Mr Fogarty

Mr Fogarty is a modest grocer whose manners and small gift win him a place among Mr Kernan’s companions, while his correction of their conversation about papal mottos gives him a moment of conspicuous confidence. His brief appearance joins commercial dependence, social performance, and uncertain learning in a single domestic gathering.

Identity and Background

Mr Fogarty has a pale oval face, a fair, trailing moustache, and fair eyebrows arched above pleasantly astonished eyes. A grocer by trade, he had failed in business at a licensed house in the city because his financial circumstances forced him to tie himself to second-class distillers and brewers. He then opened a small shop on Glasnevin Road, hoping that his manners would ingratiate him with the district’s housewives.

His manner is deliberately courteous: he carries himself with a certain grace, compliments little children, and speaks with neat enunciation. The narrator also notes that he is not without culture, a qualification that becomes relevant when he enters a conversation about the learning of popes.

Entry into Mr Kernan’s Gathering

Mr Fogarty arrives as a visitor and is welcomed in. He brings a half-pint of special whisky, places it on the table, and politely asks after Mr Kernan before sitting down with the company on equal terms. Mr Kernan values the present especially because a small grocery account between them remains unsettled. The gift thus operates both as hospitality and as a gesture within an existing business relationship.

After Mr Power rinses the glasses and pours five small measures, the whisky enlivens the conversation. Mr Fogarty, perched on a small area of his chair, listens with particular interest. His entrance changes the gathering’s mood, but it also shows how his social ease and commercial connection allow him to participate despite his modest position.

The Disputed Papal Motto

The conversation turns to the intellectual reputation of a pope and the motto attributed to him. When Mr Cunningham asserts that the motto was Lux upon Lux, Mr Fogarty eagerly objects that it was Lux in Tenebris, which he glosses as Light in Darkness. Mr M'Coy briefly offers Tenebrae, while Mr Cunningham insists on his own account and adds a contrasting motto for Pius IX.

The exchange gives Mr Fogarty a brief chance to display learning, but it does not settle the question: Mr Cunningham holds his ground, and the company’s competing Latin phrases leave the point contested. The moment suits the earlier description of Fogarty as a man with some culture without making him an unquestioned authority. His eagerness to correct a confident speaker briefly alters the balance of the discussion, even as the scene leaves the correction unresolved.