Complete Works of George Moore, page 896
You always hated Christianity, especially in its Catholic form.
Only in its Catholic form.
When you were at Oscott there was no question of your becoming a Protestant?
My dear Colonel, I answer you as I answered Edward; one doesn’t become a Protestant, one discovers oneself to be a Protestant, and I discovered in those days that magicians and their sacraments estranged me from all religious belief, instead of drawing me closer to it.
The Colonel smiled sadly.
We shall get you back one of these days.
When I lose my self, perhaps. I have often wondered at my hatred of Catholicism, so original, so inherent is it. Sometimes I have wondered if it may not be an inheritance of some remote ancestor.
Not so very remote, the Colonel said.
Why? Weren’t we originally a Catholic family?
No, it was our great-grandfather at the end of the eighteenth century that changed his religion.
So our great-grandfather became a Catholic. He went to Spain, I know that, and made a great fortune and married in Spain; but whom did he marry? A Spaniard?
A Miss O’Kelly.
An Irishwoman, a Catholic of course? And it was she who persuaded him to change his religion. Theology and sex go together. If there were no sex there would be no theology.
Her family, the Colonel said, had been in Spain so long that she was practically a Spaniard.
And grandfather was an Agnostic, mother told me, so there is only one generation of pure Catholicism behind me. You don’t know how happy you’ve made me. Your news comes as sweetly as the south wind blowing over the downs.
Note. — My great-grandfather did not become a Catholic. His will instructed his executors that he was to be buried in the old family burial-ground at Ashbrook. This matter is cleared up earlier in this volume.
XVIII
THE COLONEL STAYED with me a few days longer, and when the morning came for him to go, we bade each other goodbye with empressement, a little more than usual, as if to convince ourselves that we loved each other as before; but neither was deceived, and I went up to the drawing-room with a heavy heart.
Miss Gough was waiting there, and she began to read aloud from yesterday’s dictation, but her voice was soon drowned in the tumult of my thoughts. Of what use for us to see each other if we may only talk of superficial things? Never more can there be any sympathy of spirit between us. We are solitary beings who may at most exchange words about tenants and saw-mills. How horrible! And while talking of things that do not interest me in the least, there will be always a rancour in my heart. We shall drift further and further apart; the fissure will widen into a chasm. We are divided utterly, and sooner or later he will leave Moore Hall and will go to live abroad. The cessation of Miss Gough’s voice awoke me, and looking up I caught sight of her eyes fixed upon me reproachfully.
You’re not listening.
I beg your pardon; I’ve been away. Now we’ll go on.
But the scene of the story I was dictating was laid in Mayo round the shores of Lough Cara, and the woods and islands and the people whom I had known long ago drew my thoughts from the narrative, and before long they had drifted to a house that my brother and I had built with some planks high up in a beech-tree. One day a quarrel had arisen regarding the building of this house, and to get my own way I had pretended not to believe in his love of me, causing him to burst into tears. His tears provoked my curiosity, and it was not long before I began to think that I would like to see him cry again. But to my surprise and sorrow the gibe did not succeed in producing a single tear. He seemed indifferent whether I thought he loved me or not.
It was after fifty years had gone by that this long-forgotten episode floated up out of the depths.
I was as detestable in the beginning as I am in the end, I said, like one speaking in his sleep; and catching Miss Gough’s eyes again, I laughed a little. I’m absent-minded this afternoon.
You’ve been working too hard lately, and you didn’t go for your walk yesterday.
You think it would be better for me to go for a long walk than to sit here dreaming or dictating rubbish? I dare say you’re right; I give you your liberty. She closed her notebook and rose from the table. But I don’t know where to walk.
Why not go to Merrion and call on John Eglinton? You always like talking to him.
He’s at the Library this afternoon.
And there are your cousins at Blackrock.
Yes, I might go to see them.
Then till tomorrow.
She went away leaving me stretched in an armchair by the window staring at the drooping ash by the wicket, trying to think of some way of passing the time, but unable to discover any except by going into the garden and helping the gardener to collect the large box snails with which the plants were infested. He threw them into a pail of salt and water, saying, It is fine stuff for them; but I liked to spill a circle of salt and watch them trying to crawl out of it. Alas! one does not change — not materially. Once on a time I used to hunt the laundry cats with dogs, but the Colonel was never cruel. No one corrected me, no one reproved me; I grew up a wilding; and that wouldn’t matter so much if — The sentence remained unfinished, for at that moment I remembered the intonation in the Colonel’s voice: It will be a great grief to me if you declare yourself a Protestant. The words were simple enough, but intonation is more important than words; it goes deeper, like music, to the very roots of feeling, to the heart’s core.
But if I sit here brooding any longer I shall go mad, and I rushed upstairs and shaved myself, and buttoned myself into a new suit of clothes. The apparel oft creates a new man, I said, stepping briskly over the threshold, hastening my pace down Baggot Street, assuring myself that meditation is impossible when the pace is more than four miles an hour. But at the canal bridge it was necessary to stop, not to watch the boats as is my wont, but to consider which way I should take, for I had gone down Baggot Street and the Pembroke Road, over Ballsbridge, and followed the Dodder to Donnybrook so often that my imagination craved for some new scenery. But there is no other, I cried, and it was not until the trees of the Botanic Gardens came into view that I roused a little out of my despondency. I had never asked for a key, or solicited admission to these gardens, so gloomy did they seem; but thinking that I might meet some student from Trinity whom I could watch pursuing knowledge from flower to flower, from tree to tree, who might even be kind enough to instruct me a little and divert me, I crossed the tramline and peered through the tall railings into the dark and dismal thickets. There did not seem to be anything in these gardens but ilex-trees; the most unsuitable tree to my present mood, I muttered, and went away in the direction of Blackrock, thinking of my handsome cousin Fenella and her good-natured innocent brothers. It seemed to me that I should like to pay them a visit, that their house would soothe me. One likes certain houses, not because the people that live in them are especially clever and amusing, but because one finds it agreeable to be there. But in Mount Merrion questions would be put to me about the Colonel. Mount Merrion would bring all the miserable business up again, and I stopped at the corner of Serpentine Avenue undecided.
If I could only think of something, I said; anything ... provided I have not done it a hundred times before. I have never followed the Dodder to the sea! And wondering how it got there, I turned into Serpentine Avenue. As there was no sign of the river at this side of the railway, I concluded that it must lie on the other side, for all rivers reach the sea unless they go underground. The gates of the level-crossing were closed when I arrived, and a sound of angry voices reached my ears. A little group of wayfarers, I said, cursing a gatekeeper in Dublin brogue. Will you come out to Hell ower that. The divil take you, what are you doing in there? Is it asleep you are? and so forth, until at last an old sluggard rolled out of his box with a dream still in his eyes, and, grumbling, opened the gates, receiving damnations from everybody but me, who was nowise in a hurry.
A passer-by directed me, and I followed a beautiful shady road, admiring the houses with gardens at the back, until I came to a great stone bridge, unfortunately a modern one, but built out of large blocks of fine stone. A black, drain-like river flowed through the arches, for the Dodder is nowhere an attractive river, not even when flowing through the woods at Dartry. At the Lansdowne Road there is a wood and at the end of the wood a pleasant green bank overhung with hawthorn boughs. But the Dodder is inert and black as a crocodile. The current moves hardly at all, and my priest, I said, would prefer to face a couple of miles of Lough Cara on a moonlight night. He would come out of the Dodder clothed in mud, but out of Lough Cara he would rise like Leander from the Hellespont, but with no Hero to meet him.
And throwing myself on the green bank, my thoughts began to follow the priest’s moods as he wandered round the thickets of Derrinrush — mood rising out of mood and melting into mood. The story seemed to be moving on very smoothly in my imagination, and I know not what chance association of images or ideas led my thoughts away from it and back to the evening when the Colonel had left my house when I told him that he might as well castrate his children as bring them up Catholics. He had forgiven me my atrocious language, it is true, for the Colonel’s beautiful nature can do more than pardon; he is one of those rare human beings who can forgive. He is unable to acquire new ideas, the old are too intimate and intense; family ties are dear to him, and he is a Catholic because he was taught Catholic prayers when he was a little child and taken to Carnacun Chapel. His life is set in his feelings rather than in his ideas, and he expressed himself fully and perfectly when he said: It will be a great grief to me if you declare yourself a Protestant, and it seemed to me that I should be guilty of a dastardly act if I were to bring grief into my brother’s life. God knows, thought I, he has received stabs enough from fortune, as do all those whose hearts compel them as his did on Carlisle Bridge, six months ago. It pleased me to remember the scuffle. We had heard a woman cry out as we returned from a Gaelic League meeting, and looking back I said: A Jack cuffing his Jill round a cockle stall, one of the many hundred women that are cuffed nightly in Dublin. Before I could say a word the Colonel had rushed to her assistance, and a fine old boxing-match began between the cad and the Colonel at one in the morning; and if the cad had happened to have some pals about, the Colonel would certainly have been flung into the Liffey. He did not think of the danger he was running, only of rescuing some oppressed woman.
A diabolical act it would be to grieve him mortally in the autumn of his life, now that he is settled in Moore Hall in the enjoyment of his first freedom after thirty years of military discipline. I can’t do it. The Colonel did not come into the world, as the saying goes, with a silver spoon in his mouth, and had to make up his mind before he was twenty how he was to get a living. There was no time for consideration as to the direction in which he would like to develop. If he had had a little money he might have gone to the Bar, and he would have made a good lawyer; but success at the Bar comes after many years. In those days the army examination was difficult; he was plucked the first time, and was sufficiently pooh-poohed at home, very likely by me who could never pass any examination. He said very little, but his mind concentrated in a fierce determination to get through, and he passed high up. Mother began at the bottom of the list trying to find him, but the housemaid cried out: Why he’s here, ma’am, ninth! He was first out of Sandhurst, went to India and was stationed in the Mauritius, and fought in the first South African War.
He returned to India, and was not long at home before he had to go out again to South Africa, where he commanded his regiment through all the fierce fighting of Colenso and Pieter’s Hill. He had to risk his life again and again, and submit himself to a coil of duties for thirty years before he had earned enough to support a wife and children, and it is outrageous that I, who have enjoyed my life always, never knowing an ache or a want, should dare to intervene and tell him — I could not repeat the atrocious words again. It seemed to me, as I lay on the green bank, that I had no right to declare myself a Protestant. It is bad that the children should see their parents divided in religion; it would aggravate the evil were their uncle to declare himself on their mother’s side. But I wonder why he married a Protestant? Because he was compelled by his heart, and did not meanly stop to consider the value of the sacrifice he was making. That is why, and I got up from the green bank and walked towards the next bridge, wondering how it was that I was never able to bask in the sun like the couples to be seen every fine evening in the Park; rough boys and girls sitting on the benches, their arms about each other, content to lie in the warmth of each other’s company without uttering a word — at most, Are you comfy, dear? I’m all right. But I have never been able to enjoy life without thought, and should not have lain on that green bank.
On the other side of the bridge there are no sweet hawthorns, only waste lands, and a ragged path along the water’s edge interrupted by stiles; at the third bridge this path ceases altogether; warehouses and factories rise up steeply; the Dodder cannot be followed to the sea by that bank; but a flight of steps exists on the other side, and these took me down to a black cindery place intersected by canals. It was amusing to trip across several lock gates and to find oneself suddenly on the quays. But where was the Dodder? To recross the lock gates and go up that flight of steps would be tiresome, and I decided to miss the honour of discovering the mouth of that river, and give my attention to a great four-master, the hull of the ship standing thirty feet out of the water, and all the spars and yards and ropes delicate yet clear upon the grey sky.
But there seemed to be nobody about to whom I could apply for permission to visit the ship, and my choice lay between continuing my walk regretfully along the quays or going up the gangway uninvited and explaining to the first sailor that my intentions were strictly honest. There must be somebody on board; the ship wouldn’t be left unprotected, and up the gangway I went. But the ship seemed as empty as the shells that used to lie along the mantelpieces in the ‘sixties, and I walked about for a long time before happening upon anybody. At last a simple, good-natured Breton sailor appeared whom I had no difficulty in engaging in conversation. He told me that the ship had come from Australia with corn and would go away in ballast, first to Glasgow, and if the wind were favourable they would get to Glasgow in about eighteen hours. The ship’s next destination was San Francisco, and to get there they would have to double Cape Horn, and I thought of the sailor ordered aloft to take in sail. However black the night, he would have to climb into the rigging, and if the ship doubled the Cape in safety he would be up among the yards furling sail after sail as she floated through the Golden Gates. At San Francisco they would take in corn and —
En dix-huit mois nous serons revenus avec du blé.
Et après?
Alors je reverrai ma patrie et mon fils, and he took me into a little closet and showed me his son’s photograph. And when I had admired the young man, he asked me if I would like to go over the ship, and we walked about together, but there was nothing to see ... only a number of bonhams.
Voilà le manger des matelots.
Pas pour nous, monsieur. C’est le capitaine et les officiers qui mangent le porc frais.
Vous êtes breton, mais vous parlez bien français; peut-être encore mieux que le breton.
Non pas, monsieur; je suis du Finistère, une des provinces où on parle breton.
The sailor revived my ardour for the preservation of small languages, and we talked enthusiastically of the Bretons, the remnant of the race that had once possessed all France and colonised Britain. The Irish Celts were a different race, and spoke a language that he would not understand; but he would understand some Welsh, and the Cornish language better still —
La dernière personne qui parlait le Cornouailles fut une vieille femme, morte il y a cent ans. On sait son nom, mais pour le moment....
Vous ne vous le rappelez pas, monsieur?
N’importe. Cela ne vous semble pas drôle d’entendre les syllabes celtiques lorsque vous grimpez sur la vergue du perroquet dix ou douze mètres au-dessus des mers houleuses du Cap Horn?
Non, monsieur, puisque je travaille avec mes compatriotes.
Bien sûr, bien sûr; vous êtes tous bretons.
And, slipping a shilling into his hand, I pursued my way along the quays, stopping to admire the cut-stone front of a house in ruins; its pillared gateway and iron railings seemed to tell that this indigent riverside had seen better days. Behind it was a little purlieu overflowing with children, and a few odd trades were ensconced amid the ruins of warehouses. A little farther on I came upon a tavern, a resort of sailors. It looked as if some wild scenes might happen there of an evening, but very likely the crews from the fishing-smacks only came up to play a game of cards and get a little tipsy — nowadays the end of an Irishman’s adventure. We are supposed to be a most romantic and adventurous race, and very likely we were centuries ago; but we are now the smuggest and the most prosaic people in the world; our spiritual adventures are limited to going to Mass, and our enjoyment to a race meeting. A mild climate, without an accent upon it, does not breed adventurers. Quay followed quay. There were plenty of fishing-smacks in the Liffey, and these interested me till I came to Carlisle Bridge; and, leaning over the parapet, my thoughts followed the Liffey beyond Chapelizod. It is between Chapelizod and Lucan that it begins to gurgle alongside of high hedges through a flat country enclosed by a line of blue hills about seven or eight miles distant; after Chapelizod it is a brown and bonny river, that would have inspired the Celt to write poetry if he had not preferred priests to the muses. As I said just now, he is supposed to be romantic and adventurous, but he is the smuggest and most prosaic fellow in the world. As Edward says, men in Dublin do not burn. The Celt is supposed to be humorous, but he is merely loquacious. We read of Celtic glamour, but what is known as Celtic glamour came out of Sussex. Shelley came to Ireland to redeem the Celt. A mad freak, very much like mine. All the same, he got some beautiful poetry out of Ireland:
