Deciding to pursue other interests, he was called to the bar in 1834 but never practised. Instead, he travelled the world, spending some time at the court of Louis-Philippe, where he was apparently appointed a colonel in the army of France. It is difficult to verify the legends of his exploits abroad, although he certainly embarked on numerous adventures, perhaps fighting against the Arabs in Africa in 1846. Returning to Ireland, he stood for parliament and was elected for Ennis as an independent (1847–52); his extravagant lifestyle led to financial difficulties and he was defeated at the next election. Supposedly, he toured Russia, where he became an officer in the tsar's army and fought the Tartars; proceeded to China, India, and Turkey; then on to Austria, where he received another military rank; before crossing the Atlantic c.1860 to fight for Costa Rica, Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Brazil, sometimes in the navy, more often in the army. Moving north he allegedly fought on the union side in the American civil war. In 1866 he returned to Paris and then visited Prussia, where he later claimed to have befriended the chancellor, Otto von Bismarck.

A frequent visitor to Ireland, he became a supporter of the home rule movement and a friend of Charles Stewart Parnell (qv). As a result, he was asked to stand for election once more and became MP for Clare [...]

The History of Parliament (Westminster) - Members’ Biographies - gives bio-data: b. 17 March 1802; 1st s. of Patrick Mahon of Snugville and Newpark and Barbara, da. and h. of James O’Gorman of Ennis. educ. Clongowes Wood Coll. 1815; Trinity, Dublin 1819; G. Inn 1825; King’s Inns 1828, called 1834. m. bef. June 1830, Christina Maria, da. and coh. of John O’Brien of 12 Fitzwilliam Square North, Dublin, 1s. d.v.p. 1da. d.v.p. suc. fa. 1821. d. 15 June 1891. [h.=heir; coh.=co-heir.]

In attempting to make arrangements for preventing disturbances on the last day of the poll, he had the temerity to treat the commanding officer ‘with all the effrontery of a rival general’; but he met his match in Sir Charles William Doyle, who told him, in relation to the forces at his disposal, that in the event of his being involved in any disorder, ‘you will find them exactly at your elbow, Mr. Mahon, wherever you are’, at which he ‘for once appeared abashed’. [14] As Richard Sheil* wrote of him at the time:

He has a very striking physiognomy, of the corsair character ... His figure is tall and he is peculiarly free and dégagé in all his attitudes and movements. In any other his attire would appear singularly fantastical. His manners are exceedingly frank and natural, and have a character of kindliness as well as of self-reliance imprinted upon them ... His talents as a popular speaker are considerable. He derives from external qualifications an influence over the multitude, which men of a diminutive stature are somewhat slow of obtaining ... When O’Gorman Mahon throws himself out before the people, and, touching his whiskers with one hand, brandishes the other, an enthusiasm is at once produced, to which the fair portion of the spectators lend their tender contribution. Such a man was exactly adapted to the excitement of the people of Clare; and it must be admitted, that by his indefatigable exertions, his unremitting activity and his devoted zeal, he most materially assisted in the election of Mr. O’Connell. [15]

Apparently enraptured by the reception he received, he joined in efforts to prevent landlord retaliation against their tenants and was reimbursed with £700 by the Association for his expenses during the election. [16]

His antics had been reported by Doyle to the Irish administration, and Anglesey wrote to Peel, the home secretary, 20 July 1828, that, among other Catholic agitators who ‘are carried away by their feelings and thirst for popularity, and are very unguarded’, the O’Gorman Mahon, ‘if rebellion should break out, will be a very prominent character in the field’. [17]

The O’Gorman Mahon created a frightful scene at the county Dublin reform meeting in December 1831, when he was flung out of the room and prosecuted by O’Connell’s son-in-law Christopher Fitzsimon†, and he continued to be involved in judicial disputes and the subject of the O’Connells’ displeasure for several years. [63] He had been invited by Hunt to stand for Preston in 1831, but nothing came of that then (or later), nor does it appear that he pursued a requisition the following year to offer for the newly enfranchised borough of Oldham, where William Cobbett† was returned. It was thought that he would stand as a Repealer for Clare at the general election of 1832, but O’Connell kept him out. [64] Two years later Lady Glengall reported to Wellington, the acting chief minister in Peel’s putative administration, that the O’Gorman Mahon, who desired a seat as a supporter of government, ‘is O’Connell’s furious enemy and only wants to get into Parliament to fly at him for his monstrous conduct in trying to have him arrested as a Terry Alt’, although she added that he intended to advocate repeal of the Union and was untrustworthy. [65] In May 1835 Robert Graham of Redgorton recorded of the O’Gorman Mahon, ‘a hot, lively, pugilistic kind of fellow’, that he, now a Liberal, ‘was originally closely connected with O’Connell, but was not subservient enough to continue of the Tail and at the last [sic] election, O’Connell supported one of his own sons against O’Gorman Mahon and threw him out’. [66]

Later that year he began to travel in Europe and visited several other continents, but he sat for Ennis as a repealer in the 1847 Parliament. After another period in Paris, where he was a journalist and financial speculator, he resumed his quixotic adventures abroad in the 1850s and 1860s; among other tales that he later told, he supposedly served as a lieutenant in the tsar of Russia’s bodyguard, as a general in the government forces in Uruguay, as a commander of a Chilean fleet, as a colonel under the emperor of Brazil and as an officer on the Union side in the American civil war. His always tottering financial situation had collapsed by 1872, but he re-entered Parliament as Home Rule Member for Clare in 1879, acting with Charles Stewart Parnell†, to whom he delivered O’Shea’s challenge in 1881. [67] He was the original of ‘the Mulligan’ in Thackeray’s Mrs. Perkins’ Ball (1881). Alluding to his reputation as a duellist, William Ewart Gladstone† wrote of him in 1889 that the ‘Commons is now familiar with the stately figure of an Irish gentleman advanced in life, who carries with him the halo of an extraordinary reputation in that particular, but who is conspicuous among all his contemporaries for his singularly beautiful and gentle manners’. [68] As Member for county Carlow, he was, after the death of Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot* in 1890, the last surviving Member of the unreformed House to hold a seat in the Commons, although several others outlived him, including the longest survivor of all, John Charles George Savile, Viscount Pollington (the 4th earl of Mexborough). He died in June 1891, a throwback to an imagined ideal of Irish chieftainship. [69; end.]

[...]

Mahon became a barrister in 1834, but the following year, he left for Paris. There he associated with Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, becoming a favourite at Louis-Philippe’s court [1] and working as a journalist. He travelled the world, spending time in both Africa, where he befriended Ferdinand de Lesseps, engineer of the Suez Canal, [2] and South America, before returning to Ireland in 1846. [1]

Following his defeat in the 1852 election, Mahon returned to Paris, then travelled on to St Petersburg, where he served in the Imperial Bodyguard. During this period, he journeyed through lands from Finland (where he hunted bear with the tsarevich) to Siberia. [1] He then travelled across China, India and Arabia. His finances largely exhausted, he served as a mercenary in the Ottoman and Austrian armies before returning to England in 1858. Late that year, he left for South America, where he attempted to finance the construction of a canal through Central America. He investigated the disappearance of Commander Lionel Lambert, captain of the paddle sloop HMS Vixen, on which Mahon had voyaged, and forced the Peruvian Government to instigate an investigation which revealed that Lambert had been murdered. He reported these findings to Lord Palmerston, a former Parliamentary colleague. [3]

Mahon then returned to soldiery. He served in a number of forces, often in honorary positions. [3] In Uruguay he was appointed a general in the government forces during the Uruguayan Civil War. He also claimed to have commanded a Chilean fleet during the Chincha Islands War and to have served as a colonel in Pedro II of Brazil’s army. [1] Later legends claimed that he was made an archbishop while in Brazil. [3]

When Mahon heard that the American Civil War had broken out, he went to fight for the Union.[3] In 1866, he returned to Paris, where he was made a colonel in a regiment of chasseurs by Louis-Napoleon, but in 1877, he moved to Berlin, where he became a close associate of Otto von Bismarck. He was plagued by debts in this period, seeking money in speculative ventures, and in 1871 he returned to Ireland.

[1] Mahon, Charles James Patrick, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. [2] ‘Riches of Clare’, in Clare Champion, 13 Sept 2002; [3] Guide to the O’Gorman Papers, 1824-92, at University of Chicago.