David Dickinson: Death on the Holy Mountain

‘You wouldn’t even have to be related to the people in the pictures,’ said Powerscourt. ‘You could say they were O’Shaughnessys or Carrolls from years gone by and nobody would be the wiser.’

‘Exactly so,’ said Hudson, ‘and I suspect you could charge a great deal of money for a complete eight-place-setting set of ancestors, as it were.’

‘I think there’s a snag in this theory,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I’m not sure that the Irish immigrants, who are Catholic, would want to have portraits of Protestant landlords on their walls, however rich they had become. Those people in the Big Houses would be, if not actual enemies, then the oppressors of the poor tenant farmers who had fled to America to find a better life. Somebody in America might like ancestor portraits, mind you. The old might have an appeal for some in the land of the new. How on earth would we find out what the situation is?’

‘At this moment,’ said Michael Hudson, smiling at his visitor, ‘I have no idea. We could,’ a smile spread slowly across his handsome face, ‘try placing a few advertisements in the kind of papers the wealthier Americans might read. Set of eight Irish family portraits, eighteenth to nineteenth century, available, that sort of thing. I think we’d need to put a fairly hefty price on them to deter the McGahern clientele, say fifteen hundred pounds. What do you think of that, Lord Powerscourt?’

‘I think it’s rather clever,’ said Powerscourt, smiling back to the young man, ‘but tell me – what happens if you are inundated with potential customers? Suppose thirty or forty come knocking at your doors? What do we do then?’

‘Find a forger perhaps? That would be a good trade, you know. Forge them all over here, send them to America, I don’t think you could be prosecuted there for something done over here. Your forging friend could do very well. Seriously though, I think we wait and see.’

‘I am most grateful for your time and your help, Mr Hudson,’ said Powerscourt, rising to take his leave. ‘Perhaps you could be so kind as to send any news to my London house with a copy to me at the Butler house whose address is here.’ He handed over a small sheet of paper then paused as he was about to open the door and turned back to the art dealer. ‘One last thing, Mr Hudson. Every time I have anything to do with paintings in a professional capacity, the same questions arise. Is this a real Romney? Did Gainsborough actually paint this portrait? That red mess over there, is that really a Tintoretto? You know the question of attribution far better than I. If it comes up, would you be willing to come to Ireland and help me out?’

‘I would be delighted, Lord Powerscourt. After all, they say Ireland is very beautiful at this time of year.’

The gate lodge of Kincarrig House, ancestral home of the Connolly family, recently deprived of the painted records of six of their own ancestors, was set back slightly from the road. On either side the stone walls that marked the outer edge of the demesne seemed to stretch away into infinity. Powerscourt was beginning his investigation here as Kincarrig House was closest to Dublin and the Holyhead boat. He had made his appointment before leaving Markham Square. Then he planned to move further west to Butler’s Court. Powerscourt’s cabby was a cheerful soul, pointing out the places of interest as they went along.

‘This gate lodge now,’ he said, ‘and the arch and the drive here, sure they’re among the finest in Ireland.’

Powerscourt made appreciative noises. He gazed upwards at the Triple Gothic Arch that towered above the road. It was completely useless. All over Ireland, he thought, at the entrance to the Big Houses with their long drives of beech and yew curling away to hide the property from the prying eyes of the public and people of the wrong religion, the owners had built monumental gates of one sort or another. Anglo-Irish mansions were guarded by a strange stone menagerie of lions and unicorns, of falcons and eagles, of hawks and harriers, tigers and kestrels and merlins. Powerscourt had heard stories of a house with a stone dinosaur on guard. The animals were often surrounded by great stone balls, as if, in times of emergency, they might return to life and begin hurling this weighty ammunition at their enemies. Powerscourt remembered his father telling him of one estate belonging to a Lord Mulkerry in County Cork where the demesne walls and the monumental gates became one side of the town square. And on the side of the town square was a large plaque on which was written: ‘Town of Ardhoe, property of Lord Mulkerry’. Badges of ownership, marks of superiority, symbols of arrogance, Powerscourt disliked them intensely. And as his cab rattled along this very long drive he remembered too the prestige that attached to the length of the approaches to the Big House. Less than half a mile and you were virtually going to a peasant’s cabin. Half a mile to a mile, pretty poor, little better than a cottage you’ll find at the end, a mile to a mile and a half, there might be a pillar or two to greet you at the end but nothing much, anything over two miles and respectability is attained at last. Over to his left he could see the sun glittering on a fast-flowing river which must, he suspected, pass the Connolly house to enhance the Connolly view.

The house was Regency with a front of seven bays and a Doric entrance porch with eight pillars. Well-tended grass ran down the slope towards the river. Inside was a magnificent entrance hall with a marble floor that ran the whole length of the front of the house with a dramatic enfilade of six yellow scagliola pillars and dozens and dozens of drawings and etchings and paintings of horses. A huge elk head guarded the doorway. A very small butler greeted Powerscourt, asking him to wait while he found his master.

The architecture of this house and the houses like it whispered a strange language of their own, a language that came back to Powerscourt from years before.

It spoke of parapets, and turreted gateways, of rectangular windows with mullions and astragals under hood-mouldings, of quatrefoil decoration on the parapets, of vaulted undercrofts and great halls, of carved oak chimney pieces and overmantels, of segmental pointed doorways, battlemented and machiolated square towers, of portes cocheres and oriels, of ceilings in ornate Louis Quatorze style with much gilding and well-fed putti in high relief supporting cartouches and trailing swags of flowers and fruit, of entablature enriched with medallions and swags and urns, of halls with screens of Corinthian columns and friezes, of tripods and winged sphinxes, of quoins and keystones, of Imperial staircases and rectangular coffering, of rusticated niches and doorways, of scaglioli columns, of friezes and volutes and many more, stretching out across centuries through hall and drawing room and dining room the length and breadth of the country.

Out in the parks and walkways, many of them by lakes or rivers, were great fountains, houses with obelisks in their grounds, gardens guarded by forts with cannon to fire salutes on family birthdays, conventional orangeries and unconventional casinos, ornate gardens, Japanese gardens, Chinese gardens, Palladian follies, in one case a herd of white deer to mark the exclusivity of the Big House and the Big Garden.

This, Powerscourt thought, was architecture as political statement, an arrogant damn your eyes architectural declaration of superiority. We are the masters here. Don’t even think, any Irish Catholic peering through the trees at the house over the top of the wall, that one day this might be yours. It won’t. And yet, Powerscourt thought, and yet . . . The temples and the churches and all the great palaces of Rome were still standing the day before the barbarians came to town. He wondered if those stone sphinxes that adorned the Ascendancy Big Houses might not have one or two riddles left for their masters, riddles that might rather speak of Descendancy.