Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  If English plays are allowed, precedence will be given to them. The line of least resistance, I said; but the idea of stock company travelling all over the country seemed an excellent one, and I promised that on the morrow, as soon as I had finished my writing, I would go down to the Gaelic League offices and lay the project before the secretary.

  We writers are always glad of any little excuse for an afternoon walk. Our brains are exhausted after five or six hours of composition, and the question arises how are the hours before dinner to be whiled away, and the hours after dinner, for if we go to bed before twelve we may lie awake thinking of what we have written during the day, and of what we hope to write on the morrow. The reader sees us spending our evenings reading, but we have read all the books that we want to read; the modern theatre is merely servant-girlism (I make no difference between the kitchen and the drawing-room variety). After forty, shooting and hunting amuse us no longer, and women, though still enchanting, are not quite so enchanting as they used to be. There’s one.... She turned round the corner into Baggot Street, and I stood hesitating between a choice of ways. The Green tempted me, and I thought of Grafton Street and of the women running in and out of its shops, and after each other, talking and gathering up the finery which brings the young barristers from the Courts — spruce young fellows, whom I had often seen in little groups of threes and fours, each one trying to look as if he were busy disentangling some knotty point of law, but thinking all the while of his coloured socks and of the women going by. In Grafton Street I should meet little Tommy O’Shaughnessy on his way home from Green Street Court House which he never really leaves, talking to himself, and tapping his snuff-box from time to time; and Gill would be floating along there, lost in admiration of his own wisdom. Sir Thornley Stoker rarely misses Grafton Street between four and five; I should certainly catch sight of him hopping about a silversmith’s, like an old magpie, prying out spoons and forks, and the immodest bulk of Larky Waldron, waiting outside for him, looking into the window. A hundred other odds and oddments I should meet there, every one amusing to see and to hear; all the same for a change of spectacle it might be as well to stroll to the Gaelic League offices through Merrion Street and along Nassau Street. I should meet students on their way to the National Library, girls and boys, and an old derelict Jesuit whom I liked to see going by in his threadbare coat, tightly buttoned, a great Irish scholar; and then there are the clerics to see, out for their afternoon walks, with perhaps a glimpse of Edward talking to them. He always says that he likes Bohemians or priests. The rural clergy tell him about the country, and he tells the urban priest that he has very nearly succeeded in inveigling Archbishop Walsh into accepting ten thousand pounds for the establishment of a choir to sing Palestrina and Orlando di Lasso. The priests go away, smiling inwardly, thinking him a little eccentric, but a very good Catholic. If Edward is out of town and my taste runs that day towards trees and greenswards, all I have to do is to go down Leinster Street and through a gateway into Trinity College Gardens. Professor Mahaffy sometimes walks in the path under the railings shaded by beautiful trees, and if it had not been for a ferocious article published at the time, attacking him for his lack of sympathy for the Gaelic Movement, we might have spent many pleasant hours together under the hawthorns. Professor Tyrrell’s hostility to our movement was less aggressive, and I liked to meet him in the gardens, and to walk a little way with him, listening to his pleasant ancient warble about the literature that he has lived in all his life, and with which he is so saturated that, involuntarily, he transports me out of the grey modern day to Athens, where Aristophanes walked to the Piraeus to watch for the galleys from Sicily.

  If these two men are not about, there are other professors, and I have often been through the gardens talking with the fellow that teaches French. He is, of course, learned in Corneille, Racine, and Ronsard, and, by some strange chance, he knows Stuart Merrill, a poet of some distinction, a contributor to the old Revue Indépendante, Dujardin’s Revue, but unfortunately he never met Dujardin, and as it is impossible to talk of Stuart Merrill for more than half an hour, he was generally sent away at Carlisle Bridge. On the other side one was sure to run up against Taidgh O’Donoghue, the modern Irish poet, the rival of the Munster poets of the eighteenth century, and my Irish translator, though O’Neill Russell had begged me to beware of him, saying that the Irish that Taidgh wrote would not be understood out of Munster — a libel on the Irish language, proved to be one soon after the arrival of a boy from Galway, my nephew’s Irish tutor, for Comber, who had never been out of Galway before, understood every word of Taidgh’s beautiful translation of my story, The Wedding Gown.

  The great old cock was O’Neill Russell, whom we never looked upon as an old man, despite his eighty years. How could we, since he was straight as a maypole, and went for walks of two-and-twenty miles among the Dublin mountains? He came back to me one day after one of these strolls, the news bubbling upon his lips that he had composed an entire scenario on the subject of an heroic adventure that had happened to an Irish king in the thirteenth century; but he would not stay to dinner, nor even to relate it; he was in too great a hurry to verify a fact in the National Library, to get his scenario down on paper. For one reason or another he never dined at my house, though he liked to come in after dinner for a talk on Saturday nights. It was no use offering him a cigar, he always begged to be allowed to smoke his pipe, and there being no spittoons in my dining-room the coal-scuttle was put by him. A great old cock, head upreared, fine neck, grand shoulders, a stately piece of architecture, fine in detail as in general effect. A big nose divided the face, wandering grey eyes lit it. The large hands had worked for sixty years in America, in France, in the East. He had been all over the world, and had returned to Ireland with some seventy, eighty, perhaps a hundred pounds a year. He was gibed in songs, for he had gone away as a boy, speaking bad Irish, and come back after sixty years, speaking bad Irish still; so said the song’s refrain, and a story followed at his heels that he had vilified a man for twenty years in the American newspapers, denouncing him as a renegade Irishman, because had advocated a certain use of the genitive. A great old cock, as young as the youngest of the men that came to my house, were it not for a certain sadness — a very beautiful sadness, not for himself, but for his country. He had hoped all his life for Ireland’s resurrection, but at the end of his life it seemed as far distant as ever.

  He haunted the Gaelic League offices, and the day he pushed the door open, entering the room with a great stride, I began to wonder who the intruder could be — this great tall man, dressed in a faded blue jacket and a pair of grey trousers, and a calico shirt. The editor of the Claidheamh introduced us, and my heart went out to him at once, as every heart did, for he was the recognisable Irishman, the adventurer, the wild goose. And after that meeting we met frequently between five and six o’clock; the Gaelic League offices were then a pleasant resort; all kinds and conditions of men assembled there, and we discussed the Irish language sitting upon tables while smoking cigarettes. It appeared every week in the Claidheamh Soluis, and I liked to dictate a paragraph for somebody to turn into Irish before my eyes, and, when the editor paused for an equivalent, every one ransacked his memory, but our dictionary was always O’Neill Russell — a rambling, incoherent, untrustworthy, old dictionary — but one that none of us would have willingly been without. It is pleasant to remember that he was in the offices of the League the day that I called to unfold my project for a little travelling company to the secretary and that he approved of it; but his conversation soon diverged from the matter in hand into an argument regarding the relative merits of Munster and Connaught Irish.

  I’m afraid, he said, that you’ve come too late to revive the Irish language. There are only three men in Ireland who can write pure Irish. It’s dialect, sir, they write.

  This may be true, my dear Mr O’Neill Russell, but bad Irish is better than good English and I care little what Irish we get so long as we get ourse
lves out of English.

  A few days after, I returned triumphant to the secretary, Kuno Meyer having told me the night before that Goethe, when he was asked how the German language might be fostered in Poland, had answered, Not so much by schools, or by books, but by travelling companies that will play, not necessarily good plays — good plays are not even desirable — but homely little plays that will interest the villagers. Everybody likes the theatre, and people will take the trouble to learn a language so that they may understand plays.

  I’m giving you Goethe’s own words, and you’ll be well advised to accept the wisdom of the wisest man since Antiquity. The secretary did not answer, and I continued angrily: Up to the present you have done nothing but tell the people that they should learn Irish, and the people are asking themselves what good the language will do them when they have got it. The question is not unreasonable, and it cannot be left unanswered. Willie Fay is willing to undertake the management of a company acting little plays in Irish. You don’t answer, and if I read your face correctly, you are not of Goethe’s opinion?

  That is not what I was going to say, sir. I was thinking of our finances. Our organisers cost the League a great deal of money.

  But your organisers will not be able to do half as much for the language as a company of strolling players. How much do you pay your organisers?

  About two hundred a year.

  Two hundred a year to bawl from market place to market place: Now, my fine fellows, will you be telling me why don’t you speak the language of your forefathers? If it was good enough for them it ought to be good enough for you. And you, Joe Maguire, why aren’t you talking Irish?

  The secretary was not disposed to admit that the organisers of the League were as uncouth as I wished to represent them.

  It matters little whether they are couth or uncouth, my good sir; you must provide a reason for the learning of Irish, and there are only two valid reasons — to read books and to understand plays.

  Bedell’s Bible was mentioned; a masterpiece of modern Irish, the secretary admitted it to be.

  But what would Father Riley be saying if we were caught putting forward a Protestant book? We can’t afford to have the priests against us.

  I know that; but the priest couldn’t object to the travelling company?

  The secretary admitted that he did not see how he could, and he promised to lay my project for the financing of a small company of strolling players before the Coisde Gnotha on the eighteenth, and on the nineteenth he told me the matter had been carefully considered, but —

  If the Coisde Gnotha would only give me an opportunity of laying my project before them. You see it is impossible for you to tell them all that is in my mind. The secretary said he thought he had listened very carefully to me, and had repeated all I had said. You will excuse me if I say that I could plead my own case better than you. Among other things I forgot to tell you that the travelling company might prove a paying concern. If it were to pay ten pounds a week after expenses?

  Of course if it did that.... But besides the money there are other difficulties, he said. There are women’s parts in the plays you propose to have acted? The ladies who play these parts could hardly travel about unprotected. Father Riley, who is on the Coisde Gnotha —

  He is everywhere.

  He’s a great man for the Irish, and he brought out this point very clearly, and everybody agreed with him.

  Of course, if Ireland is to be governed by parish priests! and I fumed about the office, talking of the Italian Renaissance.

  There is nothing to hinder you and Mr Martyn from starting a company.

  Fiddlesticks. The Moore and Martyn Company would have no success whatever. If it is to be done at all it will have to be called The Gaelic League Touring Company. Besides, Mr Martyn wouldn’t go into any project that the priests opposed on the ground of faith and morals; so I suppose the thing is at an end.

  I wouldn’t advise you to go on with it, for I’ve always noticed that nothing succeeded in Ireland unless the priests take it up.

  So the Irish language is going to be sacrificed for the sake of a little female virtue. But girls are seducing young men ... and old men, too, for the matter of that, all over the world, and every hour of the night and day. That such a profligacy is not desirable in England I readily understand; but in Ireland! You know what I mean.

  I’m afraid I don’t.

  You surprise me. And taking a sovereign out of my pocket, I held it up to his gaze. The depreciation of the gold species. Now you understand?

  I’m afraid I don’t.

  If a man employs fifty girls in a factory he wishes them to practise virtue, for if they don’t they will not be able to give him that amount of work which will enable him to pay dividends. But in Ireland there are no factories, and consequently female virtue is not a natural necessity, as in England.

  I’m afraid you’ll never get Father Riley to see it from your point of view.

  Probably not. Irish Catholics have taken their morality from English Puritans. I should have said economists. Good morning.

  But half-way down the stairs a new ideas occurred to me, and the temptation was very great to return and tell the secretary that the safety bicycle has brought a new morality into the world, even into Ireland, for, by freeing girls from the control of their mothers, it has given them the right to earn their own living; and the right of women to earn their living on their feet has — and I paused to consider the question — has brought to a close the oldest of all the trades. The light-of-love is becoming as rare as the chough, and on the dusty stairs of the Gaelic League I remembered how numerous they used to be on Kingstown Pier on Sundays, all of them beautifully dressed in sea-green dresses and sealskin jackets. All the same, there is no reason why the moralist should rejoice; their places are being taken by bands of enthusiastic amateurs. Thousands of years ago in India, I said, the Buddhist spoke of the wheel of Life, or was it the wheel of Change? And, thinking how quickly this wheel revolves in the middle of us, I imagined myself in a pulpit, preaching a great sermon on morality, its cause and cure; and the wonderful things I could say on this subject ran on in my head until I caught sight of three large, healthy-looking priests standing on the kerb, dressed in admirable broadcloth, and wearing finely stitched American boots, their fat and freckled hands playing with their watch-chains. At that moment dear Edward joined them, and from the complacency that his arrival brought into the clerical faces it seemed certain that he was asking how the country was looking, meaning thereby, how is the Irish language going along? And they are answering his questions sympathetically, I said; but on approaching the group the words Her Excellency caught my ear, and I guessed that they were talking of the caravan which Lady Aberdeen had sent round the country — a caravan of plastic protests and warnings against the danger of spitting, and of sleeping within closed windows.

  But it will not occur to them that insufficient food is the cause of much consumption, I said, thinking of the vanman who goes out at six o’clock in the morning and returns home at midday wet to the skin, and, after a dinner of potatoes and dripping (lucky if he gets a bit of American bacon), goes out again, and comes back about eight or nine to a cup of tea, lucky if he gets that before lying down in his wet shirt. Father Riley had set me against the clerics, and it was in a spirit of rebuke that I listened to the priests proposing that sermons denouncing spitting should be delivered in every parish from the altar.

  Edward introduced me to the holy ones, and, after listening to them for a while, the temptation stole over me to tell them that I had written to Her Excellency last night, asking her to use her very great influence to make known the cure that had been discovered.

  And what cure is that? Edward asked innocently.

  Holy Orders. Now, listen! I have come upon a great truth: that for the last hundred years no Archbishop has died from consumption, nor a Bishop, nor a parish priest, only two or three outlying curates. Therefore, my letter to Her Excellency is
a serious advocacy that all Ireland should take Orders, those who want to lead celibate lives remaining or becoming Catholics, those who wish to enter the marriage state remaining, or discovering themselves, Protestants. In this way, and only in this way, will Her Excellency be able to kill a fatal disease and rid Ireland of religious differences. What do you think of the new cure, gentlemen? But, Edward, wait a moment. As the priests did not seem ready with an answer, I bade them goodbye abruptly, and hurried after Edward. Why all this haste? I asked, overtaking him.

  I don’t like that kind of talk. It’s most offensive to me; and I, after introducing you —

  But, my dear Edward, how can it be offensive to propose that all Ireland shall take Orders? Didn’t Father Sheehan say in his last masterpiece that he looked forward to the day when Ireland should be one vast monastery?

  When that day comes they’ll make short work of fellows like you — ship you all off. But I daren’t linger at the corner talking; I’ll catch another cold.

  But, Edward, I’ve just come from the Gaelic League, and have to speak to you on a matter of importance.

  Well, then, come along.

  We might follow the quays to Ringsend.

  That way means loitering, looking at ships, and Edward, who had been feeling a little bit livery lately, proposed that we should walk to Ballsbridge and follow the Dodder on to Donnybrook, returning home by Leeson Street. We crossed Carlisle Bridge at the rate of four miles an hour, and at the end of Westmoreland Street Edward said This way, and we turned into Brunswick Street. At Westland Row he said, We’ll turn up here and avoid the back streets, and away we went, through Merrion Square and Lower Mount Street, Edward thinking all the time of his liver, never for a moment of the business that I wished to speak to him about, and my irritation increased against him at every lamp-post in Lower Mount Street, but I restrained myself till we reached Ballsbridge.

  Was a man ever absorbed in himself as you are, I wonder?