Mr. Dooley and the Same Old World

by JOHN V. KELLEHER

1

IT is now twenty years since Mr. Martin Dooley, then proprietor of a speak-easy, was last heard from. It is nearer forty years to the time when he had the daily attention of millions of Americans, and when his words, spoken in the relative seclusion of his barroom to his silent auditor, Mr. Malachi Hennessy, were re-echoed admiringly throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. You, gentle reader, may never have heard of him, or only vaguely, as you have heard of Bill Nye or Petroleum V. Nasby; yet, just forty years ago, some one of your relatives was singing: —

It was a silly song. It heaped praises on Mr. Dooley for things he had never done, and could not be imagined attempting: —

Those who sang it knew very well how silly it was, but they sang it in tribute and gratitude to the man whose wisdom was more than helpful to a nation still trying to recover its self-possession after having fought the War with Spain. In that United States, still full of men who had survived Spanish bullets and American embalmed beef and the Montauk Point hospital camp, — a country headed by Theodore Roosevelt, the hero of San Juan Hill, — Martin Dooley, self-described as “th’ man behind th‘ guns, four thousan’ miles behind thim, an’ willin’ to be further,” easily held his own in popularity. It was one of those rare moments in history when venerable wisdom is given the palm over youth and vigor.

If your interest is aroused by this and you turn to any recent American history to find out more about Martin Dooley, the chances are that you will find his words quoted in the text, but you will not find his name in the index. His creator, Finley Peter Dunne, will be listed there, a proof of the weakness of current historical method, which readily accepts Plato’s Socrates but draws the line at our American philosopher, presumably because he is not mentioned in so poor an authority as the Chicago city directory. There is no denying the substantive existence of Finley Peter Dunne, or his influence in American politics and journalism; but to use that as an excuse for relegating Mr. Dooley to the limbo of once popular fictions, with Private Miles O’Reilly and the Lady from Philadelphia, is as foolish as it is bigoted.

The admirers of Mr. Dooley are now a small and select group, gently asserting the merits of good dialect writing; yet you will never hear one of them say, “Wait till I read you what Finley Dunne has to say about that.” The idea is preposterous. One might as readily quote what William Shakespeare said when he decided that his royal uncle had killed his royal father. Let the historians grasp the larger realities. It was Mr. Dooley, and not Dunne, to whom the American people listened lovingly. And it was the old and wise Dooley who gave the historians the indispensable observation with which they high-light the politics of our emergence as an imperial power: “Whether th’ constitution follows th’ flag or not, th’ Supreme Coort follows th’ iliction returns.” When Dooley said that, Dunne was a mere stripling of thirty-three.

Proceeding conventionally, one would admit that Dunne, the author, takes standing over Dooley, the character, and begin with a sketch of Dunne’s life and works. Neither, however, is a conventional figure in literature. Dooley is a unique invention: the only mythical philosopher I can think of with a philosophy. He is also Dunne’s only major character. With the exception of Hennessy, who somehow manages a vivid existence on little more than silent bewilderment, the other people in the essays are as shadowy as the fall guys in Plato’s dialogues: they exist only through Dooley’s quotations or descriptions of them. Hogan, the gullible intellectual; Father Kelly, the humane and humorous priest; Dock O’Leary, the agnostic; Schwartzmeister, the foreign element and Dooley’s German rival; the various cops, plumbers, misers, lovers, housewives, aldermen, reformers, and bums, who are mentioned transiently — all exist to feed Dooley information it would be out of character for him to find in his newspaper, or to enable him to point and illustrate a moral.

2

NOR is it simply Dooley’s singularity that gives him precedence. Other authors have spoken through their characters, or invented them only to discover that, once alive, they would go their own ways and do their own work. But Dooley was so large that Dunne could live inside him unnoticed and endowed with a freedom that Dunne, the citizen, would never be permitted. No one could serve a warrant on Dooley; nor could any enemy impugn his motives. His probity and fairness and tolerance, the modesty of his living, were as unquestioned as George Washington’s honesty. Hence, when Dooley struck at a malefactor, the victim had no redress except to answer Dooley back in kind with as good as he gave. It is a matter of history that no one ever managed that.

The great of the nation — industrial barons, leaders of reform, generals of the army; indeed, the President of the United States himself—tiptoed past that Archey Road barroom with placating smiles. No one willingly drew on himself the whip of Dooley’s scorn. Those who did wished they hadn’t. Imagine being poor Andrew Carnegie, who, every time he opened his mouth, got Dooley’s foot in it. Or Theodore Roosevelt, whose bulliest bravery was no protection against potshots from behind the bar — “I’d like to tell me frind Tiddy that they’se a sthrenuse life an’ a sthrenuseless life” — though it was as an author that Roosevelt suffered most. Dooley’s review of his Rough Riders, a regimental history in the first person, began with a discussion of suitable subtitles: —

’Tis “Th’ Biography iv a Hero be Wan Who Knows.” ‘Tis “Th’ Darin’ Exploits iv a Brave Man be an Actual Eye Witness.” Tis “Th’ Account iv th’ Desthruction iv Spanish Power in th’ Ant Hills,” as it fell fr’m th’ lips iv Tiddy Rosenfelt an’ was took down be his own hands.

The review then proceeded with a synopsis of the author’s account of the war: —

“. . . so I sint th’ ar-rmy home an’ attackted San Joon hill. Ar-rmed on’y with a small thirty-two which I used in th’ West to shoot th’ fleet prairie dog, I climbed that precipitous ascent in th’ face iv th’ most gallin’ fire I iver knew or heerd iv. But I had a few r-rounds iv gall mesilf an’ what cared I? I dashed madly on, cheerin’ as I wint. Th’ Spanish throops was dhrawn up in a long line in th’ formation known among military men as a long line. I fired at th’ man nearest to me an’ I knew be th’ expression iv his face that th’ trusty bullet wint home. It passed through his frame, he fell, an’ wan little home in far-off Catalonia was made happy be th’ thought that their riprisintative had been kilt be th’ future governor iv New York. Th’ bullet sped on its mad flight an’ passed through th’ intire line fin’lly imbeddin’ itself in th’ abdomen iv th’ Ar-rch-bishop iv Santago eight miles away. This ended th’ war.

“They has been some discussion as to who was th’ first man to r-reach th’ summit iv San Joon hill. I will not attempt to dispute th’ merits iv th’ manny gallant sojers, statesmen, corryspondints, an’ kinetoscope men who claim th’ distinction. They ar-re all brave men an’ if they wish to wear me laurels they may. I have so manny annyhow that it keeps me broke havin’ thim blocked an’ irned. But I will say f’r th’ binifit iv posterity that I was th’ on’y man I see. An’ I had a tillyscope.”

The last punch was right to the wind: —

... if Tiddy done it all he ought to say so an’ relieve th’ suspinse. But if I was him I’d call th’ book “Alone in Cubia.”

From then on, the book was Alone in Cubia. And one of the most interesting chapters in Dunne’s life is how Roosevelt genially, if nervously, courted his friendship.

The personal history of Martin Dooley was known to all. Like Socrates he made one brief excursion into office — as precinct captain (1873-1875) — but after that retired to philosophy. (When asked to remain in politics, he refused and gave his reasons: “As Shakespere says, ‘Ol’ men f’r th’ council, young men f’r th’ ward.’ ”) His occupation was saloonkeeper, though in his earlier years he had worked at heavier manual employment as street laborer and drayman. Born in County Roscommon, Ireland, he had emigrated to the United States before the Civil War and had worked his way west to Chicago. He was a mature observer of the Chicago Fire of 1871. His age, when he first became a national figure, in 1898, was unknown, but was commonly believed to be at least in the late sixties. What his age was when he last appeared, in 1926, is anybody’s guess.

Dooley’s barroom was on Archey Road (Archer Avenue) in Chicago, in a neighborhood once purely Irish and still, in 1898, Irish enough so that it made little difference in the essays. “The barbarians around them,” we are told in Dunne’s description of the area, “are moderately but firmly governed, encouraged to passionate votings for the ruling race, but restrained from the immoral pursuit of office.”

And of Dooley himself we have the following account: “Among them lives and prospers the traveller, archaeologist, historian, social observer, saloonkeeper, economist, and philosopher, who has not been out of the ward for twenty-five years but twict.’ He reads the newspapers with solemn care, heartily hates them, and accepts all they print for the sake of drowning Hennessy’s rising protests against his logic. From the cool heights of life in the Archey Road, uninterrupted by the jarring noises of crickets and cows, he observes the passing show, and meditates thereon. His impressions are transferred to the desensitized plate of Mr. Hennessy’s mind, where they can do no harm. ... He is opulent in good advice, as becomes a man of his station; for he has mastered most of the obstacles in a business career, and by leading a prudent and temperate life has established himself so well that he owns his own house and furniture, and is only slightly behind on his license. It would be indelicate to give statistics as to his age.” There, except to note that he profited by Socrates’ example and remained a bachelor, is the sum of Martin Dooley’s personality and circumstances at the time the world began to beat a path to his keyhole.

3

IT WAS far easier to create Dooley in character than to keep him there. Much of Dunne’s quality as an artist can be measured by his success in doing just that. The difficulties were innumerable. Many of the earlier essays written between 1893 and 1898 were concerned with Chicago politics, a subject obviously within Dooley’s experience. Others were observations on general topics, or tall stories, or little homilies on practical virtue and everyday vice. But with national syndication the politics had to become national or international, and the localisms either universal or unintelligible.

Dunne managed it beautifully. The newspapers still accounted for the bulk of Dooley’s information; and Hogan and Father Kelly and Dock O’Leary supplied subjects for literary, theological, and scientific discussion. Hogan was the most useful. He read everything, believed everything, and followed every fad from infant care to golf. Hogan came very close to being enthusiastic, progress-minded America. He is an appealing, understandable, and — in his full implications — rather a terrifying character.

There were other dangers for Dooley — the worst, perhaps, that he would become a fossil, with only a fossil’s powers of entertainment, and lose his value as an interpreter. Such fossils abound in all professional humor. An American example, to which you can easily add a dozen others, is the chin-whiskered farmer, with cowhide boots and a catgut twang, dear to fifth-rate cartoonists. It would have been all too easy for that to happen to Dooley, for he represented a factor in American life that changed very nearly out of recognition during the thirty-three years he appeared in the newspapers and magazines. That Dooley did not fossilize, that he remained fresh and alive to the last, is due to Dunne’s objective sensitivity to social change.

It would be foolish to offer the eight volumes of essays as a sociological document on the thens and nows of the American-Irish scene. The primary interest of both Dunne and his readers was in his political or social comment; his attention to background was purely literary. Yet the essays do record many of the most significant permutations of Irish life in America, as and when they took place.

The change of tone over the years is very broad. In the late nineties, for example, Dooley waxed sardonic over golf, that social-silly pastime of the idle rich. In 1919, he followed Hogan and Larkin out to the links to watch them play. He was as ironic as ever, but now in everyday language. The game had become just another foolish fact — no longer a Sunday-supplement, lobsters-and-champagne myth. “There’s nawthin’ more excitin’ to th’ mother iv siven at th’ end iv a complete wash-day thin to listen to an account iv a bum goluf game fr’m th’ lips iv her lifemate. ‘Tis almost as absorbin’ as th’ invintory iv a grocery store.” That Dooley or Hogan should be on the links in 1895 might not have been impossible, but at any rate it wouldn’t have happened. In 1919 it would not lift an eyebrow.

Golf is one example, and not particularly a central example, of the change represented. The whole process needs a history by itself, and none is yet written. The essays indicate it by progressively relaxing the belligerence with which the characters, Dooley included, face the smug and wealthy world. More and more their angry sarcasm is softened by indifference, their irony by amusement. This is not growing weakness or old age or an access of gentleness — just that a battle has been won and the victors are letting down their stiffly assumed defense. To put it more briefly still: the pressure is off.

The pressure let up in numberless ways, about that time, as the first generation of American-born Irish took over from their parents. Think of it in concrete terms. Families that had struggled along for years — God knows how — on the father’s uncertain wages of, say, eight to ten dollars a week suddenly found themselves with five or six times that amount as the boys and girls grew up and got jobs their parents could never dream of. They marched into Canaan land and the walls toppled in the onrush. The “No Irish Need Apply” signs were broken up for firewood. It was a happy, marvelous time — a time for them to wonder at and enjoy — and it was enjoyed.

After fifty years of low wages, high immigration, and few opportunities, the American dream came true for the Irish with a bang. People with Irish names might, if they chose, be irritated by a last social sniper or two, but there was no serious obstacle left. Like the Yankees before them, they were now free to camp on the higher pastures and throw rocks at the foreigners below — for the Mayflower had meanwhile discharged another enormous boatload.

This last aspect of the change did not escape Dunne’s attention, and though he had always been avowedly partisan as far as the Irish were concerned, he let these new recruits to smugness have a welldirected volley. Know-Nothingism was a form of mental decrepitude he disliked in anybody.

[Shaughnessy] was in yisterdah an’ says he: “ ‘Tis time we done something to make th’ immigration laws sthronger,” says he. “Thrue f’r ye, Miles Standish,” says I; “but what wud ye do?” “I’d keep out th’ offscourin’s iv Europe,” says he. “Wud ye go back?” says I. “Have ye’er joke,” says he. “ ‘Tis not so seeryus as it was befure ye come,” says I.

In a longer speech Dunne let Dooley remind Americans of the hypocrisy of paleface nativism: —

... As a pilgrim father that missed th’ first boats, I must raise me claryon voice again’ th’ invasion iv this fair land be th’ paupers an’ arnychists iv effete Europe. Ye bet I must — because I’m here first. ‘Twas different whin I was dashed high on th’ stern an’ rockbound coast. In thim days America was th’ refuge iv th’ oppressed iv all th’ wurruld. They cud come over here an’ do a good job iv oppressin’ thimsilves. As I told ye I come a little late. Th’ Rosenfelts an’ th’ Lodges bate me be at laste a boat lenth, an’ be th’ time I got here they was stern an’ rockbound thimsilves. So I got a gloryous rayciption as soon as I was towed off th’ rocks. Th’ stars an’ sthripes whispered a welcome in th’ breeze an’ a shovel was thrust into me hand an’ I was pushed into a sthreet excyvatin’ as though I’d been born here. Th’ pilgrim father who bossed th’ job was a fine ol’ puritan be th’ name iv Doherty, who come over in th’ Mayflower about th’ time iv the potato rot in Wexford, an’ he made me think they was a hole in th’ breakwather iv th’ haven iv refuge an’ some iv th’ wash iv th’ seas iv opprission had got through. . . .

Annyhow, I was rayceived with open arms that sometimes ended in a clinch. I was afraid I wasn’t goin’ to assimilate with th’ airlyer pilgrim fathers an’ th’ instichoochions iv th’ counthry, but I soon found that a long swing iv th’ pick made me as good as another man an’ it didn’t require a gr-reat intellect, or sometimes anny at all, to vote th’ dimmycrat ticket, an’ befure I was here a month, I felt enough like a native born American to burn a witch.

4

FOR the most part, however, Dunne let his people enjoy their prosperity in quietness, and added his benediction. His own prosperity, considerable as it was, had, I believe, very little to do with the increasing gentleness of his comment. He was far too objective for that, and his natural kindliness, combined with a bitter hatred of hypocrisy, did not lend itself to jeremiads on the evils of having enough. The observation was as fundamental with him as with Shaw that the trouble with the poor is poverty. In his later years he had fewer occasions to attack the comfortable proponents of salutary poverty, but if we go back to 1894, the year of the Pullman strike, we can see the color of his fury.

After months of conflict, the strike against the company had been suppressed with use of Federal troops, and starvation was a daily fact in Pullman, Illinois. Dunne, then on the editorial staff of the Chicago Evening Post, had punched at Pullman’s head from time to time, but when it seemed that the company’s policy toward the beaten men was to be one of cold-blooded retaliation, he let go with both hands and both feet and the pavement, and did not smile as he worked. The essay shows Dunne at his most Irish, using wit coldly as a bludgeon, savaging his victim with it. It shows too what Dunne could do when he felt himself called upon to champion a cause — for his action in such a case was that of a champion. You could hardly call it defending the weak. It was slaughter: —

Go into wan iv th’ side sthreets about supper time an’ see thim, Jawn — thim women sittin’ at th’ windies, with th’ babies at their breasts an’ waitin’ f’r th’ ol’ man to come home. Thin watch him as he comes up th’ sthreet, with his hat over his eyes an’ th’ shoulders iv him bint like a hoop an’ dhraggin’ his feet as if he carried ball an’ chain. Musha. but ‘tis a sound to dhrive ye’er heart cold whin a woman sobs an’ th’ young wans cries, an’ both because there’s no bread in th’ house. Betther off thim that lies in Gavin’s crates out in Calv’ry, with th’ grass over thim an’ th’ stars lookin’ down on thim, quite at last. And betther f’r us that sees an’ hears an’ can do nawthin’ but give a crust now an’ thin. . . .

Then he turned directly to the employer himself: —

“But what’s it all to Pullman? Whin Gawd quarried his heart a happy man was made. He cares no more f’r thim little matthers iv life an’ death thin I do f’r O’Connor’s tab. ‘Th’ women an’ childhern is dyin’ iv hunger,’ they says. ‘Will ye not put out ye’er hand to help thim?’ they says. ‘Ah, what th’ ‘ell,’ says George. ‘What th’ ‘ell,’ he says. ‘What th’ ‘ell,’ he says ‘James,’ he says, ‘a bottle iv champagne an’ a piece iv crambree pie. What th’ ‘ell, what th’ ‘ell, what th’ ‘ell.’”

“I heard two died yesterday,” said Mr. McKenna. “Two women.”

“Poor things, poor things. But,” said Mr. Dooley, once more swabbing the bar, “what th’ ‘ell.”

As the editorial writer at twenty-seven had had nothing but contempt for a tycoon befuddled by his own power, so at thirty-one, when Dunne lifted his sights from Chicago to the world of nations, he found no bigger game. Dooley was fazed by no man’s pretensions. Statesman or alderman, man of war or man of God, it was all the same; “man” without its modifiers was the meaningful word — and, be it noted, the dignified word. Though his hero-worship was not even microscopic, his respect for human worth was as ready as his understanding of human nature.

Like every writer worth his salt, Dunne had his vision of evil, profound and thoroughgoing, and what is less usual, balanced by an equally searching vision of decency. He could never write a Utopia. The complexity of the human spirit was his starting point, and his philosophy was bounded by an intensely felt perception that all souls are alike before man as before God. “All men are ME. Th’ little tape line that I use f’r mesilf is long enough an’ acc’rate enough to measure anny man in th’ wurruld, an’ if it happens that I’m ladlin’ out red impeeryalism at tin cints th’ glass instead iv breakin’ stone at Joliet or frinds in Wall Sthreet it’s because I started th’ way I did.” The same applied to Joe Chamberlain and Oom Paul Kruger, to Father Kelly and to Carey, the young criminal in “The Idle Apprentice.”It was, I think, largely because of this perception that people recognized in Dooley the peculiar authority of the man who has been there and knows. Applicability is an attribute of the classics. Dooley navigated in the world with his map of Archey Road; he traveled Archey Road by the signposts of the human heart.

“It must be a good thing to be good,” he said, “or ivrybody wudden’t be pretendin’ he was. But I don’t think they’se anny such thing as hypocrisy in th’ wurruld. They can’t be. If ye’d turn on th’ gas in th’ darkest heart ye’d find it had a good raison for th’ worst things it done, a good varchous raison, like needin’ th’ money or punishin’ th’ wicked or tachin’ people a lesson to be more careful, or protectin’ th’ liberties iv mankind, or needin’ the money.” Hypocrisy and the money motives it concealed were often his theme — sometimes illustrated by an example drawn from Archey Road, but more usually by a direct attack on the conniving interests, whether individual or national.

Imperialism he counted the biggest hypocrisy of all, and the most vicious. And though his friend Theodore Roosevelt wrote him argumentative letters on the subject, he hit at it repeatedly, scoring his most effective shot when he readjusted the imperialistic slogans of the day to “Hands acrost th’ sea an’ into somewan’s pocket” and “Take up th’ white man’s burden an’ hand it to th’ coons.” In this work he rarely let his personal sympathies interfere with his vision. As an Irishman he loved the United States, hated England, and had a soft spot in his heart for France, but he knew all too well that greed has no nationality.

The protests that Dunne leveled against British methods in South Africa merge inevitably with his open disgust at the cruelty used in suppressing the Filipino Insurrection. Read his discussion of American use of the water torture in his essay on “The Philippine Peace,” an almost Swiftian satire in which his pity and indignation vent themselves in lacerating wit. Or his personalization of nineteenth-century diplomacy, in which both the Englishman and the Frenchman are represented as thieves — the Frenchman the more amiable, but not enough to matter much to the victim.

’Tis unforch’nit, but ‘tis thrue. Th’ Fr-rinch ar-re not steady ayether in their politics or their morals. That’s where they get done be th’ hated British. Th’ diff’rence in furrin’ policies is th’ diff’rence between a second-rate safe blower an’ a first-class boonco-steerer. Th’ Fr-rinch buy a ton iv dinnymite, spind five years in dhrillin’ a hole through a steel dure, blow open lb safe, lose a leg or an ar-rm, an’ get away with th’ li’bilities iv th’ firm. Th’ English dhress up f’r a Methodist preacher, stick a piece iv lead pipe in th’ tails iv their coat in case iv emargency, an’ get all th’ money there is in th’ line.

In view of the lambasting they took from him, it is difficult to understand Dooley’s immense popularity with the English. The likeliest explanation is that they knew that his fair-mindedness cut both ways. He flailed into them as hard as any other American journalist in his protests about the Boer War, but he was the first to admit the safety-first quality of American sympathy.

“Don’t ye think th’ United States is enthusyastic f’r th’ Boers?” asked the innocent Hennessy.

“It was,” said Mr. Dooley. “But in th’ las’ few weeks it’s had so manny things to think iv. Th’ enthusyasm iv this counthry, Hinnissy, always makes me think iv a bonfire on an ice-floe. It burns bright so long as ye feed it, an’ it looks good, but it don’t take hold, somehow, on th’ ice.”

5

WHILE it is obvious, or seems obvious, how Martin Dooley’s sixty-odd years of experience in the Old and New Worlds as laborer and proprietor, participant and observer, fitted him for his great role, it is less easy to understand how Dunne, at twenty-six, could create and endow Dooley. Fortunately there is a good biography — Elmer Ellis’s Mr. Dooley’s America — well written and definitive, and explaining everything except that which no biography can explain: the ignition of genius.

Dunne’s background, as Ellis reconstructs it, was good but not unusual. He came from a comfortably well-off, middle-class, Irish family. His father was interested in the art of politics, his mother in good reading; and the son acquired both tastes. He got a high school education, but was both too smart and too lazy to satisfy his teachers. In 1884, when he was not quite seventeen, he went to work for the Chicago Telegram. Perhaps fortunately for him, the Telegram was a poor sort of paper— “a bright boy was better talent than any other it could command,” writes Mr. Ellis. Dunne was soon its police reporter, and within a few months one of his stories attracted the attention of the editor of the News, who hired him away.

In 1888 he went to the Chicago Times to do political reporting, and in the same year became city editor. At twenty-two, “already at the top as a reporter in Chicago,” he was feeling restless. He began moving about from paper to paper. The year 1890 saw him editor of the Sunday edition of the Tribune; 1891, a political reporter on the Herald; 1892, in charge of the editorial page of the Evening Post, a Herald subsidiary. In that year he began writing Irish dialect stories for the Sunday Post. The stories soon had as their central character a Col. McNeery, modeled on John McGarry, an eminent Dearborn Street publican, who, like his successor, was a Roscommon man and a bachelor.

The McNeery stories were an instant success; too much of a success, in fact, for McGarry objected and Dunne had to invent a new character. The result, slowly developed over the next few years, was Martin Dooley—enough like McGarry to maintain a continuum, different enough to assuage McGarry’s anger. Then came the Spanish war, and in telling Hennessy how Cousin George “ Dooley,” the admiral, won at Manila, Mr. Dooley suddenly found himself talking to an eagerly attentive world.

The rest of Dunne’s life is not so important for us. His own career had just begun in 1898, and for nearly twenty-five years afterwards he remained near the top of his profession. He was editor and one of the founders of the American Magazine when it was the organ of the liberal “muckrake” movement. He was editor of Collier's for several years before it was sold to Crowell. His friends included such men as Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and most of the other American writers of his day. His admirers numbered such unlikely people as Henry James and Henry Adams.

But the fact remains that he created Martin Dooley when he was twenty-six and had developed him fully by the time he was thirty. After that Dunne exhibited a continuous miracle in maintaining Dooley — but there was no new miracle, only much fine work in other fields. More could not have been expected of him. “I, mesilf,” said Dooley, “am ivry man.” A generation of readers understood him to be right.

Dunne’s admirations were as catholic as his resentments. Ready to applaud at a hero’s popular triumph, he was yet like William James, who found most cause to wonder at those “great examples of sustained endurance” found readily in “thousands of poor homes where the woman successfully holds the family together and keeps it going by taking all the thought and doing all the work.” James saw that from a distance. Dooley lived on the same block with it.

The distance or nearness of the point of vantage does not matter: it takes like genius to make a selection from the obvious. All Dooley’s personal heroes are kin to the woman James described. They appear in different guises — a good cop, a hardworking father of a large family, a washerwoman whose tenderly reared only son turns out a bum, a Union veteran who never marches in a parade or waves the bloody shirt. In one of his finest heroic tales the hero is a fireman. It never disqualified a man, to Dooley’s thinking, that he got paid for his bravery by the week.

The fireman’s name was Clancy and he had all the necessary attributes, the “sustained endurance” and the strength for it, the flair for dramatic action, respect and contempt for danger, and, in the great heroic tradition, the inner compulsion to outlive his luck, to effect his own doom.

All th’ r-road was proud iv him, an’ faith he was proud iv himsilf. He r-rode free on th’ sthreet ca-ars, an was th’ champeen hand-ball player f’r miles around. Ye shud see him goin’ down th’ sthreet, with his blue shirt an’ his blue coat with th’ buttons on it, an’ his cap on his ear. But ne’er a cap or coat’d he wear whin they was a fire. He might be shiv’rin be th’ stove in th’ ingine house with a buffalo robe over his head; but, whin th’ gong sthruck, ‘twas off with coat an’ cap an’ buffalo robe, an’ out come me brave Clancy, bareheaded an’ bare hand, dhrivin’ with wan line an’ spillin’ th’ hose cart on wan wheel at ivry jump iv the horse.

The Clancy saga is then built up in a few swiftly told feats of grand irrational courage: —

“Who’ll go up?” says Bill Musham. “Sure, sir.” says Clancy, “I’ll go”; an’ up he wint. His captain was a man be th’ name iv O’Connell, fr’m th’ County Kerry; an’ he had his fut on th’ ladder whin Clancy started. Well, th’ good man wint into th’ smoke, with his wife faintin’ down below. “He’ll be kilt,” says his brother. “Ye don’t know him,” says Bill Musham. An’ sure enough, whin ivry wan’d give him up, out comes me brave Clancy, as black as a Turk, with th’ girl in his arms. Th’ others wint up like monkeys, but he shtud wavin’ thim off, an’ come down th’ ladder face forward. “Where’d ye larn that?” says Bill Musham. “I seen a man do it at th’ Lvceem whin I was a kid,” says Clancy. “Was it all right?” “I’ll have ye up before th’ ol’ man,” says Bill Musham. “I’ll teach ye to come down a laddher as if ye was in a quadhrille, ye horse-stealin’, ham-sthringin’ May-o man,” he says. But he didn’t. Clancy wint over to see his wife. “O Mike,” says she, “ ‘twas fine,” she says. “But why d’ye take th’ risk?” she says. “Did ye see th’ captain?” he says with a scowl. “He wanted to go. Did ye think I’d follow a Kerry man with all th’ ward lukkin’ on?” he says.

But like Achilles or Cuchulain, Clancy cannot die in bed. The hero must break his taboos. Clancy’s are worn-out luck and onsetting age. He knows that the time has come to quit. He will quit — after the last battle. Carefully, in a tense, restrained passage, Dooley sings out his story to the end: —

Well, so he wint dhrivin’ th’ hose-cart on wan wheel, an’ jumpin’ whin he heerd a man so much as hit a glass to make it ring. All th’ people looked up to him, an’ th’ kids followed him down th’ sthreet; an’ ‘twas th’ gr-reatest priv’lige f’r anny wan f’r to play dominos with him near th’ joker.

But about a year ago he come in to see me, an’ says he, “Well, I’m goin’ to quit.” “Why,” says I, “ye’re a young man yet,” I says. “Faith,”he says, “look at me hair, he says —“young heart, ol’ head. I’ve been at it these twinty year, an’ th’ good woman’s wantin’ to see more iv me thin blowin’ into a saucer iv coffee,” he says. “I’m goin’ to quit,” he says, “on’y I want to see wan more good fire,” he says. “A rale good ol’ hot wan,” he says, “with th’ wind blowin’ f’r it an’ a good dhraft in th’ ilivator-shaft, an’ about two stories, with pitcher-frames an’ gasoline an’ excelsior, an’ to hear th’ chief yellin’: ‘Play ‘way sivinteen. What th’ hell an’ damnation are ye standin’ aroun’ with that pipe f’r? Is this a fire ‘r a dam livin’ pitcher? I’ll break ivry man iv eighteen, four, six, an’ chem’cal five to-morrah mornin’ befure breakfast.’ Oh,” he says, bringin his fist down, “wan more, an’ I’ll quit.”

An’ he did, Jawn. Th’ day th’ Carpenter Brothers’ box factory burnt. ‘Twas wan iv thim big, fine-lookin buildings that pious men built out iv celluloid an plasther iv Paris. An’ Clancy was wan iv th’ men undher whin th’ wall fell. I seen thim bringin’ him home; an’ th’ little woman met him at th’ dure, rumplin’ her apron in her hands.

6

THE suggestion is regularly made that the time has come to revive Dooley, and not infrequently some small attempt at it is made. One of the essays, peculiarly applicable to some present crisis, is reprinted in a newspaper or magazine, or an editorial is written, liberally spiced with pertinent quotations. The result is only a vague wonder and amusement, not the hoped-for stirring of a new interest. As a method it is too piecemeal to succeed. Dooley’s credit with his readers was long-term. He held them by his continuous provision of apposite wisdom; by his wit, and its varied rhythm which is not to be learned in one day; and above all, by his personality, which was thoroughly loved and as thoroughly understood. His clientele was trained to him and stayed with him for years. Besides, they knew how to read dialect. Strange as it may seem, they even liked to read it.

The present reading public has a firmly settled aversion to dialect writing, which is not likely soon to be shaken. If taste should turn again in that direction, it will not be towards the dialect of Dooley’s all but vanished generation of immigrant Irish, but to some vernacular as readily heard now as that was then. Meanwhile, with every year, his obscurities increase. As unfamiliarity makes his language diflicult, so the fading memory of topicalities that were the occasions of his wit darkens the wit itself and makes what was catholic and clear seem merely abstruse.

Rendition into straight English has been tried and, to my taste, fails. As well translate Chaucer — though that has been done. Translation precipitates some of the wit out of the essays, but it destroys their artistic compaction and it dissolves Martin Dooley altogether. Dooley without Dooley is inexcusable. He must be read in the original and at length. That will never be done again by a great many. But there will, I believe, always be a scattering of people in whose estimation he will be secure. The need for study and a glossary to read it has rarely killed a specimen of wisdom; and of witty wisdom — never.

Not that a glossary is necessary yet. Only practice and an ear for the brogue are required. Given these, the essays are as good as ever. The ear for the brogue is the most immediately important. If few will take the trouble to read him, many will listen to him read, and with pleasure. There is the way to make converts. And there, I think, is the way he could be brought again to wide attention. I offer it as a free suggestion to any recording company that they put out a Dooley album — taken perhaps, from Elmer Ellis’s well-selected anthology, Mr. Dooley at His Best — and read, of course, by Barry Fitzgerald. It should go over nicely. What could be better, any one of these evenings, than to switch off the damned driveling radio, put a record on the phonograph, and hear Fitzgerald-Dooley talking soberly of Things Spiritual: —

How can I know annything, whin I haven’t puzzled out what I am mesilf. I am Dooley, ye say, but ye’re on’y a casual obsarver. Ye don’t know annything about me details. Ye look at me with a gin’ral eye. Nawthin’ that happens to me really hurts ye. Ye say, “I’ll go over to see Dooley,” sometimes, but more often ye say, “I’ll go over to Dooley’s.” I’m a house to ye, wan iv a thousand that look like a row iv model wurrukin’men’s cottages. I’m a post to hitch ye’er silences to. I’m always about th’ same to ye. But to me I’m a millyon Dooleys an’ all iv thim sthrangers to ME. I niver know which wan iv thim is cornin’ in. I’m like a hotel keeper with on’y wan bed an’ a millyon guests, who come wan at a time an’ tumble each other out. I set up late at night an’ pass th’ bottle with a gay an’ careless Dooley that hasn’t a sorrow in th’ world, an’ suddenly I look up an’ see settin’ acrost fr’m me a gloomy wretch that fires th’ dhrink out iv th’ window an’ chases me to bed. I’m just gettin’ used to him whin another Dooley comes in, a cross, cantankerous, crazy fellow that insists on eatin’ breakfast with me. An’ so it goes. I know more about mesilf than annybody knows an’ I know nawthin’. Though I’d make a map fr’m memory an’ gossip iv anny other man, f’r mesilf I’m still uncharted.