An Irishman's Diary

OF ALL THE protests that greeted the Government’s short-lived cut of youth disability payments, few can have carried as much weight as that of a 15-year-old schoolgirl from Cork. Her name was Joanne O’Riordan and the open letter she wrote to Enda Kenny was itself a cogent argument against the measure. But it was also backed up by the very rare condition she suffers from – or rather, lives with cheerfully – which goes by the name of Total Amelia.

When she was born in 1996, she was the only person in Ireland who had it and (as far as I know) remains so today. In fact there are only a handful of known cases worldwide. The effect, in any case, is that she has no arms or legs. Despite which severely bad luck, she has grown up to be a beacon of positivity and, in the words of her mother, the bringer of “nothing but happiness”.

Faced with such critics of the disability measure, the Government wisely backed down. But not before Joanna’s story reminded me about Arthur MacMurrough Kavanagh, a 19th-century Carlowman, who was also born limbless – or near enough – but went on to achieve great things.

In truth, they have little else in common. Because the story of “the incredible Mr Kavanagh”, as he became known, must be prefaced by the fact that he was born rich: which is always highly recommended if you suffer from any physical infirmity.

A scion of the landed gentry, he eventually became a landlord in his own right. And when he was also elected an MP – another family inheritance – he was accompanied to the House of Commons, as to most places, by a servant who was always on hand to lift him on and off the benches. It’s fair to say that disability benefit cuts would not have been among Kavanagh’s worries.

Even so, he well earned the adjective that subsequently attached to his surname. Not least among his achievements, according to one version of the story, is that his mother had to send him away to Europe, at the age of 18, after discovering he had been “having affairs with girls on the family estate”.

But then, it should also be noted that, rather than having no limbs at all, Kavanagh did have stumps, and although they ended at the elbows and knees, he used them to maximum effect.

Probably his most famous talent was as a horseman. With a modified saddle and using a single rein that he looped around both armlets, he was quite fearless, hurtling his mounts over fences where others held back. This attitude also extended to his travels on horseback, including an epic journey with his brother between 1849-1851 that brought them from Scandinavia, via Russia and Persia, to India.

En route, they passed through places that were dangerous – politically as well as geographically – even for the full-bodied. In what is now northern Iraq, for example, they visited the scene where two British men, Stoddart and Conolly, had not long before been executed on suspicion of spying; recovering Conolly’s prayer-book in the process. And on a precipitous pass near Shiraz, Kavanagh saw the mule in front tumble over the a cliff, only just avoiding the same fate himself.

It was during this trip that Kavanagh’s mother is said to have cancelled his allowance after learning that he had spent two weeks as a guest in a Persian prince’s harem. Most versions suggest he was seriously ill at the time, and had merely been recuperating. At any rate, he made a full recovery.

When he wasn’t on horseback, he was sailing a 130ft schooner that he had built himself. He was also a painter and a draftsman. He was adept at felling trees. And he was famous too as a “sportsman”, which in that era, usually involved shooting things: in his case up to and including tigers. He was as good a shot, witnesses said, as he was a horseman. Oh, and he was also a skilled angler who, on one 10-day expedition, caught 39 salmon with a combined weight of 800lbs.

It was perhaps the least incredible of his achievements that he became an MP, first for Wexford in and later Carlow, until the rise of Parnellite nationalism (Kavanagh was a unionist and opposed Home Rule) unseated him in 1880. He was also a dynamic and enlightened landlord. And in between politics, estate management, shooting, fishing, riding, sailing, and the rest, he also found time to marry his cousin and father seven children.

One of his sons, reflecting changed times, later became a Redmondite MP. But in the meantime, in December 1889, the diminutive patriarch would succumb to pneumonia and die aged 58, with his family singing Christmas carols at his bedside, as directed. By all accounts, his heavy workload had been a contributory factor in the illness: an achievement in itself.

I don’t know whether the Incredible Mr Kavanagh is in all respects a suitable role model for the Remarkable Miss O’Riordan. They have many things not in common, including the exact nature of their disabilities. Still, she seems to be made from some of the same stuff, having recently won an award for her school and community work in Millstreet, where she is a transition-year pupil. She reportedly wants to be a journalist, which may be pitching her ambitions a bit low. But whatever she aims to do, I don’t doubt for a moment that she’ll succeed.