Sit-down Sunday: One Of JP Donleavy’s Last Ever Interviews...

The old adage about truth being stranger than fiction was apt when it came to describing the colorful, bohemian life & times of the late, enigmatic author JP Donleavy, who penned The Ginger Man.

It sounded like something straight off the pages of one Donleavy’s risqué novels when his second ex-wife Mary Wilson Price publicly dropped the bombshell in 2011 that two children born during their marriage were fathered by two brothers from the Guinness brewing dynasty.

But Donleavy insisted to me that it was never really a case of life imitating art for him. Because — unlike the type of belligerent and bawdy characters peppered throughout his novels — he never felt any animosity towards his ex-wife or the scions of the Guinness dynasty when he discovered the shocking truth.

And it was clearly a measure of the gentleman that JP never once screamed at his wife or contemplated striking one of her lovers in rage — even when DNA tests showed he wasn’t the biological father of Rebecca and Rory.

“My principal concern was always just the children and their everyday welfare,” he said when we met for our final ever chat at his 180-acre estate in Co. Westmeath, back in late August 2011. [In fact, I still have several hours of untranscribed taped interviews with him from our several long chats, which I may one day post on Substack.]

The secret about the children’s true biological identity had only been revealed a few days earlier and, unsurprisingly, JP had been inundated with media interview requests, but flatly turned them all down.

However, I was allowed to call out to interview him because I was a neighbor, much to the surprise and delight of my then editor. I stand to be corrected, but, as far as I’m aware, this was the only in-depth interview JP conducted about the scandal a few years before his death in 2017 at the grand old age of 91.

Sadly, James Patrick Michael Donleavy — born in 1926 in New York to Irish emigrants — was no stranger to heartbreak. He admitted that he “simply wouldn’t know” where to begin if asked who was the great love of his life because there were many “lady friends,” as he liked to describe the women in his colorful and controversial past.

In 1946, having been in the US Navy, JP secured a grant to study in Ireland through the GI Bill of Rights given out to World War II veterans. It seemed the earliest woman to break his heart was his first wife, Valerie Heron, whom JP met through her brother Michael when they shared a room at Trinity College.

It was, JP recalled, love at first sight when he met the Englishwoman. “Anyone who met her immediately fell in love with her,” he said. “People regard her as one of the most beautiful women in the world. This was often said about her. But she had no sense about her beauty. It would embarrass the life out of her when you’d say: ‘You’re beautiful.’ She never wanted to be in the limelight. She was a little bit shy, but very wonderfully mannered and charming.”

It was a whirlwind romance and they married in 1948 while JP was still studying. He dropped out of university without completing his degree and the newly-married couple moved back to the US. There, they struggled financially as Donleavy pursued his dream of one day becoming a writer. The financial woes increased when the first of their two children, Philip, was born in 1951.

“I had to find places where the rent was so low they almost always were in a sort of down-market area, like a slum in Boston. That was always a problem. And, having children, I realized immediately one really had to get to the countryside somehow,” he said.

“Valerie was a speech therapist and she was able to get a few clients, but not that many. We managed our way around between friends and we got invited up to Connecticut for Valerie to look after somebody’s grandchildren. They gave us this wonderful cottage out in the woods to stay in.”

But Donleavy insisted that monetary woes never put a strain on the marriage or caused the couple to squabble. “She had a very luxurious background. She went to a very elegant finishing school and they had servants when she grew up. But she actually liked being poor — as strange as it sounds to say that!” he said, smiling at the memories.

“She enjoyed herself. And then she’d make a fuss over being scrupulous with money. She quite liked it. Once I thought: ‘God! This woman has never complained about anything.’ Yes — amazing.”