The Year of the French (92 page)

Moore cared nothing for either Pitt’s gratitude or Archbishop Troy’s admiration. He had expressed his actual political convictions. The “Protestant Nation,” as it was now being called, seemed to him hopelessly venal and corrupt, and its parliament an assembly of placemen leavened by a handful of patriotic but ineffectual rhetoricians. Any hope for reform or for the removal of Catholic disabilities lay with London. His own instincts and preferences were English rather than Irish, and he relied upon England to drag his country forward into the modern world. It was a most tentative and conditional reliance, for he did not expect England to act upon any motives other than those of selfishness and the need to protect itself. This too he presented in the pamphlets with a candour which lent weight to his arguments. And his cynicism seemed justified as the country watched the ill-concealed process by which Cornwallis and Castlereagh set to work bribing the legislators in Dublin with pensions, titles, and promises of sinecures. The “Protestant Nation,” so he insisted, did not deserve to survive, and was proving the point by being bribed out of existence.

And yet his brief adventure into practical politics filled him with disgust and self-loathing. He had written what he believed to be the truth, but he had done so in payment of a debt to Dennis Browne, who had devoted months to a remorseless dragooning of Mayo. At Browne’s instigation, companies of militia and yeomanry had crossed and recrossed the county, burning hamlets which had sheltered rebels, lashing suspects at the cabin door, dragging them at the rope’s end to the gaols in Castlebar and Ballina. Informers, working under the direction of Paudge Dineen, one of Browne’s creatures, brought word to him of rebels who had taken refuge in remote villages, and these were hunted down upon the bogs or the hillsides, frightened men in stained and damp clothing. A whipping triangle was set up at the cross of Ballintubber, upon Moore’s land, and remained there until he tore it down with his own hands. And as he wrote his pamphlets, as he conducted his correspondence with clerics and gentry, with the Catholic bankers and merchants of Dublin and Limerick, he had always before him, in a corner of his imagination, the memory of Dennis Browne at Westport House, leaning forward towards him across the table, bland and insinuating. Moore felt himself soiled beyond the possibility of cleansing.

He was visited once by Thomas Treacy of Bridge-end House, on his way to Dublin. In the cool evening they sat together on the balcony.

“Your father sat here often,” Treacy said. “Do you remember?”

“Yes,” Moore said. “I remember.”

“Would that he could see you now,” Treacy said. “Taking your place among us at last. He had great respect for your abilities of mind, George. Great respect. He felt that you were wasting yourself over there in London. You were the clever one, and John was—” He paused.

“He loved John,” Moore said. “We both did.”

“And so did I.” Treacy looked away from him, towards the dark green of the evening lake. “I should tell you about Ellen. She is becoming interested, I believe, in a young man. You know him, perhaps, Dominick O’Conor of Roscommon. A good family. His father is a cousin of O’Conor of Clonalis. Nothing has been settled, of course. It is too early for that.”

“That is welcome news,” Moore said without irony. “I am most fond of Ellen. She has wit, and spirit.”

“I had wished a different life for her,” Treacy said, his eyes still upon the lake. “They were very much in love. Herself and John. She was heartbroken. You can well imagine how she felt.”

“Yes,” Moore said.

“My God, what a waste,” Treacy said. “But his motives were generous. You must remember that, George.”

“History does not judge us by our motives,” Moore said.

“History does not judge us at all,” Treacy said. “God judges us.”

“God does,” Moore said.

“I was reflecting upon that as I read your latest paper. It was most kind of you to send it to me. It is the judgement of God upon this Protestant nation of theirs that it is perishing at last in squalor. They have lorded it over us since the Boyne, since Cromwell. Moss-troopers and jumped-up joiners’ apprentices, and their sons and grandsons and great-grandsons. The judgement of God. You might well have made that point.”

“And so they will in the future,” Moore said. “The property and commerce of this island are firmly in the hands of the Protestants. That will not change. But with a London parliament there is a chance that we will have our liberties restored to us. A chance only. That is all that I have argued.”

“A most lucid argument,” Treacy said. “If only your father— He would have been most proud of you.”

“We may gain our liberties,” Moore said. “The Papists may. But the country will lose whatever independence it has enjoyed. John would not have been proud.”

“John was a boy,” Treacy said. “What liberty could we have been given by the French? Cutthroats and blasphemers.”

“Yes,” Moore said. “I know.” He passed his hand over his eyes, rubbing them. “I made a bargain with Dennis Browne,” he said. “Browne got John out of here, to a safe gaol in the south. In time we would have got him out of the country. To America, perhaps. Or Spain. And in exchange I agreed to argue on behalf of the Union. I was bribed. As those wretched timeservers in Dublin are being bribed with ribbons and pensions. I had my price.”

Treacy turned to look at him. He paused, puzzled, before he spoke. “But you believe what you have written?”

“Oh, yes,” Moore said. “Every word of it. But I would not have written save for that bargain. I gave Browne his pound of flesh.”

“That is a disagreeable way to put it, surely,” Treacy said. “It was for John’s life that you bargained. God Almighty! Dennis Browne is a man beneath contempt. I would not have thought it of him.”

“He kept his part of the bargain and I have kept mine. It was a worthless bargain. John is dead.”

“Not useless,” Treacy said gently. “It was for John that you made it. To save John.”

“I would have made any promise. Strung lies together, given him money. Whatever.”

“But you did not. You promised only to make public your true opinions. You are troubled by a scruple of conscience which any intelligent priest could resolve for you. Speak to Hussey. I can assure you that he admires what you have written.”

“Oh, that!” Moore smiled. “I am something of an expert upon scruples of conscience. I have no need to consult Mr. Hussey.” He shook his head impatiently. “Let us speak of something else. It is too pleasant an evening to waste.”

But Treacy persisted. “Even if you had bribed him, if you had written what you do not believe . . .”

“I despise bargaining,” Moore said. “And bargainers.”

“Our Saviour did not,” Treacy said. “He bargained with the Father for our redemption.”

“A blasphemous analogy,” Moore said. “Mr. Hussey would not welcome it.”

How could he explain himself to someone like Treacy, a conventional man, rustic and pious? He did not attempt it. His integrity had been soiled by the soot of circumstance. History, society had existed for him as networks of power, intricate webs of cause and effect, weakness and strength, authority and subservience. But his mind, the power of his intellect, had held him free of those webs. Cool and deliberate, his thoughts dipped in preserving liquor of irony, he had tested, weighed, evaluated, judged. His independence had been vested in the freedom of his mind to move among possibilities, uncommitted. His thoughts were birds, circling the earth, swooping low and then darting up again. Browne had limed the nets, his very thoughts fluttered helpless in their folds. To save John he had given more than gold. He had sent his ideas to do Browne’s bidding. It was a fitting irony. His father would have approved and would have been delighted to see his affected pride brought low. Damn him.

Treacy was right, of course. It was a scruple of conscience, but not in his Christian meaning of the term. If Moore was anything, he was an historian, or so he believed, and historians did not sell the truth to politicians, not for gold or power or the lives of brothers. This was Moore’s only piety, and history suggests that it was a mistaken one.

In the event, of course, the Act of Union was passed in 1800, but Catholic Emancipation was not achieved for another thirty years, and by then Moore was dead. He had taken no further part in public affairs, although he was several times urged to accept a position of leadership in the Catholic Association. He published nothing, and it was generally believed that he was continuing his researches into the history of the French Revolution. In Mayo he was accounted a learned, indeed a profound scholar, but in London his very name was forgotten, save as the author of his short, early treatise on the Whigs.

In 1805 he married, and the nature of the union prompted much comment and gossip in Mayo, for he married Sarah Browne, Dennis’s niece, who had returned to Ireland upon the dissolution of her scandalous relationship with Lord Galmoy, a notorious rake. Moore had met her three years earlier, when the business of his estate carried him to Woodlands, Browne’s house.

It was a modest house, far smaller than Westport House, the residence of his brother. The brother was Lord Altamont no longer; with the passage of the Act of Union he had been created Marquis of Sligo, in partial recompense for Dennis’s services to the government. Dennis had been repaid in other ways as well: he was Member of Parliament in London now, and the most powerful man in Connaught. Among the peasants, his actions in ’ninety-eight had earned him a reputation as an ogre which would last long decades after his death, but this bothered him little. He had promised to pacify Mayo, and it was indeed at peace. The last of the hanged men had rotted beneath their overcoats of tar and they had been cut down from the gibbets. Songs were sung against him in shebeens, but he took no notice of these. In Ireland, power was seldom accompanied by popular approbation.

The proportioning of Woodlands was clumsy. Stables and kennels stood close to it: their odours filled the air in the cramped courtyard, and droppings of horse and dog were smeared across the uneven cobbles. The sounds of men shouting drifted to Moore from the outbuildings, the good-humoured banter of grooms and stable boys.

“We have the simple life here,” Browne said, welcoming him. “None of the brother’s music rooms and artificial lakes and Chinese wallpaper. Did you ever see the like of that wallpaper? Pagodas and Ming horsemen and the dear knows what else stuck upon the walls of Mayo.” He placed a hand upon Moore’s shoulder. “Come inside, man. Come inside.”

“I am here only to discuss the grand jury assessments,” Moore said stiffly. “You understand that, do you not? I made it clear in my letter. It is good of you to receive me.”

“To be sure,” Browne said. “To be sure. You are a sight for sore eyes. It has been years now.”

The entrance hall was dark. Portraits hung upon the walls, dim and indistinct, white faces glimmering beneath varnish and dust.

“Poor daubs they are,” Browne said. “Westport House has the good ones, of course. The old man and Peter after him and then the grandfather. These are the scruffs—cousins and the like. All but one. Take a look here, would you?” He led Moore to the portrait of a man in seventeenth-century military dress, florid colouring, high arched nose. “There he is in all his glory, Colonel John in his regimentals, ready to ride off with King James and bash a few Protestant skulls. Small wonder brother Sligo doesn’t want that one on his walls. Sure we were all Papists then—Moores and Brownes and Treacys.”

“A resourceful-looking fellow,” Moore said.

“Not a bad bit of canvas,” Browne said. “A London artist named Turville.”

They settled down to their talk in Browne’s study, a small pleasant room, with a turf fire built against the chill of early evening. Bookshelves rose towards the ceiling along two walls. Tall double windows opened upon a meadow. Haze clung to the yellowing grass, a herd of black cattle grazed in the distance, beneath trees. One picture, bright against firelight: Westport House seen from a distant hill, with Clew Bay spread beyond it. A formal, awkward painting, as much chart as landscape, plantations and avenues laid out in meticulous detail.

“By God, the lad who did that was determined to give value for money,” Browne said. “He would have stuck in every tree if he’d had room.”

“It is a handsome house,” Moore said.

“It is that,” Browne said. “And built to last. There is a great future in Westport, George. A great future. Killala and Ballina are played out. In five years’ time that port will be crowded with grain boats for England. Every grain of Connaught corn will be shipped from Westport. There is a great future for Connaught, thanks be to God. We will become England’s victuallers. England and Master Buonaparte are going to settle down to a long, long war and the farmers and the landlords of Ireland will find their breeches pockets stuffed with English pound notes.”

“Don’t rely upon history,” Moore said. “A few years ago, when last we talked, Master Buonaparte was a defeated general, stranded in Egypt. Today he is master of France. Things change.”

“Never fear,” Browne said. “I leave history in your keeping.”

“About the jury assessments,” Moore said, and drew the papers from his pocket.

It took them but an hour or so to conduct their business. Both men had a head for figures, and an instinct for detail. At last Browne threw his pen onto the desk, and stretched. “You will stay for dinner, will you not, George? Pheasant and baked ham and a gooseberry flan. I brought down the pheasant with my own gun.”

“If I leave now,” Moore said, “I can reach Moore Hall before night. Another time, perhaps.”

“No time like the present,” Browne said. “You are here now, and it has been a long time. Years. You will spend the night here, surely.”

Why not, Moore thought. What does it matter? It is all over now, long past.

“I have a pleasant surprise for you,” Browne said. “My niece is here. Sarah is here. She is staying with me. You knew her in London, did you not?”

Moore remembered her. Slender. Black hair, brown eyes. The special friend of Dick Galmoy. Dishonoured. He had not known her well.