Michael Hudson had pulled a catalogue from his desk. ‘Let me show you this, Lord Powerscourt. This comes from an exhibition held recently in New York which transferred to Boston and, I believe, Chicago. These people, McGaherns, are very respectable. They operate a long way down the scale from ourselves. The works they sell are cheap and tawdry, they might cost five or ten or twenty pounds rather than the same number with thousands added. They operate,’ and here Hudson looked up from the paintings, ‘in areas with very heavy concentrations of Irish settled in them. I worked in our office in New York for two years and I must have walked all over the city by the end. The pictures they sell in such quantities are never originals, but the subject matter doesn’t change very much, attractive colleens, horses of every shape and size with or without their riders, those wonderful lakes and mountains Ireland is festooned with, small cottages with smoke coming out of them in the wild wastes of Mayo and Connemara. The ancestral home or the fantasy of the ancestral home, no doubt. The real home might have been a Dublin slum. Many, if not most, of these people have never been to Ireland in their lives, but they live very Irish lives in America, Mass, Christian Brothers, walls draped with pictures of the Blessed Virgin Mary, family piety, all that sort of thing. Oddly enough, their Ireland is often a generation or a generation and a half even behind the real one. The parents pass on what they remember of the world they left twenty or thirty years ago. Forgive me, I’m wandering off the point.’
Michael Hudson closed his catalogue and put it on his desk. ‘I have no idea if the McGahern works are turned out in Dublin or New York, but one thing is clear, Lord Powerscourt. There is an artistic connection between the two countries. It is possible there is an innocent – well, not innocent, but certainly non-violent explanation for what has been happening to these portraits.’
‘You mean, they may end up in the McGahern catalogue? And get sold off like that for twenty pounds each?’
‘Not quite, Lord Powerscourt. The Irish who buy the McGaherns are not poor, but they’re not well off either. Sixty years on, some of these Irish families have become quite rich, a number of them very rich. Suppose you’re an ambitious Irish family living in New York. Suppose somebody comes along and offers you a bundle of your ancestors. They’re probably not your ancestors at all, but the neighbours aren’t going to know. Think of eight of these hanging in your parlour or dining room. The prestige would be terrific. In a society composed entirely of immigrants of one sort or another, how great would it be to show off a family history that went back a couple of centuries?’
‘You wouldn’t even have to be related to the people in the pictures,’ said Powerscourt. ‘You could say they were O’Shaughnessys or Carrolls from years gone by and nobody would be the wiser.’
‘Exactly so,’ said Hudson, ‘and I suspect you could charge a great deal of money for a complete eight-place-setting set of ancestors, as it were.’
‘I think there’s a snag in this theory,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I’m not sure that the Irish immigrants, who are Catholic, would want to have portraits of Protestant landlords on their walls, however rich they had become. Those people in the Big Houses would be, if not actual enemies, then the oppressors of the poor tenant farmers who had fled to America to find a better life. Somebody in America might like ancestor portraits, mind you. The old might have an appeal for some in the land of the new. How on earth would we find out what the situation is?’
‘At this moment,’ said Michael Hudson, smiling at his visitor, ‘I have no idea. We could,’ a smile spread slowly across his handsome face, ‘try placing a few advertisements in the kind of papers the wealthier Americans might read. Set of eight Irish family portraits, eighteenth to nineteenth century, available, that sort of thing. I think we’d need to put a fairly hefty price on them to deter the McGahern clientele, say fifteen hundred pounds. What do you think of that, Lord Powerscourt?’
‘I think it’s rather clever,’ said Powerscourt, smiling back to the young man, ‘but tell me – what happens if you are inundated with potential customers? Suppose thirty or forty come knocking at your doors? What do we do then?’
‘Find a forger perhaps? That would be a good trade, you know. Forge them all over here, send them to America, I don’t think you could be prosecuted there for something done over here. Your forging friend could do very well. Seriously though, I think we wait and see.’
‘I am most grateful for your time and your help, Mr Hudson,’ said Powerscourt, rising to take his leave. ‘Perhaps you could be so kind as to send any news to my London house with a copy to me at the Butler house whose address is here.’ He handed over a small sheet of paper then paused as he was about to open the door and turned back to the art dealer. ‘One last thing, Mr Hudson. Every time I have anything to do with paintings in a professional capacity, the same questions arise. Is this a real Romney? Did Gainsborough actually paint this portrait? That red mess over there, is that really a Tintoretto? You know the question of attribution far better than I. If it comes up, would you be willing to come to Ireland and help me out?’
‘I would be delighted, Lord Powerscourt. After all, they say Ireland is very beautiful at this time of year.’
2
The gate lodge of Kincarrig House, ancestral home of the Connolly family, recently deprived of the painted records of six of their own ancestors, was set back slightly from the road. On either side the stone walls that marked the outer edge of the demesne seemed to stretch away into infinity. Powerscourt was beginning his investigation here as Kincarrig House was closest to Dublin and the Holyhead boat. He had made his appointment before leaving Markham Square. Then he planned to move further west to Butler’s Court. Powerscourt’s cabby was a cheerful soul, pointing out the places of interest as they went along.
‘This gate lodge now,’ he said, ‘and the arch and the drive here, sure they’re among the finest in Ireland.’
Powerscourt made appreciative noises. He gazed upwards at the Triple Gothic Arch that towered above the road. It was completely useless. All over Ireland, he thought, at the entrance to the Big Houses with their long drives of beech and yew curling away to hide the property from the prying eyes of the public and people of the wrong religion, the owners had built monumental gates of one sort or another. Anglo-Irish mansions were guarded by a strange stone menagerie of lions and unicorns, of falcons and eagles, of hawks and harriers, tigers and kestrels and merlins. Powerscourt had heard stories of a house with a stone dinosaur on guard. The animals were often surrounded by great stone balls, as if, in times of emergency, they might return to life and begin hurling this weighty ammunition at their enemies. Powerscourt remembered his father telling him of one estate belonging to a Lord Mulkerry in County Cork where the demesne walls and the monumental gates became one side of the town square. And on the side of the town square was a large plaque on which was written: ‘Town of Ardhoe, property of Lord Mulkerry’. Badges of ownership, marks of superiority, symbols of arrogance, Powerscourt disliked them intensely. And as his cab rattled along this very long drive he remembered too the prestige that attached to the length of the approaches to the Big House. Less than half a mile and you were virtually going to a peasant’s cabin. Half a mile to a mile, pretty poor, little better than a cottage you’ll find at the end, a mile to a mile and a half, there might be a pillar or two to greet you at the end but nothing much, anything over two miles and respectability is attained at last. Over to his left he could see the sun glittering on a fast-flowing river which must, he suspected, pass the Connolly house to enhance the Connolly view.
The house was Regency with a front of seven bays and a Doric entrance porch with eight pillars. Well-tended grass ran down the slope towards the river. Inside was a magnificent entrance hall with a marble floor that ran the whole length of the front of the house with a dramatic enfilade of six yellow scagliola pillars and dozens and dozens of drawings and etchings and paintings of horses. A huge elk head guarded the doorway. A very small butler greeted
Powerscourt, asking him to wait while he found his master.
The architecture of this house and the houses like it whispered a strange language of their own, a language that came back to Powerscourt from years before.
It spoke of parapets, and turreted gateways, of rectangular windows with mullions and astragals under hood-mouldings, of quatrefoil decoration on the parapets, of vaulted undercrofts and great halls, of carved oak chimney pieces and overmantels, of segmental pointed doorways, battlemented and machiolated square towers, of portes cocheres and oriels, of ceilings in ornate Louis Quatorze style with much gilding and well-fed putti in high relief supporting cartouches and trailing swags of flowers and fruit, of entablature enriched with medallions and swags and urns, of halls with screens of Corinthian columns and friezes, of tripods and winged sphinxes, of quoins and keystones, of Imperial staircases and rectangular coffering, of rusticated niches and doorways, of scaglioli columns, of friezes and volutes and many more, stretching out across centuries through hall and drawing room and dining room the length and breadth of the country.
Out in the parks and walkways, many of them by lakes or rivers, were great fountains, houses with obelisks in their grounds, gardens guarded by forts with cannon to fire salutes on family birthdays, conventional orangeries and unconventional casinos, ornate gardens, Japanese gardens, Chinese gardens, Palladian follies, in one case a herd of white deer to mark the exclusivity of the Big House and the Big Garden.
This, Powerscourt thought, was architecture as political statement, an arrogant damn your eyes architectural declaration of superiority. We are the masters here. Don’t even think, any Irish Catholic peering through the trees at the house over the top of the wall, that one day this might be yours. It won’t. And yet, Powerscourt thought, and yet . . . The temples and the churches and all the great palaces of Rome were still standing the day before the barbarians came to town. He wondered if those stone sphinxes that adorned the Ascendancy Big Houses might not have one or two riddles left for their masters, riddles that might rather speak of Descendancy.
‘Mr Connolly is in the library, sir,’ the butler said, rousing Powerscourt from his reverie, as he ushered him into a handsome room with great gaps on its walls. The word library can have many different meanings in Ireland, Powerscourt remembered. Put a great many books in them and nobody will ever use the room in case they’re meant to read a book. But hostesses like to have libraries in their houses. It adds an air of learning to the predominant themes of hunting and shooting. Hence there are many libraries in these houses with very few books in them. And as Peter Connolly rose to give him a very short and rather perfunctory handshake, Powerscourt realized he was in the latter category of library. He had seen bedrooms in England with more books in them. A solitary bookshelf, no more than waist high, gave its name to the room.
‘Thank you for coming to see us, Lord Powerscourt. How can I be of assistance?’
Even before the man finished the first sentence, Powerscourt knew something was wrong. There was a coldness that was on the edge of rudeness. Never mind the traditional Irish hundred thousand welcomes, he was hardly getting a single one in the Connolly household.
‘I would like to see where the pictures were, and any details you have of them, who the artists were, that sort of thing.’ He noticed suddenly that there were four picture cords hanging from the rail above, but no paintings in them. Connolly noticed his glance.
‘The police asked us to leave everything as it was,’ he explained. ‘Not that they will be any use. The oldest Connolly was placed just above the fireplace, the others followed him in line of inheritance. The last two of the sequence were in the dining room with the Titian and the Rembrandt in the gold drawing room.’
‘Do you have any details of the artists who did the portraits? Do you have any records of what the gentlemen were wearing?’
‘I fail to see how that is relevant,’ said Connolly coldly, looking pointedly at his watch.
Powerscourt felt he was on the verge of losing his temper.
‘Look here, Mr Connolly, I presume you want to get your pictures back. Suppose the thief sells them in Dublin or they are carried over to one of the big London firms. The proprietors know that six male Connolly ancestors have gone missing and a couple of Old Masters. I have made it my business to see that they are so informed. If one of your ancestors were to appear, how in God’s name are they going to know that he is a Connolly? He could be an Audley or a Fitzgibbon or a Talbot or anybody at all in Christendom. Without descriptions the whole attempt to recover them is a waste of time.’
Connolly looked at him very coldly. ‘I do not believe the pictures will ever be recovered. The villains will destroy them. Soon they will come back here for more, whether for more pictures or for the people who live here, I do not know. Our time has come, Lord Powerscourt, and all that is left to us is to face it with the courage of our race. I have asked for police protection and the sergeant laughed in my face. All this talk of descriptions of pictures is futile, fiddling while Rome burns.’ Connolly was working up a fine head of steam. His wild talk sounded even stranger in such elegant surroundings, the marble fireplace, the intricate plasterwork on the ceiling, the distant whisper of the river through the open windows.
‘Are you not jumping to conclusions, Mr Connolly? You had two other paintings stolen, I believe, one Titian and one Rembrandt. Taken all together, those pictures could fetch tens of thousands of pounds. It’s perfectly possible that this is the work of a gang of art thieves who are even now arranging the dispatch of the paintings to New York. It would help enormously if you and your family could manage to write out descriptions of all the paintings. It would help to recover them.’
Connolly was shouting now. ‘You just don’t understand! You haven’t lived here for years! You’re not even Irish any more! We made it our business to find out about you, Powerscourt, betraying your past and your people to swan about in London playing at being a detective! You’ve no idea what it’s been like to live here these last thirty years, the Land War, the boycotting, the plan of campaign, the betrayal of a Protestant people by a Protestant government in London trying to force us to sell our land to appease the Catholics. Well, we have lived through all that here in this house. I do not believe that a gang of art thieves broke into my home to steal our pictures. I just don’t believe it. This is the final act, Lord Powerscourt. Who is there to defend us any more? Politicians? The Irish Members of Parliament want Home Rule for Ireland, that means Catholic rule with no room for Protestants. To a man, they’re all Papists, Rome rulers all, waiting and waiting for their day to dawn. There’s a hunger for land out there, Powerscourt, our land. Sometimes on market days in the town square, you can almost smell it.’
Powerscourt was suddenly struck by a thought that had absolutely no relevance to the conversation. He was not going to be asked to stay. He was certain of it. There had been no mention of green bedrooms or the most comfortable room in the attic. In landlord Ireland, famed for its hospitality and its generosity, this was unthinkable. He knew the stories, of houses where over a hundred guests would stay for weeks at a time, head after head of prime cattle slaughtered to fill the table. One apocryphal story concerned an assistant surveyor who had come to do some work on the house and stayed for a year and a half. After a week the family forgot his name and felt it rude to inquire again. Short of a slap in the face, a refusal to invite a visitor to stay for the night was one of the biggest insults you could offer.
‘I’m sure you’re being too pessimistic, Mr Connolly,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I thought things had been relatively peaceful here over the last few years. But tell me this, did you get a letter from the thieves? Demands of some sort? Blackmail perhaps?’
‘I have not,’ said Connolly and something in his downward look told Powerscourt the man was lying. ‘You talk of peaceful times over here. Things are never what they seem in Ireland, never,’ said Connolly darkly. ‘And now, if you will forgive me, I have work to do
. We can’t all spend our time swanning round other people’s houses asking damn fool questions. My coachman will take you into the town. I booked a room for you in the Kincarrig Arms. It is a perfectly respectable hotel. I do not wish to have you staying in my house. Good afternoon.’
With that Peter Connolly ushered Powerscourt to the door and vanished into another part of the house.
The Connolly house had a little river running past its front door. Butler’s Court, the Butler residence a few miles south of Athlone, stood a couple of hundred feet above Ireland’s greatest river, the Shannon. Visitors to the house could arrive by road or water. In summer the river meandered gently south towards the sea; in spring and autumn when the rains were heavy it flooded slightly. In winter it looked sullen, dark and forbidding, its waters swirling their way into black eddies as it rumbled down to Limerick and the Atlantic Ocean.
Powerscourt’s first thought as he looked at the house was that he had seen it before. He was in some great square in Italy, in Siena or Perugia perhaps, looking at the great town house of some local aristocrat. Dimly, he remembered that the principal architect of Butler’s Court was Italian. He felt relieved that the front of the house appeared to be unchanged. So many Irish houses had been altered, defaced in his view, in the previous century by a fad for neo-Gothic that included turrets and battlements and fake towers. Maybe it was because the leading architects of the day preferred this style of building. Maybe it was keeping up with your neighbours. Powerscourt had the rather fanciful notion that somewhere in the back of their minds these Irish patricians felt threatened by the world around them. The peaceful Regency fronts, all proportion and good taste, would not be enough to defend them from the hostile forces that surrounded them. So they felt safer with their walkways and their turrets. Nobody had taken the style so far back in history as to have a moat and a drawbridge, but Powerscourt thought these would have sold well.
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