Invited to a light lunch, I drive along Lough Swilly from the town of Letterkenny, passing on its outskirts these bijou stucco and stone decorated bungalow masterpieces which in Ireland always sit glaringly on close view to the passing envious neighbours. And one has come to know, wherever one sees an unspoilt stretch of countryside and a plantation of mature trees still standing, that there is sure to be an Anglo Irish Protestant near at hand. So as a lengthy frontage of foliage and a forest loomed along the road, something told me that I was already driving past Aughnagaddy House. And turning around in the pretty village of Ramelton, I headed back to find its shrubbery shrouded entrance. Proceeding into a long potholed drive twisting through ancient trees towering over an entangled undergrowth of rhododendrons whose boughs contorted in the shadows like great monster snakes. Arriving finally in front of this sprawling rectory with its windows too close together, as are some people’s eyes, and Honora Myles coming out across the ice coated ground to greet me.
Speaking some of the most exquisitely spoken English in the world, as the Anglo Irish do, Honora welcomed me into the front hall with its ship’s panelling. My cap and gloves placed on a travelling trunk under the massive head of the water buffalo benignly looming from the wall. Ushered up the concrete stairs which replaced previous wooden ones burned in a fire. Concrete because in those days past, estate workers knew how to mix cement but carpentry was an unperfected art. Turning left on the landing and up further stairs to a much lived in kitchen. Everything in sight of an eye and handy to reach. From baking powder to barley water. And now further mysteries began to unfold.
A Mr Derek Hill arrives. Cherubically pleasant, freckled faced, jovial and marvellously tweeded, Derek’s was another name I’d oft heard mentioned out in these environs. And his was as fabled as Henry’s. For both were famed not only as world travelled connoisseurs, Derek as a distinguished painter and Henry as a collector, but also for the splendour of the comfort in which they lived and which they dispensed with their legendary hospitality. Indeed the few words of annoyance these two ever exchanged was over the largest of all sins to be committed out in these rural wastes, that of hiring away another’s staff. Henry’s abode being bigger and his coffers seemingly inexhaustible, Henry was occasionally to be accused. But if much of what is stunningly beautiful in Donegal still remains, it is greatly due to the example set by both these men, holding out on their respective estates, against wind, rain, mist and philistine.
Sherry is poured as we all sit in a small sitting room reached along a hall, and through a bedroom where Honora Myles has a magic world awakening. Her dolls, many known to her from childhood, are each aseat on their antique chairs in their wonderful frocks. Others are gathered together as a tiny audience or as for a children’s party in their ruffles, flounces, frills and furbelows. Fiddle de dees on dressing tables and in every nook and cranny. Georgian dolls’ houses in their miniature fairy tale grandeur, and with their teeniest of weeniest furnishings, sit up on tallboys. One wants to diminish so one can join at a minuscule table for an eyedrop of tea and take a microscopic bite of a biscuit.
Nothing anywhere throughout these rooms seems as if it has been moved for many years. The furniture taking its time to find its well worn spot where it shall always henceforth comfortably remain. Even to the bumps and lumps in sofas left undisturbed. Yet all is neat and pleasantly in its chosen place ready to please the eye. Including twenty year old Mousings, the cat, sitting regally curled on a window sill. And this is a house like most Irish mansions, where if you are not huddled over a fire or stove, it is colder within than it is without. Even a fine brocaded napkin feels heavy in the hand. And one’s pee fumes up upon the nostrils as it descends into the toilet bowl.
But such chill came only latterly to these big Anglo Irish houses, when far off sources of wealth dried up and the local servants and workers dwindled and butlers drowned their sorrows and standards in their master’s wine cellars. It took little then, as the odd roof slate fell and the dry rot creeped along the joists, to shrink the lands of these great estates and to make their large mansions crumble. The riding boots always the last to go as the blue and green moulds sprouted on top hats and dancing slippers. While sustenance was maintained by fishing rod and shotgun and the pheasant and quail hung seasoning behind the satin curtains.
But although many of the Anglo Irish fled back to the civilization of England, their parklands and silverware sold, more than a few of the hardier stayed, defying all discomfort and impoverishment. And keeping their eccentric charm, generosity and equanimity intact. But here in Aughnagaddy House something is different. A strange beauty lingering in these faded colours and peeling paint, as all ages and decays with grace. Even where the plaster has bulged or crumbled on the walls. Or near the doorways where ferns threaten to walk in and spread their pale green fronds waving across the floors.
Sydney, Araminta’s husband, politely greets me as I do a tour of the house. He sits in a drawing room chair in his gloves, overcoat and cap, an old pair of galoshes done up with string on his feet. With a magnifying glass he reads a letter recently arrived in the post. Due to a slight rheumatism he apologizes for not getting up. In this room where in front of the blazing fire one’s breath goes steaming out on the air. Yet all is a hive of industry. Sydney gardens, paints and fixes the roof. Araminta saddle soaps the riding tack. And Honora knits one of her splendid wool spreads and gives Derek a present. A mussel shell for cuff links, exquisitely covered in glove leather. And Henry’s name is mentioned. Of how he would manage in some people’s houses to undiplomatically comment on the furnishings.
‘That lamp, although it does have the virtue of being not unamusing, is, I’m afraid, an eyesore. However, you mustn’t get rid of it, it goes so well with everything else.’
And then upon this visit appears another ghost as the beautiful Amabel steps in with lunch. Of country fish pie she’s just cooked made of salmon, cod and mussels with mashed potato on top. Mousings the cat nearly gets mine but a quicker Honora gets there first. Everyone has a second delicious helping. For Amabel keeps an elegant little restaurant in a Georgian house in the nearby town of Ramelton. For pudding there is orange and chocolate mousse with cream. And then I remember the strange familiarity of Amabel’s face. Last seen and watched throughout an evening across dining tables some months previous in Claridge’s Hotel, in London, where she sat speaking Russian with members of the visiting Bolshoi Ballet.
But there remains the spectre still haunting me, of Henry. Who now looks down upon us all from that great gallery in the sky. Derek arranges for me to visit again this now empty castle. One says goodbye to Honora’s dolls, still all sitting prettily in their straw hats, bonnets and berets, their tiny bow shaped mouths and their blue glass eyes alive with smiles. And I go again as I did on that day when my socially registered friend first announced that we were at Henry’s. We were approaching some very modest gates with stags’ heads mounted on the stone piers. Out all around us mountainous moorlands towards every horizon. A few distant deer grazed amid granite boulders. But not a single sign of habitation or life anywhere on the rocky heathery hillsides. Just some of the most bereft and wild landscape God ever invented.
And I recall that day driving onwards over a well kept but narrow winding stony track. Mile after mile across these moors. Then the road sloping downwards as gradually the growth of rhododendrons thickened at the sides of the lane. Till descending in a steeper and steeper twisting incline, there was an abrupt turning in the road. Ahead lay the stunning blue black waters of Lough Veagh spreading between two mountains. With trimmed hedges flanking a luxurious tarmacadam drive along the edge of the lough, another world began to unfold. Of strange plants and expansive flower beds. Then through more and grander gateways. Suddenly massive granite walls and the turrets of a castle loomed out of the trees, and was greyly silhouetted against the sky. Here at long last, close at hand, was Henry’s. And one had arrived on his little spread of thirty thousand acres by the b
ack gate.
Butlers and footmen rushed to take luggage from the car. Leading one past the turf fires glowing, and up a grand staircase under towering crystal chandeliers and along intertwining corridors to one’s room. Our host to be met at drinks before dinner. I spent long minutes staring out the windows and down vistas cutting their way through the one hundred and fifty acres of exotic gardens of plants, trees and shrubberies collected from across the world. In all these lonely windswept Donegal wastes, there stood only this castle, filled with fresh flowers every day, whose colours vied with some of the world’s fabled paintings. Washing in the bathroom before tea and drying my hands with a magically soft fluffy fabric, I forgot my watch and returned to find the used towels already replaced with fresh ones on the hot towel rail by a secret hand. A selection of mineral waters and all the books one ever wanted to read were by one’s bedside. And one thing at least had dawned on me, I may at last be here at Henry’s but there was no doubt whatever that I had also come to Shangri-La.
Visitors for dinner had gathered in the great drawing room with its collection of Landseers, and scenes of wolves tearing the throats out of stags. Shyly I entered waiting to be introduced in this glamorous gathering of guests, some as fabled as the paintings. A figure turned, detached from a group, and crossed the drawing room towards me. A face I knew well from Dublin and university undergraduate days. And who had many a time attended parties in one’s own Trinity College rooms. He was a man whose civilized company one would seek for reassurance in the more notorious Dublin dungeons frequented such as Charnel Chambers and the Catacombs. And here he was, beaming a smile with his greeting words.
‘My God, J.P., it really is you.’
‘My God, Henry. Henry is you.’
‘But of course. And where on earth have you been all these years.’
‘Well as a matter of fact, meeting people. All of whom were on their way to Henry’s.’
1987
Upon Conduct Becoming and Unbecoming a Philanderer
As just your ordinary average looking kind of guy, you need, in this activity, to show women no mercy. For the appalling truth, frequently denied by nearly all ladies, is that they adore handsome men. Especially of the cigarette ad variety. It also matters not that he has the top of a fence post between his ears, which mostly he hasn’t as alas even here, too, good looking fellows excel in intelligence. It’s nature’s way of keeping a tiny nucleus of the race from getting entirely stupid and objectionable. Which is why philandering by tall godlike well featured chaps is so eugenically important. Of course not being able to attract one of these good looking guys, women, being extremely practical, immediately set about ruthlessly to entrap the next best thing. And this is where you flirtatiously step in.
No decent philanderer worthy of the name bothers pursuing ladies who are handing it out to all comers. Otherwise this is essentially a game called ‘How to Get Up Her Without a Wedding’. Although a wedding may indeed play a most important part in this activity especially after she’s married someone else. Successful philandering calls for a degree of delight with yourself and some assurance that the word lady killer is not misplaced when applied to you. To be skilled and to remain for any length of time engaged at this vocation, single, married minded ladies are to be avoided. As the picket fence around their future house with you office bound somewhere steadily being promoted and providing a larger and larger salary for their future support comes first in their priorities. No. Your saucy opportunities abound among the riper aged already married ladies pampering their beauty on their large estates and in the boudoirs of substantial suburban houses. Plus of course the fairly numerous ones you may encounter dinner partying at the downtown grander tables in the more fashionable larger cities.
Visit your venereal doctor often and willingly provide the necessary specimens, as he may, at almost any time, have important information to disclose to you. Muster about yourself all the civilities that are normally accepted as indicating ‘What a nice boy’ and which now you hope will be said about you by all these other men’s wives that you are now after. And who are to be found most easily accessible in the leisure climes and in purlieus where the folk are reekingly rich. Along with the water and snow skiing these kind of folk sport the pretence of being sophisticatedly liberal in male female relationships. Like.
‘Hey, Bob, you don’t mind if I take Carol for two hours out to the deserted island to look over the indigenous metazoa.’
Of course, Bob transports by helicopter and doesn’t really have the peace of time to mind. He is loudly and skywards clearly seen leaving the area to return to more tiptoeing on the brink of his daily decision making or sweating out his bland faced lack of it and just hoping to hell he doesn’t get removed by the board or fired with his mortgage, the cost of three kids at prep school and wife’s bills from I Magnin crashing around his bowed head, while you, of course, with merely a pot to piss in, have one whale of a time grappling with his wife’s freely wagging limbs.
Albeit you are fooling around in top drawer society nevertheless remember that you are in and about a sneaky occupation. Often requiring a nimbleness of mind and movement. Not to mention speed in donning your clothes and assuming a fast respectable air about you. Particularly if you don’t know Bob’s helicopter movements. Therefore it is always wise to check out in detail the floor plan of any residence where you intend to let this or any Bob or Charlie’s wife have it. To scale if possible. The residence that is. And do this well before need.
There is nothing worse than to hear the majestic purr of a husband’s motor car or roof top roar of his gyrating aircraft unexpectedly arriving and gently and luxuriously squashing the pebbles together on the front apron of the mansion and then not only have to collect together your strewn socks, pointy two tone shoes, highly coloured shorts, and other of your racy haberdasheries but to then have to tear open your badly folded architect’s plan of the house and take up valuable time studying this, not only in order to calculate how many seconds it takes to spring the length of the upper floor corridor to the disused servants’ staircase, but also to find somewhere to tuck both you and your shoelaces back into some discreet crevice while outside Bob’s car or helicopter door is slamming and servants are being alerted to uphand potables and smokables they are enjoying down their employers’ wine cellar.
Besides eroding your iron nerve, such last minute alerts will put an unforgettable strain on your heart, severely shortening your philandering career, youthful though you are, and long distance jogger that you continue to be. But on the other hand if you must contend with Bob’s silent approach on a hard topped front drive then do at least stack the milk bottles at the front door which crash at his entrance. Otherwise you’re in for an even more adrenalin producing situation than just sailing bollocks naked out into the hall with your map half open in your left hand and hubby chomping up the main marble staircase with some kind of weapon in his right fist.
For Bob might have just come back from a duck or snipe shooting expedition. Which lucky for you he hasn’t and with relief, on a quick second glance, you see it’s only Bob’s custom made monogrammed leather document case. He of course has the name of Carol still joyfully on his lips to whom he has just called. He sees you. Wow can Bob’s ashen faced jaw drop. And he recalls the two hour trip you took with his long legged softly blonde haired wife to see the indigenous metazoa. Holy metaphysical cow. This really is a time when you should have already availed yourself of departure to secret big enough for one ventilated compartments. Only trouble being that most suspicious husbands know where these places are and make straight for them sometimes even using your own architect’s plan you’ve dropped rushing in your panic. Plus once there it’s deucedly difficult to get out of the way of Bob’s fist and impossible to avoid his bullets. No. This is a time when you must talk.
‘Hey, gee, Bob, the craziest goddamn thing has happened, you wouldn’t believe it.’
‘Maybe I won’t.’
Don�
�t let Bob’s sour mistrusting words dispossess you of your enthusiasm, keep talking.
‘Well, remember those goddamn metazoa, they weren’t indigenous, Christ they were pandemic I’m telling you, you won’t believe it.’
‘No I won’t.’
‘Stop saying that, Bob. This is scientifically serious. Do you know what those goddamn metazoa did. They made clothing itch us. It could be chronic. Came right over when Carol called me. We both had to strip. Son of a bitch things, here, Christ don’t come near me, you could get it.’
It is better to have had some acting training to deliver these lines. But if your sincerity can overcome your terror and can at all permeate just a few of those words, especially the last few, as you shoutingly repeat them, ‘Don’t come near me’, you will be astonished at how credulity can creep back into the situation until now both you and Bob can walk back calmly to that adulterous room and indeed both peruse the hopefully still naked Carol and the alleged itch. But be on the safe side, let Bob walk first. And do keep your wits about you to slam and lock Bob and wife behind the bedroom door when you run, in case Carol says her skin feels fine.
Of course Carol by nature is a betrayer as indeed most ladies are if they’re going to have any fun in life. But you are a real lousy dirty rat and historically the role you are now playing is that of a cad. Most comments about you will frequently be disagreeable. On that score alone it is wise to keep your picture out of social columns and gossip magazines to which people can point or later refer for your resemblance. Your big moment will come along with plenty of large photographs and big headlines when one of your ‘talk my way out of this’ efforts falls on deaf unsympathetic ears and Bob was carrying his loaded custom made monogrammed shot gun case and swings or shoots at you and although he misses, his lawyer’s action for alienation of affection with attendant reliefs and damages doesn’t. And you hear his belligerent advocate, with the customary accusatorial pointing arm and finger saying of you before a judge and jury.
J.P. Donleavy: An Author and His Image Page 19