the place that she had made herself. A most respectable woman. She had a husband alright but where he was I couldn’t tell you. Every night we had prayers together in the kitchen.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Murtagh. His interest in the story seemed [diminished] [to fade].

  “We were there for three days. Most of us were feeling the want of exercise and we were [all] sick [and tired] playing draughts. At about five o’clock in the evening of the fourth day when we were all in the drawing-room reading the papers and yarning, we heard cars drawing up in the street below. I needn’t tell you that we knew the sound of the old Crossleys by heart.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Murtagh. “A raid?”

  “Hennessy went over to the window and peeped out. When he turned round, his face was the colour of that, look.”

  Mr. Cullen put a finger on a white water-jug [, with his nail tapping it].

  “As pale as a ghost,” he added, looking in turn at each of us. [//] “‘What’s up, Mick?’ I asked. ‘Two lorries of military,’ said Mick.”

  “Well God knows,” said Mr. Murtagh, “I’d rather be here than there that day.”

  Mr. Cullen again looked to each of us.

  “I stood up with the ‘Irish Times’ in my hand,” he said, “and did two minutes worth of very hard thinking. I took the situation in at a glance. Unless something drastic was done and done quickly, we were all bitched. Downstairs the hall-door was being hammered till the house shook.”

  “A delicate situation,” I interposed.

  “There was one chance. I took charge immediately. I put up my hand for silence [and spoke quickly] [although there was plenty of it there without being asked for]. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘we’re in a tight corner but there’s one chance if we keep our heads. This is a kip,’ says I, ‘and you,’ says I to Mrs. Hogan, ‘you’re in charge of it. We’re all respectable married men having an evening out.’”

  Mr. Murtagh smiled and wiped the counter with round meditative swipes.

  “Well I wouldn’t doubt you, Martin,” he said. “If you have to think of a story at all, you’ll think of a good one. How did our ladyship take the news?”

  Mr. Cullen put his finger again on the water-jug.

  “[First] She went the colour of that [first], [look]” he said, “and then she went as red as a turkey-cock. I think she lost the power of speech. Only temporarily, of course. We all stood there looking at her [like a lot of dumb clucks].”

  “A delicate situation,” I put in again.

  “Delicate? You could [nearly] hear the hair growing on your head. Poor Mrs. Hogan—you could see her telling herself that it would have to be done for Ireland and then finding it hard to believe what she had told herself. And all the time the hammering that was going on downstairs would put the fear of G
od in you.”

  “Of course,” said Mr. Murtagh [delicately] [finely], “if the intention was pure and no pleasure was taken, there would be no question of mortal sin.”

  “Is that so?” said Mr. Cullen.

  “I think that is the official Church view.”

  “I see. Well, to make a long story short, my bold woman marches down the stairs and throws open the door. I sneaked down to the landing to hear what was [said] [going on]. I could hear two voices—high-class officers’ voices, you know—asking her were there any men in the house and no question of please or thank-you. I nearly dropped dead when I heard her answering them. She took off the accent of a fish-woman to a T. She said there were a few men in the house certainly[.][ w][W]hy wouldn’t there be[?] She was sniggering and using plenty of personality with the two officers.”

  “Well dear knows,” said Mr. Murtagh, smiling [as if against his will].

  “One of the officers gave a bit of a laugh and said something about human nature and then I heard the other gentleman speaking in a low voice and there were several more laughs, some of them from Mrs. Hogan. This went on for five minutes. Then I heard the two boyos coming into the house and going into a room off the hall. They were inside for twenty minutes and then they came out and went away.”

  “By God there’s a story there somewhere,” said Mr. Murtagh warmly. “If you wrote down the inside story of what happened there you would make a fortune in America. Did you ever read a book called ‘Ten Nights of Life and Love’ by Charles Paris?”

  “I did not,” said Mr. Cullen.

  “Well by God that was the business,” said Mr. Murtagh.

  “Is that the end of the story about Mrs. Hogan?” I inquired.

  “It’s the end of that story,” said Mr. Cullen, “but there was what is called a sequel. At the end of a certain length of time there was a question of a baby. It was kept very dark, of course, and a yarn was put out about an orphan arriving from the country. The new arrival got the name of Hogan and it was this same particular young gentleman that cut the nose off me in the street not half an hour ago. What do you think of that?”

  Mr. Murtagh shook his head and smiled.

  “It would be the mercy of Providence,” he said, “if somebody told that proud Irish gentleman who his two fathers were. Eh, Ned?” [He laughed hollowly.]

  “And why is he so proud?” I asked, “why does he walk as if he[r] owned the earth? [Why did he not answer when you saluted?]”

  “Do you not see it?” cried Mr. Cullen. “Thousands and thousands of men have died for Ireland. Some of them have been hanged, some shot and some of them were roasted. The men of Ninety-Eight were strapped [with their face out] to the wheels of carts and flogged on the belly till their bowels came right out of them. That was a nice cup of tea to drink for Ireland. They were all good patriots [, good [???] are rare].”

  “I see that,” said Mr. Murtagh.

  “But Hogan wasn’t one of that crowd. He was born for Ireland!”

  He looked to each of us in triumph, finished his drink swiftly and walked to the door, waving his farewell with one hand and wiping his mouth with the back of the other.

  “Die-for-Ireland how are you,” he called. [END]2

  Mr. Murtagh wiped his counter carefully [and then looked down at it for a while].

  “Well Holy God,” he said [to me] at last, “if you wrote that story down you would make a queer penny from American copyrights. ‘The Man That Was Born For Ireland,’ eh? By God whether it’s good or bad it’s new. Or ‘The Woman That Sinned To Save Her Country’s Wrong.’ She was a queer woman, there is no doubt about it. Not that it is for you or me to sit in judgment, of course. Holy God Almighty.”

  “To the pure all things are pure,” I muttered.

  “That is the official Church view, of course. But Lord save us, the poor unfortunate son must have been a queer cranky article. What did he look like?”

  “O he looked the same as you or me,” I said.

  I left Mr. Murtagh soon after for I did not wish to be pressed for the young man’s description. This was because I knew the young man. [He was extremely short-sighted.] [He was neither supercilious nor shy merely short-sighted]. He was studying for the priesthood in Rome and was evidently home on [leave] [holiday]. [His second name was Murtagh.] [He was Mr. Murtagh’s second son.] [I left the shop and went away, preoccupied with the strange personality of my friend Mr. Cullen.]

  * * *

  1 Editors’ Note: This previously unpublished typescript is an early draft version of “The Martyr’s Crown” (1950): Brian O’Nolan / Flann O’Brien, “[For] Ireland Home and Beauty” (1940), Series 2: Manuscripts, Box 4, Folder 10, Brian O’Nolan papers, Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. The twelve-page typescript contains some handwritten emendations by O’Nolan. The typed words which he crossed out in pen are reproduced in square brackets with a line through them [like so]; his handwritten emendations are reproduced in square brackets [like so]; illegible words are marked as [???]; [//] denotes a deleted paragraph break.

  2 Editors’ Note: All the remaining lines after O’Nolan’s handwritten note ‘END’ have been lightly crossed out in pen.

  Appendix II

  EDITORS’ NOTE: As indicated in our Introduction, we include the following story, “Naval Control,” first published when O’Brien was just twenty-one years old, as a speculative gesture designed to generate further discussion and discovery. Such a gesture ultimately requires a full critical examination, but some initial rationale for including a hitherto unknown pen name and story is briefly offered here.

  The story was first brought to our attention by Jack Fennell, who as well as being a fine translator of Gaelic texts is also a leading authority on Irish science fiction. Jack noted how Everett F. Bleiler, in his exhaustive bibliography of every pulp science fiction story published by Hugo Gernsback from 1926 to 1936, includes a reference to a short story by a mysterious “John Shamus O’Donnell.” Unfortunately, while Bleiler has biographies for almost every other author in his index, no information is provided for O’Donnell. “John Shamus,” whoever he was, does not seem to have published anything else. Bleiler’s description, synopsis, and rather blithe critical judgment of “Naval Control” runs as follows:

  Short-short story.

  Place: the San Francisco area.

  The narrator, who seems to have been a missionary, laments the death of his wife Florence Minerva, who, he says, clad half the natives of Peru in Mother Hubbards and converted them as Baptists. But his friend the renowned Irish scientist Egan will construct for him an android that is the exact image of Florence Minerva.

  Florence Minerva the Second, who is operated by electricity, is all she should be in appearance, but there are behavioral problems. Atmospheric electricity sets her off; sitting on an iron bench drains her magnetism; and proximity to a certain sailor with a silver plate in his head induces telepathic communication (singing ribald sailor songs) and erotic feelings. At the last, as the sailor ships out to sea, Florence Minerva the Second wades out into the water after him and is lost.

  Amateurish, but occasionally amusing.1

  To date, no archival material has been found to verify the story’s provenance. Electronic concordancing and corpus linguistics may be of some value here, but we leave that investigation for another time. For the moment, though, we would just like to point out a few basic elements in the story which, for us, mark it out as the work of Flann O’Brien.

  First, there is the thematic fascination with trains, doubles, and strange names, all reminiscent of stories such as “John Duffy’s Brother” and “Donabate” as well as novels like The Third Policeman and At Swim-Two-Birds. Second, there is the typically playful use of the epistolary mode, where letters serve to splinter the text into multiple voices (something that O’Brien uses to great effect elsewhere). Third, the parodic use of science—or science reformulated as farce—is particularly characte
ristic of O’Brien. Note, for instance, the comic consequences of the mechanical Florence Minerva’s wiring malfunctions and the mock-serious tone of the pseudo-scientific jargon, as in the description of the the electrical sympathy between her “fissures and sulci” and the “silver-pated” sailor. (A rather misogynistic view of women is another, less attractive, O’Brien characteristic.) Fourth, the family resemblance between the mad Irish scientist Professor J. Egan and one of O’Brien’s great creations, the idiot savant de Selby, is striking, even if Egan is a less refined version. Fifth, and while the Irishness of the Professor is noteworthy, even more striking is the pen name “John Shamus O’Donnell,” which seems to prefigure the parodic name “Jams O’Donnell” in The Poor Mouth (Jams and Shamus are derived from the same name, James). Sixth, and more speculatively, perhaps, much of “Naval Control” is based in “Beal Gulch,” California––a variation, possibly, on Bear Gulch Road in Oakland, California—although the word “Béal” is also the Gaelic for mouth.

  Throughout “Naval Control,” significant intertextual and intratextual connections with other O’Brien works are also evident. For example, at one point we are told that Florence “burst forth in a ribald sailor’s song, which would have been proper in a Singapore drinking dive,” echoing a phrase used in The Third Policeman, in relation to Policeman MacCruiskeen’s chest: “It was a brown chest like those owned by seafaring men or lascars from Singapore.” (Eagleeyed readers will already have noted that Singapore is mentioned twice in Slattery’s Sago Saga.)

  A much more compelling connection, though, lies in the closure to the story: “With the spiritual poise of a Lady of the Lake walking towards her Jurgen, she walked toward the ship and the sunset, till, through my tears, I saw her sun-bonnet disappear beneath the waves!” This slightly elliptical denouement mirrors the enigmatic ending of “John Duffy’s Brother,” with its resonant—but unspecified—allusion to John Keats’s sonnet, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1816): “Never once did the strange malady return. But to this day John Duffy’s brother starts at the rumble of a train in the Liffey tunnel and stands rooted to the road when he comes suddenly on a level-crossing—silent, so to speak, upon a peak in Darien.”2 More specifically, the intertextual invocation at the end of “Naval Control” is to James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice (1919), in which the eponymous hero counts among his amorous conquests a mysterious “Lady of the Lake.” (Our Lady of the Lake is also mentioned, of course, in Slattery’s Sago Saga.) As various scholars have pointed out, Cabell’s novels were an acknowledged influence on At Swim-Two-Birds, or as Anthony Cronin has noted: