by George Moore
An extraordinary indigence of speech, and an artificiality of sentiment caught my ear, and I felt that it would be impossible to refrain from an outburst if he were to say again, in answer to the simple statement that I arrived this morning: Now, did you come across last night? You don’t tell me so? Tank you, tank you. You’ll have a great reception.
About the reception I care not a fig. I came over because it seemed to me to be my duty.
Did you, now? It was good of you.
But I am suffering something that words can’t express, and it will be kind in you to call upon me as soon as you have finished speaking.
MacNeill follows me. I’m sorry for you; from the bottom of my heart I’m sorry.
Well, Hyde, if you don’t hasten I’m afraid I shall have to go away. There is a trembling in my stomach that I would explain.
Somebody called him; a shuffling of chairs was followed by a sudden silence, and whilst Hyde stood bawling I saw the great skull, its fringe of long black hair, with extraordinary lucidity, the slope of the temples, the swell of the bone above the nape, the insignificant nose, the droop of the moustache through which his Irish frothed like porter, and when he returned to English it was easy to understand why he desired to change the language of Ireland.
The next speaker was a bearded man of middle height and middle age, forty or thereabouts, a post-office official whose oratory was more reasonable and dignified than our President’s, and perhaps for that reason it was less successful despite its repetitions and commonplace. But these qualities, which I had begun to see were essential in Irish oratory, were not considered enough; the audience missed the familiar note of spite. MacNeill was looked upon as good enough, as small ale would be by the average Coombe toper. What they want is porther; and feeling that my paper would interest nobody, I appealed to Hyde again, and begged him to call on me and let me get it over.
Before he could do so he said he would have to call upon two priests, Father Meehan and Father Hogarty, and these men spoke whatever happened to come into their heads, always using twenty words where five would have been too many, and they rambled on to their own pleasure and to that of the audience. Snatches of their oratory still linger in my ears. I remember the language that our forefathers spoke in time of persecution, hermits and saints said their prayers in it — which might be true, but seemed to imply that since the introduction of the English language saints had declined in Ireland. The next speaker, referring to the eloquent words of the last speaker, reminded the audience that not a line of heresy had been written in Irish, an assertion which recalled Father Ford’s pamphlet. He must have been reading it, I said to myself.
Now, will you call on me? I whispered to Hyde.
I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart.
Of what use to bring me over from England?
From the bottom of my heart! I must call upon —— , and he called out some name that I have forgotten. The success of this speaker when he declared that the dogs of war were to be loosed was unbounded. In the vast and densely packed building only one dissenting voice was heard. It did not come from the body of the hall, but from a man on the platform — a thick-set fellow, a working man, sitting in a chair next to me. While Hyde was speaking he had played impatiently with his hat — a bowler, worn at the brim, greasy and ingrained with dust, very like Whelan’s. His hands were those of a joiner or carpenter or plumber. Yet, I said to myself, he hears that our President’s speech isn’t as beautiful as it should be. It seemed to me that in the midst of some turgid sentence I had heard him spitting, Good God! Yes, yes; get on! through his tawny moustache. We all know that. And I had certainly heard him mutter while MacNeill was speaking, If I’d known it was to listen to this kind of stuff! While the reverend Fathers were rigmaroling he had only dared to shuffle his feet from time to time, making it clear, at all events to me, that he did not judge ecclesiastical oratory more favourably than lay, thereby winning my approval and sympathy, and inducing me to accept him as a pure, disinterested and very able critic, who might possibly find some small merit in the paper which I began to read as soon as the applause had ceased which followed upon the declaration that the dogs of war were to be loosed. Before five lines were read I heard him shuffling his feet heavily; at the tenth line a loud groan escaped him; and when I began my third paragraph, which to my mind contained everything that could be said in favour of the literary necessity of the revival of small languages, I heard him mutter, It isn’t that sort of sophisticated stuff that we want; and he muttered so loudly that there was a moment when it began to seem necessary to ask the audience to choose between us. His impatience increased with every succeeding speaker, and while wondering what his oratory would be like if Hyde were to give him a chance of exercising it, I saw him seize the coat-tails of a little man with a bibulous nose, who had been called upon to address the meeting. Had such a thing happened to me, my nerves would have given way utterly; but the little man merely lifted his coat-tails out of his assailant’s reach, and when he had finished talking somebody proposed a vote of thanks. Then the meeting broke up rapidly, and as we were leaving the platform the disappointed orator put his hand on Hyde’s shoulder.
For two pins I’d tell you what I think about you; and Hyde was asked to explain why he did not call upon him to speak.
Your name wasn’t given to me, sir.
Wasn’t I on the platform?
There were many on the platform that I didn’t call on to speak; I only called those on my list, and you weren’t upon it.
A fine lot of blatherers you had on your list, and every one of us sick listening to them.
The retort seeming to me to be in the fine Irish style, I was tempted to stand by to listen, but fearing to exhibit a too impertinent curiosity, I followed the crowd regretfully out of the building, wondering what Stella would think of her first Gaelic League meeting; and my first, too, for that matter.
On the boat coming over, she had been assured that it was going to be a very grand affair, typical of the new spirit that was awakening in Ireland, and there was no denying that no very high intellectual level had been reached by anybody. My own paper, that in the making had seemed a fine thing, had faded away in the reading, and she could not but have been disappointed with the unintellectual audience that had gathered to hear it. And the ridiculous wrangle between Hyde and the disappointed orator! She may have left her seat before it began. But, even without this episode, a clear-minded Englishwoman, as she undoubtedly was, could not have failed to have been struck by a certain absence of sincerity in the speeches. It would, perhaps, have been better if she hadn’t come over; at all events, it would have been desirable that this meeting had not been her first glimpse of Ireland. Her tact and her affection for me would save her from the mistake of laughing at the meeting to my face. There was no real reason why I should regret having brought her over, only that the meeting had exhibited Ireland under a rough and uncouth aspect; worse still, as a country that was essentially insincere and frivolous, and this was unfortunate, for I wanted her to like Ireland.
The man that hadn’t been allowed to blather had described the meeting as blather (a word derived, no doubt, from lather; and what is lather but froth?’). Hyde had been all Guinness; and she must have laughed at the prattle of the priests. Though in sympathy with what they had come to bless — the revival of the Irish language — I had had to bite my lips when one of them started talking about the tongue that their forefathers had spoken in time of persecution, and I had found it difficult to keep my patience when his fellow, a young cleric, said that he was in favour of a revival of the Irish language because no heresy had ever been written in it. A fine reason it was to give why we should be at pains to revive the language, and it had awakened a suspicion in me that he was just a lad — in favour of the Irish language because there was no thought in its literature. What interest is there in any language but for the literature it has produced or is going to produce? And there can be no literature when no me
ntal activities are about. Mental activity begets heresy, I muttered, and wandered to and fro, looking for Stella, hoping to find her not too seriously disappointed with her first glimpse into Irish Ireland. If she had heard only one good speech, or one note of genuine passion, however imperfectly expressed! But Ireland lacks passion, I said, and pushed my way through the crowd. It lacks ideas, and worst of all, it lacks passion ... all the same, it is difficult to find Stella. Where the devil! — all froth, porther, porther, and I returned to that very magnanimous statement that the Irish language was worth reviving because no word of heresy had been written in it. Which is a lie. Damn that priest! I said. Stella cannot have failed to see through his advocacy. Without heresy there can be no religion, for heresy means trying to think out the answer to the riddle of life and death for ourselves. We don’t succeed, of course we don’t, but we do lift ourselves out of the ruts when we think for ourselves — in other words, when we live. But acquiescence in dogma means decay, dead leaves in the mire, nothing more. The only thing that counts is personal feeling. And if this be true, it may be said that Ireland has never shown any interest in religious questions — merely a wrangle between Protestants and Catholics.
Part of the speech of another orator started into my mind; he had said he would shoulder a musket — he didn’t say a rifle mark you, but a musket; I wonder he didn’t say a pike! Dead leaves in the mire, dead traditions, a people living on the tradition of ‘98. But there were heroes in ‘98. In those days men thought for themselves and lived according to their passions. But if the meeting I have just come from is to be taken as typical, Ireland has melted away. Maybe, to be revived again in the language ... if the language can be revived. But can it be revived? Ah, there is Stella! And never did she seem so essentially English to me as at that moment — so English that I experienced a certain sense of resentment against her for wearing the look that, before the Boer War, had attracted me to her — I might say had attracted me even before I had seen her — that English air of hers which she wore with such dignity. Until I met her, the women I had loved were like myself, capricious and impulsive; some had been amusing, some charming, some pretty, and one had enchanted me by her joy in life and belief that everything she did was right because she did it. High spirits are delightful, but incompatible with dignity, and, deep down in my heart, I had always wished to love a chin that deflected, calm, clear, intelligent eyes, and a quiet and grave demeanour, for that is the English face, and the English face and temperament have always been in my blood; and it was doubtless these qualities that attracted me to my friends in Sussex. Stella might be more intelligent than they, or her intelligence was of a different kind — the measure of intellect differs in every individual, but the temperament of the race (in essentials) is the same, and it endures longer. But now her very English appearance and temperament vexed me in Sackville Street, and my vexation was aggravated by the fact that it was impossible to tell her why I was so dissatisfied with her. She had not laughed at nor said a word in disparagement of the meeting, nor told me that, in seeking to revive the language, I was on a wild-goose chase. But out of sorts with her I was, knowing myself all the while for a fool, and cursing myself as a weakling for not having been able to come to Ireland without her.
The incident seemed symbolic; neither country is able to do without the other; and it would have been easy for Stella and me to have quarrelled that evening, though we weren’t man and wife. She spoke so kindly and warmly of the meeting, seeing all that was good in it, and laughing with such agreeable humour at the incident of the disappointed orator, that I told her I loved her, despite her English face and voice and manner, making her laugh thereby.
The tact of women cannot be overpraised; and they need all their tact to live with us; and how delightfully they accept the religions we invent, and the morals that we like to worry over, though they understand neither! A wonderful race is the race of women, easily misunderstood by men, for they understand only lovers, children, and flowers. To fill many pages on the subject of women would be easy, and perhaps my sympathy would be more interesting than the tale I have to tell. Even so, I should have to continue telling how, some months after my visit to Dublin, when the cloud cast by the meeting at the Rotunda upon my belief in the possibility of a Celtic Renaissance had dissolved, another escape from England presented itself. A letter arrived one morning from Yeats, summoning me to Ireland, so that we might come to some decision about Diarmuid and Grania, the play that we had agreed to write in collaboration. We had exchanged many letters, but as every one had seemed to estrange us, Lady Gregory had charged Yeats to invite me to Coole, where he was staying at the time; and reading in this letter a week spent in the very heart of Ireland, among lakes and hills, and the most delightful conversation in the world, I accepted the invitation with pleasure.
As I write, the wind whistles and yells in the street; the waves must be mountains high in the Channel, I said, but the Irish Sea has always been propitious to me — all my crossings have been accomplished amid sparkling waves and dipping gulls, and the crossing that I am trying to remember when I went to Coole to write Diarmuid and Grania was doubtless as fine as those that had gone before. I can recall myself waiting eagerly for the beautiful shape of Howth to appear above the sea-line, my head filled with its legends. Or, maybe, my memory fails me, and it may well have been that I crossed under the moon and stars, for I remember catching the morning mail from the Broadstone and journeying, pale for want of sleep and tired, through the beautiful county of Dublin, alongside of the canal, here and there slipping into swamp, with an abandoned boat in the rushes. But when we leave County Dublin the country begins to drop away into bogland, the hovel appears (there is a good deal of the West of Ireland all through Ireland), but as soon as the middle of Ireland has been crossed the green country begins again; and, seeing many woods, I fell to thinking how Ireland once had been known as the Island of Many Woods, cultivated in patches, and overrun by tribes always at war one with the other. So it must have been in the fourth century when Grania fled from Tara with Diarmuid — her adventure; and mine — to write Ireland’s greatest love-story in conjunction with Yeats.
Athlone came into sight, and I looked upon the Shannon with a strange and new tenderness, thinking that it might have been in a certain bed of rushes that Grania lifted her kirtle, the sweetness of her legs blighting in Diarmuid all memory of his oath of fealty to Finn, and compelling him to take her in his arms, and in the words of the old Irish story-teller to make a woman of her. And without doubt it would be a great thing to shape this primitive story into a play, if we could do it without losing any of the grandeur and significance of the legend. I thought of the beauty of Diarmuid, his doom, and how he should court it at the end of the second act when the great fame of Finn captures Grania’s imagination. The third act would be the pursuit of the boar through the forest, followed by Finn’s great hounds — Bran, Sgeolan, Lomairly.
In happy meditation mile after mile went by. Lady Gregory’s station is Gort. Coole was beginning to be known to the general public at the time I went there to write Diarmuid and Grania with Yeats. Hyde had been to Coole, and had been inspired to write several short plays in Irish; one of them, The Twisting of the Rope, we hoped we should be able to induce Mr Benson to allow us to produce after Diarmuid and Grania. If Yeats had not begun The Shadowy Waters at Coole he had at least written several versions of it under Lady Gregory’s roof-tree; and so Coole will be historic; later still, it will become a legend, a sort of Minstrelburg, the home of the Bell Branch Singers, I said, trying to keep my bicycle from skidding, for I had told the coachman to look after my luggage and bring it with him on the car, hoping in this way to reach Coole in time for breakfast.
The sun was shining, but the road was dangerously greasy, and I had much difficulty in saving myself from falling. A lovely morning, I said, pleasantly ventilated by light breezes from the Burran Mountains. We shall all become folklore in time to come, Finns and Diarmuids and Us
heens, every one of us, and Lady Gregory a new Niamh who — At that moment my bicycle nearly succeeded in throwing me into the mud, but by lifting it on to the footpath, and by giving all my attention to it, I managed to reach the lodge-gates without a fall. A horn, I said, should hang on the gatepost, and the gate should not open till the visitor has blown forth a motif; but Yeats would be kept a long time waiting, for he is not musical, and thinking of the various funny noises he would produce on the horn, I admired the hawthorns that AE painted last year; and at the end of a long drive a portico appeared in red and blue glass, partly hidden by masses of reddening creeper. Sir William’s marbles detained me on the staircase, and whilst I compared present with past appreciations Lady Gregory came to meet me with news of Yeats. He was still composing; we should have to wait breakfast for him; and we waited till Lady Gregory, taking pity on me, rang the bell. But the meal we sat down to was disturbed not a little by thoughts of Yeats, who still tarried. The whisper went round the table that he must have been overtaken by some inspiration, and Lady Gregory, fluttered with care, was about to send the servant to inquire if Mr Yeats would like to have his breakfast in his room. At that moment the poet appeared, smiling and delightful, saying that just as the clocks were striking ten the metre had begun to beat, and abandoning himself to the emotion of the tune, he had allowed his pen to run till it had completed nearly eight and a half lines, and the conversation turned on the embarrassment his prose caused him, forcing him to reconstruct his scenario. He would have written his play in half the time if he had begun writing it in verse.
