by Ian McDonald
November 8, 1913
Advertisement in the Irish Times
Carswell & Greer: Estate Agents
For Sale
(By private contract or auction)
Craigdarragh House & Estate
We are delighted to be offering for sale this superb property in Drumcliffe, County Sligo, comprising of a superior Georgian country residence set in two and one half acres of mature landscaped gardens, together with its 180-acre estate. Situated eight miles from the town of Sligo upon the south-facing slopes of Ben Bulben Mountain, adjacent to the local beauty spot of Bridestone Wood, the property offers all the charm of the rural life with the conveniences and comforts of urban sophistication, and would, in our considered opinion, make the perfect country seat for a discerning gentleman farmer—perhaps a retired military officer or colonial administrator.
Craigdarragh House dates from 1778 and was constructed in the Palladian style by Mr. James Gandon, later architect of the Dublin Custom House, and is a superlative example of his early work in the smaller country house metier.
The ground floor interior by John Adam comprises of a Classical entrance portico, a spacious hall with hung staircase, one of the few examples of its kind in the western counties; a main drawing room enjoying superb views across Sligo Bay; a dining room; two studies; a small library; a games room with billiards table; a morning room with attached conservatory; a kitchen with scullery and housekeeper’s bed-sitting room; larder; and laundry room. The first floor interior, by the same architect, contains two master bedrooms at the front of the house, each commanding fine vistas of sea and mountain; three secondary, or guest, bedrooms; two bathrooms, a W. C., and a nursery. The spacious attic contains domestics’ rooms, storage, and shelving, and may be reached by means of a concealed servants’ staircase.
All is tastefully decorated, and much is period and in exquisite condition.
Exterior features include a stable block and stable yard with small hay loft, a disused gate lodge and two and one half acres of finely landscaped grounds, including rhododendron walk, sunken garden, Italian garden, walled kitchen garden, gazebo, and grass tennis court. Approximately fifty yards from the main house, close by the demesne-wall, is a small observatory.
The sale will also include the estate of Craigdarragh, comprising of 180 acres of farmland, fifty acres of which consist of the woodland known as Bridestone Wood, and the remainder being divided between three tenant farms of sixty, forty-five, and twenty-five acres respectively.
The tenancies are held under secured ninety-nine-year leases registered since the 1881 Act, and the rentable values set by the Fair Rent Court range from five guineas per acre per annum for the richer lowland leases to fifteen shillings per acre per year for the poorer hillside farm.
The tenant farmers also enjoy rights of foraging and coppicing in the estate woodlands and rights of communal grazing on the common hillside beyond the demesne wall. The prospective buyer will please note that these tenancies, though renegotiated under the 1903 Act, have been held by the same families for at least seventy-five years and that the farmers can be considered exceptional and trustworthy tenants.
The vendor has instructed us to advise any interested parties that house and estate are intended to be sold as an entity: offers for the estate alone will not be entertained, offers for the house and gardens only in the event that, no purchaser for the entire property being forthcoming, the tenant farmers exercise their option to purchase their tenancies. However, we are quite certain that there will be no shortage of parties with an interest in the property as an entirety.
Quite simply, a property of this quality must be personally inspected to properly appreciate the value for money it represents. Potential purchasers may arrange for personal tours of the property either through our Dublin office, our Sligo branch, or through the estate owner, Dr. Edward Garret Desmond; telephone Sligo 202. Without doubt, Craigdarragh is one of the finest and most desirable properties to have featured on the open market in recent years, and, together with the proven profitability of the tenant farms, consideration will only be given to offers in excess of £23,000.
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: November 16, 1913
LIKE A ROCK RISING from a troublous sea, this diary represents solidity and solace in these confusing times. To be able to write down, clearly, coherently, all one’s clashing thoughts and feelings, to be able to order all one’s confusions into disciplined ranks of blue copperplate—that is a great comfort in a bleak and chilly season. I take small comfort from the current closeness between Caroline and me. We both understand it is an artificial thing, a mutual defense against Emily’s increasingly disturbing behaviour. Emily, Emily, what to do about Emily? Her terrible, sudden fits of fury have mercifully ended, only to be replaced with a withdrawn, sullen, silent depression. Nevertheless, I do not hesitate in writing down here that we are both terrified of our own daughter. She only comes down from her room to eat, two meals per day, surely not enough for one who is eating for two, and she is picky in the extreme in her menu. A meal she has enjoyed on numerous other occasions will be rejected, untouched, while she will devour with enthusiasm such things as parsnips and spinach, which she did not even grace with a sneer before. Our gentle (and not so gentle) coercions have failed. Even Mrs. O’Carolan’s un-subtle bribery will not get her to unlock her door and communicate with us. If only we could make her understand that we only have her health and the baby’s in consideration. It has come to such a pass that I am afraid that sometimes her prolonged absence suits us rather too well; denied her silent, sullen presence, it is all too much of a relief for Caroline and me to temporarily overlook her existence. So greatly does she overshadow our lives that, like the climate, like the view out of one’s window, overfamiliarity has bred indifference.
Yet I suspect—no, I know—that she is considerably more active than she would have us believe. Why, in the dead of night, have I not on more than one occasion been awakened by the sound of footsteps in the old servants’ quarters above that we have reopened for the inspection of prospective buyers? And have not many of the visitors I have conducted around the house been surprised to find little snippets and cuttings of what seems to be old wallpaper arranged so as to suggest spritelike nymphs and dryads? And in the strangest corners of the house: the bottom of the bath, the pelmet in the library, tucked into the drawing room chandelier—even behind the glass of the watercolour of Croagh Patrick from Clew Bay in the dining room.
More perplexing, and irritating, is to come down in the morning to a day’s work to find that objects have been moved in the night: my books all rearranged on the shelves, my lacquered Japanese wastepaper basket upended over my globe of the heavens like a ludicrous fez; my electric reading lamp shut in a drawer and my fountain pen strewn across the carpet in its component parts. Caroline, too, has experienced these mysterious rearrangements—her workbooks went missing only to be discovered days later by Mrs. O’Carolan stacked in the broom closet, and Mrs. O’Carolan herself has complained of finding kitchen utensils in places she never left them, of batches of dough left overnight to rise rammed down the plug hole of the scullery sink, or salted with Vim. Most astounding of all was to discover my antique Indian brass orrery, normally resident in the observatory, rusting in the rain in the middle of the tennis court. The thing weighs nigh on three hundredweight, and takes all of Paddy-Joe’s and Michael’s strength, with the assistance of Dignan, to even budge it, let alone a four-months-pregnant fifteen-year-old! There is clearly something at work here that delights in confounding me. I do not know what it is. I cannot even begin to formulate a hypothesis—any conceptions I have are so outrageous as to be instantly dismissable. I can see that I will have to break, soon, and forcibly, if needs be, Emily’s silence, and demand the truth from her.
December 2, 1913
Balrothery Endowed School
Balrothery
County Dublin
My Dear Edward,
It was with the greatest regret that I received the news of your misfortune. Please forgive me for not having responded with my sympathies sooner; however, I delayed writing for the most honest of motives—that of wishing to verify all the facts before being the bearer of good news. It is with the greatest delight to know that I am, in some small way, helping a fellow Old Boy out of difficulty that, on behalf of the Board of Governors, I am able to offer you the position of Master of Mathematics at Balrothery Endowed.
Mr. Foley, the previous head of department, died most tragically and unexpectedly at midterm, and his passing left a considerable gap in our Mathematics department. Fellow masters have been covering as best as possible, but what with examination classes and university candidacies, our resources have been somewhat stretched. Your letter of request came at just the God-sent moment, and on behalf of the Board of Governors, and the entire Teaching Staff, I am glad to welcome you back to Balrothery Endowed.
I realise, of course, that it may be some time before you are able to take up the position, what with the vicissitudes of moving home and family to Dublin, but our need is somewhat pressing, and I am wondering if it would be possible for you to take up teaching duties at the beginning of the new term, on January 4?
You’ll find Balrothery Endowed still the same friendly school we so fondly remember, even on the other side of the gown. Many of the masters, like your good self, and my good self, are Old Boys, and we still draw pupils from the very finest class of family, of either denomination. I think you will be pleased at how little the school has changed since you and I walked its corridors.
In conclusion, I would be grateful if you would write at your earliest convenience to confirm your acceptance of the position, and if there are any ways in which I or the staff can assist your move and subsequent settling in, feel at complete liberty just to name it. My congratulations on your success, and my every good wish for your future at Balrothery Endowed.
Sincerely,
Oswald Chambers, M.A., Dip. Ed.
Headmaster
Emily’s Diary: December 21, 1913
IN THE NIGHT I can hear them, the tiny, whispering, tearing noises as they rip themselves free from their wallpaper and fold themselves to slip through the gaps under the doors, behind the skirtings, between the floorboards; folding and unfolding, folding and refolding as they scurry through the sleeping house, touching, exploring, testing, feeling. When I get up to turn on the light and catch them in their foldings and unfoldings, the soft, secret rustlings, they press themselves against the walls and become paper patterns again; they slip under the carpets. And by day I see them everywhere, and nowhere—a flicker of movement; a swift, sudden darting in the corner of my eye that freezes into immobility whenever I turn to look; a looming shadow over my shoulder that, when I spin around, is only a pattern acid-etched into a glass lamp globe.
I know what it is they want from me. They want me to embrace the old magic that has come out of the wood searching for me. They want me to take the hands they reach out toward me, and lead me away. And that both terrifies me and thrills me, because I know there is a part of me that still cries out, Yes, yes, take me away with you. I have had enough of being human. Dress me in Chantilly lace and creme organdy and sweep me away into whatever you will for me and the baby.
Now I understand why, when I first saw that dress, I did not try it on; to have put it on would have been to accept them and their will for me. To put it on would have been to make myself the Maid of the Flowers, the Queen of Morning. I dared not take more than a passing glance in a mirror for fear that She would be waiting there for me, the wedding dress filled with dried flowers. But She is no longer confined to mirrors. She has grown strong, broken free of Her constraints. Looking out the french windows in the drawing room I have seen Her floating, mist-hidden, in the sunken garden. Another time, I saw Her in the summerhouse and the sense of beckoning that overcame me was so powerful that without a thought I was out in the early December drizzle and rushing down the rhododendron walk toward the summoning figure. It was a vain pursuit, of course. I found only cobwebs, and dead moths and the dry woody scent of ancient summers. After stern warnings, Mummy and Daddy forbade me to go outside again until after the baby has come. I do not need to go outside to be in no doubt about where She is beckoning me; from attic to house to gardens to summerhouse, She is leading me, step by step, toward Bridestone Wood. Just before dark yesterday I glanced out my bedroom window and saw Her by the stile across the demesne wall into Bridestone Wood. This morning, looking again, I glimpsed Her through the cold grey mist, a half-seen phantom gliding between the nearer trees at the edge of the wood, beckoning, calling.
This is the essence of my dilemma. Do I accept that call or do I reject it? Dr. Orr and his clinic convinced me of one view of the world; my memories and experiences tell me a different view is true. They cannot be at peace under the same roof—oh, sometimes I feel I am going mad! Everywhere I hear voices, shouting—a voice in every wall, every door, every piece of furniture, shouting, “Decide! Decide! Decide!” Which is it to be, the world or the wildwoods? Choose the world and I dissolve all the magic and mystery and beauty into a foggy limbo of delusion. Do I want to think of myself as a person visited by delusions? Choose Otherworld, and I leave all that Dr. Orr taught me about myself lying discarded, like outworn clothes, on the floor. Decide! Decide! Decide!
The old servants’ rooms are no longer the safe and magical sanctuary I once rejoiced in. The time before last I went up they were filled with a sense of watching, of waiting, of hungry anticipation so menacing that I could progress no farther than the Room of Forgotten Memories, torn between attraction and repulsion. Louder the voices called: Come away, oh human child, to the water and the wild— Louder, the voice of my denial thundered back at them, until I could bear no more, and in a frenzy I picked up the nearest object to hand and blindly smashed it to the floor. Glass shattered— and it was as hushed as the great silence before creation. Broken on the floor lay the framed photograph entitled: Caroly: Wood Nymph: The Time Garden, August 1881.
I had won one small tactical victory, but the inevitable conflict could not be long postponed.
And it was not.
For a week after the smashing of the photograph I had resisted returning to the attic—a week in which the supernatural forces about me seemed to double and redouble their assault as Craigdarragh prepared itself for a final, desultory Christmas. The flicker-shimmer of the Wallpaper People in the edge of my vision was a constant, distracting blur and I was subject to continual headaches. The magic mounted like approaching thunder as the token tree went up, hung with candles. The token streamers were stretched across the drawing room ceiling, and the hall decked with posies of ivy and mistletoe, the door with its holly wreath. In the deep night the entire house would tremble and shudder, as if shaken in a slumber. I knew it would only end when I finally confronted the decision and made my choice. I wondered about the broken photograph in the Room of Forgotten Memories, how my mother had chosen Caroline the toast of Gaelic Literary League over Caroly with the Wood Nymph in the Time Garden, and came to understand why she had left those attic rooms locked all these years. More than anything, I would have loved her to have shared that time with me, but I knew she could not for fear that she might find those doors she had thought so firmly locked and barred had in truth been ajar all these years. So it was that, after long and painful deliberation, I found that there was no choice to be made at all, and, long after the house was asleep, climbed the narrow staircase to the old servants’ quarters, oil lamp in hand.
It was strong in those rooms that night, stronger than I have ever felt it before—a riptide that would sweep me away if for one instant I ever lost contact with the sure foundation of reality. It took all my physical and mental strength to slow its inexorable attraction to an advance of one cautious step at a time. The face of my mother looked through splintered glass at me. Suddenly feeling the need for some defence
, I stooped and picked up a long shard of glass, my dagger. The door into the next room opened before me. A mad moonlight, shivered by racing clouds, patterned the floor. Step by step, I was drawn through the room of the discarded clothes into the Room of the Floating Flowers.
Beyond the door, the mirror awaited me. I looked within. There was the Maid of Flowers, in the empty doorway behind me. I whirled, quick as thought, and this time it was no illusion. The folds and pleats of chestnut silk rustled in the softly moving air; the flower heads whispered among themselves. I could have touched it— I almost did. My fingers were reaching out, and then I saw what I was doing, realised the consequence of my action, and lashed out with the dagger of glass from the broken photograph. With an almost human cry, the fabric ripped from breast to thigh. Inside the torn bodice I saw white roots, tangling, twining, moving. I started back in alarm, and out they came. Out of the rolls of wallpaper and the borders and friezes and covings where they had been trapped, the Wallpaper People came, strands and whorls of printed foliage, tearing themselves away from the paper—the sprites, the hobgoblins, the dragons and basilisks and salamanders. They flocked about me, mobbed me; like bats they flittered in my face, caught in my hair. I tried to pull them free and tear them into pieces but they were too many. In desperation I slashed and cut with my glass dagger. I will never forget the horrid, squeaking cries they made as I cut and slashed them with the sharp glass. I cut and cut and cut my way toward the door and into the Trunk Room. I tried to slam the door shut on the Wallpaper People but they were too sprightly, too thin; the few I trapped in the hinge writhed and flapped most horribly. I winced—something had grazed my cheek. A paper hobgoblin flapped away from me and I realised that it had cut me exactly as a sheet of paper, carelessly handled, will lay open flesh. I snatched at the hobgoblin and tore it to pieces but the Wallpaper People were swift to learn this new and dreadful tactic and they mobbed me with renewed vigour, cutting, slitting, gashing. I could not sweep them away from me. I lashed out futilely with my blade and all the while the room beat like a wolf-skin drum as the trunks in which the clothes were stored rattled and thumped impatiently on the bare wood floor. I fled, hiding my face in my hands, into the Room of Forgotten Memories. Scenting blood, the Wallpaper People came after me. Blood ran from my lacerated hands down the sleeves of my nightdress. I could not close the door or they would have been at my mouth and eyes. I stumbled blindly across the room, scattering piles of old photographs. Above and beyond the insistent drumbeat and bat chatter I heard voices calling, the voices of the people in the photographs, those voices from long ago, all calling the same words—Choose— choose— choose— choose— choose— I found myself again looking at the broken photograph of my mother. She regarded me with a terrible look of accusation. The storm of voices and flapping wings peaked to a crescendo around me. For a moment I thought I had tumbled finally, exultantly, into insanity, and she was there, before me, the Maid of the Flowers, in the doorway to the servants’ staircase.