by George Moore
You see, I’m the President of the Pipers’ Club, Edward broke in.
They should be here by now, only there is no wind in the bay, Yeats muttered.
I begged of him to come away, but he did not know if he could leave Lady Gregory. He leaned over her, and at the end of some affable murmuring she seemed satisfied to let him go, accepting his promise to come back to fetch her in time for lunch; and we three went out together for a walk through the town.
How happy the sunlight makes me! Don’t you feel a little tipsy, Edward? How could you have wanted to sit listening any longer to that eternal rigmarole without beginning or end?
You mean the traditional singer? He wasn’t very good, and only got poor marks, Edward said, and he asked me what I thought of the piper.
He recalled many memories and a landscape. But if you like folk-music how is it that you don’t like folk-tales?
I do like folk-tales in the Irish language or in the English —
Folk is our refuge from vulgarity, Yeats answered, and we strolled aimlessly through the sunlight.
Where would you like to go? Edward asked me abruptly.
To see the salmon. All my life I’ve heard of the salmon lying in the river, four and five deep, like sardines in a box.
Well, you’ll see them today, Yeats answered.
There were other idlers besides ourselves enjoying the fair weather, and their arms resting on the stone bridge they looked into the brown rippling water, remarking from time to time that the river was very low (no one had ever seen it lower), and that the fish would have to wait a long time before there was enough water for them to get up the weir. But my eyes could not distinguish a fish till Yeats told me to look straight down through the brown water, and I saw one, and immediately afterwards a second a third and a fourth. And then the great shoal, hundreds, thousands of salmon, each fish keeping its place in the current, a slight movement of the tail being sufficient.
But if they should get tired of waiting and return to the sea?
Yeats is a bit of a naturalist, and in an indolent mood it was pleasant to listen to him telling of the habits of the salmon which only feeds in the sea. If the fishermen were to get a rise it would be because the fish were tired of waiting and snapped at anything to relieve the tedium of daily life.
A lovely day it was, the town lying under a white canopy of cloud, not a wind in all the air, but a line of houses sheer and dim along the river mingling with grey shadows; and on the other bank there were waste places difficult to account for, ruins showing dimly through the soft diffused light, like old castles, but Yeats said they were the ruins of ancient mills, for Galway had once been a prosperous town. Maybe, my spirit answered, but less beautiful than she is today; and after this remark Yeats was forgotten in the fisherman who threw his fly in vain, for the fish were too absorbed in their natural instinct to think of anything but the coming flood which would carry them up the river. I saw him change his fly many times, and at last, with some strange medley of red and blue and purple, he roused a fish out of its lethargy. It snapped; the hook caught in its gills, and a battle began which lasted up and down the stream, till at last a wearied fish was drawn up to the bank for the gillie to gaff. The fisherman prepared to throw his fly again across the river. Another silly fish would be tempted to snap at the gaudy thing dragged across its very nose sooner or later.... But we had seen enough of fishing for one day, and Edward led us through a dusty, dilapidated square; we stopped by the broken railings of the garden, for in the middle of the grass-plot somebody had set up an ancient gateway, all that remained of some great house; and when we had admired it we followed him through some crumbling streets to the town house of the Martyns, for in the eighteenth century the western gentry did not go to Dublin for the season. Dublin was two long days’ journey away; going to Dublin meant spending a night on the road, and so every important county family had its town house in Galway. My grandfathers must have danced in Galway, there being no important town in Mayo, and in fine houses, if one may judge from what remains of Edward’s. We viewed it from the courtyard, and he told us it had been let out in tenements and was nearly a ruin when it came into his hands; the roof was falling, the police had ordered him to have it taken down, for it was a public danger, and we listened to him, and we considered the archway under which the four-horsed coach used to pass into the courtyard, whilst he pointed out some marble chimney-pieces high up on the naked walls, saying he had better have them taken away. I hoped he would leave them, for a scattered vision of ladies in high-peaked bodices and gentlemen with swords had just appeared to me, dancing in mid air — appeared to me, not to him.
Leave them, and these steps where the lackeys have set down sedan chairs; embroidered shoes have run up these steps, flowered trains following, to dance minuet or gavotte ... or waltzes.
And arguing whether the waltz had penetrated to Galway in the eighteenth century, we followed Edward to the cathedral. Edward likes arches, even when the service held beneath them is Anglican, and he made himself agreeable, telling us that the cathedral was built late in the fifteenth century, and we wandered down the aisles, deploring the vulgarity of the modern world.
It would be impossible, he said, to build as beautiful a cathedral today, and he called on us to remember that there could not have been much culture in Galway in the fifteenth century, yet Galway could build a cathedral.
Galway was then without knowledge, I answered. We corrupt in knowledge and purify ourselves in ignorance.
Who said that? Yeats asked sharply.
Balzac, but I cannot answer for the exact words.
True! How true! Edward repeated, and, leading us down a lane-way, he pointed out some stone carvings which seemed to him conclusive of the fifteenth, but which might be fourteenth-century sculpture, Ireland being always a century behind England, and England being always a century behind France. All the same he believed that the gateway was late fifteenth century, for at that time Galway was trading with Spain and the gateway bore traces of Spanish influence. He spoke of the great galleons that once came floating up the bay, their sails filled with the sunset, and called our attention to the wide sweeping outlines of the headlands stretching far away into the Atlantic. Not only in certain buildings but in flesh and blood are traces of the Spaniard to be found in Galway, I said, and pointed to a group of yellow-skinned boys basking among the brown nets drying along the great wharf. Edward told me that these were Claddagh boys, and that the Claddagh are all Irish speakers; and we stopped to question them as to what language they were in the habit of using, only to learn with sorrow that English and Irish were all the same to them.
That is how a language dies, Edward said. The parents speak it, the children understand it, but don’t speak it, and the grandchildren neither speak nor understand. I like the English language and I like the Irish, but I hate the mixture.
Yeats sighed, and the boys told us that the hooker from Arran was lying out there in the west, becalmed, and we need not expect her before evening, unless the men put out the oars, and she was too heavy for rowing.
On a warm day like this, not likely, I answered, and the indolent boys laughed, and we continued our walk down the wharf, thinking of the great labour spent upon it. The bringing of all these stones and the building of them so firmly and for such a long way into the sea could only have been done in famine times. A long wharf, so long that we had not walked half its length when Yeats and Edward began to speak of returning to the Feis; and, leaving them undecided, staring into the mist, hoping to catch sight every moment of the black hull of the hooker, I strayed on ahead, looking round, wondering, tempted to explore the mystery of the wharf’s end. Yet what mystery could there be? Only a lot of tumbled stones. But the wonder of the world has hardly decreased for me since the days when I longed to explore the wilderness of rocks at the end of Kingstown Pier, the great clefts frightening me, sending me back, ashamed of my cowardice, to where my uncles and aunts and cousins were seated, listen
ing to the band (in the ‘sixties fashionable Dublin used to assemble on the pier on Sunday afternoons). One day I was bolder, and descended into the wilderness, returning after a long absence, very excited, and telling that I had met the King of the Fairies fishing at the mouth of the cave. The story that I had brought back was that he had caught three fish when I had met him and had given me one. I was silent when asked why I had forgotten to bring it back with me, my interest in the adventure being centred in the fact that in answer to my question how far Fairyland was from Kingstown, he had told me that a great wave rises out of the sea every month, and that I must go away upon it, and then wait for another great wave, which would take me another piece of the way. I must wait for a third wave, and it would be the ninth that would throw me right up on to Fairyland.
But the story interested nobody but me; my uncles and aunts looked at me, evidently considering if I weren’t a little daft; and one of the crudest of the Blakes, a girl with a wide, ugly mouth and a loud voice, laughed harshly, saying that I could not be taken anywhere, even to Kingstown Pier, without something wonderful happening to me. These Blakes were my first critics, and their gibes filled me with shame, and I remember coming to a resolve that night to avoid all the places where one would be likely to meet a fairy fisherman, and if I did come across another by ill chance, to run away from him, my fingers in my ears. But notwithstanding that early vow and many subsequent vows, I have failed to see and hear as the Blakes do, and I go on meeting adventures everywhere, even on the wharf at Galway, which should have been safe from them. By Edward one is always safe from adventures, and it would have been well for me not to have stirred from his side. I only strayed fifty yards, but that short distance was enough, for while looking down into the summer sea, thinking how it moved up against the land’s side like a soft, feline animal, the voices of some women engaged my attention, and turning I saw that three girls had come down to a pool sequestered out of observation, in a hollow of the headland. Sitting on the bank they drew off their shoes and stockings and advanced into the water, kilting their petticoats above their knees as it deepened. On seeing me they laughed invitingly; and, as if desiring my appreciation, one girl walked across the pool, lifting her red petticoat to her waist, and forgetting to drop it when the water shallowed, she showed me thighs whiter and rounder than any I have ever seen, their country coarseness heightening the temptation. She continued to come towards me. A few steps would have taken me behind a hillock. They might have bathed naked before me, and it would have been the boldest I should have chosen, if fortune had favoured me. But Yeats and Edward began calling, and, dropping her petticoats, she waded from me.
What are you doing down there, George? Hurry up! Here’s the hooker being rowed into the bay bringing the piper and the story-tellers from Arran.
IX
EDWARD, I SAID, if the Irish language is to be revived, something in the way of reading must be provided for the people.
Haven’t they Hyde’s Folk Tales?
Yes, and these are well enough in their way, but a work is what is needed — a book.
Edward thought that as soon as the Irish people had learnt their language somebody would be sure to write a national work.
There’s plenty of talent about.
But, my dear friend, there isn’t sufficient application.
You’re quite right. And we talked of atmosphere and literary tradition, neither of which we had, nor could have for a hundred years. And therefore are without hope of an original work in the Irish language. But we can get a translation of a masterpiece. We want a book and can’t go on any further without one. I hear everybody complaining that when he has learnt Irish there is nothing for him to read.
But do you think they would deign to read a translation? Edward answered, laughing, and he agreed with me that, outside of folklore, there is no art except that which comes of great culture.
A translation of a world-wide masterpiece is what we want, and we have to decide on a work before we reach Athlone.
Why Athlone?
Athlone or Mullingar. Now, Edward, you are to give your whole mind to the question.
Nothing English, he said resolutely. Something Continental — some great Continental work. His eyes became fixed, and I saw that he was thinking. Télémaque, he said at last.
Télémaque would be quite safe, but aren’t you afraid that it is a little tedious?
Gil Blast?
I never read Gil Bias, but have heard many people say that they couldn’t get through it. What do you think of Don Quixote? It comes from a great Catholic country, and it was written by a Catholic; and until we remembered the story of The Curious Impertinent, and the other stories interwoven into the narrative, Don Quixote seemed to be the very thing we needed. We want short stories, I said. A selection of tales from Maupassant.
The Gaelic League might object.
It certainly would if my name were mentioned. I’ve got it, Edward! — The Arabian Nights. There are no stories the people would read so readily.
Edward was inclined to agree with me, and before we reached Dublin it was arranged that he should give fifty pounds and I five-and-twenty towards the publication of Taidgh O’Donoghue’s translation.
And if more is wanted, Edward said, they can have it. But remember one thing. It must be sanctioned by the Gaelic League and published under its auspices; as you well know, my interests are in public life. I have no private life.
Oh yes, you have, Edward; I’m your private life.
Edward snorted and took refuge in his joke Mon ami Moore; but this time he showed himself trustworthy. He wrote to the Freeman’s Journal, disclosing our project, and winding up his letter with an expression of belief that the entire cost of the work could not be much more than one hundred and fifty pounds, and that he was quite sure there were many who would like to help.
Many were willing to help us — with advice. The Freeman’s Journal came out next day full up of letters signed by various Dublin literati, approving of the project, but suggesting a different book for translation. One writer thought that Plutarch’s Lives would supply the people with a certain culture, which he ventured to say was needed in the country. Another was disposed to look favourably upon a translation of St Thomas Aquinas; another proposed Caesar’s Commentaries; and the debate was continued until the truth leaked out that the proposed translation of The Arabian Nights was due to my suggestion. Then, of course, all the fat was in the fire. Sacerdos contributed a column and a half which may be reduced to this sentence: Mr George Moore has selected The Arabian Nights because he wishes an indecent book to be put into the hands of every Irish peasant. We do not take our ideas of love from Mohammedan countries; we are a pure race.
The paper slipped from my hand and I lay back in my chair overwhelmed, presenting a very mournful spectacle to any one coming into the room. How long I lay inert I don’t know, but I remember starting out of my chair, crying, I must go and see Edward.
Well, George, you see you’ve got the reputation for a certain kind of writing, and you can’t blame the priests if —
Edward, Edward!
After all it is their business to watch over their flocks, and to see that none is corrupted.
Ba, ba, ba! ba, ba, ba!
Mon ami Moore, mon ami Moore!
You’ll drive me mad, Edward, if you continue that idiotic joke any longer. The matter is a serious one. I came over to Ireland —
You have no patience.
No patience! I cried, looking at the great man. He is the Irish Catholic people, I said, and later in the afternoon my disappointment caused me to doze away in front of my beautiful grey Manet, my exquisite mauve Monet, and my sad Pissaro. The Irish are a cantankerous, hateful race, I muttered, on awaking. And the mood of hate endured for some days, myself continually asking myself why I had ventured back into Ireland. But at the end of the week a new plan for the regeneration of the Irish race came into my head. It seemed a good thing for me to write a volume of s
hort stories dealing with peasant life, and these would be saved from the criticism of Sacerdos and his clan if they were first published in a clerical review. One can only get the better of the clergy by setting the clergy against the clergy. In that way Louis XV ridded France of the Jesuits, and obtained possession of all their property; and in Ireland, no more than in France, are the Jesuits on the best of terms with the secular clergy ... they might be inclined to take me up.
My hopes in this direction were not altogether unwarranted. I had read a paper when I came over to Ireland for the performance of The Bending of the Bough, on the necessity of the revival of the Irish language, for literary as well as for national reasons, at a public luncheon given by the Irish Literary Society, and a few days after the reading of this paper, a neighbour of mine in Mayo wrote to me, saying that a friend of hers desired to make my acquaintance. It was natural to suppose that it could not be any one but some tiresome woman, and up went my nose. No, it isn’t a woman; it is a priest. My nose went up still higher. Father Finlay, she said, and I was at once overjoyed, for I had long desired to make Father Tom’s acquaintance. But it was not to Father Tom, but to his brother Peter that she proposed to introduce me. A much superior person, she said, a man of great learning who has lived in Rome many years and speaks Latin.
As well as he should be able to speak Irish, I clamoured.
You will like him much better than the agriculturist, she answered earnestly.
It did not seem at all sure to me that she was right; but, not wishing to lose a chance of winning friends for the Irish language, I accompanied her somewhat reluctantly to the Jesuit College in Milltown.
A curious and absurd little meeting it was; myself producing all my arguments, trying to convince the Jesuit with them, and the Jesuit taking up a different position, and the lady listening to our wearisome talk with long patience. At last it struck me that Dante must be boring her prodigiously, and getting up to go I spoke about trains.
