Philip O'Connor
Encyclopedia
Philip O'Connor was a British
writer
and surrealist poet
, who also painted. He was one of the 'Wheatsheaf writers' of 1930s Fitzrovia
(who took their name from a pub). He married six times and fathered at least eight children.
he never knew and a woman of mixed Irish and Burmese ancestry whose aristocratic tastes
exceeded her reach, he was born in Leighton Buzzard
in Bedfordshire
and taken to France
, where his mother abandoned him at the age of four, in the care of a woman, Madame Tillieux who ran a Pâtisserie
in the seaside resort of Wimereux
near Boulogne.
Two years later, his mother returned to claim him and was met with violent protests. This heartbreaking scene later became the subject of a BBC
radio play and Wimereux, its wide white beaches and the warmth of its well-ordered teashop, was to haunt O'Connor for many years afterwards. "Memories of twilight in Wimereux return home in a glass of wine," he wrote later. His mother took him back to England and then, after setting up housekeeping in a Soho
cellar, abandoned him again, this time, he recounted, to the care of a one-legged bachelor civil servant who wore size 13 boot, and who lived in a small wooden hut on Box Hill
near Dorking
in Surrey
. In due course, O'Connor attended the nearby Dorking High School, reading the entire works of Dickens before the age of 14 but otherwise proving a difficult student, ill at ease with his fellow pupils. Leaving school at 17, Philip O'Connor plunged into the bohemian life in the artistic quarter of London
known as Fitzrovia
, declaiming doggerel at bars frequented by Dylan Thomas
and others, giving impassioned, if not always comprehensible, speeches at Hyde Park Corner
.
then percolating through London
, Philip O'Connor rapidly produced poems which he later described as "a shockspill of sensations and thoughts in Surrealist disarray" and with atypical modesty as "mountebankery". His contempt for the editors who published his early work in magazines like "New Verse" and "Life and Letters Today" was often equally fierce.
Philip O'Connor, who began his literary career turning out surrealistic poetry
, also took to buttonholing literary lions, not always to their delight.
He once sent a note up to Aldous Huxley
's hotel suite demanding five pounds and on another occasion jumped out from behind a door and shouted Boo! at T. S. Eliot
.
His extreme outsider status was reinforced in his late teens by a longish period tramping across England
and Ireland
- an experience which formed the basis for his book Vagrancy published as a Penguin Special
in 1963. His time on the road was followed by a six-month stay in the Maudsley mental hospital
, where he was diagnosed as the youngest schizophrenic in the ward. He then bounced, or fell, back into Fitzrovia
and into a marriage with the daughter of a Scottish lawyer, whose inheritance he was to squander quickly.
O'Connor and his frail bride returned to the hill where he had lived with his guardian and purchased another hut there.
The marriage ended after five years and O'Connor embarked upon a number of other relationships, fathering an unknown number of children, in whose upbringing he was to play little part.
Some of his wives and girlfriends attempted to tame him and at various times O'Connor earned a living by pushing an old man round Salisbury
in a Bath chair
, wielding the lights at the Bedford Music Hall in Camden Town
, and as an operator
on the continental telephone exchange
.
Along the way he took up with a woman who earned her living taking baths with older men, then improved his lot by marrying a wealthy woman who financed a high-living fling that ended when her money and her sanity ran out. (After she tried to kill him, she was confined to a mental hospital
and Philip O'Connor went on to other women.)
declared in Esquire
that there could be no calmer word to describe the book than superb, while in The Sunday Times
, Cyril Connolly
proclaimed O'Connor's "acutely conscious and contemporary sensibility". The book is dedicated to Anna Wing
, the actress and his third partner with whom he had a son, Jon. Its success though launched O'Connor into a career as an off-beat radio interviewer.
One literary figure who did not shrink from such antics was Stephen Spender
, who wrote an admiring introduction to Memoirs and another when the book was reissued by Norton
in 1989.
The book, hailed for its uncompromising honesty, was greeted in England
with almost unremitting acclaim, which included an entire BBC
broadcast devoted to its merits and lavish praise from Cyril Connolly
and Philip Toynbee
. The book eventually drew praise from the disparate likes of Saul Bellow
, Paul Bowles
, Joseph Brodsky
, William Burroughs, Arthur Miller
and Dorothy Parker
, but generally the appreciation on the US side of the Atlantic was more mixed.
Indeed, the daily book reviewer for the New York Times, Orville Prescott, was unable to decide which he loathed more, the "sickening book" or the "sick man" who had produced it.
Philip O'Connor, who emerged from his childhood with a lifelong disdain for the British middle class, fared better in the Times's Sunday Book Review
, where John W. Aldrige, a professor of literature at New York University
, likened O'Connor to Yeats
, praised him for his "sharply epigrammatic wittiness" and hailed him for revealing himself as "an unspeakable cad, scoundrel and snob—in short a brutally honest man."
Two autobiographical sequels, The Lower View (1960), about bicycle visits to writers and artists, and Living in Croesor (1962), describing his sojourn in a Welsh village
, were less well received. But Vagrancy (1963), a study of those on the bottom of British society, enjoyed a vogue on university reading lists.
's Third Programme
. He talked on air with drug addicts, alcoholics and other misfits, including Quentin Crisp
, in 1963. The flamboyant eccentric credited O'Connor with inventing him. Donald Carroll
a publisher, who happened to hear the broadcast was impressed by Crisp
's performance, and as an indirect result of the interview, Crisp wrote The Naked Civil Servant
.
apartment in the Dakota building had been on an epic scale.
Philip O'Connor started the love affair which was to last for the rest of his life. Repeating the earlier pattern, the couple left immediately for France
, and soon settled in Wimereux
where O'Connor's formative early years had been spent.
A few years later they and their two sons moved to the South of France, in Fontareches
, near Uzes
where he lived for the rest of his life, writing thousands of letters to friends, often with abject apologies for past hurts, and keeping a daily journal that runs to millions of words.
O'Connor and Grady never married, but they created an atmosphere of strange fastidiousness around them in which O'Connor's hisses and cackles were matched by a neurasthenic fear of the sounds and movements of others.
This private world hedged in by Grady's antique screens and Chinese tapestries was rarely penetrated or understood by others, though O'Connor could on occasions be an exhilarating host. Reluctant to shake hands - he was more likely to extend a dangling finger - he had considerable skills as a cook, dabbled interestingly with chickens but was just as likely to offer visitors a glass of boiling rum as a tumbler of the best champagne.
He was a heavy drinker and (at the very least) massively eccentric, living a mainly parasitic life. In his own words, he "bathed in life and dried myself on the typewriter".
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and surrealist poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, who also painted. He was one of the 'Wheatsheaf writers' of 1930s Fitzrovia
Fitzrovia
Fitzrovia is a neighbourhood in central London, near London's West End lying partly in the London Borough of Camden and partly in the City of Westminster ; and situated between Marylebone and Bloomsbury and north of Soho. It is characterised by its mixed-use of residential, business, retail,...
(who took their name from a pub). He married six times and fathered at least eight children.
Early life and education
The son of a well-educated Irish fatherIreland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
he never knew and a woman of mixed Irish and Burmese ancestry whose aristocratic tastes
Aristocracy (class)
The aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in a society which has or once had a political system of Aristocracy. Aristocrats possess hereditary titles granted by a monarch, which once granted them feudal or legal privileges, or deriving, as in Ancient Greece and India,...
exceeded her reach, he was born in Leighton Buzzard
Leighton Buzzard
-Lower schools:*Beaudesert Lower School - Apennine Way*Clipstone Brook Lower School - Brooklands Drive*Greenleas Lower School - Derwent Road*Dovery Down Lower School - Heath Road*Heathwood Lower School - Heath Road*Leedon Lower School - Highfield Road...
in Bedfordshire
Bedfordshire
Bedfordshire is a ceremonial county of historic origin in England that forms part of the East of England region.It borders Cambridgeshire to the north-east, Northamptonshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the west and Hertfordshire to the south-east....
and taken to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, where his mother abandoned him at the age of four, in the care of a woman, Madame Tillieux who ran a Pâtisserie
Pâtisserie
A pâtisserie is the type of French or Belgian bakery that specializes in pastries and sweets. In both countries it is a legally controlled title that may only be used by bakeries that employ a licensed maître pâtissier ....
in the seaside resort of Wimereux
Wimereux
Wimereux is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France.-Geography:Wimereux is a coastal town situated some north of Boulogne, at the junction of the D233 and the D940 roads, on the banks of the river Wimereux. The river Slack forms the northern boundary of...
near Boulogne.
Two years later, his mother returned to claim him and was met with violent protests. This heartbreaking scene later became the subject of a BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
radio play and Wimereux, its wide white beaches and the warmth of its well-ordered teashop, was to haunt O'Connor for many years afterwards. "Memories of twilight in Wimereux return home in a glass of wine," he wrote later. His mother took him back to England and then, after setting up housekeeping in a Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
cellar, abandoned him again, this time, he recounted, to the care of a one-legged bachelor civil servant who wore size 13 boot, and who lived in a small wooden hut on Box Hill
Box Hill, Surrey
Box Hill is a summit of the North Downs in Surrey, approximately south west of London. The hill takes its name from the ancient box woodland found on the steepest west-facing chalk slopes overlooking the River Mole. The western part of the hill is owned and managed by the National Trust, whilst...
near Dorking
Dorking
Dorking is a historic market town at the foot of the North Downs approximately south of London, in Surrey, England.- History and development :...
in Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
. In due course, O'Connor attended the nearby Dorking High School, reading the entire works of Dickens before the age of 14 but otherwise proving a difficult student, ill at ease with his fellow pupils. Leaving school at 17, Philip O'Connor plunged into the bohemian life in the artistic quarter of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
known as Fitzrovia
Fitzrovia
Fitzrovia is a neighbourhood in central London, near London's West End lying partly in the London Borough of Camden and partly in the City of Westminster ; and situated between Marylebone and Bloomsbury and north of Soho. It is characterised by its mixed-use of residential, business, retail,...
, declaiming doggerel at bars frequented by Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
and others, giving impassioned, if not always comprehensible, speeches at Hyde Park Corner
Hyde Park Corner
Hyde Park Corner is a place in London, at the south-east corner of Hyde Park. It is a major intersection where Park Lane, Knightsbridge, Piccadilly, Grosvenor Place and Constitution Hill converge...
.
Early poetry
Poetry was a perfect outlet for him. Receptive to the Surrealist movementSurrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
then percolating through London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Philip O'Connor rapidly produced poems which he later described as "a shockspill of sensations and thoughts in Surrealist disarray" and with atypical modesty as "mountebankery". His contempt for the editors who published his early work in magazines like "New Verse" and "Life and Letters Today" was often equally fierce.
Philip O'Connor, who began his literary career turning out surrealistic poetry
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, also took to buttonholing literary lions, not always to their delight.
He once sent a note up to Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
's hotel suite demanding five pounds and on another occasion jumped out from behind a door and shouted Boo! at T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
.
His extreme outsider status was reinforced in his late teens by a longish period tramping across England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
- an experience which formed the basis for his book Vagrancy published as a Penguin Special
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
in 1963. His time on the road was followed by a six-month stay in the Maudsley mental hospital
Mental Hospital
Mental hospital may refer to:*Psychiatric hospital*hospital in Nepal named Mental Hospital...
, where he was diagnosed as the youngest schizophrenic in the ward. He then bounced, or fell, back into Fitzrovia
Fitzrovia
Fitzrovia is a neighbourhood in central London, near London's West End lying partly in the London Borough of Camden and partly in the City of Westminster ; and situated between Marylebone and Bloomsbury and north of Soho. It is characterised by its mixed-use of residential, business, retail,...
and into a marriage with the daughter of a Scottish lawyer, whose inheritance he was to squander quickly.
O'Connor and his frail bride returned to the hill where he had lived with his guardian and purchased another hut there.
The marriage ended after five years and O'Connor embarked upon a number of other relationships, fathering an unknown number of children, in whose upbringing he was to play little part.
Some of his wives and girlfriends attempted to tame him and at various times O'Connor earned a living by pushing an old man round Salisbury
Salisbury
Salisbury is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England and the only city in the county. It is the second largest settlement in the county...
in a Bath chair
Bath chair
A bath chair—or Bath chair—is a rolling chaise or light carriage with a folding hood, which can be open or closed, and a glass front. Used especially by invalids, it is mounted on three or four wheels and drawn or pushed by hand. It is so named from its origin in Bath, England, and possibly also...
, wielding the lights at the Bedford Music Hall in Camden Town
Camden Town
-Economy:In recent years, entertainment-related businesses and a Holiday Inn have moved into the area. A number of retail and food chain outlets have replaced independent shops driven out by high rents and redevelopment. Restaurants have thrived, with the variety of culinary traditions found in...
, and as an operator
Telephone operator
A telephone operator is either* a person who provides assistance to a telephone caller, usually in the placing of operator assisted telephone calls such as calls from a pay phone, collect calls , calls which are billed to a credit card, station-to-station and person-to-person calls, and certain...
on the continental telephone exchange
Telephone exchange
In the field of telecommunications, a telephone exchange or telephone switch is a system of electronic components that connects telephone calls...
.
Along the way he took up with a woman who earned her living taking baths with older men, then improved his lot by marrying a wealthy woman who financed a high-living fling that ended when her money and her sanity ran out. (After she tried to kill him, she was confined to a mental hospital
Mental Hospital
Mental hospital may refer to:*Psychiatric hospital*hospital in Nepal named Mental Hospital...
and Philip O'Connor went on to other women.)
Memoirs of a Public Baby (1958)
The publication of the complex, adroit and highly pertinent Memoirs of a Public Baby lent O'Connor considerable prestige in literary circles. Dorothy ParkerDorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
declared in Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
that there could be no calmer word to describe the book than superb, while in The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
, Cyril Connolly
Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connolly was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise , which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of...
proclaimed O'Connor's "acutely conscious and contemporary sensibility". The book is dedicated to Anna Wing
Anna Wing
Anna Eva Lydia Catherine Wing, MBE is an English actress. She has had a long career in television and theatre.-Personal life:...
, the actress and his third partner with whom he had a son, Jon. Its success though launched O'Connor into a career as an off-beat radio interviewer.
One literary figure who did not shrink from such antics was Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
, who wrote an admiring introduction to Memoirs and another when the book was reissued by Norton
W. W. Norton
W. W. Norton & Company is an independent American book publishing company based in New York City. It is well known for its "Norton Anthologies", particularly the Norton Anthology of English Literature and the "Norton Critical Editions" series of texts which are frequently assigned in university...
in 1989.
The book, hailed for its uncompromising honesty, was greeted in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
with almost unremitting acclaim, which included an entire BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
broadcast devoted to its merits and lavish praise from Cyril Connolly
Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connolly was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise , which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of...
and Philip Toynbee
Philip Toynbee
Theodore Philip Toynbee was a British writer and communist. He wrote experimental novels, and distinctive verse novels, one of which was an epic called Pantaloon, a work in several volumes, only some of which are published...
. The book eventually drew praise from the disparate likes of Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
, Paul Bowles
Paul Bowles
Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...
, Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky , was a Russian poet and essayist.In 1964, 23-year-old Brodsky was arrested and charged with the crime of "social parasitism" He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 and settled in America with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters...
, William Burroughs, Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...
and Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
, but generally the appreciation on the US side of the Atlantic was more mixed.
Indeed, the daily book reviewer for the New York Times, Orville Prescott, was unable to decide which he loathed more, the "sickening book" or the "sick man" who had produced it.
Philip O'Connor, who emerged from his childhood with a lifelong disdain for the British middle class, fared better in the Times's Sunday Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
, where John W. Aldrige, a professor of literature at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
, likened O'Connor to Yeats
Yeats
W. B. Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright.Yeats may also refer to:* Yeats ,* Yeats , an impact crater on Mercury* Yeats , an Irish thoroughbred racehorse-See also:...
, praised him for his "sharply epigrammatic wittiness" and hailed him for revealing himself as "an unspeakable cad, scoundrel and snob—in short a brutally honest man."
Two autobiographical sequels, The Lower View (1960), about bicycle visits to writers and artists, and Living in Croesor (1962), describing his sojourn in a Welsh village
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, were less well received. But Vagrancy (1963), a study of those on the bottom of British society, enjoyed a vogue on university reading lists.
Radio host
During the early 1960s O'Connor conducted a series of radio interviews for the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's Third Programme
BBC Third Programme
The BBC Third Programme was a national radio network broadcast by the BBC. The network first went on air on 29 September 1946 and became one of the leading cultural and intellectual forces in Britain, playing a crucial role in disseminating the arts...
. He talked on air with drug addicts, alcoholics and other misfits, including Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp , was an English writer and raconteur. He became a gay icon in the 1970s after publication of his memoir, The Naked Civil Servant.- Early life :...
, in 1963. The flamboyant eccentric credited O'Connor with inventing him. Donald Carroll
Donald Carroll
Donald Carroll was an American author, editor, poet, columnist and humourist.-Early life:Born in Dallas, Texas in 1940, he was educated at the University of Texas, where he founded the poetry quarterly Quagga - which published the work of Richard Wilbur, e.e...
a publisher, who happened to hear the broadcast was impressed by Crisp
Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp , was an English writer and raconteur. He became a gay icon in the 1970s after publication of his memoir, The Naked Civil Servant.- Early life :...
's performance, and as an indirect result of the interview, Crisp wrote The Naked Civil Servant
The Naked Civil Servant (book)
The Naked Civil Servant is the first volume of an autobiography by the gay icon Quentin Crisp. It was later turned into a TV movie starring John Hurt, which was also titled The Naked Civil Servant....
.
Panna Grady
In material and emotional terms, O'Connor's life was stabilised in 1967 by his meeting at the age of 51 with the young, beautiful and wealthy American Panna Grady, whose self-effacing generosity to artists and writers in her New YorkNew York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
apartment in the Dakota building had been on an epic scale.
Philip O'Connor started the love affair which was to last for the rest of his life. Repeating the earlier pattern, the couple left immediately for France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, and soon settled in Wimereux
Wimereux
Wimereux is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France.-Geography:Wimereux is a coastal town situated some north of Boulogne, at the junction of the D233 and the D940 roads, on the banks of the river Wimereux. The river Slack forms the northern boundary of...
where O'Connor's formative early years had been spent.
A few years later they and their two sons moved to the South of France, in Fontareches
Fontarèches
Fontarèches is a commune in the Gard department in southern France.-Population:-References:*...
, near Uzes
Uzès
Uzès is a commune in the Gard department in southern France.It lies about 25 km north-northeast of Nîmes.-History:Originally Ucetia, Uzès was a small Gallo-Roman oppidum, or administrative settlement. The town lies at the source of the Eure, from where a Roman aqueduct was built in the first...
where he lived for the rest of his life, writing thousands of letters to friends, often with abject apologies for past hurts, and keeping a daily journal that runs to millions of words.
O'Connor and Grady never married, but they created an atmosphere of strange fastidiousness around them in which O'Connor's hisses and cackles were matched by a neurasthenic fear of the sounds and movements of others.
This private world hedged in by Grady's antique screens and Chinese tapestries was rarely penetrated or understood by others, though O'Connor could on occasions be an exhilarating host. Reluctant to shake hands - he was more likely to extend a dangling finger - he had considerable skills as a cook, dabbled interestingly with chickens but was just as likely to offer visitors a glass of boiling rum as a tumbler of the best champagne.
He was a heavy drinker and (at the very least) massively eccentric, living a mainly parasitic life. In his own words, he "bathed in life and dried myself on the typewriter".
Books
- Memoirs of a Public Baby (1958)
- The Lower View (1960)
- Steiner's Tour (1960)
- Living in Croesor (1962)
- Vagrancy (1963)
Radio
- He Who Refrains (1959)
- A Morality (1959).
- Anathema (1962).
- Success (1967), in conversations with Philip ToynbeePhilip ToynbeeTheodore Philip Toynbee was a British writer and communist. He wrote experimental novels, and distinctive verse novels, one of which was an epic called Pantaloon, a work in several volumes, only some of which are published...
, Sir Michael RedgraveMichael RedgraveSir Michael Scudamore Redgrave, CBE was an English stage and film actor, director, manager and author.-Youth and education:...
, Malcolm MuggeridgeMalcolm MuggeridgeThomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy...
and John BergerJohn BergerJohn Peter Berger is an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text.-Education:Born in Hackney, London, England, Berger was...
Biography
- Quentin and Philip, (2002), Andrew Barrow, Macmillan, 559 pages, ISBN 0-333-78051-5. Dual biography of Quentin CrispQuentin CrispQuentin Crisp , was an English writer and raconteur. He became a gay icon in the 1970s after publication of his memoir, The Naked Civil Servant.- Early life :...
and his friend Philip O'Connor.