page_title: Oliver St. John Gogarty
section_title: University days
hierarchical_section_title: Oliver St. John Gogarty / Life / University days
caption_attribution_description: Irish poet Oliver St. John Gogarty as a young man
context_page_description: Oliver Joseph St John Gogarty was an Irish poet, author, otolaryngologist, athlete, politician, and well-known conversationalist. He served as the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in James Joyce's novel Ulysses.
context_section_description: As one of Dublin's "medicos", Gogarty was known to be fond of public pranks and midnight carousing in "the Kips", Dublin's red-light district. He had a talent for humorous and bawdy verse, which quickly made the rounds through the city, and sometimes composed mnemonic lyrics to aid his medical studies.  He also enjoyed a highly successful cycling career before being banned from the tracks in 1901 for bad language, and between 1898 and 1901 he rescued at least four people from drowning. He became interested in Irish nationalism after meeting Arthur Griffith in 1899, and contributed propaganda pieces to The United Irishman over subsequent years.
  A serious interest in poetry and literature also began to manifest itself during his years at Trinity.  His witty conversation made him a favourite with the dons, particularly John Pentland Mahaffy (formerly the tutor of Oscar Wilde) and Robert Yelverton Tyrrell, and between 1901 and 1903 he won three successive Vice-Chancellor's prizes for verse.  In 1900 he made the acquaintance of W. B. Yeats (of whom his mother highly approved) and of George Moore (of whom she did not) and began to frequent Dublin literary circles. He also formed close friendships with other up-and-coming young poets, such as Seamus O'Sullivan and James Joyce.  In 1904 he spent two terms at Oxford to compete for the Newdigate Prize, but lost to G.K.A. Bell, the future Bishop of Chichester, who became a friend and frequent correspondent over the next few years.
  Upon returning to Dublin in the summer of 1904, Gogarty made arrangements to rent the famous Martello Tower in Sandycove.  The primary goal of this scheme, as described by Gogarty in a letter to G.K.A. Bell, was to "house the Bard" (i.e. James Joyce), who was without money and required "a year in which to finish his novel." The two friends quarrelled in August, however, and Joyce either failed to move in or left shortly after doing so.  Joyce briefly took up residence in the Tower the following month, together with Gogarty and his Oxford friend Samuel Chenevix Trench (a setup which later provided inspiration for the opening chapter of Ulysses) but left again suddenly after only six days. Forty years later in America, Gogarty would attribute Joyce's abrupt departure to his and S.C. Trench's midnight antics with a loaded revolver. Joyce and Gogarty corresponded intermittently during the early years of Joyce's continental exile and occasionally planned meetings, but contemporaneous letters from Joyce to his brother reveal deep distrust of Gogarty's motives, and their friendship was never fully renewed.  Gogarty made use of the Martello Tower during the following year as a writing retreat and party venue, and officially held the lease until 1925.
  In 1904 and 1905 Gogarty published several short poems in the London publication The Venture and in John Eglinton's journal Dana. His name also appeared in print as the renegade priest Fr. Oliver Gogarty in George Moore's 1905 novel The Lake, an occurrence which upset Gogarty's devout mother. In 1905 Gogarty became one of the founding members of Arthur Griffith's Sinn Féin, a non-violent political movement with a plan for Irish autonomy modelled after the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy.
caption: Gogarty in 1897
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