by George Moore
The oak
Expanding its immeasurable arms,
Embraces the light beech. The pyramids
Of the tall cedar overarching, frame
Most solemn domes within, and far below,
Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,
The ash and the acacia floating hang
Tremulous and pale.
And those lines:
A well,
Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,
Images all the woven boughs above,
And each depending leaf, and every speck
Of azure sky...
are very like Lucan; and there are other passages still more like Lucan. But unable to capture the elusive lines, my thoughts followed the river as far as I knew it, as far as Blessington, to Poulaphouca. Phuca is a fairy in Irish, and no doubt the fairies assembled there long ago; but they have hidden themselves far away among the hills, between the source of the Liffey and the Dodder. When O’Grady wrote the divine Dodder, he must have been thinking of long ago, when the Dodder roared down from the hills, a great and terrible river, sweeping the cattle out of the fields, killing even its otters, wearing through the land a great chasm, now often dry save for a peevish trickle which, after many weeks of rain, swells into a harmless flood and falls over the great weir at Tallaght, but only to run away quickly or collect into pools among great boulders, reaching Rathfarnham a quiet and demure little river. At Dartry it flows through mud, but the wood above it is beautiful; not great and noble as the wood at Pangbourne; Dartry is a small place, no doubt, but the trees that crowd the banks are tall and shapely, and along one bank there is a rich growth of cow-parsley and hemlock, and there are sedges and flags and beds of wild forget-me-nots in the stream itself. The trees reach over the stream, and there are pleasant spots under the hawthorns in the meadows where the lovers may sit hand in hand, and nooks under the high banks where they can lie conscious of each other and of the soft summer evening. A man should go there with a girl, for the intrusion of the mere wayfarer is resented. There is a beautiful bend in the stream near the dye-works, and the trees grow straight and tall, and out of them the wood-pigeon clatters. Green, slimy, stenchy at Donnybrook, at Ballsbridge the Dodder reminds one of a steep, ill-paven street into which many washtubs have been emptied; and after Ballsbridge, it reaches the sea; as has been said, black and inert as a crocodile.
If O’Grady had called the Dodder the Union river, he would have described it better, for the Dodder must have been entirely dissociated from Dublin till about a hundred years ago. The aristocracy that inhabited the great squares and streets in the north side of Dublin could have known very little about this river; but as soon as the Union became an established fact, Dublin showed a tendency to move towards the south-east, towards the Dodder. Every other city in the world moves westward, but we are an odd people, and Dublin is as odd as ourselves. The building of Merrion Square must have been undertaken a little before, or very soon after the Union; Stephen’s Green is late eighteenth century; Fitzwilliam Square looks like 1850. The houses in the Pembroke Road seem a little older, but we cannot date them earlier than 1820. Within the memory of man, Donnybrook was a little village lying outside Dublin; today it is only connected with Dublin by a long, straggling street; and beyond Donnybrook is a beautifully wooded district through which the Stillorgan Road rises in gentle ascents, sycamores, beeches, and chestnuts of great height and size shadowing it mile after mile. On either side of the roadway there are cut-stone gateways; the smooth drives curve and disappear behind hollies and cedars, and we often catch sight of the blue hills between the trees.
At this moment, I said, the transparent leaves are shining like emeralds set in filigree gold; the fruit has fallen from the branches, the shucks are broken, boys are picking out the red-brown nuts for hacking. And the same sun is lighting up the chestnut avenue leading to the Moat House. Stella’s shadow lengthens down her garden walk. She would like me to startle her solitude with my voice. Why not? And, while watching her in imagination lifting the pots off the dahlias and shaking the earwigs out, the thought shot through my heart that I might not be able to bear the disgrace of Catholicism for the Colonel’s sake, causing me to quail and to sink as if I had been struck by a knife.
It has begun all over again, I said, and all the evening it will take me unawares as it did just now. It will return again and again to conquer me in the end, or at every assault the temptation may be less vehement. Go home I cannot. Distraction is what I need — company. I’ll go to Stella, and we will walk round the garden together; she will enjoy showing me her carnations and dahlias, teasing me because I cannot remember the name of every trivial weed. I suppose it is that men don’t care for flowers as women do; we never come back from the country our arms filled with flowers. We are interested in dogmas; they in flowers. A mother never turned her daughter out of doors because she could not believe in the doctrine of the Atonement. Women are without a theological sense, thank God! We shall linger by the moat watching the trout darting to and fro, thinking of nothing but the trout, and after supper we’ll stray into the painting-room and go over all the canvases, talking of quality, values, and drawing. And then —
But she may not be at home; she may have gone to Rathfarnham in search of subjects; she may have gone to Sligo; she spoke last week of going there to stay with friends. To find the Moat House empty and to have to come back and spend the evening alone, would be very disappointing, and I walked up and down the bridge wondering if I should risk it. All my life long I shall have to bear the brand of Catholicism. I shall never escape from my promise except by breaking it, and forgetful of Stella, I followed the pavement, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, lost in surprise at my own lack of power to keep my promise; Sooner or later I shall yield to the temptation, so why not at once? But it may pass away. Stella will be able to advise me better than anybody, and I fell to thinking how she had been the refuge whither I could run ever since I had come to Ireland, sure of finding comfort and wise counsel.
Car!
XIX
SHE IS QUITE right, I said to myself, as I took a seat under the apple-tree by the table laid for dinner under the great bough — she is quite right. I must leave Ireland if I am not to grieve my brother. And it would be well to spread the news, for as soon as everybody knows that I’m going, I shall be free to stay as long as I please. AE will miss me and John Eglinton; Yeats will bear up manfully; Longworth, too, will miss me, and I shall miss them all.... But are they my kin? And if not, who are my kin? Steer, Tonks, Sickert, Dujardin — why enumerate? Ah, here is he who cast his spell over me from across the seas and keeps me here for some great purpose, else why am I here?
The warm hour prompted you, AE, to look through the hawthorns.
It was the whiteness of the cloth that caught my eye.
And you were surprised to see the table laid under the apple-tree in this late season? But the only change is an hour less of light than a month ago; the evenings are as dry as they were in July; no dew falls; so I consulted Teresa, who never opposes my wishes — her only virtue. Here she comes across the sward with lamps; and we shall dine in the midst of mystery. My fear is that the mystery may be deepened by the going out of the lamps. Teresa is not very capable, but I keep her for her amiability and her conversation behind my chair when I dine alone. Teresa, are you sure you’ve wound the lamps; you’ve seen the oil flowing over the rim? She assured me that she had. You cannot have seen anything of the kind, I answered. The lamp has not been wound. At that moment the wicket slammed. Whoever this may be, AE, do you entertain him. It is you, John Eglinton? Teresa and Moderator Lamps are incompatible. Next year I shall devise a system of aboreal illumination.
But I heard today that you’re thinking of leaving us.
Who has been tittle-tattling in the Library this afternoon?
I wasn’t in the Library this afternoon; so it must have been yesterday that I overheard some conversation as it passed through
the turnstile.
But you aren’t thinking of leaving us? AE asked.
Not tomorrow, nor the day after, nor next year; I can’t leave till the end of my lease, and by then you’ll have had enough of me; don’t you think so?
You’re not really thinking of leaving us?
The only foundation for the rumour is, that I mentioned to a lady the other day that I didn’t look upon Ireland as the end of my earthly adventure. And she must have told one of her neighbours. Twenty-four hours are all that is required for news to reach the National Library. John’s face darkened. The National Library should not be spoken of as a house of gossip, even in joke.
But you’ll never find elsewhere a house as suitable to your pictures, as beautiful a garden to walk in, or friends as appreciative of your conversation. You’ll not find a finer intelligence than Yeats’s in London, or John Eglinton’s.
I am certain I shall never find myself among a more agreeable circle of friends. I am heart-broken, so necessary are you all to me. Each stands for something.
I should like to hear what AE stands for in your mind. Can you tell us?
He makes me feel at times that the thither side is not dark but dusk, and that an invisible hand weaves a thread of destiny through the daily woof of life. He makes me feel that our friendship was begun in some anterior existence.
And will be continued —
Perhaps, AE. How conscious he is of his own eternity! I said, turning to John Eglinton.
Yet you are leaving us.
How insistent he is, John! And yet, for all we know, he may be the first to leave us. He has certain knowledge of different incarnations. The first was in India, the second in Persia, his third, of which he keeps a distinct memory, happened in Egypt. About Babylon I am not so sure. But AE dislikes irreverence, especially a light treatment of his ideas, and I did not dare to add that in Heaven he is known as Albar, but asked him instead, if he were redeemed from the task of earning his daily bread, would he retire to Bengal and spend the rest of his life translating the Sacred Books of the East. His answer to this interesting question we shall never know, for, yielding to the impulse of a sudden conviction, John Eglinton interjected:
If AE leaves Dublin it will not be for Bengal but for Ross’s Point, formerly haunted by Mananaan Mac Lir and the Dagda, and now the Palestine of an interesting heresy known as AEtheism.
At the end of our laughter AE said:
Now, will you tell us what idea John Eglinton stands for?
He and you are opposite poles, I answered. You stand for belief, John Eglinton for unbelief. On one side of me sits the Great Everything, and on the other the Great Nothing.
And which would you prefer that death should reveal to you? John Eglinton asked. Nothing or Everything? You don’t answer. Admit that you would just as lief that death discovered Nothing.
It is easy to imagine a return to the darkness out of which we came — out of which I came; and difficult to imagine my life in the grey dusk that AE’s eyes have revealed to me. But since you deny the worth of this life —
I do not deny, John Eglinton answered.
Yes, by your abstinence from your prose you deny the value of your life. He doubts everything, AE — the future of Ireland, the value of literature, even the value of his own beautiful prose. Watch the frown coming into his face! I am forgetting — we mustn’t speak of a collected edition of his works lest we spoil for him the taste of that melon.
Who else is coming to dinner? John Eglinton asked.
Conan said he would come, and he will turn up probably in the middle of dinner, pleading that he missed his train.
Let us hear what idea Conan stands for, said John Eglinton.
An invisible hand introduces a special thread into the woof which we must follow or perish, and as we stand with girt loins a peal of laughter often causes us to hesitate.
Laughter behind the veil, said John, and he spoke to me of a poem that he had received from Conan for publication in Dana. He had it in his pocket, and would be glad if I would say how it struck me. Only two stanzas, hardly longer than a Limerick. But the poem could not be found among the bundle of papers he drew from his pocket, and when he gave up the search definitely, AE said:
I’m going to write the myth of your appearance and evanishment from Dublin, Moore; the legend of a Phooka who appeared some years ago, and the young people crowded about him and he smelted them in the fires of fierce heresies, and petrified them with tales of frigid immoralities, and anybody who wilted from the heat the Phooka flung from him, and anybody who was petrified, he broke in twain and flung aside as of no use, and at last only four stood the test: AEolius, because he was an artist and was enchanted with the performances of the Phooka; Johannes also remained, because he was of a contrairy disposition and was only happy when contrairy or contradicting, and the Phooka gave him the time of his life. There was Olius, or Oliverius, who was naturally more ribald than the Phooka, and had nothing to learn in blasphemy from him, but undertook to complete his education; and there was Ernestius, who practised Law, and could not be brow-beat; and to these four the Phooka revealed his true being.
You’ll write that little pastoral for the next number of Dana, won’t you, AE? for we’re short of an article.
When I find the true reason of the Phooka’s sudden disappearance, I’ll write it.
You mean that you would like me to tell you the true reason. But is there a true reason for anything? There are a hundred reasons why I should not remain in Ireland always. And then, it being impossible for me to resist AE’s eyes, I said: Well, the immediate reason is the Colonel, who says it will be a great grief to him if I declare myself a Protestant.
But you aren’t thinking of doing any such thing? You can’t, said John Eglinton. As I was about to answer, AE interrupted:
But I never thought of the Colonel as a Catholic. I used to know him very well some years ago, and I always looked upon him as an Agnostic.
He may have been in his youth, like others; but he is sinking into Catholicism. The last time he came to Dublin we quarrelled, and I thought for good, on account of what I said to him about his children. Don’t ask me, AE, to repeat what I said; it would be too painful, and I wish to forget the words. We shall never be the same friends as we were once, but we are still friends. I succeeded in persuading him to stop a few days longer, and during those days, while trying to avoid all religious questions, we fell to talking of family history, and he mentioned, accidentally of course, that my family isn’t a Catholic family, that it was my great-grandfather that ‘verted — my grandfather wasn’t a Catholic, but my father was, more or less, in his old age. I assure you the news that there was only one generation of Catholicism behind me came as sweetly as the south wind blowing over the downs, and I said at once I should like to declare myself a Protestant. It was then that he answered that it would be a great grief to him if I did so. I shouldn’t so much mind grieving him in so good a cause if I hadn’t used words that drove him out of the house. My dilemma was most painful — to bear the shame of being considered a Catholic all my life or — so I consulted a friend of mine in whom I have great confidence, and she said: If you can’t remain in Ireland without declaring yourself a Protestant, and wouldn’t grieve your brother, you had better leave Ireland.
But were you in earnest when you told your brother you’d like to declare yourself a Protestant? John Eglinton asked.
I don’t joke on such subjects.
What means did you propose to take? A letter to The Times?
I had thought of that and of a lecture, but decided that the first step to take would be to write to the Archbishop.
But the Archbishop would ask if you believed in a great many things which you don’t believe in.
Everything can be explained. I take it for granted that being a man of the world, he would not press me to say that I believed in the resurrection of the body. St Paul didn’t believe in it. I can cite you text after text —
We’re not in disagreement with you; but we’re thinking whether Dr Peacock will accept your interpretation of the texts.
You think that the Archbishop would ask me to accept the bodily resurrection of Christ?
I’m afraid, said John Eglinton, that you’ll have to accept both body and spirit.
I hadn’t foreseen these difficulties. AE tried to prove to me that I should stay in Ireland, and now you are providing me with excellent reasons for leaving.
It’s only contrairy John that’s talking, said AE in his most dulcet tones. You’ll never leave us.
Well, I’ve told you, AE, that I can’t leave till the end of my lease. My dear AE, sufficient for the day, or for the evening, I should have said. I see Teresa and the gardener coming down the greensward, and soon the refreshing odour of pea soup will arise through the branches. Now, the question is, whether we shall eat the melon with salt and pepper before the soup, or reserve it till the end of dinner and eat it with sugar. But where’s Conan? Teresa, will you kindly walk across and ask —
The wicket clanged, and we watched the author of most of the great Limericks coming towards us.
There was a young man of St John’s, I cried.
My masterpiece ... it was always popular, he added, dropping his voice, as Yeats does when he is complimented on Innisfree. It was always popular, and from the first. But you remind me of a tale of long ago — not the Trinity, though there are bread and wine by you. I am thinking of some Latin poet — it is Moore that puts the story into my head — a Latin poet banished to the Pontic seas — Ovid sitting with his friends.
So you’ve heard the news?
I have heard no news, none since my parlourmaid burst into my study with the news that the lamps were lighted in the garden and that the company were at table; and what better news could I hear than that?
