O’Keeffe, (O’Keefe), John (1747-1833)
By Gerard O’Keeffe
THE ASCENT OF THE O’KEEFFES
Actor and dramatist, he was born twenty forth June seventeen forty-seven at Abbey Street, Dublin, into a catholic family. Educated locally by Father Austin, he showed some talent as a painter and was enrolled at the Dublin Society schools. However, his mind soon turned to the theatre, and in he summer of seventeen sixty-two he went to London, where he stayed with his aunt and attended as many plays as possible.
Returning to Ireland (seventeen sixty-four) he was engaged by Henry Mossop to write and act for the Smock Alley Theatre and he began his career in tragic roles before moving to comedy. In seventeen sixty-seven his first mature work (a farce, «The She-gallant’) was successfully produced in Dublin; it was revised and staged in London as The Positive Man’ (seventeen eighty-two).
He married (seventeen seventy-four) Mary Heaphy (seven-teen fifty-seven to eighteen thirteen), eldest daughter of Tottenham Heaphy and Alice Heaphy, both actors. A successful actress in Ireland, and later Britain, Mary O’Keeffe made her debut as Juliet in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at Smock Alley on eighteenth March seventeen seventy-five. During this period John O’Keeffe worked as an actor, performing throughout the country. In seventeen seventy-seven the family moved to London where he wrote two companion pieces to Goldsmith’s ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ ‘Tony Lumpkin’s Ramble Thro’ Cork’ (seventeen seventy-three and ‘Tony Lumpkin in Town’ (seventeen seventy-four)). The second was performed in seventeen seventy-eight at the Haymarket Theatre and was one of his greatest successes. Returning to Dublin in seventeen seventy-nine he completed the words for his comic opera “The Son-in-law; which was hailed in Ireland and England. O’Keeffe acted with his wife in the Crow Street Company in Dublin between seventeen ninety and seventeen eighty-one. After this their marriage broke up acrimoniously; O’Keeffe discovered his wife’s affair with an actor, George Graham, and was so infuriated that he ‘demolished his wife’s nose.’
O’Keeffe returned to England where he resided of the remainder of his life. His most famous and enduring work was The Agreeable Surprise’ (seventeen eighty-one), which followed his ‘Dead Alive,’ and included the popular jingle ‘Amo, amass, I love a lass.’ However, he gradually began to go blind, the result apparently of a childhood accident when he had fallen into the River Liffey; his later works all had to be dictated. Until his retirement in seventeen ninety-nine O’Keeffe produced an astonishing number of plays, of little quality but of some popularity.
His plays were often highly fashionable, and then just as quickly forgotten. Never financially secure, he was given a benefit in eighteen hundred, where he broke down in tears of gratitude. Writing occasionally for magazines and journals, he published his ‘Recollections’ in two volumes in eighteen twenty-six; these contained many anecdotes and incidents from his life but little that was accurate or remarkable. He received a royal pension in this year after dedicating this work to King George IV.
O’Keeffe died fourth February eighteen thirty-three at Southampton. The greatest tribute for his work came from the nineteenth century critic Willaim Hazlitt, who called him ‘the English Moliere;’ sadly this assessment was incorrect on both counts. The patriotic O’Keeffe was largely sympathetic to Irish Catholics in his plays, although there are also numerous examples of the stage Irishman. One of his poems, ‘My Lamentation,’ was an attack on the act of union (eighteen hundred). In total he wrote seventy-seven works, and some of his plays, like “Wild Oats,’ were successfully revived by the Royal Shakespeare Company in the nineteen seventies. His estranged wife died first January eighteen thirteen in Scotland; they had two sons and one daughter. Their elder son, John Tottenham O’Keeffe (seventeen seventy-five to eighteen hundred and five), was chaplain to the Duke of Clarence and died in Jamaica; their second son died in infancy. Their only daughter, Adelaide O’Keeffe (seventeen seventy-six to eighteen sixty-five), poet and novelist, was born fifth November seventeen seventy-six at Eustade Street, Dublin. For the first few years of life Adelaide was brought up by a nurse in a cabin in Wicklow, where her father visited frequently but her mother seldom. With the break-up of her parents’ marriage she was denied access to her mother and endured a troubled childhood. Her father sent his children to school in England in seventeen eighty-two, but shipped them to France when he heard his wife had secretly visited them.
After education in a convent until seventeen eighty-eight, Adelaide acted as amanuensis to her father, but then nearly blind but a highly popular dramatist. Her own first publication was a novel, ‘Llewellin,’ written seventeen ninety-five, published seventeen ninety-nine), which posed as the life story of Piers Gaveston’s son told to Chaucer. In seventeen ninety-eight her father retired, leaving money short, and that year she wrote ‘Patriarchal Time or the Land of Canaan’, which expanded the story of Genesis. It went unpublished until eighteen hundred and eleven, but then ran to a sixth edition in eighteen forty-two. Renown had come with the group of thirty-four poems which she contributed to Ann and Jane Taylor’s hugely popular anthology, ‘Original Poems for Infant Minds (eighteen hundred and four) which ran to fifty editions and was translated. These improving, moral but charming verses for children were her best known works. She wrote further volumes of poems for children until eighteen forty-nine, of which the best are “National Characters Exhibited in 40 Geographical Places (eighteen eighteen), where she profiled different races in an individuated, uncondescending way. She drew on her life for her work; her epistolary novel ‘Dudley’ (eighteen nineteen),
written after her only brother’s sudden death in eighteen hundred and three, treats of bereavement while ‘The Broken Sword, or, A Soldier’s Honour’ (eighteen fifty-four) is about the effect of parents’ estrangement on children.
She lived with her father, first in London and then in Southampton, where he died in eighteen thirty-three. After unsuccessful attempts to sell his unpublished dramatic works, she published a collection of his poems together with a short essay in ‘A Father’s Legacy to his Daughter’ (eighteen thirty-four). He had always spoken of taking her back to Ireland, but never did, and after his death, she continued to live in England, working sometimes as a governess. In 1830, she estimated her entire literary earnings at £243 and in eighteen forty wrote to the Royal Literary Fund, calling her royal pension of £50 a year a wretched pittance. She was living in 3 Spring Place Hill in Southampton in April eighteen forty-eight. She died, unmarried, in eighteen sixty-five.
THE ASCENT OF THE O’KEEFFES:
Tracing for the first time the direct lineage of famed American artist Georgia O’Keefe to Kanturk, Co Cork, Ireland
