A recent intimate memoir about troubled visionary Patrick Kavanagh sheds new light on the most misunderstood of all the great Irish poets of the twentieth century

A book published last year by 97-year-old Elizabeth O’Toole offers fresh insight into a writer often unsubtly portrayed as an uncouth, cantankerous heavy drinker. Clare-born poet Betty, her husband playwright James O’Toole and their family nursed an extremely ill poet back to health and productivity during his six-month stay at their home at 47 Priory Grove, Stillorgan, Dublin, in 1961.

Patrick Kavanagh had arrived on the O’Toole doorstep a cold, sodden bundle, ­suffering from pneumonia. Despite the ­gruffness and eccentricity, he could be ­tender-hearted, fun-loving, and good ­company. He blossomed under Elizabeth’s consummate care and no-nonsense approach. He related to each of the four O’Toole children – aged between two and 10 – differently, ­replying to their constant questioning with answers in keeping with their ages.

Gradually, with good food, a warm, happy family environment, and given the respect due to him as an established poet, he was nursed back to health. The company of children he had never had gave Kavanagh an experience of fatherhood. But it is Elizabeth’s spontaneous remark after observing him at close quarters interacting with her children that I found most compelling: “Patrick Kavanagh,” she writes, “was a man consumed with the presence of God. It was not just that he believed in God as I did. It was that he was aware of God’s presence in all things.”