Tipperary (5 page)

Life in Mr. O'Brien's surrounding environment was desperately poor. Existence for most Irish people was at that time brutish and unjust. But nothing else has greatly changed in the young Charles O'Brien's neighborhood. All the “wonders” of his father's Tipperary recital still exist (except, of course, the renowned limbs of the vaunted Miss Cahill).

The Rock of Cashel sits like a Disney creation high on a limestone crag over a wide and handsome plain, watched over by the gap-toothed Devil's Bit Mountain. Near Golden, four miles west, the river Suir (pronounced “Shure”) still flows over a shallow and placid weir. The shores of Lough Derg, in the northwest of the county, give Tipperary its border along the river Shannon. And the Glen of Aherlow, it is said, contains more sunlight and shadow than any other valley in Ireland.

As to the remaining “wonder,” the magnificent Tipperary Castle— Mr. O'Brien has no doubts as to its place in his narrative; when he remarked that it “came to dominate my existence,” he understated.

Even though he begins his recital of himself with the memory of the violent Treece eviction, it makes sense to take as a truer starting point his view of himself at the age of forty. After all, that was when he met his motivation for writing, April Burke. Therefore his physical description probably shows us what she saw: a “wild mop of yellow-blond hair, and my height of six feet three inches, and my wide shoulders”—and his tone suggests a man looking in a mirror in the prime of his life.

To touch his “History” is to bring him closer than that. His papers convey a feeling far above the inanimate; they stack so pleasantly in the hand. He chose almost the texture of a linen weave, slightly heavier than the commercial writing foolscap of the day. The pages have colored gently with age.

He used a light sepia ink, close to a coffee color, and a medium-broad nib. Unlike most manuscripts of the day, his shows none of the tiny spatters at, say, the beginnings of sentences or paragraphs. Then there is the numbering of the pages—in the top right-hand corner he placed neat figures, each succeeded by a firm dot or full point. The entire script runs so smoothly, so uninterruptedly, that it proves impossible to say where he left off one day's work and began the next.

This orderliness of penmanship contradicts the “feckless” opinions of him that he himself openly reports. In later pages we infer, and encounter directly, a man seen by others as somewhat wayward and unsteady. Yet the management of his manuscript shows a figure in charge of what he was doing. There are perhaps no more than twenty small corrections in a handwritten document of several hundred pages.

As to content, although he seems conscious of the need for faithful chronology, he does not conform to the disciplines of academic historical narrative. He shuttles back and forth all the time, plucking an anecdote from his childhood here, a chance encounter with a great person there, a public incident somewhere else. Yet he always keeps hold of the thread of his history. He's like a man from a myth, drawing himself along a golden rope—not to immortality, but to the moment he eagerly wants to reach.

No matter how great the person he meets, or how absorbing the event he reports, he gives the impression of wishing never to stray far from his pursuit of April Burke. And he interrupts his narrative time and time again to cry out his passion for her. Sometimes his outburst occurs unexpectedly, and he becomes almost lost in a strenuous hymn of love.

I know that I am a Romantic—I am more influenced by my imaginings and more driven by my passions than anyone of my acquaintance. In this, I also feel myself to be deeply elemental. The mountains enchant me and I think of each peak as I would of a person; the clouds cast shadows on them as moods traverse a human face. I love rain and often tilt my face to feel its full cool sheet and I thank it. How often have I lain on the ground merely to gaze at the traveling clouds and thought of myself pillowed upon them, like some sultan of the universe.

When I first saw her whom I have made the love of my life, I instantly wanted to share such things. I wanted to point out to her the small but infinite wonders that fill me with pleasure: the webbed filaments of a chrysalis tucked into the angle of a leaf; the brown impertinence of a sparrow pecking crumbs; the austerity of a hilltop tree leafless against a winter sky; white gravel in the bed of a clear stream.

I owe the awareness of these mysteries to my wonderful parents, who ever availed of an opportunity to show me how the hidden world works. One afternoon, I remember, when I was very young, my mother spent many minutes coaxing a ladybird to open the wings beneath its black-spotted red back. Another time, she showed me the paper hulk of a wasps' nest long after the summer—and the stingers—had left.

“Nobody loves a wasp,” she said, “except another wasp,” and she told me how a wasp will give its own life for its comrade. In general, never did we observe an unexpected insect without her inquiry being excited.

Let me now describe the instant when I first saw my beloved. I shall recount all the circumstances later, but for now I must tell how she looked; how she filled the space in the air of the room all around her; how she seemed to me both human and divine; and my own physical reaction, so strong that I feared it must become noticeable to others present.

She was standing on a chair, arranging a picture's hanging, when she first looked into my eyes. She is, as it happens, notably tall anyway— when she stepped down from the chair I then believed she stood five feet ten inches, and she has confirmed this.

“Force of presence!” cried my mind at once; but she did not consume the air, as some very strong people do. She occupied her space like a slim perpendicular column of some classical style.

Her being was composed of warmth and energy; she had a capability, an aura of efficiency; she gave off a feeling of knowing what to do, not just in the instant, but in life generally—and she possessed great beauty.

I stood and stared; my manners must have abandoned me. She had the courtesy to ignore my staring and she turned away—and of course she had the good breeding not to address me until we had been introduced, which did not occur for some days. As to my reaction—I began to sweat; the back of my neck grew damp and my skin began to prickle. My eyebrows shot up almost beyond retrieval, and my mouth felt dry.

Believe me, I have trawled for comparisons of that moment—and herein lies the value of writing a History of myself that is also a History of my country. I have had the privilege of looking back at each and every great event that I have witnessed, and accordingly I have been able to trace those that seemed remarkable and important, and I have been able to measure how they influenced and even altered my life. Through them all, November 1900 in Paris shines unchallenged.

In today's terms, Mr. O'Brien's reaction may seem excessive. Not in Queen Victoria's reign, when the idea of romantic love, descended from the times of the troubadours, had well and truly taken root. In an era where prudishness and repression were equated with prudence and responsibility, all that was left to a man by way of expressing love was the report of his own passions.

The poets had led the way; “Byronic” had long been a shorthand term for passionate emotion. Charles O'Brien, in common with so many other men of the day who fell suddenly in love, had solid precedent for seeing himself as a dashing and romantic figure. Windswept and interesting, moody and wild with love pangs, he was prepared to surrender all for love.

But he was a little older than the typical Byronic figure with the brooding lips and flowing white shirt. This was a man who had already lived well more than half the male lifespan of the day. He had claimed no prospects that he could offer a girl. And he seemed to depend upon his paternal family and home far more than the typical man of his time.

My first complete memory—that is to say of a cohesively remembered moment with its own Beginning, Middle, and End—comes from my life at the age of almost four. I have other fragments from times before then, the commonplace memories that I expect are found in all small children: my father lifting me high while I looked down at his laughing, exerted face; a curtain fluttering at an open window; a butterfly finding its way into the drawing-room and mistakenly alighting on a flower in the furniture's fabric; the taste of sugar upon buttered bread, which Cally gave as a treat; the tightness of a shirt-collar, worn to be gracious when Grandmother Goldsmith or Aunt Hutchinson came visiting; the quiet hum of deep, approving conversation as my parents pored over my mother's ledgers. (Father was an excellent and successful farmer.)

That very first memory, though, brought my introduction to fear and its thrill, and it took place in the safest of surroundings. Our domestic bathing arrangements never varied; Cally or Mrs. Ryan took responsibility for my hygiene until the age of ten—when my father, with whispered asides to my mother, consigned it to me alone. He supervised me, and in due course taught me to shave: “Keep the razor wet!” One evening, early in 1864, Mother came rushing to the kitchen, where I was often to be found among the women (I was quite their pet), and she cried, “Bathing! We must bathe Charles now!” Her urgency puzzled all until she explained in whispers—and then Cally became urgent and raced me to the bathroom, half-carrying me. Mrs. Ryan, who was as stout as a hippopotamus, huffed along after us.

Hot water was brought upstairs, and I was washed as never before. So distressing did I find this that Mrs. Ryan and Cally conspired to tell me.

Mrs. Ryan: “A girl's after dying in Limerick. You have to be scrubbed and scrubbed.”

“Why?”

Cally: “She died of an awful thing.”

“What?”

Mrs. Ryan: “An awful thing altogether.”

“What's an awful thing?”

They looked at each other and agreed with their eyes.

Mrs. Ryan: “She was a leper.”

I thought they meant that the girl had somehow jumped off some great height and died.

“Why do I have to be scrubbed because she leapt?”

The women began to laugh; Mrs. Ryan had her hands in the tub washing my feet, and her great forearms all but heaved the water everywhere. When they subsided, the women grew serious again.

Cally: “She had the leprosy.”

Mrs. Ryan: “She caught it off a sailor's clothes that she was washing.”

Cally: “An African sailor, he was—he had it. A black fella.”

“What's leprosy?”

Cally: “Your nose falls off.”

Mrs. Ryan: “And your hands with it.”

Cally: “They have to give you a bell to tell everyone you're coming and they're to get out of the way—so's they don't catch it.”

“How can you ring the bell if your hands have fallen off?”

Mrs. Ryan: “Well, you can.”

“Is it a big bell?”

Mrs. Ryan: “No, no, a small little bell and you've to shout and warn them.”

“What do they shout?”

Mrs. Ryan: “I s'pose they say, ‘I have the leprosy, I'm a leper.’ ”

Cally: “No, they say, ‘Unclean, that's what I am, unclean.’ ”

Such a gift to a small boy! That night, to Mother's horror and Father's delight, I took the serving bell from the dining-room table and went about the house calling out, “Unclean! Unclean!” But it was true; a young servant-girl had contracted leprosy in Limerick and died.