will so.â
âYah! Yah! Patsieâs not me da!â sang Cathal, waltzing the length of the drawing-room.
The Dumayâs house stood at the upper end of Blessington Street, a wide, sad, dirty street due north of the Pillar, which crawled up the hill and ended at the railings of a melancholy little park. It had, under the pale bright sky, its own quiet air of dereliction, a street leading nowhere, always full of idling dogs and open doorways. Yet in form it closely resembled the other great Georgian arteries of Dublin, with its noble continuous façade of sombre blackened red brick which seemed to absorb, rather than to be revealed by, the perpetual rainy light. Looked at closely, the bricks of these houses showed in fact a variety of colours, some purplish red, some yellowish grey, all glued together by a jelly of filth to form a uniform organic surface rather like the scales of a fish, the basic material of Dublin, a city conjured from the earth all in one piece by some tousled Dido. Iron railings guarded deep cave-like areas where dandelions and young saplings flourished, and a few steps led up to each front door, above which was a graceful semicircular fanlight. The ornate pillars which flanked the doors, battered and flattened by time, had the air of Grecian antiquities. The windows alone were, the length of the street, handsome and elegant as upon their first day.
The doors varied. They were serious affairs, solid and many-panelled, and if well painted and provided with handsome knockers and a brass plate or two could sufficiently announce, even here, the residences of substantial citizens, well-bred reticent professional men. But by now many of the doors in the street were broken-down, their paint peeling off, chequered with mysterious holes, and lacking their knockers so that visitors had to shout through the letter-box. Various strange activities had meanwhile developed in the basements, such as a bicycle shop in one, a carpenterâs workshop in another, and in one area a man sat all day mending cane chairs. While through grimy glass the fanlights displayed, besides the usual gaudy little figure of Christ the King, the cards of hairdressers and of chimney sweeps. At the end of the street there was even a house which had a sweet shop on the ground floor.
Yet the street had a spirit above these matters and in the evening when the lamp-lighter was just going his rounds, or on certain soft days when the sun shone through cloud, making everything vivid and exact as in a print, the street looked beautiful, with that particular sad, resigned, orderly beauty of Dublin. Those squared, cliff-like, blackened Dublin streets, stretching on and on, still had some inkling of perfection, even though the terraces sometimes looked more like warehouses, even had become warehouses, or in the poorer streets had gaping holes for windows and doors. Even then they seemed to know that they represented, they still in their darkened condition were, the most beautiful dwellings which the human race had ever invented.
The Dumaysâ house was not the finest in the street, nor was it the shabbiest. The door had been painted dark green some six years ago. It had a large brass knocker in the form of a wreath which the servant Jinny, a single girl of advancing years, who was paid eight shillings a week and lived in some nearby tenements affectionately called âthe little hellâ, occasionally polished when the matter came into her mind. On entering the house the first impression was of an ecclesiastical darkness and of the smell referred to by Mrs Chase-White. The ecclesiastical air was contributed by a stained-glass window on the half-landing which was in fact inside a lavatory, the door of which, when untenanted, stood always open. This place may also have accounted for the smell. The upper landing, which was long and lit by a skylight, was divided into two, for no very clear reason, by a faintly jangling bead curtain;
âYah! Yah! Patsieâs not me da!â sang Cathal, waltzing the length of the drawing-room.
The Dumayâs house stood at the upper end of Blessington Street, a wide, sad, dirty street due north of the Pillar, which crawled up the hill and ended at the railings of a melancholy little park. It had, under the pale bright sky, its own quiet air of dereliction, a street leading nowhere, always full of idling dogs and open doorways. Yet in form it closely resembled the other great Georgian arteries of Dublin, with its noble continuous façade of sombre blackened red brick which seemed to absorb, rather than to be revealed by, the perpetual rainy light. Looked at closely, the bricks of these houses showed in fact a variety of colours, some purplish red, some yellowish grey, all glued together by a jelly of filth to form a uniform organic surface rather like the scales of a fish, the basic material of Dublin, a city conjured from the earth all in one piece by some tousled Dido. Iron railings guarded deep cave-like areas where dandelions and young saplings flourished, and a few steps led up to each front door, above which was a graceful semicircular fanlight. The ornate pillars which flanked the doors, battered and flattened by time, had the air of Grecian antiquities. The windows alone were, the length of the street, handsome and elegant as upon their first day.
The doors varied. They were serious affairs, solid and many-panelled, and if well painted and provided with handsome knockers and a brass plate or two could sufficiently announce, even here, the residences of substantial citizens, well-bred reticent professional men. But by now many of the doors in the street were broken-down, their paint peeling off, chequered with mysterious holes, and lacking their knockers so that visitors had to shout through the letter-box. Various strange activities had meanwhile developed in the basements, such as a bicycle shop in one, a carpenterâs workshop in another, and in one area a man sat all day mending cane chairs. While through grimy glass the fanlights displayed, besides the usual gaudy little figure of Christ the King, the cards of hairdressers and of chimney sweeps. At the end of the street there was even a house which had a sweet shop on the ground floor.
Yet the street had a spirit above these matters and in the evening when the lamp-lighter was just going his rounds, or on certain soft days when the sun shone through cloud, making everything vivid and exact as in a print, the street looked beautiful, with that particular sad, resigned, orderly beauty of Dublin. Those squared, cliff-like, blackened Dublin streets, stretching on and on, still had some inkling of perfection, even though the terraces sometimes looked more like warehouses, even had become warehouses, or in the poorer streets had gaping holes for windows and doors. Even then they seemed to know that they represented, they still in their darkened condition were, the most beautiful dwellings which the human race had ever invented.
The Dumaysâ house was not the finest in the street, nor was it the shabbiest. The door had been painted dark green some six years ago. It had a large brass knocker in the form of a wreath which the servant Jinny, a single girl of advancing years, who was paid eight shillings a week and lived in some nearby tenements affectionately called âthe little hellâ, occasionally polished when the matter came into her mind. On entering the house the first impression was of an ecclesiastical darkness and of the smell referred to by Mrs Chase-White. The ecclesiastical air was contributed by a stained-glass window on the half-landing which was in fact inside a lavatory, the door of which, when untenanted, stood always open. This place may also have accounted for the smell. The upper landing, which was long and lit by a skylight, was divided into two, for no very clear reason, by a faintly jangling bead curtain;
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