Author: Dermody, Thomas
Biography:
DERMODY, Thomas (1775-1802: DIB)
pseudonym Marmaduke Myrtle, Mauritius Moonshine
He was the eldest of three sons born on 17 Jan. 1775 at Ennis, Co. Clare, to a classics teacher, Nicholas Dermody, and his wife (name unknown). Dermody was a prodigy who began teaching with his father when he was nine and at ten wrote a monody for a younger brother who had died of smallpox. Nicholas Dermody was an alcoholic and his son seems early to have adopted his father’s habits. At fifteen he was inspired by reading Tom Jones to run away to Dublin; he arrived penniless having given away his only money—two shillings—to an indigent family. In Dublin he secured support from a sequence of patrons who were attracted by his brilliance but, inevitably, also alienated by his erratic behaviour and inability to sustain attention to his studies. One such patron was the Rev. Gilbert Austin who established a subscription for Dermody’s education and arranged the publication of his 1789 Poems. Elizabeth Rawdon, the dowager Countess of Moira, also tried to help by sending him for two years to be educated by the Rev. Henry Boyd (q.v.) at Killeigh, Co. Offaly. His patrons finally despaired of him when Dermody turned down the offer of a scholarship at Trinity College Dublin. Having run out of other options, in 1794 he enlisted in the 108th Regiment of the British Wagon Corps as a private. Surprisingly, the discipline of army life suited him; he served with distinction in France and was wounded in battle. In 1799 he went to London on half-pay but the cycle of drinking and profligacy started again, with Dermody being imprisoned at least once for debt. However, he never wanted for influential supporters: Henry Addington, the chancellor of the exchequer, offered assistance, and his applications to the RLF were supported by Henry Pye and James Bland Burges (qq.v.). Over two years, the Fund awarded him £50. 15s. and on one occasion paid his debt for a suit of clothes. The final £5 was awarded three days after his death, probably from tuberculosis, in an abandoned Kent cottage on 15 July 1802. He was buried in St Mary the Virgin churchyard in Lewisham, London, where the monument to his memory has been twice restored by his admirers. (DIB; ODNB 22 Feb. 2021; ancestry.co.uk 22 Feb. 2021; J. G. Raymond, The Life of Thomas Dermody [1806]; RLF file 85)