The God of the Labyrinth

  Before leaving the house, I rang an old friend at the University of Galway, Professor Kevin Roche. His assistant said he was at home. I rang him there.

  ‘Do you know anything about Esmond Donelly?’

  ‘The fellow who wrote a book about deflowering virgins?’

  ‘Do you think he really wrote it?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. My copy has his name on the title page.’

  ‘Do you have it there? Could I come and see it?’

  ‘Certainly. When would you like to come?’

  ‘Now,’ I said. And within forty-five minutes I was in Kevin’s study, overlooking Galway Bay, and with a fine view of Inishmaan and Inishmore.

  I had already decided to pursue my policy of discretion, for news travels fast in Ireland. So after we had exchanged civilities, and I had accepted a small glass of Bushmill’s, I handed Kevin the manuscript of the Refutation of Hume, and told him that I had been asked to edit it for publication.

  ‘Rather short, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m hoping to find other things—letters and journals. I’m just going to see the Misses Donelly at Ballycahane.’

  He handed me the paperback book that lay on his desk; it had been printed by the Obelisk Press in Paris. Of the Deflowering of Maids, by Esmond Donelly. A short introductory note signed Henry V. Miller repeated the facts I already knew about Donelly—his date and place of birth, his travel diaries; the fact that the present volume was published in German by Brockhaus of Leip­zig (who was also the publisher of Casanova’s Memoirs) in 1835, and by an anonymous Dutch printer—obviously translated from the German edition—in English in 1863. I opened it to a chapter called: ‘Of the Fallacy that all Women are Alike in the Dark’.

  robin. Pray, sir, continue with your instruction, for I hang upon your words.

  lord cobald. You flatter me, my dear boy. But I find it highly gratifying that you agree with me about the import­ance of acquiring this tender knowledge. We must next consider the fallacy, propagated by Claude de Crébillon and Mr Cleland, that has been expressed in the words ‘All cats are grey in the dark’. You may take my word for it that, when I look back over a lifetime of women, I can remember no two who were alike when their thighs were apart. I am not now speaking merely of the formation of the nether regions of delight, which may be plump or boney, fleshy or firm, downy or bristly, but of what I might call the soul that dwells in the cunt. No man of breeding would confuse the dark wine of Burgundy with the clairet of Bordeaux, and even a child can tell the difference between an apple and a pear, though one be soft and juicy and the other hard and astringent. So it is with women. And just as the taste of a wine is judged by the first mouthfull, so the individual flavour of a girl may be most clearly grasped in the first movement of encunting, as the velvet head is received by the coral lips. I have known wenches that were sharp and fresh, like an apple eaten by moonlight, others that were syrupy and soft, like a pear or a peach; others who were hard and round in the arms, but sweet within, like a melon.

  robin. Indeed, sir, I understand you well, for my two sisters, who were born within an hour of one another, are as different as could be in bed.

  lord cobald. Your penetration delights me [a Freudian pun, this]. Pray acquaint me with your own view of the difference between them. For I myself have never succeeded in telling one from the other by appearance alone.

  robin. As to that, sir, my mother herself often calls one by the other’s name. Yet between the sheets they are as unlike as could be. Agatha is such as you describe, syrupy and soft like a peach. When I enter her, her cunt welcomes me with warm and tender embrace, as is appropriate from a sister who loves her brother. And then, sir, I feel as if I have become my own prick, and am tenderly engulfed from head to foot. The sensation is not unlike immersing in a warm bath, as I do every Candlemass. Now Christina, on the other hand, produces a most lewd and lustful sensation as I slip within her, for she seems to experience surprise that a man should perform so strange an operation, or even that she should be lying there naked. In consequence, I find myself imagining her fully clothed, in the brown velvet dress with silver buttons she wears when pouring tea, or the green gown she wears for riding in the park, and the shock of finding her cunt defenseless makes me drive into her like a stallion, so ’tis wonder that her belly has not swelled before this.

  lord cobald. Your gift of expression is remarkable, my dear boy. That is precisely the difference I have observed between them. You are lucky to have such gifted sisters. My own sister, when I finally succeeded in overcoming her modesty, was pleasing enough, but as tasteless and fuzzy as an apple that has been left in the bowl too long.

  I put down the book, and looked across at Kevin, who was still absorbed in the Refutation of Hume. If he had looked up, I would have said: This is another forgery. The first page might have been written by Donelly, for it has the kind of psychological penetration I have come to expect of him. But the paragraph about the sisters has more than a touch of de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom, while the last sentence has a touch of cruelty that is not justified even by its psychological insight.

  But by the time Kevin looked up from the typescript, I had changed my mind about speaking. If I explained why I was certain it was a forgery, I would have to admit that I knew more of Donelly’s work in this manner. So, instead, I made remarks about it being fascinating stuff. Kevin himself was delighted with the Refutation, and asked me if he might get it copied, to write an article on the development of Donelly’s style. I promised to let him have it when I had shown it to the Misses Donelly, and left him. It was after midday, and I wanted to get to Limerick. It was only after I had gone through Oranmore that I remem­bered I had forgotten to ask him if he knew anything of a scandal involving Lady Mary Glenney.

  I dropped off Diana and Mopsy in Limerick, where they could do a few hours’ shopping, then drove south on the Cork road, through flat, drowsy, pastoral country that looked almost feverishly green in the April sunlight. I stopped in Ballycahane to enquire for Castle Donelly, and was told that I had come too far and would have to go back towards Adare and turn off the road. With these instructions, I managed to draw up at the front door of Castle Donelly at about three o’clock.

  It is not, of course, a castle, but a Queen Anne house, built of silvery brick with red brick Corinthian pilasters; the walls are covered with ivy, and the house has an atmosphere of neglect that is so common to great Irish houses, particularly in Con­naught and Munster. A fine flight of water-lily steps—which are curved—ran up to the front door. Their surface was so irregular that I wondered how anyone could get up and down without twisting an ankle. The River Meigh runs beside the house, and the ruins of Adare Abbey stand against the skyline. It came as a shock to realise that this house looked new and smart when Donelly was born in it—for it was built around 1700—and that the walls were probably free of ivy even when he died here. It was like taking a leap back into the past, and it brought a dis­turbing sense of passing time.

  Before I had reached the top of the steps, the door was opened by a vigorous lady in riding clothes; she had cropped iron-grey hair, and stood with her legs astride, like one of Rowlandson’s country squires. The handshake was as hard and firm as a man’s.

  ‘I’m Eileen Donelly. Delighted to meet you.’ Her accent was English upper class, with a touch of Irish in the vowels. ‘I’m glad you made it.’

  The place was impressive and cold, with a huge flight of stairs running to murky upper regions; there was a great deal of marble, which contrasted oddly with peeling Victorian wallpaper. But the library she led me into had a large fire. Another lady, also in male attire, was knitting by the fire. She was introduced to me as Miss Tina; she was small and sweet-faced, and female clothes would have suited her better. I suspected that the riding breeches were to keep out the cold. They offered me tea, and Miss Tina went off to make it. Miss Eileen stood in front of the fire,
her legs apart, hands behind her back, and made general conver­sation about the weather, the countryside, and so on. Then we talked about America. She seemed to be very curious about America, and after ten minutes or so, remarked casually that she had heard that Americans would offer large sums for houses such as this. I said this was probably so. How much? she asked. I took a very quick guess, and said that the right person would prob­ably pay twenty-five thousand for it. ‘Pounds or dollars?’ she asked quickly. I said pounds. At this she looked very thoughtful. And as Miss Tina poured the tea, using a beautiful eighteenth-century tea-service that might have been the one Robin’s sister Christina used, I realised suddenly why they were so interested in this revival of Esmond Donelly’s reputation. These two had no children; why should they not sell this huge and uncomfortable house, and buy themselves a pleasant flat in London? I began to feel less guilty about my quest. The publication of Memoirs of An Irish Rake would certainly increase their ancestor’s reputa­tion more than that of the travel diary or the Refutation of Hume.

  Miss Tina asked me about Colonel Donelly, and I told her a little about his career in recent years. She looked very sad.

  ‘Poor man. We really ought to write to him, Eileen.’

  ‘Maybe. I seem to remember there was something a bit rum about him. Did you find him odd, Mr Sorme?’

  ‘No, not in the least,’ I said.

  ‘Of course, he’s only a second cousin,’ said Miss Eileen thoughtfully. I could see she was thinking of marriage—probably to Tina. It struck me that Colonel Donelly would probably like Eileen; she looked as if she might be a skilful hand with a riding crop. I made a mental note to drop Donelly a line.

  Miss Eileen said: ‘Well, if your wife’s in Limerick, you don’t want to spend all afternoon here, I suppose. Dreadful place, Limerick. Lot of damn fanatics. They burned one of my an­cestors back in 1540. Bishop Donelly, known as Holy Joe. Didn’t like his politics.’ She led me into a small room adjoining the library. A single-bar electric fire was burning, so that it was not too cold; it also caught something of the western sun. On a small table there were two large folders, the kind made to look like books. She opened one of them, and my heart raced to recognise the handwriting on the topmost sheet of yellow foolscap. She said:

  ‘I’ve stuck bits of paper in the places I thought might interest you. He’s rather good at descriptions—there’s a rather splendid one of Pisa. Well, I’ll leave you to it. Tina’ll be in the library if you want anything.’

  She left me alone, and I began to read avidly:

  Rue de Grande Chaumière. Sept 11, 1766

  [when Donelly would be eighteen]

  My dear Papa,

  The letter of recommendation to M. Blaizeau proved ex­tremely useful, and I dined with his family last night. He sends you his kindest best wishes. His business has suffered reverses in recent years, but he still lives very stylishly. He excused himself early on account of his gout, and Mme Blaizeau and her two amiable daughters accompanied me on a stroll along the Promenade du Jardin Turc, whose coffee houses present singular and astonishing spectacles. They are not only crowded within, but other expectant crowds are at the windows, listening with à gorge deployé to certain orators who harangue their audience from chairs. . . .

  I glanced quickly through the rest of the letter. It was all pleasant, informative stuff of the kind one might expect from Horace Walpole or Arthur Young—obviously, the letter of a young man who is anxious to assure his parents that he is not wasting his life or substance. I glanced quickly through the rest of the letters, reading one here and there at random. As I read, my sense of disappointment deepened. There was nothing here of the kind that I could not find in the Travel Diaries; in fact, there could be little doubt that parts of these letters had been used in the Travel Diaries.

  The two folders contained an enormous number of papers: letters, legal documents, a fragment of a novel that reminded me, in style, of Fanny Burney’s Evelina, household accounts, letters of introduction—the kind of thing that would delight an academic biographer. I took notes—for the sake of appearances, in case Miss Eileen looked in on me—rather than out of interest. There was something very frustrating about all this stuff, most of which dated from the 1760s to 1785. I wanted to know the names of the Mesdemoiselles Blaizeau, and whether Donelly had been attracted to either of them. There were several references to them over the next few months; but not a word to indicate whether they were plain or pretty, let alone whether Donelly was roman­tically inclined towards them.

  I tried to cheer myself with the thought that I would be a fool to expect that his family papers would contain revelations. Anything of the sort would have been destroyed during the Victorian era, or perhaps even by the Donelly sisters who were my hostesses. Somehow, I doubted that the sisters had removed anything from these family papers; they were too innocent, too open-faced about their ancestor.

  Miss Tina peeped in the door and asked me if I would like more tea. I declined with thanks. She asked how I was getting on. I said politely that I found it all most interesting. Then I drew from my pocket the copy of the quotation from Boswell, and showed it to her. I said:

  ‘Have you any idea why Dr Johnson should have disliked Donelly?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. Except . . . didn’t he dislike the Irish anyway?’

  I said I didn’t think so.

  ‘There’s nothing in these papers to indicate that Donelly was a “phoenix of convivial malice” either. He emerges as a rather respectable, sober sort of person.’

  She said: ‘Oh, I don’t think he was terribly respectable.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. There were stories—rumours. Nothing very definite. He spent a lot of time in Switzerland and Italy, didn’t he? I believe people were rather wicked in those days.’

  She said this wistfully, looking out at the river, in which the tall forms of the ashes were reflected. After a moment, she said: ‘Of course, Dr Johnson may have been making a sort of pun. Esmond’s journals had a picture of a phoenix on the cover.’

  I thought about this for a moment.

  ‘No, that’s impossible. Johnson made the remark in 1773. The earliest edition of the travel diary is 1791.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true. I’m sure we have an earlier one. Would you like to come and look? My eyes are not very good.’

  We went into the library, and she said vaguely:

  ‘I seem to remember it’s on one of those shelves up there.’

  The books stretched up to a height of about ten feet. I took a library ladder that rested against the wall, and climbed up to the shelf she indicated. It took me about five minutes of searching before I came upon a number of leather-bound volumes with Donelly’s name on the spine. Some of them were the small, pocket-size edition of the Journal I had seen at Colonel Donelly’s. This was an edition of the travel diary in four volumes, printed in London in 1793, with the note ‘3rd edition’. There was also a larger volume, beautifully bound in a leather that showed little sign of wear even after two centuries. It was entitled: Observa­tions upon France and Switzerland, by Esmond Donelly, Gent, printed for J. J. Johnson (and a great list of other names), London, 1771. The front cover and the title page bore the image of a phoenix rising from its flames, the stylised kind of emblem to be found in heraldry. As I stared at it, it struck me that the feathers on its breast would be taken by a modern psychologist for phallic symbols. After all, the feathers of a bird point down­wards, and taper towards the end; these pointed upward, and were shaped like sausages. I said:

  ‘It’s strange that no one has mentioned this earlier. Colonel Donelly didn’t seem to know about it.’

  ‘Probably not. I believe the whole edition was destroyed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There was a fire. You’ll find it mentioned in one of the letters. I saw it only the other day.’ r />
  I climbed down, bringing the book with me. Miss Tina went into the other room; after a five-minute search, she handed me the last sheet of a letter. The postscript read:

  Calamity! Tooke has just told me that Johnson’s ware­house in the Strand has burnt down, and every copy of my book with it. It is fortunate that the accident has cost me nothing.

  The letter was dated September 11, 1771. This, then, explained why the Observations upon France and Switzerland had never been heard of. And, as I could see, even this copy had not been read from beginning to end, for many of its pages were still uncut. I turned over its pages, until my eye was arrested by the word ‘phoenix’; I turned back to the previous page and read the whole passage. In Heidelberg, the carriage in which Donelly proposed to take an excursion broke down. The innkeeper told him that no other was available, but that the local pastor, the Reverend Kries, had a carriage which he occasionally hired out to distinguished visitors. Donelly found Kries in his garden over­looking the Neckar, and was taken to see the carriage, in a nearby barn; the pastor remarked that it had not been used all winter, and would be dusty and damp. Donelly looked at it and decided that it could be made presentable with a few minutes’ work; the pastor declined to take money for its hire. On the way out of the barn, Donelly noticed the wooden image of a phoenix lying half-covered by straw. He asked the pastor what it was doing there, and was told that it had been included in a lot of furniture he had bought at auction a year before. Feeling that it was unsuitable for a vicarage, he had thrown it into the barn. Donelly, rather surprised, enquired why it should not be suitable for a vicarage.

  He seemed surprised at my ignorance, and asked me if I was not aware that the bird was the symbol of a sect of heretics, sometimes known as the Brethren of the Free Spirit, sometimes as the Sect of the Phoenix. I replied that I only knew that the phoenix was sometimes used as a sign outside the shops of apothecaries, and that I presumed it had some alchemical significance. Whereupon the learned man discoursed to me upon the history of the Sect of the Phoenix. It arose in Europe at the time of the Black Death, when it became widely believed that venereal lascivious­ness was a remedy against the disease. The basic argument ran thus: there can be no true spirituality without inward­ness; man can never know the truth while he casts around outside of his soul, entangling himself in outward things. In the crisis of sexual pleasure, the spirit is more concentrated than at any other time. The Brethren of the Free Spirit believed that God is everywhere and in everything; every stirring of delight is a revelation from God. In the name of this belief, all manner of lewd excesses were performed, sometimes upon the very altar. The Inquisition uprooted these doctrines with cruel severity, but the Sect of the Phoenix proved to share the nature of its symbolic bird, and arose ever and again from the ashes of the stake and the funeral pyre. And since, according to Herodotus, the life­time of the phoenix is five hundred years, we may confi­dently affirm that the sect will continue to flourish for at least another century.