The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [70]
Isobel wrote that her aunt, Molly Jeavons – as a rule far from an authority on such matters – had lent her a book about Castlemallock, its original owner, a Lord Chief Justice (whose earldom had been raised to a marquisate for supporting the Union) having been a distant connexion of the Ardglass family. His heir – better known as Hercules Mallock, friend of d’Orsay and Lady Blessington – had sold the place to a rich linen manufacturer, who had pulled down the palladian mansion and built this neo-gothic castle. The second Lord Castlemallock died unmarried, at a great age, in Lisbon, leaving little or nothing to the great-nephew who inherited the title, father or grandfather of the Castlemallock who had run away with Dicky Umfraville’s second wife. Like other houses of similar size throughout this region, Castlemallock, too large and inconvenient, had lain untenanted for twenty or thirty years before its requisitioning. The book also quoted Byron’s letter (a fragment only, said to be of doubtful authenticity) written to Caroline Lamb who had visited the house when exiled from England by her family on his account. Isobel had copied this out for me:
‘... even though the diversions of Castlemallock may exceed those of Lismore, I perceive you are ignorant of one matter – that he to whose Labours you appear not insensible was once known to your humble servant by the chaste waters of the Cam. Moderate, therefore, your talent for novel writing, My dear Caro, or at least spare me an account of his protestations of affection & recollect that your host’s namesake preferred Hylas to the Nymphs. Learn, too, that the theme of assignations in romantick groves palls on a man with a cold & quinsy & a digestion that lately suffered the torment of supper at L d Sleaford’s…’
This glade in the park at Castlemallock was still known as ‘Lady Caro’s Dingle’, and thought of a Byronic interlude here certainly added charm to grounds not greatly altered at the time of the rebuilding of the house. An air of thwarted passion could be well imagined to haunt these grass-grown paths, weedy lawns and ornamental pools, where moss-covered fountains no longer played. However, such memories were not in themselves sufficient to make the place an acceptable billet. At Castlemallock I knew despair. The proliferating responsibilities of an infantry officer, simple in themselves, yet, if properly carried out, formidable in their minutiae, impose a strain in wartime even on those to whom they are a lifelong professional habit; the excruciating boredom of exclusively male society is particularly irksome in areas at once remote from war, yet oppressed by war conditions. Like a million others, I missed my wife, wearied of the officers and men round me, grew to loathe a post wanting even the consolation that one was required to be brave. Castlemallock lacked the warmth of a regiment, gave none of the sense of belonging to an army that exists in any properly commanded unit or formation. Here was only cursing, quarrelling, complaining, inglorious officers of the instructional and administrative staff, Other Ranks – except for Gwatkin’s company – of low medical category. Here, indeed, was the negation of Lyautey’s ideal, though food enough for the military resignation of Vigny.
However, there was an undoubted aptness in this sham fortress, monument to a tasteless, half-baked romanticism, becoming now, in truth, a military stronghold, its stone walls and vaulted ceilings echoing at last to the clatter of arms and oaths of soldiery. It was as if its perpetrators had re-created the tedium, as well as the architecture of mediaeval times. At fourteenth-century Stourwater (which had once caused Isobel to recall the Morte d’Arthur), Sir Magnus Donners was far less a castellan than the Castlemallock commandant, a grey-faced Regular, recovering from