Dermody, Thomas (1775–1802), poet and soldier, was born 17 January 1775 in Ennis, Co. Clare, eldest of three sons of Nicholas Dermody, a classical teacher. He was educated in his youth in Latin and Greek and was teaching alongside his father at the age of nine. At ten he began to write poetry and, adopting another of his father's habits, to drink. With the death of a beloved brother and his mother shortly afterwards, Dermody set out for Dublin. He took with him only two shillings, a volume of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749), and a single spare shirt. On the road to the capital, he found shelter with an indigent family. There, a grandmother, keening over the loss of her daughter and surrounded by her grandchildren, touched the boy's compassion. On leaving them, he gave away the first, then the last, of his shillings to the woman. As a result, he was already penniless. On his arrival in Dublin, he sold his spare shirt in what was to become, with poverty and drunkenness, a recurring pattern.
After receiving a less cordial reception than he believed he warranted from his only contact, a Dublin apothecary, Dermody quickly developed a revolving sequence of patrons dazzled by his talents at writing and translation. On numerous occasions, the tiny, usually ragged, and dirty boy translated the ancients extemporaneously into English verse. When he was discovered reading a Greek text – his favourite authors were Virgil and Horace – at a Fleet St. book-stall, the bookseller arranged employment for him. After a short time, he was ‘discovered’ again reading Longinus, by Dr Robert Houlton, the first of a parade of Dublin personages and patrons who offered their help to Dermody. An important early patron was Robert Owenson (qv), himself a ‘discovered’ singer and actor and the father of Lady Morgan (qv). Owenson invited the boy into his home as family tutor. In hopes of providing additional education, he sent him to Dr Matthew Young (qv), senior fellow at Trinity and afterwards bishop of Clonfert. On seeing the boy's poetry and poverty, Young immediately offered to supervise his studies. Dermody attended for a time, but increasingly avoided the work, insulting both men in the process.
He resumed study with the Rev. Gilbert Austin, then master of a school near Grafton St. The minister took in the boy, initiated a subscription for his education, and published Dermody's first collection, Poems (1789). Once again, the poet alienated his host, this time in a deception involving a drawing master named Martin. The two attempted to convince Austin that the boy was a visual as well as a verbal prodigy, requiring Martin's attentions. Austin discovered the fraud and punished Dermody with kitchen duties. In response, Dermody wrote several lines satirising his patrons. These were discarded, but discovered and relayed to Austin, who turned him out. Still only 14, Dermody accepted work with a newspaper till another cycle of patronage began. Most notably, he met Elizabeth Rawdon (qv) (née Hastings), the dowager countess of Moira and patroness of a literary salon at Moira House. Through her, he began yet another term of study with the Rev. Henry Boyd (qv) in Killeigh, King's Co. (Offaly). He remained there for two years, composing a wide variety of essays, fairy-tales, and poetry. Dermody's drunkenness and eccentricities, however, became increasingly obvious and tiresome and he eventually returned to Dublin. As his friend and future biographer, James Grant Raymond, noted, ‘Few indeed have experienced so liberal and exalted a patronage as Dermody, and it is infinitely to be regretted that none ever made so unwise a use of it’ (Life, ii, 220).
Dermody's ability to find and lose patrons was astonishing. More impressive perhaps was the calibre of his patrons. Dermody wrote, for example, letters of appeal to the bishop of Dromore, to Henry Grattan (qv), and to the Whig Club of Dublin. Grattan introduced him to Henry Flood (qv), for whom Dermody later wrote an elegy. Grattan is said to have introduced passages of the boy's poetry into parliamentary debate. Another oft-told incident relates the young man's walk from Dublin to Grattan's Wicklow home to ‘borrow’ £5. Encouraged by his success, Dermody quickly drank and dispersed the money before making it back to town. In hopes of repeating his success, he walked a further three miles out to Ranelagh to visit Raymond. Arriving at three in the morning, he attempted to arouse him by throwing stones at his windows. In the process, Dermody broke several panes and the peace of the neighbouring hamlet and convent. He only narrowly avoided arrest by his friend's pleas, and bribes, to the watch.
After a second volume of poetry, Dermody wrote a political tract, The rights of justice, or rational liberty (1793), and an accompanying poem, calling for the Irish to emulate the French revolutionaries. Another poetic panegyric was dedicated to the attorney general, later Lord Chief Justice Kilwarden (qv). Seeing the work, Kilwarden sought out Dermody. Finding him in typical squalor, and despite his bad graces, Kilwarden offered to pay the poet's university fees, accommodation expenses, and a stipend. The offer, among others, was refused. Dermody began to think again of flight, this time to London. While attempting to decide his future, he only narrowly avoided (on several occasions) being pressed into military service through his inebriated incaution. Once again, his patrons rescued him. Finally, Dermody chose to enlist on 17 September 1794 as a private in the 108th Regiment of the British wagon corps. He was still only 19.
To the surprise of all, Dermody functioned remarkably well under military discipline. He rose from private to second lieutenant under the command of the earl of Moira (qv). With a few exceptions, he served with distinction. Dermody was twice wounded in battle, leaving him disfigured and deprived of the use of his left hand. After a truce with the French, he returned to London with high hopes, and on half-pay, in 1799. Once again, he turned to patrons. The earl of Moira provided him with accommodation and arranged employment. Before long, Dermody returned into poverty, this time in a garret rented by an Irish cobbler. With the reacquaintance of Raymond, Dermody returned to writing and a small volume, Poems, moral, and descriptive (1800), was quickly produced. Neither this publication nor his army half-pay kept him from debt and he spent a brief period in the Fleet prison before Moira arranged his release. Another attempt to rescue him from poverty resulted in a farcical scene in which his tattered clothing, discarded in a river, was mistaken for a suicide. The river being dragged and tears shed for the ‘victim’, Dermody and his rescuer slipped quietly away.
As always, new and influential patrons appeared. Sir James Bland Burges, attorney and author, assisted him and helped secure money from the London Literary Fund. Dermody offended the one and exhausted the other. Henry Addington, then chancellor of the exchequer (later Viscount Sidmouth), and his brother Hiley Addington both provided assistance. Through them, another volume, Poems in various subjects (1802) was published. By this time, Dermody's health had finally begun to show the effects of his adventures. Having developed consumption, he fled to an abandoned cottage near Sydenham in Kent where he died on 15 July 1802. Dermody is buried in Lewisham churchyard, where Raymond erected a monument with the words of the poet's ‘The fate of genius’. ‘He was’, it reads, ‘dear Fancy's favour'd son’ (Raymond, Life, ii, 336). Raymond published both a biography and collection of Dermody's poetry, the two-volume Harp of Erin, in 1807. In retrospect, the life is more impressive than the poetry: the attention paid to his work perhaps owes more to the age of the writer than to the quality of the writing.