Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  Shall I know enough Latin in six months to read Propertius? It will be many years before you will be able to read him. He is a very difficult writer. Could Martin Blake read Propertius?

  Martin Blake was Father James’s other pupil, and these Blakes are neighbours of ours, and live on the far side of Carnacun. Father James was always telling me of the progress Martin was making in the Latin language, and I was always asking Father James when I should overtake him, but he held out very little hope that it would be possible for me ever to outdo Martin in scholarship. He may have said this because he could not look upon me as a promising pupil, or he may have been moved by a hope to start a spirit of emulation in me. He was a wise man, and the reader will wonder how it was that, with such a natural interest in languages and such excellent opportunities, I did not become a classical scholar; the reader’s legitimate curiosity shall be satisfied.

  One day Father James said the time would come when I would give up hunting — everything, for the classics, and I rode home, elated, to tell my mother the prophecy. But she burst out laughing, leaving me in no doubt whatever that she looked upon Father James’s idea of me as an excellent joke; and the tragedy of it all is that I accepted her casual point of view without consideration, carrying it almost at once into reality, playing truant instead of going to my Latin lesson. Father James, divested of his scholarship, became a mere priest in my eyes. I think that I avoided him, and am sure that I hardly ever saw him again, except at Mass.

  A strange old church is Carnacun, built in the form of a cross, with whitewashed walls and some hardened earth for floor; and I should be hard set to discover in my childhood an earlier memory than the panelled roof, designed and paid for by my father, who had won the Chester Cup some years before. The last few hundred pounds of his good fortune were spent in pitch-pine rafters and boards, and he provided a large picture of the Crucifixion, painted by my cousin, Jim Browne, who happened to be staying at Moore Hall at the time, from Tom Kelly the lodge-keeper, the first nude model that ever stood up in Mayo (Mayo has always led the way — Ireland’s van-bird for sure). It was taken in great pomp from Moore Hall to Carnacun; and the hanging of it was a great and punctilious affair. A board had to be nailed at the back whereby a rope could be attached to hoist it into the roof, and lo! Mickey Murphy drove a nail through one of the gilt leaves which served as a sort of frame for the picture. My father shouted his orders to the men in the roof that they were to draw up the picture very slowly, and, lest it should sway and get damaged in the swaying, strings were attached to it. My father and mother each held a string, and the third may have been held by Jim Browne, or perhaps I was allowed to hold it.

  Some time afterwards a Blessed Virgin and a St Joseph came down from Dublin, and they were painted and gilded by my father, and so beautifully, that they were the admiration of every one for a very long while, and it was Jim Browne’s Crucifixion and these anonymous statues that awakened my first aesthetic emotions. I used to look forward to seeing them all the way from Moore Hall to Carnacun — a bleak road as soon as our gate-lodge was passed: on one side a hill that looked as if it had been peeled; on the other some moist fields, divided by small stone walls, liked by me in those days, for they were excellent practice for my pony. Along this road our tenantry used to come from the villages, the women walking on one side (the married women in dark blue cloaks, the girls hiding their faces behind their shawls, carrying their boots in their hands, which they would put on in the chapel yard), the men walking on the other side, the elderly men in traditional swallow-tail coats, knee-breeches, and worsted stockings; the young men in corduroy trousers and frieze coats. As we passed, the women curtsied in their red petticoats; the young men lifted their round bowler-hats; but the old men stood by, their tall hats in their hands. At the bottom of every one was a red handkerchief, and I remember wisps of grey hair floating in the wind. Our tenantry met the tenantry of Clogher and Tower Hill, and they all collected round the gateway of the chapel to admire the carriages of their landlords. We were received like royalty as we turned in through the gates and went up the wooden staircase leading to the gallery, frequented by the privileged people of the parish — by us, and by our servants, the postmaster and postmistress from Ballyglass, and a few graziers. In the last pew were the police, and after the landlords these were the most respected.

  As soon as we were settled in our pew the acolytes ventured from the sacristy tinkling their bells, the priest following, carrying the chalice covered with the veil. As the ceremony of the Mass had never caught my fancy, I used to spend my time looking over the pew into the body of the church, wondering at the herd of peasantry, trying to distinguish our own serfs among those from the Tower Hill and Clogher estates. Pat Plunket, a highly respectable tenant (he owned a small orchard), I could always discover; he knelt just under us, and in front of a bench, the only one in the body of the church, and about him collected those few that had begun to rise out of brutal indigence. Their dress and their food were slightly different from the commoner kind. Pat Plunket and Mickey Murphy, the carpenter, not the sawyer, were supposed to drink tea and eat hot cakes. The others breakfasted off Indian-meal porridge. And to Pat Plunket’s bench used to come a tall woman, whose grace of body the long blue-black cloak of married life could not hide. I liked to wonder which among the men about her might be her husband. And a partial memory still lingers of a cripple that was allowed to avail himself of Pat Plunket’s bench. His crutches were placed against the wall, and used to catch my eye, suggesting thoughts of what his embarrassment would be if they were taken away whilst he prayed. A great unknown horde of peasantry from Ballyglass and beyond it knelt in the left-hand corner, and after the Communion they came up the church with a great clatter of brogues to hear the sermon, leaving behind a hideous dwarf whom I could not take my eyes off, so strange was his waddle as he moved about the edge of the crowd, his huge mouth grinning all the time.

  Our pew was the first on the right-hand side, and the pew behind us was the Clogher pew, and it was filled with girls — Helena, Livy, Lizzy, and May — the first girls I ever knew; and these are now under the sod — all except poor Livy, an old woman whom I sometimes meet out with her dog by the canal. In the first few on the left was a red landlord with a frizzled beard and a perfectly handsome wife, and behind him was Joe McDonnel from Carnacun House, a great farmer, and the wonder of the church, so great was his belly. I can see these people dimly, like figures in the background of a picture; but the blind girl is as clear in my memory as if she were present. She used to kneel behind the Virgin’s altar and the Communion rails, almost entirely hidden under an old shawl, grown green with age; and the event of every Sunday, at least for me, was to see her draw herself forward when the Communion bell rang, and lift herself to receive the wafer that the priest placed upon her tongue and having received it, she would sink back, overcome, overawed, and I used to wonder at her piety, and think of the long hours she spent sitting by the cabin fire waiting for Sunday to come round again. On what roadside was that cabin? And did she come, led by some relative or friend, or finding her way down the road by herself? Questions that interested me more than anybody else, and it was only at the end of a long inquiry that I learnt that she came from one of the cabins opposite Carnacun House. Every time we passed that cabin I used to look out for her, thinking how I might catch sight of her in the doorway; but I never saw her except in the chapel. Only once did we meet her as we drove to Ballyglass, groping her way, doubtless, to Carnacun. Where else would she be going? And hearing our horses’ hoofs she sank closer to the wall, overawed, into the wet among the falling leaves.

  As soon as the Communion was over Father James would come forward, and thrusting his hands under the alb (his favourite gesture) he would begin his sermon in Irish (in those days Irish was the language of the country among the peasantry), and we would sit for half an hour, wondering what were the terrible things he was saying, asking ourselves if it were pitchforks or ovens, or both, th
at he was talking; for the peasantry were groaning aloud, the women not infrequently falling on their knees, beating their breasts; and I remember being perplexed by the possibility that some few tenantry might be saved, for if that happened how should we meet them in heaven? Would they look another way and pass us by without lifting their hats and crying: Long life to yer honour?

  My memories of Carnacun Chapel and Father James Browne were interrupted by a sudden lurching forward of the car, which nearly flung me into the road. Whelan apologised for himself and his horse, but I damned him, for I was annoyed at being awakened from my dream. There was no hope of being able to pick it up again, for the chapel bell was pealing down the empty landscape, calling the peasants from their desolute villages. It seemed to me that the Carnacun bell used to cry across the moist fields more cheerfully; there was a menace in the Gort bell as there is in the voice of a man who fears that he may not be obeyed, and this gave me an interest in the Mass I was going to hear. It would teach me something of the changes that had happened during my absence. The first thing I noticed as I approached the chapel was the smallness of the crowd of men about the gateposts; only a few figures, and they surly and suspicious fellows, resolved not to salute the landlord, yet breaking away with difficulty from traditional servility. Our popularity had disappeared with the laws that favoured us, but Whelan’s appearance counted for something in the decaying sense of rank among the peasantry, and I mentally reproached Edward for not putting his servant into livery. It interested me to see that the superstitions of Carnacun were still followed: the peasants dipped their fingers in a font and sprinkled themselves, and the only difference that I noticed between the two chapels was one for the worse; the windows at Gort were not broken, and the happy, circling swallows did not build under the rafters. It was easier to discover differences in the two congregations. My eyes sought vainly the long dark cloak of married life, nor did I succeed in finding an old man in knee-breeches and worsted stockings, nor a girl drawing her shawl over her head.

  The Irish language is inseparable from these things, I said, and it has gone. The sermon will be in English, or in a language as near English as those hats and feathers are near the fashions that prevail in Paris.

  The Gort peasants seemed able to read, for they held prayer-books, and as if to help them in their devotion a harmonium began to utter sounds as discordant as the red and blue glass in the windows, and all the time the Mass continued very much as I remembered it, until the priest lifted his alb over his head and placed it upon the altar (Father James used to preach in the vestment, I said to myself); and very slowly and methodically the Gort priest tried to explain the mystery of Transubstantiation to the peasants, who lent such an indifferent ear to him that it was difficult not to think that Father James’s sermons, based on the fear of the devil, were more suitable to Ireland.

  A Mass only rememberable for a squealing harmonium, some panes in terrifying blues and reds, and my own great shame. However noble my motive may have been, I had knelt and stood with the congregation; I had even bowed my head, making believe by this parade that I accepted the Mass as a truth. It could not be right to do this, even for the sake of the Irish Literary Theatre, and I left the chapel asking myself by what strange alienation of the brain had Edward come to imagine that a piece of enforced hypocrisy on my part could be to any one’s advantage.

  It seemed to me that mortal sin had been committed that morning; a sense of guilt clung about me. Edward was consulted. Could it be right for one who did not believe in the Mass to attend Mass? He seemed to acquiesce that it might not be right, but when Sunday came round again my refusal to get on the car so frightened him that I relinquished myself to his scruples, to his terror, to his cries. The reader will judge me weak, but it should be remembered that he is my oldest friend, and it seemed to me that we should never be the same friends again if I refused; added to which he had been telling me all the week that he was getting on finely with his third act, and for the sake of a hypothetical act I climbed up on the car.

  Now, Whelan, don’t delay putting up the horse. Mind you’re in time for Mass, and don’t leave the chapel until the last Gospel has been read.

  Must we wait for Benediction? I cried ironically.

  Edward did not answer, possibly because he does not regard Benediction as part of the liturgy, and is, therefore, more or less indifferent to it. The horse trotted and Whelan clacked his tongue, a horrible noise from which I tried to escape by asking him questions.

  Are the people quiet in this part of the country? Quite enough, he answered, and I thought I detected a slightly contemptuous accent in the syllables.

  Not much life in the country? I hear the hunting is going to be stopped?

  Parnell never told them to stop the hunting.

  You’re a Parnellite?

  He was a great man.

  The priests went against him, I said, because he loved another man’s wife.

  And O’Shea not living with her at the time.

  Even if he had been, I answered, Ireland first of all, say I. He was a great man.

  He was that.

  And the priest at Gort — was he against him?

  Wasn’t he every bit as bad as the others?

  Then you don’t care to go to his church?

  I’d just as lief stop away.

  It’s strange, Whelan; it’s strange that Mr Martyn should insist on my going to Gort to Mass. Of what use can Mass be to any one if he doesn’t wish to hear it?

  Whelan chuckled, or seemed to chuckle.

  He will express no opinion, I said to myself, and abstractions don’t interest him. So, turning to the concrete, I spoke of the priest who was to say Mass, and Whelan agreed that he had gone agin Parnell.

  Well, Whelan, it’s a great waste of time going to Gort to hear a Mass one doesn’t want to hear, and I have business with Mr Yeats.

  Maybe you’d like me to turn into Coole, sur?

  I was thinking we might do that ... only you won’t speak to Mr Martin about it, will you? Because, you see Whelan, every one has his prejudices, and I am a great friend of Mr Martyn, and wouldn’t like to disappoint him.

  Wouldn’t like to contrairy him, sur?

  That’s it, Whelan. Now, what about your dinner? You don’t mind having your dinner in a Protestant house?

  It’s all one to me, sur.

  The dinner is the main point, isn’t it, Whelan?

  Begad it is sur, and he turned the horse in through the gates.

  Just go round, I said, and put the horse up and say nothing to anybody.

  Yes, sur.

  After long ringing the maid-servant opened the door and told me that Lady Gregory had gone to church with her niece; Mr Yeats was composing. Would I take a seat in the drawing-room and wait till he was finished? He must have heard the wheels of the car coming round the gravel sweep, for he was in the room before the servant left it — enthusiastic, though a little weary. He had written five lines and a half, and a pause between one’s rhymes is an excellent thing, he said. One could not but admire him, for even in early morning he was convinced of the importance of literature in our national life. He is nearly as tall as a Dublin policeman, and preaching literature he stood on the hearthrug, his feet set close together. Lifting his arms above his head (the very movement that Raphael gives to Paul when preaching at Athens), he said what he wanted to do was to gather up a great mass of speech. It did not seem to me clear why he should be at pains to gather up a great mass of speech to write so exiguous a thing as The Shadowy Waters; but we live in our desires rather than in our achievements, and Yeats talked on, telling me that he was experimenting, and did not know whether his play would come out in rhyme or in blank verse; he was experimenting. He could write blank verse almost as easily as prose, and therefore feared it; some obstacle, some darn was necessary. It seemed a pity to interrupt him, but I was interested to hear if he were going to accept my end, and allow the lady to drift southward, drinking yellow ale with the
sailors, while the hero sought salvation alone in the North. He flowed out into a torrent of argument and explanation, very ingenious, but impossible to follow. Phrase after phrase rose and turned and went out like a wreath of smoke, and when the last was spoken and the idea it had borne had vanished, I asked him if he knew the legend of Diarmuid and Grania. He began to tell it to me in its many variants, surprising me with unexpected dramatic situations, at first sight contradictory and incoherent, but on closer scrutiny revealing a psychology in germ which it would interest me to unfold. A wonderful hour of literature that was, flowering into a resolution to write an heroic play together. As we sat looking at each other in silence, Lady Gregory returned from church.