J.P. Donleavy by J.P. Donleavy

Author:J.P. Donleavy [J. P. Donleavy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781843512103
Publisher: The Lilliput Press
Published: 2011-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

1995

Pasha of Heartbreak House

Having lived now a quarter of a century in a big country house, I am told that I have an unquenchable obsession about the aristocratic upper classes and praise the Royal Family too much. I have even been accused of tweediness and then in this very highly regarded newspaper the Telegraph, it was made known in an obituary of a recently deceased Irish author who, while he lived, was quoted as regarding me as a poseur. But worse, a proper English gent watching me on TV lead out the Westmeath Hunt from this present mansion screamed out in the presence of two of my good friends, ‘That man is a raving snob.’

Now then. Much truth may seem to ring forth from all this, as these days the image is the reality. However, as an American not badly born and bred, this reputation really stems from attempting to be mannerly and nice to everybody. And as I came to Europe to be educated and later to live, the only people with time to waste in my company and at the same time willing to be pleasant to me have been persons who have had private incomes from inherited wealth which has often brought, through no fault of theirs, a title with it and condemned them to living in large castles and massive country houses located within their splendidly spacious domains. Thus my landed gentry associations and my own adaptation to this way of life have led to the writing of novels such as The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman and The Onion Eaters which fairly echo and revel in this motif. And even an odd passage in The Ginger Man has an impoverished Sebastian Dangerfield swearing revenge by imagining that one day he will be back on his great estate where he belongs and will have his game keepers drive away his erstwhile wife, who having taunted and deserted him in poverty now wants to return to him with her babe in arms.

Now all that said, let me please say this. There is no question whatever attached to the fact that I have, through no grievous fault of social climbing, but strictly acquired for professional privacy, ended up myself rattling around in a big old house. The desperate difference being that I am now doing it alone. And more than occasionally teetering over an abyss of solitude such as dries up the soul, which in its weightless frailty nearly vanishes. As an antidote I have a closet full of plus twos and threes and a whole library of walking sticks and sometimes do affect the posture of the country gent, marching out over the parklands. The walking sticks, I hasten to add, carved by my own hand out of the hedgerows. Because I can more often be seen crossing the fields with pick axe, crange and slash hook. But publicized images last. And it is now far too late to allay such

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