Koehler
Koehler
In Brief
The "Koehler" mentioned in Nestor's list of people
to whom Stephen owes money was a friend of Joyce's named
Thomas Goodwin Keohler. All the family used this form of
their name, but Joyce apparently liked the German spelling
better. In 1914 Thomas and his brother Robert legally
changed their names to Keller, probably to avoid association
with Germans as the war started. Thomas, nine years older
than Joyce, was a writer, musician, and Theosophist who was
deeply involved in the Irish Literary Revival. Joyce stayed
connected to him all his life, unlike most of his other
Dublin friends, and he may have gotten the idea for giving
Bloom a job at Hely's
stationery business from visiting Keohler at work
there.
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Thomas Keohler was born in Belfast in 1873. In 1902 he took a
job at Hely's, Ltd. in Dame Street and was still working there
more than 40 years later. Throughout these adult years,
though, he conducted a parallel literary life. He became
involved with the Abbey Theatre, and when the Irish National
Theatre opened its new building on Abbey Street in December
1904 he wrote reviews of the inaugural performances for John
Eglinton's Dana. He wrote other literary essays for
various magazines and newspapers, including Arthur Griffith's
United Irishman
and later his Sinn Féin.
Keohler also wrote poetry. George
Russell (Æ) published five of his lyrics in New
Songs: A Lyric Selection (1904), a volume that the
librarian, Thomas Lyster, refers to in Scylla and
Charybdis: "Mr Russell, rumour has it, is gathering
together a sheaf of our younger poets' verses." (The
poets were Padraic Colum, Susan Mitchell, Alice Milligan, George
Roberts, Eva Gore-Booth, Seumas O'Sullivan, Ella Young, and
Koehler.) Soon afterward, Tower Press published Koehler's Songs
of a Devotee (1906), a chapbook of 28 lyrics.
Joyce owned a signed copy of this volume and held on to it
throughout his European moves. Keohler did not publish any
more volumes of poetry until, decades later, Timely
Utterances (1937) was produced in a limited edition
intended only for private distribution.
The slender bulk of Keller's literary output is somewhat
deceiving, however, since an obituary in the 27 March 1959 Irish
Times noted that he wrote "sometimes under his
pseudonym 'Michael Orkney'." In an essay on James Joyce
Online Notes, Eamonn Finn and John Simpson survey the
works that "Orkney" published in a variety of newspapers and
magazines during the seemingly dry years between 1906 and
1937. They include poems, book reviews, short stories,
literary essays, essays on music and history, and letters on
cultural topics. Joyce was aware of his friend's pseudonymous
literary career. Citing Finn Fordham's Lots of Fun at
Finnegans Wake (2007), the JJON article notes
that on 7 March 1924 Joyce sent to Harriet Shaw Weaver a
fragment of Work in Progress that never made it into
the Wake which includes the sentence, "Well, there
once dwelt a local hermit, Michael Orkney, they say was his
name."
Tom Keller died in May 1942, a little more than a year after
Joyce. He is buried in the Mount Jerome Cemetery.
Source: www.abebooks.com.
