by George Moore
No road ever wound so beautifully, I cried, and there are no cottages, only an occasional ruin to make the road attractive. How much more attractive it is now, redeemed from its humanities — large families flowing over doorways, probably in and out of cesspools! I had seen such cottages in the West, and had wished them in ruins, for ruins are wistful, especially when a foxglove finds root-hold in the crannies, and tall grasses flourish round the doorway, and withdrawing my eyes from the pretty cottage, I admired the spotted shade, and the road itself, now twisting abruptly, now winding leisurely up the hill, among woods ascending on my left and descending on my right. But what seemed most wonderful of all was the view that accompanied the road — glimpses of a great plain showing between comely trees shooting out of the hillside — a dim green plain, divided by hedges, traversed by long herds, and enclosed, if I remember rightly, by a line of low grey hills, far, ever so far, away.
All the same, the road ascends very steeply, I growled, beginning to doubt the veracity of the agent who had informed me that a house existed in the neighbourhood. In the neighbourhood, I repeated, for the word appeared singularly inappropriate. In the solitude, he should have said. A little higher up in the hills a chance herdsman offered me some goat’s milk; but it was like drinking Camembert cheese, and the least epicurean amongst us would prefer his milk and cheese separate. He had no other, and, in answer to my questions regarding a house to let, said there was one a mile up the road: Mount Venus.
Mount Venus! Who may have given it that name?
The question brought all his stupidity into his face, and after a short talk with him about his goats, I said I must be getting on to Mount Venus ... if it be no more than a mile.
Nothing in Ireland lasts long except the miles, and the last mile to Mount Venus is the longest mile in Ireland; and the road is the steepest. It wound past another ruined cottage, and then a gateway appeared — heavy wrought-iron gates hanging between great stone pillars, the drive ascending through lonely grass-lands with no house in view, for the house lay on the farther side of the hill, a grove of beech trees reserving it as a surprise for the visitor. A more beautiful grove I have never seen, some two hundred years old, and the house as old as it — a long house built with picturesque chimney-stacks, well placed at each end, a resolute house, emphatic as an oath, with great steps before the door, and each made out of a single stone, a house at which one knocks timidly, lest mastiffs should rush out, eager for the strangling. But no fierce voices answered my knocking, only a vague echo. Maybe I’ll find somebody in the back premises, and wandering through a gateway, I came upon many ruins of barns and byres, and upon a heap of stones probably once used for the crushing of apples. No cow in the byre, nor pony in the stable, nor dog in the kennel, nor pig in the sty, nor gaunt Irish fowl stalking about what seemed to be the kitchen-door. An empty dovecot hung on the wall above it. Mount Venus without doves, I said. And as no answer came to my knocking I wandered back to the front of the house to enjoy the view of the sea and the line of the shore, drawn as beautifully as if Corot had drawn it. Dublin City appeared in the distance a mere murky mass, with here and there a building, faintly indicated. Nearer still the suburbs came trickling into the fields, the very fields in which I had seen herds of cattle feeding.
Besides the beech woods there was the great yew hedge, hundreds of years old, and a walled garden at the end of it, a little lower down the shelving hillside, and, pulling a thorn-bush out of the gateway, I passed into a little wilderness of vagrant grasses and goats. A scheme for the restoration of Mount Venus started up in my mind for about two thousand pounds. I should live in the most beautiful place in the world. The Temple Church cannot compare with Chartres, nor Mount Venus with Windsor; a trifle, no doubt, in the world of art; but what a delicious trifle!... My dream died suddenly in the reflection that one country-house is generally enough for an Irish landlord, and I walked seeking for a man who would spend two thousand pounds on Mount Venus, thereby giving me a house for which I would repay by dedicating all the books I should write inspired by the lovely lines of Howth afloat between sea and sky. Men speculate in racehorses and hounds, yachts and Scottish moors, why is it there is no one who would restore Mount Venus sufficiently for the summer months, long enough for me to write my books and to acquire a permanent memory of a beautiful thing which the earth is claiming rapidly, and which, in a few years, will pass away.
By standing on some loose stones it was possible to look into the first-floor rooms, and I could see marble chimney-pieces set in a long room, up and down which I could walk while arranging my ideas; and when ideas failed me I could suckle my imagination on the view. This is the house I’m in search of, and there seems to be enough furniture for my wants. I’ll return tomorrow.... But my pleasure will be lost if I’ve to wait till tomorrow. Somebody must be here. I’ll try again. The silence that answered my knocking strengthened my determination to see Mount Venus that night, and I returned to the empty yard, and peeped and pried through all the outhouses, discovering at last a pail of newly peeled potatoes. There must be somebody about, and I waited, peeling the potatoes that remained unpeeled to pass the time.
I’m afraid I’m wasting your potatoes, I said to the woman who appeared in the doorway — a peasant woman wearing a rough, dark grey petticoat and heavy boots, men’s boots (they were almost the first thing I noticed) — just the woman who I expected would come, the caretaker. She spoke with her head turned aside, showing a thin well-cut face with a shapely forehead, iron-grey hair, a nose, long and thin, with fine nostrils, and a mouth a pretty line I think ... but that is all I can say about her, for when I try to remember more I seem to lose sight of her...
‘You’ve come to see the house?
She stopped and looked at me.
Is there any reason why I shouldn’t see it?’
‘No, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. If you’ll wait a minute I’ll fetch the key.
She doesn’t speak like a caretaker, I thought, nor look like one.
Is it a lease of the house you’d like, or do you wish only to hire it for the season, sir?
Only for the season, I said. It is to be let furnished?
There’s not much furniture, but sufficient —
So long as there are beds, and a table to write upon, and a few chairs.
Yes, there’s that, and more than that, she answered, smiling. This is the kitchen, and she showed me into a vast stone room; and the passages leading from the kitchen were wide and high, and built in stone. The walls seemed of great thickness, and when we came to the staircase, she said: Mind you don’t slip. The stairs are very slippery, but can easily be put right. The stonemason will only have to run his chisel over them.
I’m more interested in the rooms in which I’m to live myself ... if I take the house.
These are the drawing-rooms, she said, and drew my attention to the chimney-piece.
It’s very beautiful, I answered, turning from the parti-coloured marbles to the pictures. All the ordinary subjects of pictorial art lined the walls, but I passed on without noticing any, so poor and provincial was the painting, until I came suddenly upon the portrait of a young girl. The painting was hardly better than any I had already seen, but her natural gracefulness transpired in classical folds as she stood leaning on her bow, a Diana of the ‘forties, looking across the greensward waiting to hear if the arrow had reached its mark.
Into what kind of old age has she drifted? I asked myself, and the recollection of the thin clear-cut eager face brought me back again to the portrait, and forgetful of the woman I had found in the outhouse peeling potatoes for her dinner, I studied the face, certain that I had seen it before. But where?
Several generations seem to be on these walls, and I asked the caretaker if she knew anything about the people who had lived in the house? It was built about two hundred years ago, I should say, and we wandered into another room. I should like to hear something about the girl whose portrait I’ve been looking
at. There’s nothing to conceal? No story —
There’s nothing in her story that any one need be ashamed of. But why do you ask? And the manner in which she put the question still further excited my curiosity.
Because it seems to me that I’ve seen the face before.
Yes, she answered, you have. The portrait in the next room is my portrait ... as I was forty years ago. But I didn’t think that any one would see the likeness.
Your portrait! I answered abruptly. Yes, I can see the likeness. And I heard her say under her breath that she had been through a great deal of trouble, and her face was again turned from me as we walked into another room.
But do you wish to take the house, sir? If not —
In some ways it would suit me well enough. I’ll write and let you know. And your portrait I shall always remember, I added, thinking to please her. But seeing that my remark failed to do so, I spoke of the water supply, and she told me there was another well: an excellent spring, only the cattle went there to drink; but it would be easy to put an iron fence round it.
And now, if you’ll excuse me. It’s my dinner-time.
I let her go and wandered whither she had advised me — to the cromlech, one of the grandest in Ireland.
I could not miss it, she had said: I’d find it if I followed the path round the hill in the beech dell: a great rock laid upon three upright stones; one had fallen lately and, in the words of a shepherd I’d consulted, the altar was out of repair. Even Druid altars do not survive the nineteenth century in Ireland, I answered, and still lingering, detained by the ancient stones, my thoughts returned to her whom an artist had painted as Diana the Huntress. A man of some talent, for he had painted her in an attitude that atoned to some extent for the poverty of the painting. Or was it she who gave him the attitude leaning on her bow? Was it she who settled the folds about her limbs, and decided the turn of her head, the eyes looking across the greensward towards the target? Had she fled with somebody whom she had loved dearly and been deserted and cast away on that hillside? Does the house belong to her? Or is she the caretaker? Does she live there with a servant? Or alone, cooking her own dinner? None of my questions would be answered, and I invented story after story to explain her as I returned through the grey evening in which no star appeared, only a red moon rising up through the woods like a fire in the branches.
My single meeting with this woman happened twenty-five years ago, and it is more than likely she is now dead, and the ruins among which she lived are probably a quarry whence the peasants go to fetch stones to build their cottages; many of the beech trees have been felled. Mount Venus has passed away, never to be revived again. But enough of its story is remembered to fill a corner of the book I am dreaming; no more than that, for the book I am dreaming is a man’s book, and it should be made of the life that lingered in Mayo till the end of the ‘sixties: landlords, their retainers and serfs.
At these words, in the middle of the Temple, a scene rose up before me of a pack of harriers — or shall I say wild dogs? — running into a hare on a bleak hillside, and far away, showing faintly on a pale line of melancholy mountains, a horse rising up in the act of jumping. And on and on came horse and rider, over stone wall after stone wall, till stopped by a wall so high that no horse could jump it, so I thought. The gate of the park was miles away, so the hounds had time, not only to devour the hare they had killed, but to eat many a rabbit. Surrounding the furze, they drove the rabbits this way and that, the whole pack working in concert, as wild dogs might, and the whip, all the while, talking to a group of countrymen, until the hunt began to appear. I must be getting to my hounds now, and picking up the snaffle-rein, he drove the pony at the wall, who, to the admiration of the group, rose at it, kicking it with her hind hooves, landing in style among the hounds quarrelling over bits of skin and bone. The wild huntsman blew his horn and, gathering his hounds round him, said to me, before putting his pony again at the wall: A great little pony, isn’t she? And what’s half a dozen of rabbits between twenty-two couple of hounds? It’ll only give them an appetite, though they’ve always that. Bedad if they weren’t the most intelligent hounds in the country it’s dead long ago they’d be of hunger. Do you know of an old jackass? he said, turning to a country-man. If you do you might have a shilling for bringing him. You can have the skin back if you like to come for it.
By this time all the field were up, the master, florid and elderly, and a quarrel began between him and the huntsman, whom he threatened to sack in the morning for not being up with the hounds.
Wasn’t there six foot of a wall between us? And they as hungry as hawks?
But if the pony was able to lep the wall, why didn’t you ride her at it at once?
And so I did, your honour.
And the countrymen were called and they testified.
Well, Pat, you must be up in time to get the next hare from them, for if you don’t, it’s myself and Johnny Malone that will be drinking our punch on empty bellies, which isn’t good for any man. And away went the master in search of his dinner over the grey plain, under rolling clouds threatening rain, the hounds trying the patches of furze for another hare, and the field — a dozen huntsmen with a lady amongst them — waiting, talking to each other about their horses. I could see Pat pressing his wonderful pony forward, on the alert for stragglers, assuring Bell-Ringer with a terrific crack of his whip that he was not likely to find a hare where he was looking for one, and must get into the furze instantly; and then I caught a glimpse of the ragged peasantry following the hunt over the plains of Ballyglass, just as they used to follow it, a fierce wind thrilling in their shaggy chests, and they speaking Irish to each other, calling to the master in English.
A place must be found, I said to myself, in my story for that pack of hounds, for its master, for its whip, and for the marvellous pony, and for a race-meeting, whether at Ballinrobe or Breaghwy or Castlebar. Castlebar for preference. The horde of peasantry would look well amid the line of hills enclosing the plain: old men in knee-breeches and tall hats, young men in trousers, cattle-dealers in great overcoats reaching to their heels, wearing broad-brimmed hats, everybody with a broad Irish grin on his face, and everybody with his blackthorn. Of a sudden I could see a crowd gathered to watch a bucking chestnut, a sixteen-hands horse with a small boy in pink upon his back. Now the horse hunches himself up till he seems like a hillock; his head is down between his legs, his hind legs are in the air, but he doesn’t rid himself of his burden. He plunges forward, he rises — up, coming down again, his head between his legs; and the boy, still unstirred, recalls the ancient dream of the Centaur.
Bedad! he’s the greatest rider in Ireland, a crowd of tinkers and peasants are saying, the tinkers hurrying up to see the sport, retiring hurriedly as the horse plunges in their direction, running great danger of being kicked.
So did I remember the scene as I walked about the Temple that moonlit night, the very words of the tinkers chiming in my head after many years: Isn’t he a devil? cries one; it’s in the circus he ought to be. Mickey was near off that time, cries another, and while the great fight was waged between horse and jockey, my father rode up, crying to the crowd to disperse, threatening that if the course was not cleared in a few minutes he would ride in amongst them, and he on a great bay stallion. I’ll ride in amongst you; you’ll get kicked, you’ll get kicked. Even at this distance of time I can feel the very pang of fear which I endured, lest the horse my father was riding should kick some peasant and kill him, for, even in those feudal days, a peasant’s life was considered of some value, and the horse my father rode quivered with excitement and impatience. Get back! Get back or there’ll be no racing today. And you, Mickey Ford, if you can’t get that horse to the post, I’ll start without you. Give him his head, put the spurs into him, thrash him! And taking my father at his word, Mickey raised his whip, and down it came sounding along the golden hide. The horse bounded higher, but without getting any nearer to unseating his rider, and away they went
towards the starting-point, my father crying to the jockeys that they must get into line, telling Mickey that if he didn’t walk his horse to the post he would disqualify him, and Mickey swearing that his horse was unmanageable, and my father swearing that the jockey was touching him on the offside with his spur. It seemed to me my father was very cruel to the poor boy whose horse wouldn’t keep quiet. A moment after they were galloping over the rough fields, bounding over the stone walls, the ragged peasantry rebuilding the walls for the next race, waving their sticks, running from one corner of the field to another, and no one thinking at all of the melancholy line of wandering hills enclosing the plain.
A scene to be included in the novel I was dreaming, and, for the moment, my father appeared to me as the principal character; but only for a moment. Something much rougher, more Irish, more uncouth, more Catholic, was required. My father was a Catholic, but only of one generation, and to produce the pure Catholic several are necessary. The hero of my novel must be sought and found among the Catholic end of my family, a combination of sportsman and cattle-dealer. Andy on his grey mare careering after the Blazers, rolling about like a sack in the saddle, but always leading the field, tempted me, until my thoughts were suddenly diverted by a remembrance of a Curragh meeting, with Dan who had brought up a crack from Galway and was going to break the ring.
