by George Moore
I ordered my trunk to be packed that evening, and next morning was at the house-agent’s office in Grafton Street; and while the clerk made out a long list of houses for me I told him my requirements. The houses in Merrion Square are too large for a single man of limited income; I had lived with my mother in one when boycotting brought me back from France; the houses in Stephen’s Green are as fine, but even if one could have been gotten at a reasonable rental, Stephen’s Green did not tempt me, my imagination turning rather to a quiet, old-fashioned house with a garden situated in some sequestered, half-forgotten street in which old ladies live — pious women who would pass my window every Sunday morning along the pavement on their way to church. The house-agent did not think he had exactly the house, street, and the inhabitants I described upon his books, but there was a house he thought would suit me in Upper Mount Street. I remembered the street dimly; a chilly street with an uninteresting church at the end of it. A bucolic relation had taken a house in Upper Mount Street in the ‘eighties and had given parties with a view to ridding himself of two uninteresting sisters-in-law, but the experiment had failed. So I knew what the houses in Upper Mount Street were like — ugly, common, expensive. Why trouble to visit them? All the same, I visited two or three, and from the doorstep of one I caught sight of Mount Street Crescent, bending prettily about a church. But there were no bills in any window, and the jarvey was asked why he didn’t take me to Lower Mount Street.
Because, he said, all the houses there are lodging-houses, and he turned his horse’s head and drove me into a delightful draggle-tailed end of the town, silhouetting charmingly, I remembered, on the evening sky, for I had never failed to admire Baggot Street when I visited Dublin. There is always something strangely attractive in a declining neighbourhood, and thinking of the powdered lackeys that must have stood on steps that now a poor slavey washes, I began to dream. The house that I had been directed to was no doubt a fine one, but its fate is declension, for it lives in my memory not by marble chimney-pieces nor Adam ceilings, but by the bite of the most ferocious flea that I ever met, caught from the caretaker, no doubt, at the last moment, for I was on the car before he nipped me in the middle of the back, exactly where I can’t scratch, and from there he jumped down upon my loins and nipped me again and again, until I arrived at the Shelbourne, where I had to strip naked to discover him.
If the Creator of fleas had not endowed them with a passion for whiteness, humanity would perish, I muttered, descending the stairs.
Are you after catching him, sir? the jarvey asked.
Yes, and easily, for he was drunk with my blood as you might be upon John Jameson on Saturday night, and we drove away to Fitzwilliam Square.
The houses there are large and clean, but the rents were higher than I wished to pay, and it did not seem to me that I should occupy an important enough position in the Square. Something a little more personal, I said to myself, and drove away to Leeson Street: a repetition of Baggot Street, decrepit houses that had once sheltered an aristocracy, now falling into the hands of nuns and lodging-house keepers. It was abandoned for Harcourt Street, but despite the attraction of some magnificent areas and lamp-posts with old lanterns, I decided that I would not live in Harcourt Street and returned to the agent, who produced another list and next day I visited Pembroke Road and admired the great flights of granite steps that lead to doorways that seemed to bespeak a wife and family so emphatically that I drove to Clyde Road. And finding it too pompous and suburban, too significant of distillers and brewers, I told the jarvey to drive me to Waterloo Road, a long monotonous road, with some pretty houses and gardens, connecting Pembroke Road with Upper Leeson Street; but unable to associate it in my mind with my mission to Ireland, I cried out: Castlewood Avenue! The jarvey took me thither, but the avenue, at once shabby and genteel, disappointed me. I cried to the jarvey: Clonskeagh! He took me up the Rathmines Road into Clonskeagh, where I found some pleasant houses, not one of which was to let — the old story of houses that had long been let remaining on the agent’s books. After Clonskeagh we wandered through Terenure into a desolate region which the jarvey told me was Clondalkin, and followed a lonely road that seemed to lead away from all human habitation.
But you see, I said to the driver, I’m looking for a house in the town.
It is to The Moat we are going, he answered; and half an hour later our horse stopped before a drawbridge, which I doubted not would cost a great deal of money to put it into working order. But when it is lifted my friends will know that I am composing; and it can be let down at tea-time. A grand sight it will be to see them, all Gaelic Leaguers of course, walk across it into the moated grange. About a thousand pounds, the caretaker said, would make the place quite comfortable, and I answered that The Moat appealed to me in many ways, but that I had not come to Ireland in search of a picturesque residence, but in the hope of reviving the language of the tribe whose wont it was to come down from the rim of blue hills over yonder to invade Dublin and to be repulsed by different garrisons of the Pale. One was no doubt ensconced here, and thinking of Mount Venus, the house that I had visited high up in the Dublin mountains many years ago, wondering whether it would suit me better to live there than to live at The Moat, I said to myself: I shall have to live in one or the other, for there doesn’t seem to be any house to let in Dublin City.
A thousand pounds are needed to make The Moat habitable, and that is more than I wish to spend, I said to the clerk, and begged him to give me another list of houses; again he searched his books, and a few more addresses were added to the list.
I’ll try these tomorrow, and, leaving the office, I followed the pavement along Trinity College Gardens, my feet taking me instinctively to AE. He settles everybody’s difficulties and consoles the afflicted.
If I don’t find a house, I said to him, in Dublin, I shall have to return to that Inferno which is London, and I attempted a description of Mafeking night and other nights. There are no houses, AE, to let. I’ve searched everywhere and can find nothing but The Moat, and Mount Venus, no doubt, is still vacant, but it’s a good five miles distant from Ranfarnham, and you won’t be able to come to see me very often.
AE’s grey eyes lit up with a kindly, witty smile.
Nature, he said, has given you energy, vitality, and perseverance, my dear Moore, but she has denied you the gift of patience, and patience above all things is needed when seeking a house.
But I’ve searched Merrion Square, Fitzwilliam Square, Harcourt Street, and many a suburb.
There were at the time three bank managers waiting to receive instructions from him, but he listened to my story, and I noticed that the anxious typist with a sheaf of letters in her hand did not distract his attention from me; he dismissed her, but without abruptness, and came down to the door refusing to believe that it would be impossible for me to find a house in Dublin.
Ireland thrives in her belief in you, I answered; perhaps I shall. For two days I did not hear from him, but on the third morning, as I was asking myself if it would be worth while to hire another car to go forth again to hunt through Mountjoy Square and Rutland Square where the aristocracy before the Union had built their mansions, the porter came to tell me that a gentleman wanted to see me. It was AE, who had come to tell me that he had found me a house; within a few minutes’ walk of Stephen’s Green. The perfect residence, he said, for a man of letters; one of five little eighteenth-century houses shut off from the thoroughfare, and with an orchard opposite which may be yours for two or three pounds a year if you know how to bargain with the landlord.
As he spoke these words we turned a corner and came into sight of an old iron gateway; behind it were the five eighteenth-century houses, five modest little houses, but every one with tall windows; a single window above the area, no doubt the dining-room, and above it a pair of windows with balconies; behind them were the drawing-rooms, and the windows above these were the bedroom windows.
Not a single pane of plate-glass in the house, A
E! The room above mine is the cook’s room, and if there are some back rooms?
He assured me that the houses were deep and had several back rooms; the drawing-rooms were large and lofty, and, as well as he remembered, the back windows in the dining and drawing-rooms overlooked the convent garden.
I should have tramped round Dublin for a month without finding anything, and in three days you have found the house that suits me. Tell me how you did it.
Number 3 was the home of the Theosophical Society, and I remember, while editing the Review, I used to envy those that had the right to walk in the orchard.
And now you can walk there whenever you please, and dine with me under that apple-tree, AE, if the Irish summer is warm enough.
But you haven’t seen the house yet.
I don’t want to see the house until my furniture is in it. I’m no judge of unfurnished houses.
But he insisted on ringing the bell, and while he was making inquiries about the state of the roof and the kitchen flue, I was upstairs admiring marble mantelpieces of no mean design, and cottages that the back windows overlooked.
AE, I beseech you to leave off talking about boilers and cisterns and all such tiresome things. Come upstairs at once and see the dear little slum, and the two washerwomen in it. I wish we could hear what they’re saying.
One does hear some bad language sometimes, the caretaker murmured, turning her head away.
I’m sure they blaspheme splendidly. Blasphemy is the literature of Catholic countries. AE, what an inveterate mystic you are, as practical as St Teresa; whereas I am content if the windows and mantelpieces are eighteenth century. Don’t let the slum trouble you, my good woman. A man of letters never objects to a slum. He sharpens his pen there.
The convent garden, sir, on the right —
Yes, I see, and a great many night-shirts out drying.
No, sir, the nuns’ underwear.
Better and better. Into what Eden have you led me, AE? Who is the agent of this Paradise? Is his name Peter?
No, sir; Mr Thomas Burton.
And his address?
He lives at the Hill, Wimbledon. The landlord lives in Wicklow.
How extraordinary! The landlord of an Irish property living in Ireland and the agent in London. Shall I have to go back to England and interview this agent? AE? I can’t go back.
You won’t be quit of England until your affairs are settled.
But I can’t go back.
AE smiled so kindly that I half forgot my anger, and my impulsiveness began to amuse me.
You’re always right, AE.
Don’t say so, for there’s nobody so boring —
As the righteous man.... But come into the garden, where we shall dine, I hope, often. A wilderness it seems at present, but the hen-coops and swings can be removed. He took out his watch. I begged him to stay. He said he couldn’t, and bade me goodbye quickly. But, AE, I’m going —
Whither I went that evening I cannot remember; all I know for certain is that at some assembly, not at the Mansion House or at the Rotunda, therefore in some private house (I am sure it was in some private house, for I remember gaseliers, silk cushions, ladies’ necks), I rushed up to Hyde, both hands extended, my news upon my lips.
Hyde, I’ve come over; it’s all settled. I’ve been driving about Dublin for a week without finding a house, and would have had to go away, leave you — think of it! — if AE hadn’t come to my help in the nick of time. He has found me such a beautiful house, Hyde, where you’ll come to dine, and where, perhaps, we’ll be able to talk together in Irish, for I am determined to learn the language.
You don’t mean it? You don’t tell me that you’ve left London for good? You’re only joking, and he laughed that vacant little laugh which is so irritating.
But tell me, are you advancing?
We’re getting on finely. If we could only get the Intermediate —
The Intermediate is most important; but what I want to know is if I shall be able to help you.
You’ve done a great deal already, but —
But what?
Your book Parnell and His Island will go against you with the League.
I should have thought the League was here to accept those that are willing to help Ireland to recover her language, and not to bother about my past.
That’s the way we are over here, he said, and again I had to endure his irritating little laugh. But I’m thinking.... The League might be reconciled to your book if you were to issue it with a sub-title — Parnell and His Island, or Ireland Without Her Language. I was reading your book the other day, and do you know I wouldn’t say that it wasn’t your best book?
It is mere gabble, I answered, and cannot be reissued.
You can’t think that? And dropping a hint that I might be more useful to them in England than in Ireland, he turned away to tell dear Edward that he was delighted to see him. Now have you come up from the West for the meeting? You don’t tell me so? I don’t believe you. Edward reassured him. And your friend, George Moore, has come over from London; and with you both to back the League —
How are you, George? I heard you had arrived.
What, already!
Father Dineen saw you; I met him in Kildare Street this afternoon and he told me to tell you that the Keating Branch were saying that you’re coming over here to write them up in the English papers.
You start your rumours very quickly in Dublin, I answered angrily, and a stupider one I never heard. I don’t write for the papers; even if I did, the Keating Branch — I know nothing about it. Hyde, I wish you would use your influence to stop —
I was just telling him that he should reissue Parnell and His Island with a sub-title Ireland Without Her Language. Now, what do you think? We’re all very anxious to hear what you think, Martyn.
It would have been much better if he had never written that book. I told him so at the time. I have always told you, George, that I understand Ireland. I mayn’t understand England —
But what do you mean when you say that you understand Ireland?
Yeats joined our group, and when Edward said that I had decided to come to live in Dublin he tried a joke, but it got lost in the folds of his style, and he looked at Hyde and at Martyn disconsolate. MacNeill, the Vice-President of the Gaelic League, sidled through the crowd — an honest fellow with a great deal of brown beard. But I couldn’t get him to express any opinion regarding my coming, or the view that the League would take of it.
But your subscription will be received gratefully, he said, moving away to avoid further interrogation.
Money, I answered, is always received with gratitude, but I’ve come to work for the League as well as to subscribe to it, and shall be glad to hear what kind of work you propose to put me to. Would you care to send me to America to collect funds? What do you think? A Gaelic League missionary?
MacNeill answered that if I went to America and collected money the League would be glad to receive it; but he didn’t think that the League would send me over as its representative. They would be glad, however, to receive some journalistic help from me. One of the questions that was engaging the League’s attention at the time was how to improve The Claidheamh Soluis and he suggested that I should call upon the editor at my convenience. The last words, at my convenience, seemed unnecessary, for had I not come to Dublin to serve the Gaelic League?
Next morning, in great impatience, I sought the offices of the Gaelic League, and after many inquiries of the passers-by, discovered the number hidden away in a passage, and then the offices themselves at the top of a dusty staircase. An inscription in a strange language was assuring, and a memory of the County of Mayo in my childhood told me that the syllables that bade me enter were Gaelic and not German. A couple of rough-looking men, peasants, no doubt, and native Irish speakers, sat on either side of a large table with account-books before them, and in answer to my question if I could see the editor, one of them told me that he was not in at present.
> But you speak Irish? I said.
Both of them nodded, and, forgetful of the business upon which I had come, I began to question them as to their knowledge of the language, and I am sure that my eyes beamed when they told me that they both contributed to the Claidheamh.
Your Vice-President MacNeill sent me here. He would like me to write an article. I am George Moore.
I’ll tell the editor when he comes in, and if you’ll send in your article he’ll consider it. The next few numbers are full up.
This man must be a member of the Keating Branch, said I to myself; and, though aware of my folly, I could not restrain my words, but fell to assuring him at once that I had not come to Ireland to write the Keating Branch up in the English papers. He was sure I hadn’t, but my article would have to be submitted to the editor all the same.
