The Master

by Colm Toibin

  He learned later, much later also, what happened when Alexander uttered his last lines: ‘I’m the last, my lord, of the Domvilles.’ Someone from the gallery had shouted, ‘It’s a damned good thing you are!’ They hooted and roared and when the curtain came down they catcalled and yelled abuse as those in the stalls and dress circle applauded enthusiastically.

  That night he entered the theatre by the stage door, meeting on arrival the stage manager, who assured him that all had gone well, his play was a success. Something about the way it was said made Henry want to enquire further, find out the scale and quality of the success, but just then the first applause came, and he listened, mistaking the catcalls for roars of approval. He glimpsed Alexander, noted how stiff and serious he was as he came off the stage and waited for a moment before returning to take his bow. He moved closer to the side of the stage, certain that Alexander and the other actors were triumphant. The whistles and roars, he still believed, indicated special approval of one or two of the performers, Alexander surely among them.

  He stood and listened, close enough to the wings for Alexander to see him as he walked off from taking his bow. Later, he was told that there were wild shouts of ‘Author! Author!’ from his friends in the audience, but they were not wild enough for him to hear. Alexander heard them, however, or so he later said, because on catching the author’s eye he approached him, his face solemn, his expression fixed, and led him slowly and firmly by the hand onto the stage.

  This was the crowd he had imagined over those long days of rehearsal. He had imagined them attentive and ready to be moved, he had imagined them still and sombre. He had not prepared himself for the chaos of noise and busy fluttering. He took it in for a moment, confused, and then he bowed. And when he lifted his head he realized what he was facing. In the stalls and in the gallery the members of the paying public were hissing and booing. He looked around and saw mockery and contempt. The invited audience remained seated, still applauding, but the applause was drowned out by the crescendo of loud, rude disapproval which came from the people who had never read his books.

  The worst part was now – when he did not know what to do, when he could not control the expression on his own face, the look of panic he could not prevent. And now he could make out the faces of friends – Sargent, Gosse, Philip Burne-Jones – still gallantly applauding, futile against the yells of the mob. Nothing had prepared him for this. Slowly, he moved off the stage. He did not attend to Alexander’s speech to calm the audience. He blamed Alexander for leading him onto the stage, he blamed the crowd for booing, but more than anyone he blamed himself for being here. There was no alternative now, he would have to leave by the stage door. He had dreamed so much of moments of triumph, mingling with the invited guests, pleased that so many old friends had come to witness his theatrical success. Now he would walk home and keep his head down like a man who has committed a crime and is in imminent danger of apprehension.

  He waited in the shadows backstage so that he would not have to see the actors. Nor did he wish to leave just yet as he did not know whom he might see in the streets around the theatre. Neither he nor they would know what to say, so great and so public was his defeat. For his friends, this night would be entered into the annals of the unmentionable, pages in which he had so studiously avoided having his name appear. As time passed, however, he realized that he could not betray the performers now. He could not give into his own horrible urge to be alone in the darkness, to escape into the night and walk as though he had written nothing and was nobody. He would have to go to them and thank them; he would have to insist that the repast planned after the triumph of his play should go ahead. In the half light he stood preparing himself, steeling himself, ready to suppress whatever his own urges and needs might be. He made his hands into fists as he set out to smile and bow and imagine that the evening in all its glory had been due entirely to the talents of the actors in the great tradition of the London stage.

  CHAPTER TWO

  February 1895

  AFTER THE FAILURE OF Guy Domville, his determination to work did battle with the feeling that he had been defeated and exposed. He had failed, he realized, to take the measure of the great flat foot of the public, and he now had to face the melancholy fact that nothing he did would ever be popular or generally appreciated. Most of the time he could, if he tried, control his thoughts. What he could not control was the terrible ache of the morning, an ache that stretched now towards noon and often did not lift. There was a line in Oscar Wilde’s play that he had liked in which the question was put – did the sadness of Londoners cause the fog or did the fog cause the sadness? His sadness, he thought, as the spare light of the winter morning peered in his window, was like the London fog. Except that it did not seem to lift, and it was accompanied by a weariness that was new to him, and a lethargy that shocked and depressed him.

  He wondered if at some point in the future he would go out of fashion even more than now, and if the dividends from his father’s estate were to dry up, whether his reduced circumstances would represent a public humiliation. It came down to money, the sweetness it added to the soul. Money was a kind of grace. Everywhere he had been, the having of it and the holding of it had set people apart. It gave men a beautiful distant control over the world, and it gave women a poised sense of themselves, an inner light which even old age could not obliterate.

  It was easy to feel that he was destined to write for the few, perhaps for the future, yet never to reap the rewards that he would relish now, such as his own house and a beautiful garden and no anxiety about what was to come. He retained his pride in decisions taken, the fact that he had never compromised, that his back ached and his eyes hurt solely because he continued to labour all day at an art that was pure and unconstrained by mere mercenary ambitions.

  For his father and his brother, and for many in London too, a failure in the market was a kind of success, and a success in the market a matter not to be discussed. He did not ever in his life actively seek the hard doom of general popularity. Nonetheless, he wanted his books to sell, he wanted to shine in the marketplace and pocket the proceeds without compromising his sacred art in any way.

  It mattered to him how he was seen; and being seen not to lift a finger to make his works popular pleased him; being seen to devote himself in solitude and selfless application to a noble art gave him satisfaction. He recognized, however, that lack of success was one thing, but abject failure was another. Thus his failure in the theatre, so public, so notorious and so transparent, managed to make him uneasy in company and unwilling to venture much into the wider world of London society. He felt like a general who had come back from a battlefield complete with a scent of defeat, and whose presence in the warm bright rooms of London would seem incongruous and unhappy.

  He knew military men in London. He had moved carefully and easily among the powerful, and he had listened with close attention to the English talk about political intrigue and military valour. As he sat amid the usual collection of rich accessories and old warriors at Lord Wolseley’s house in Portman Square, he often thought of what his sister Alice or his brother William would say if they heard the densest of imperial war talk after dinner, the deep and hearty discussions about troops and attacks and slaughter. Alice had been the most anti-imperialist of the family; she had even loved Parnell and longed for Home Rule for Ireland. William had his Irish sentiments too and indeed his anti-English attitudes.

  Lord Wolseley was cultivated, as all of them were, and he was well-mannered and fascinating with rosy dimples and piercing eyes. Henry was in the company of these men because their wives wished him to be. The women liked his manners and his grey eyes and his American origin, but more than anything they enjoyed his way of listening, of drinking in every word, asking only pertinent questions, acknowledging by his gestures and replies the intelligence of his interlocutor.

  It was easier for him if there were no other writers present, no one who knew his work. The men who gathered
after dinner for anecdotes and political gossip never interested him as much as what they said interested him; the women, on the other hand, always interested him, no matter what they said. Lady Wolseley interested him a great deal because she was all cleverness and sympathy and charm and had the air and manners and taste of an American. She had the habit of surveying the room in wonder and open admiration for her guests, and then turning her smile on her closest companion and speaking quietly as though imparting a secret.

  He needed to leave London, but he did not think that he could bear to be alone anywhere. He did not want to discuss his play and he did not think he could work. He determined that if he travelled things would be different on his return. His mind was full of visions and ideas. He prayed and hoped that his imagination might be equal to pages written. That was all he wanted, he now believed.

  He went to Ireland since it was easy to travel there and because he did not believe it would strain his nerves. Neither Lord Houghton, the new Lord Lieutenant, whose father he had also known, nor Lord Wolseley, who had become Commander-in-Chief of Her Majesty’s forces in Ireland, had seen his play; he agreed to spend a week with each. He had been surprised by the vehemence of the invitations and the tussle between the two as to how much time he would spend with one and how much with the other. It was only when he was installed in Dublin Castle that he understood the problem.

  Ireland was in a state of unrest and Her Majesty’s government had not merely failed to put down the unrest but given in to it by making concessions. These had been relatively easy to explain to Parliament but impossible to explain to the Irish landlords and local garrisons, who were boycotting all the social events of the season at Dublin Castle. Lord Houghton was depending on imported guests and this explained the enthusiasm of his invitation.

  While old Lord Houghton had been informal in both his manners and his personal habits, and given especially in his later years to delighting himself and amusing others, his son was stern and self-important. In his position as Lord Lieutenant, the new Lord Houghton had found true happiness. He strutted about the place, being the only one it seemed not to realize that while he meant well, he did not matter. He represented the queen in Ireland, and he did so with all the ceremony and attention to detail he could muster, filling his day with inspections and receptions and salutes and his evening with balls and banquets. He oversaw his household as though the queen were in residence and likely to appear at this very moment in all her imperial grandeur.

  The little viceregal court in all its pomposity was, for Henry, a weariness to flesh and spirit alike. There were four balls in six days and a banquet every night. The bare official and military class peopled them, with the aid of a very dull and second-rate, though large, house party from England. Fortunately, most of the guests had never heard of him; he made no effort to alter that.

  ‘Now my advice to you,’ one of the English ladies said to him, ‘is to hold your nose and close your eyes and if you can find a way to stuff your ears do so as well. Begin the moment you arrive in Ireland and don’t stop until you enter the castle or the viceregal lodge or wherever you are staying.’

  The lady glowed with satisfaction. He wished his sister Alice, now three years dead, were here to rout her. Alice, he knew, would prepare a speech for later and write many letters about the lady’s facial hair and her teeth and the crack which came in her voice when she reached the higher notes of admonition. The lady smiled at him.

  ‘I hope I have not alarmed you. You seem alarmed.’

  He was indeed alarmed because he had found a small room with a writing table and paper and ink and some books, and he was busy writing a letter. It suddenly occurred to him that the best way of clearing this woman out of the room was by waving his two hands at her and making a noise as though she were a flock of hens or a gaggle of geese.

  ‘But it is lovely here,’ she continued, ‘and last year the balls were the most glittering events, much better than anything in London, you know.’

  He stared at her grimly and, he hoped, blankly and said nothing.

  ‘And there are other people here,’ she began again, ‘who could learn a great deal from his lordship. You know in London we are invited regularly to several of the great houses. But we don’t know Lord Wolseley nor indeed do we know his wife. Lord Houghton was kind enough to introduce us at the intimate evening he held when we first arrived and I was placed beside him, and my husband, who is a very kind and sweet man and also very rich, if you don’t mind me saying so, and honest, of course, had the misfortune to be placed beside Lady Wolseley.’

  She stopped to catch her breath and to move her indignant tone up one notch.

  ‘And Lord Wolseley must have learned a signalling system in one of his wars and he must have secretly instructed her to ignore my husband as he ignored me. The rudeness of him! And the rudeness of her! Lord Houghton was mortified. They are, I believe, the Wolseleys, a very, very rude pair.’

  Henry took the view that it was time to terminate the conversation, but saw that she was sharply on the lookout for rudeness. Nonetheless, he felt that rudeness now would be a small matter compared with further minutes listening to her conversation.

  ‘I’m afraid that I have to return to my chambers urgently,’ he said.

  ‘Oh my,’ she replied. She was blocking the door.

  When he moved towards her, she did not budge. Her face was locked in a resentful smile.

  ‘And of course we won’t be invited to the Royal Hospital now. My husband says that we would not go if we were, but I myself would love to see it, and the evenings there are splendid, I’m told, despite the rudeness of the hosts. And young Mr Webster, the MP, who my husband says is the coming thing and will be prime minister some day, is going to be there.’

  She stopped and considered the top of his head for a moment and pinched her cheek. And then she continued.

  ‘But we’re not good enough, that’s what I said to my husband. But you have a great advantage. You are an American and nobody knows who your father was or who your grandfather was. You could be anybody.’

  He stood coldly watching her across the carpet.

  ‘I don’t mean any offence,’ she said.

  He still did not speak.

  ‘I meant that America seems to be a very fine democracy.’

  ‘You would be very welcome there,’ he said and bowed.

  TWO DAYS LATER he made the journey from Dublin Castle to the Royal Hospital at Kilmainham across the city. He had seen Ireland before, having travelled once from Queenstown in Cork to Dublin, and he had stayed also in Kingstown briefly. He had liked Kingstown, the sea light and the sense of calm and order. But this journey now reminded him of travelling across the country, witnessing a squalor both abject and omnipresent. There were times during that journey when he was not sure whether a cabin had been partly razed to the ground or was fully inhabited. Everything seemed ruined or partly ruined. Smoke appeared from half-rotten chimneys, and no one, emerging from these cabins, could refrain from shouting after a carriage as it passed or moving malevolently towards one if it slowed down. There was no moment when he felt free of their hostile stares and dark accusing eyes.

  Dublin, in some respects, was different. There was greater mingling between the mendicant class and those who possessed money and manners. But still the squalor of Ireland came right up to the castle gates and left him depressed and haunted. Now, as the official carriage took him from the castle to the Royal Hospital, he noted more than anything the sullenness of the Irish. He tried to keep his eyes averted but he could not. The last few streets were too narrow for him to avoid noticing the poverty in the faces and the buildings and the feeling that at any moment the way could be blocked by importuning women and children. Had William been with him, his brother would have had strong words for this neglected and impoverished backyard.

  He was relieved as the carriage made its way up the avenue of the Royal Hospital, and surprised at the stateliness of the building, the sens
e of grace and symmetry and decorum in the grounds. It was, he smiled to himself at the thought, like entering the kingdom of heaven after a rough ride through the lower depths. Even the staff who came to greet him and take his luggage appeared different, of a heavenly disposition. He felt that he should demand that they shut the gates and save him from having to face the poverty of the city again until it was absolutely necessary.

  He knew that the hospital had been built in the seventeenth century for old soldiers, and on his first tour of inspection, he learned that a hundred and fifty of them lodged off the long corridors which gave on to a central square, happily growing older in splendid surroundings. When Lady Wolseley apologized for their proximity, he told her that he too in his own way was an old soldier, or at least an ageing one, and that he would surely be at home here if any sort of bed could be found for him.

  His room looked away from the hospital towards the river and the park. In the morning, when he woke early, there was a white mist over the lawns. He slept again, this time deeply and peacefully, and was woken by a tip-toeing presence in the room, moving in the shadows.

  ‘I have left some hot water here for washing, sir, and will draw a bath at your convenience.’

  It was a man’s voice, an English accent, soft and reassuring.

  ‘Her ladyship says that you can, if you wish, be served breakfast in your room.’

  Henry asked for his bath now and breakfast in his room. He wondered how her ladyship would take to his not appearing at all until lunchtime and presumed he could claim his art as a licence for solitude. The prospect of a morning alone with the view from the windows and the lovely proportions of the room for company filled him with happiness.