by George Moore
I have written a letter, I said, which should bring it to an end and for ever. But before publishing it I should like to show it to you; it may contain things of which you would not approve. The pages were spread upon the table, and AE began to suggest emendations. The phrases I had written would wound many people, and AE is instinctively against wounding anybody. But his emendations seemed to me to destroy the character of my letter, and I said:
AE, I can’t accept your alterations. It has come to me to write this letter. You see, I am speaking out of a profound conviction.
Then, my dear Moore, if you feel the necessity of speech as much as that, and the conviction is within you, it is not for me to advise you. You have been advised already.
VALE
I
IT WAS ABOUT the time of the publication of my letter to the Irish Times, mentioned in the last pages of Salve, that I received from the French Consul an invitation to dinner to meet the Secretary of the Consulate, M. Orange, a young man, a poet, au moins il a publié un volume de vers chez Lemerre. The Méaulles, Monsieur et Madame, are among my pleasantest memories of Dublin, and on the night in question, when it was time to bid our host and hostess good night, I proposed to Orange that we should walk back to Dublin together, thinking that perhaps he might like to talk French poetry with me. As we passed through the garden-gate he muttered: voilà une soirée bien passée. He was quite right; we had passed a pleasant evening in pleasant company. But when he repeated the same words at the same place the next time we dined at the Méaulles’, I began to read into them a hidden meaning: that we were nearer our graves than we had been earlier in the afternoon; and when he repeated the same words some weeks afterwards, and in the same place, they took on still another meaning: that we being men of letters would have done better had we stayed at home reading books under our lamps. And as we strode along together I resolved that I would reacquire the habit of reading without it occurring to me that the temptation is always by the talker to lay his book aside and go out to look up a friend, especially in Dublin, where casual visiting is our single pleasure.
And Orange’s criticism of life leaving me no peace, I begged Teresa one evening, after she had removed the cloth, to tell whosoever called that I was not at home; and when she had put my coffee on the table I said: The moment has come for me to pick out a book from the shelves. But which? I knew that a large volume containing Shakespeare’s plays stood on the third shelf and that I should find in it a well of pure literature undefiled. Alarums, excursions, and the blowing of trumpets over the field of Agincourt, Kings in full armour rushing about crying for destriers — the French word for what we would call a cob, compact and thick-set. He charges like a destrier in the Henrys, and after the charge retires to a hawthorn-tree and neighs a melodious plaint of graves and worms and epitaphs. But Balzac appealed to me for a moment and my eyes ran through the titles of the edition printed in 1855, a prize brought back from Paris some months ago, but never looked into; treated, alas! like a wife, a sort of matrimonial edition, and only known to me by a long attempt to read César Birotteau, an adventure that had stopped half-way, so cumbersome was the burly Tourainean in this story, so slow was he to rise, like a cart-horse asleep in the middle of the road, too heavy to struggle to his hooves in less than a hundred pages, but getting away at last. His ends are no doubt fine and thunderous. All the same, Turgenev didn’t believe in him, and glancing down a line of small volumes I said: Turgenev is neither cob nor dray, but an Arab carrying in every story a lady as romantic as one of Chopin’s ballads, especially the third, and I thought of the celebrated phrase. Maupassant detained me for a moment and then seemed to me too much like an intrigue with a housemaid. Goncourt? The fashion of yesterday and today older than Herodotus. Pater? His Epicurean? A tide of honeyed words preached by a divine from an ivory pulpit, well worth re-reading but —
And I returned to my chair frightened, feeling that if I did not learn to read my life would become a burden to me and to others. Everybody will fly from me, my friends will melt away. Edward wouldn’t open to me the other night, he preferred his book to my talk, and he continues to struggle through Ruskin, and John Eglinton toils at Don Quixote. Those fellows can live alone, and AE ... ah, well, AE! And then my thoughts left me. I read the newspaper, and at a quarter to eleven lit my candle, hoping that in bed some interesting book would come to mind. But when Teresa had removed the cloth the next night and the moment for choosing had come again, I was unable to conquer a mysterious reluctance. It seemed pleasanter to think about Stevenson than to read him, and of all, to remember that I had once called him a young man walking in the Burlington Arcade, the best-dressed young man that ever walked in the Burlington Arcade, but little else. We writers know how to get the knife under the other fellow’s ribs. I raised my head to listen: footsteps sounded in the street, and it seemed as if somebody was coming to see me.... The moment grew tense and relaxed, and when the footsteps of the wanderer died away in the distance of Hume Street, I sat limp and miserable, afraid to look round lest somebody should be crouching in the corner of the distant room.
But I had come home to read, and read I must, and it seemed to me that what was needed was some long work that would leave a definite impression upon the mind. There was Tom Jones; professors of literature declare it to be England’s finest novel, but I remembered it merely as a very empty work written in a breezy manner; and there was Richardson whom I had not read at all; Clarissa Harlowe in how many volumes of letters? And after these writers came Miss Burney, and the name of one of her books floated through my mind, the name of some woman, Emily, Julia — no. There was Sterne’s Sentimental Journey still unread, and some one had given me a copy saying that no one would ever appreciate Sterne more than I.... But my cigar was burning so fragrantly that Sterne was once again postponed, and I lay back in the armchair, dozing in the warmth that a huge lump of coal sent out from the grate, and, my brain stupefied in the heat, I said to myself: Though I may have lost the habit of reading, I have acquired, perhaps more than any other human being, another habit, the habit of thinking. I love my own thoughts; and the past is a wonderful mirror in which I spend hours watching people and places I have known; dim, shadowy and far away they seem, and pathetic are the faces, and still more pathetic is the way everybody follows his little prejudices; however unreasonable they may be we must follow them. The Colonel said the other day that he could accept all that his Church teaches; Transubstantiation, the Immaculate Conception, even the Pope’s indulgences did not trouble him; he found it difficult, however, to believe in the immortality of his soul. If Death deprives me of my senses of feeling and seeing, of my intellect, of everything that is me, how can it be said that I exist? he asked, shielding his face with his hand from the fire. How can it be said that I, the personality connoted by the pronoun, exist? We are all Agnostics at heart. And then it seemed to me that the Colonel and I were engaged in some argument, not about the immortality of the soul, but about a letter that I had written to the Irish Times in which he declared that I had libelled him, and then my father seemed to have come back to this world again, and, picking up the letter about which my brother and I were disputing, he declared that he could detect no libel in it but a great many misspellings and mistakes in grammar, and that I must go back to Oscott at once. I was there in a trice, face to face with the headmaster, no other than Sir Thomas More, who was deeply shocked that any descendant of his should use the language as badly as I had done in the bundle of papers which he held in his hand....
The thought of undergoing further school-days awoke me suddenly, and at the same moment the door opened. Good Heavens! Who is it? What is it?
It was only Teresa bringing in glasses and decanters, and when I had recovered my senses sufficiently I began to think of the two portraits of Sir Thomas More brought from Ashbrook. The heavy monkish jowl and the cocked hat had often awakened a frightened antipathy in me, setting me thinking that there must be a fine strain of Protestant blood fl
owing in the Moores. But which was the one who discovered himself to be a Protestant? I moved to the writing-table and wrote asking the Colonel for his name, and a few days after Teresa handed me an envelope on which I recognised my brother’s handwriting, and making at once for my armchair, I read that Sir Thomas More had married twice, begetting a son and three daughters by his first wife. These had remained Papists, and it was not till the second generation that the change came. John had two sons, both called Thomas. The elder founded the line of Barnborough, now extinct; but the younger Thomas discovered himself to be a Protestant, and the Colonel reminded me that if I decided to throw over Sir Thomas More I should also have to throw over the honour of having a Protestant clergyman in the family. The clergyman had three sons, of whom little is known except their names. Two of them went to live in Essex; the third, another Thomas, disappeared into Mayo, it is said.
This tradition, the Colonel wrote, finds support in the fact that there was a Thomas More in Mayo in the seventeenth century who had a son called George, and this George took part in the Williamite wars in Ireland, and it appears that he must have conducted himself well at the Battle of the Boyne, for King William bestowed on him the title of Vice-Admiral of Connaught, a title which he held twice, a considerable title still, for its present holder is Lord Lucan. He was buried near Straid Abbey in Mayo, with this inscription upon his tomb: THIS IS THE BURIAL PLACE OF CAPTAIN GEORGE MORE AND HIS DESCENDANTS, 1723. His son obtained a lease of some property known as Legaphouca, and from this deed we learn that he had two sons, George and John, and that John married Miss Jane Lynch Athy of Renvyle, a Catholic, and brought her to live with him at Ashbrook. Of this marriage there were two sons; one died, and the surviving son, George, seeing that the family fortunes were dwindling, sailed away to Spain and became a Catholic.
But why doesn’t he tell me our great-grandfather’s reasons for preferring Rome to Canterbury? And taking a cigar out of the box, I lay back in my armchair, and whilst watching the smoke ascend into the crystals of the chandelier, tarnishing them and diverting my thoughts from my great-grandfather, I remembered that the whole chandelier must soon be taken to pieces and cleaned, and that on the night of our quarrel, or rather the following morning, the Colonel had told me that our great-grandfather married a Miss Kilkelly, a Spaniard despite her name, if a hundred years of Spain can turn a Milesian back into a Spaniard. Wild Geese these Kilkellys were, fled from Ireland after the siege of Limerick — a handsome woman in a green silk dress, heavily flounced, her hands on the keys of a spinet, the kind of woman who would tempt a man to become a Catholic, a merchant interested above all in his business and only faintly in religious questions. It was she that did it. And he felt no repugnance in being bedded with a Papist ... strange.
A little later another explanation emerged as a wreath of smoke curled upwards into the chandelier. My great-grandfather had changed his religion before setting out for Spain, knowing well that as a Protestant he could not trade in a country where the Inquisition was still a going concern. He became a Catholic as a precautionary measure, I said, and wrote that very night to the Colonel asking for the date of our grandfather’s conversion. The reply to this question came a few days afterwards. It was not mentioned in any family paper, but of one thing he was sure, sexual reasons did not determine it, for no religious difficulty in connection with his marriage had arisen. You must remember, he wrote, that our great-grandfather’s mother was a Catholic, and it was probably the mother’s influence.
How little these Papists understand religion, I said, and walked about the room muttering. He could not very well ask me to picture the great merchant retiring to his room after business hours to read the Fathers, so he concludes that it was his mother’s influence that effected the conversion. Ary Scheffer’s picture of St Augustine and Monica rose up before my eyes, and I vowed that it was kelp that had turned my great-grandfather into a Papist. Much better it should have been kelp than Kempis, I said; much better for me. And it amused me to think of the ships laden with seaweed coming round the Bay of Biscay from the Arran Islands to my great-grandfather in Alicante, and the burnt kelp filling the iron chest (still at Moore Hall), and quickly, with ducats, and my great-grandfather returning to Ireland, a sort of mercantile pirate of the Spanish Main. The Colonel’s letter told me that it was with two hundred and fifty thousand pounds he returned, on the lookout for investments for his money, and for a site whereon to build the fine Georgian house he had in mind. He would have built it at Ashbrook if there had been a prospect, but there being none, he bought Muckloon, a pleasant green hill overlooking Lough Carra; and the Colonel mentioned that our great-grandfather used to sit on the steps of Moore Hall, his eyes fixed on the lake. I have travelled far, he is reported to have said, but have seen nothing as beautiful as Lough Carra. And he is reported truly, for such simple words are not invented. The phrase evokes a picture: A morning in early May, and an elderly man sitting, his eyes fixed on a lake set among low shores, still as a mirror — a mirror on which somebody has breathed — an elderly man in a wig and a scarlet coat. It is thus that he is apparelled in the portrait that hangs in the dining-room, painted when and by whom there is no record. In it he is a man of thirty, and when he was thirty he was in Alicante. It is pleasant to have a portrait of one’s ancestor in a wig, and in a vermilion coat with gold lace and buttons, white lace at the collar and cuffs — probably a Spanish coat of the period. The face is long, sheeplike, and distinguished — the true Moore face as it has come down to us. My brother Augustus was the living image of his great-grandfather — the same long face, the same long, delicately shaped nose, without, however, the gay eyes, cloudless as a child’s. No face ever told the tale of a happy life more plainly, nor could it be else, everything having succeeded with him. He seemed to have run misfortune clean out of sight, but he had made a little too much running, and was overtaken in the last few years. On awakening one morning he asked his valet why he had not opened the shutters. The servant answered that he had opened them. But the room is dark. No, sir; the room is quite light. Then I am blind! he said.
Who has heard of a more horrible discovery than to have gone blind in one’s sleep? Is it to be wondered that his courage died, and that the rest of his life was lived between priest and doctor, in terror of death? for he had become a Catholic. Nor were blindness and fear of death all his misfortunes. His wife wearied of Moore Hall, and her sons bored her. Peter was witless; John, the first President of the Irish Republic, was arrested at Athlone and driven along the roads with other rebels to Castlebar. He died in prison. George, the eldest son, a mild, visionary youth, was interested in literature, and was admired and made much of at Holland House, so the Colonel tells me. And without wife or child the last years of the blind man at Moore Hall must have been very sad and lonely. One room was the same as another to him, and with the disappearance of the lake his thoughts returned to Ashbrook, and the little Protestant cemetery near Straid Abbey. He was the last who thought of Ashbrook with affection. My father did not seem to like to speak of the place; he only went there to collect rents, and the same unsentimental errand took me to Ashbrook when I returned from Paris in 1880. Tom Ruttledge and I had driven through Mayo, visiting all my estates, trying to come to terms with the tenants, and at Ashbrook a crowd had followed the car up a boreen, babbling of the disastrous year they had been through: the potato crop had been a failure; there was no diet in them.
The phrase caught on my ear, and I remember well the two-storeyed house standing on a bare hillside. The woods had been felled long ago, all except a few ash-trees left standing in the corner of the field to shelter the cattle from the wind, and the house, having been inhabited by peasants for a long time, presented a sad degradation, a sagging roof, and windows so black that I did not dare to think of the staircase leading to the drawing-room, in which my great-grandmother had stitched that pretty piece of tapestry which is now in the Kensington Museum. Dunne, my tenant, a heavy, surly fellow, whose manners we
re not engaging (we heard afterwards he was the leader of a notable conspiracy against us), asked us to step inside, but fearing to meet with chickens in the parlour that perhaps still had the ancient paper on its walls, I pleaded that the day was drawing to a close, and asked him if he would be kind enough to take me to my great-grandfather’s grave. He turned aside, and the peasants answering for him said:
Sure we will your honour.
So this is the brook, I thought to myself, and watched the water trickle through masses of weeds and rushes. We crossed some fields and came to a ruined chapel, and my peasants pointed to an incised stone let into the wall, the loneliest grave it seemed to me in all the world; and drowsing in my armchair, unable to read, the sadness that I had experienced returned to me, and I felt and saw as I had done thirty years before. I had thought then of the poor old man who had built Moore Hall deciding at last that his ashes were to be carried to Ashbrook. But the Colonel, I said, mentions Straid Abbey as the burial-place of Captain George Moore and his descendants, and the little ruined chapel that was shown to me can’t be Straid Abbey.
A few days afterwards another letter came from the Colonel replying to my reproaches that his answers to my questions were vague and insufficient, and from this letter I learnt that my great-grandfather’s misfortunes did not cease with his death. He had left instructions in his will that he wished to be buried with his ancestors in the little Protestant cemetery near Straid Abbey. The Colonel had discovered it half a mile down the road, after having searched Straid Abbey vainly for the tomb of Captain George Moore, and his letter told me how he had had some difficulty in pushing his way through a mass of briars and hemlock and in finding the inscription among the ruins of the church; but he had found it.
