Tipperary (36 page)

SUNDAY, THE 29TH OF SEPTEMBER 1907.

Today we rode with Charles as he opened Tipperary Castle. I have had few days in my life when my feelings changed so. At first, I felt angry at his being used. My son was born to take care of people, not ruined estates. Then, when we all sat on the old terrace, I felt the peace of the place. Charles has spoken much of this. I knew today what he meant. At last, when we entered the house, I was marvelously overwhelmed. Never have I known such magnificence.

But that is not the point. I have known other Great Houses, including Aunt Hutchinson's and, in London, Mrs. Wilkerson's. And, of course, the Countess of Athlone's London house in Mayfair. But I have never seen a house with such feeling in it. The ornateness that we can still see did not bring that. Nor did the beauty of the cut stone. Nor even the colors employed.

There is an
emotion
in the house, a care, a warmth. I must not raise my hopes too much for my son. At the same time I must give him wonderful praise for his feelings about this house. He has been so praiseworthy in his instinct. I applaud his judgment.

At one moment today I looked at him. He stood on the terrace, inspecting with a shrewd and tasteful eye the house that he once hoped might one day become his. That girl is not his worth by a long chalk. She is not his measure and has little of his character. I know that each crow thinks her own crow the whitest, but my elder son, with his fine shoulders and his mane of hair and his pleasing and willing-to-please face, was always beyond her merit. Yet I do not know how to tell him that. He disparages himself so readily, so often.

The Irish mansions didn't suddenly begin to rise above the landscape. They weren't a direct product of English colonization. Many of them mutated from the castles of the Norman barons, whose similar buildings can be seen today in Ireland, England, and Wales. But even before the raising of their ramparts and towers, they had forerunners.

The Irish, as did the Scots, built themselves what are now called “fortified houses.” In Tipperary and the other counties of Munster, many fine examples can still be seen. Some of them have kept their height but lost their heart, and they stand in the fields, gaunt and ruined. Others have been “restored” as hotels and conference centers.

Tipperary Castle, from all the available documentation, began as one of those fortified houses. Terence Hector Burke did not, as Oscar Wilde had mistakenly believed, build it from the ground up. In fact, it's more the case that he became the last in a line of Burkes who had expanded and decorated their residence.

In time—and Oscar got this right—Terence Hector Burke added the theater. As his predecessors had done with other wings and sections, he built it so expertly that it looked as though it had always been part of the house. In essence, it became the last phase. Tipperary had grown from the original fortified house into a great Anglo-Irish mansion.

My appointment as “R.O.” did not specify my tasks, except in the vaguest terms, and so I took it upon myself to define my duties. The keys opened their locks at first turn—excellent craftsmanship to work so well after a disuse of more than half a century. I had brought candles, and the Somerville letter contained detailed instructions as to how I should open shutters all along each passageway. Entering through the servants' halls, I let in light with every few paces that I took.

Nothing had changed in this house. Dust lay everywhere, but matters had been left as though the occupants had donned their coats one day and walked out. On a small table in the annex of the servants' hall sat a mug, an old candle, and some burnt matches. The mug, when I picked it up, left a ring in the dust.

When I had opened all the shutters down in this wing, I stood and looked at everything—the walls, painted yellow; the sensible cornices with less adornment than I knew I should find in the main house; the benches painted brown, now gray with the dust. No coats hung on any of the hooks—no hats, no cloaks, no ulsters; when the servants left, they must have known that it might be forever.

In the kitchen, a giant table stretched down the middle of this long room; on shelves and in cupboards sat the great pots and crocks that had serviced the food of the house. From the servants' quarters, and the kitchens and pantries (which I did not yet open), the main passageway led to the central hallway of the house. Here I had some difficulty; this passageway had no windows, and to illuminate my way I had to depend upon the light coming from the windows that I had opened far behind me. I passed through two heavy doors, and finally, with only a glimmer to help me, found myself in the main hallway.

The windows here gave greater problems, and dust fell upon me like gray snow as I drew back the long, heavy curtains. I then found the iron handles that, when turned, opened the shutters and, with the same ease as the earlier locks, the first shutter opened, then the second. I was covered with dust—but I had let in the first light in the main hall of the house for more than fifty years.

Whatever I had imagined I now abandoned. The walls had been composed of beautiful cut stone, which reached to a height of approximately four feet, and above that the hall was paneled with marble. On the cornices and all across the ceiling had been placed the most ornate stucco that I had—or still have—ever seen. As far as I could make out, it seemed eccentric, with some of the richer styles overlaid by simpler motifs; for example, in one corner a large bird with detailed feathers protruded from the wall, grasping a branch with leaves in its beak, while beneath was slung a great plaster chain. In another corner, a proud figure of a “Victory” of sorts surged forth like the figurehead of a ship. A great marbled staircase wound upward from either side to a balcony; the stairs could allow six people abreast.

And the hall could accommodate a ball with an orchestra. It went through from one side of the house to the other, and through the north-facing windows I could see our chimneys and the wood. On the other side, the westering sun suddenly came through the clouds and shone straight in to light a ceiling as ornate as Versailles, pink and gold and turquoise. In that radiance too, however, dwelt a sadness; a wide section of the central medallion, populated by lions, tigers, and other great cats, had broken off. In truth, there was much frightful damage elsewhere.

All had been caused, my father had long ago told me, by vandalism, by would-be thieves; local opportunists had tried to steal the flashings off the roof—to sell to munitions fabricators for making bullets. As one man had wrestled with a particularly dense chunk of lead, it had broken away in his hand, exposing a ceiling underneath, which is where the water poured down in time.

However, the man had then slipped on the smooth lead and fallen to his death outside. This had strengthened the aura of bad luck in a house already stained with the reputation of loss and pain, and the gutters and lead flashings thus escaped further depredations.

Through the gap in the ceiling, the once and former grandeur of the private apartments could be glimpsed. They evidently had had much delicacy, much exquisiteness; but, sadly, the years of rains through the holes in the roof had caused very considerable damage, and much of the other plasterwork lay beneath layers of black and green mold.

It was clear that the true state of the castle could not be judged without a tour of the building. Consolingly, it was plain that whatever restoration would be required, the place retained its basic magnificence.

I opened the padlock on the bars of the front door, but no matter how I hauled and pushed, I could not move the great door by an inch. It still had damage. I could not climb the staircase, and I could not enter any of the rooms that radiated from the hall. All the doors had swollen, and everywhere destruction had spread. Looking directly above my head, I could see the ribs of the walls to which plaster had once adhered; long, wide reaches of plaster hung loose. As I moved about, some of this stucco began to flake loose; a piece fell in the hallway behind me. Smaller and lighter than a coin, it would have hurt nobody, yet it could have brought others down in its wake.

Although my activities were necessarily limited, the house came alive again. Working steadily where I could, I threw back every shutter, casement, and door that I could reach, and I let the world bring its healing light and air indoors. Now I could survey the damage to the house, which proved even more extensive than I had anticipated.

The main staircase, with all its wide marble, was incapable of bearing the weight of a person; but by a rear and undamaged stair I was able to reach the upper floors. In all the corridors, in the gallery, and along the rear passageways, I found damage. Boards had rotted and begun to fall down; in many places I could see through the timbers to the floors below. One of the ornate painted doors to the gallery, which had romantic woodland scenes, hung askew; its companion had lurched from the topmost hinge. On the frayed chairs along the gallery wall, many of the seats crumbled to my touch.

I could not gain access to the greater rooms upstairs but, through open or fallen doors, I could see four-poster beds whose canopies had fallen, and exquisite armoires—which bravely seemed to have withstood the assaults of the decades. Through one door several yards away, I looked into a nursery— and at once recalled how Mr. Wilde had told of the mysterious actress showing the new father his son's nursery before she disappeared. I reflected that I had long ago vowed to find the basis of that story, to solve the mystery. Now I felt that I never would; the journey to Somerset had proven too opaque.

Eventually, in that first week, I attempted to enter as many downstairs rooms as I could (the upper floors felt too dangerous). The more recent construction, such as the theater and the rebuilt kitchens, had stood up well—but the older parts of the house, the dining and breakfast rooms, and the three drawing-rooms, showed much damage. Green mold and fungus spread everywhere, obscuring the details on the plasterwork, much of which had begun to crumble. When I contrived to climb up and reach a cornice in the main dining-room, the stucco cluster of grapes came away in my hand, with the damp smell of decay.

In the ballroom, I found the greatest contrast—the most beautiful room had suffered the most severe damage. Its stucco peeled; its plaster cornices sagged or lay on the floor in piles. The marks of ancient cascades from water damage all but obscured the beautiful turquoise and pink paintwork. Some of the chairs along the wall, where at one time merry-makers had rested, now leaned or fell like dead, once-golden dancers.

At the end of the first week, my assessment revealed that more than two-thirds of the house required substantial renovation; in fact, no more than three servants' bedrooms above the stables had escaped damage. All hangings seemed perilous. I dared not tug at a velvet curtain and took no risks with walking across floors; I trod everywhere by the wall, where I knew that joists rested. But many joists came into view beneath rotten floorboards, and from their condition I understood that they would have to be replaced before any new floor could be laid. My inspection was a journey of pain and excitement.