ROVING WRITERS: John Banville curls up with a book in one of Ireland's great country house hotels - for a working holiday in 'refreshingly unused' Donegal
A friend on holiday in France sends me a postcard. "Here for two weeks," he writes. "One, with good behaviour." I know what he means. I have always found holidays a trial. Why disrupt the orderly rhythms of life to go off for a fortnight and be rained on in some dreary seaside resort or, worse, should one venture abroad, to be baked in inescapable heat by day and sucked dry by mosquitoes at night? Besides, when one is on holiday there is either nothing or too much to do. As Madame de Staël wearily remarked of travelling, "What I see bores me, what I don't see worries me." Stick to one's last, I say, and eschew the dubious pleasures of "a relaxing break". Work is more fun than fun.
However, an advantage of being a literary hack, and there are not many, is that one can be busily at work while engaged in what most people consider a leisure activity. You may think when you see me curled up with a good book that I am just curled up with a good book, but in fact I am gathering material for yet another consideration of the enduring legacy of Joyce's Ulysses or a quick overview of the latest in Eastern European postmodernist fiction.
A few years ago I happily killed two hot weeks in Provençe with the help of J.W. Burrow's The Crisis of Reason: European Thought 1848-1914, of which I had been commissioned to do a four thousand-word notice. Now, there was a beaker full of the warm south.
For me, then, pack my bags means pack my books, and when recently a couple of American friends here on a visit invited me to accompany them on a short trip to the far north-west - of Ireland, that is - I welcomed the opportunity to get some serious reading done.
We set out from Dublin in unseasonably fine weather. This was a worry. It was summer, after all, so I had been safely confident of overcast skies, frequent rain, perhaps even a good strong nor'westerly. The farther away from Dublin we travelled, however, the more gaily the sun shone, and as the dry-stone walls began appearing, and still the skies were blue, I was becoming seriously concerned that I might have no excuse on this trip to avoid sightseeing or going out for "walks". One can always rely on the Atlantic, though, and by the time we crossed into Donegal the clouds, albeit white ones, were building up nicely from the west. A turf fire, a glass of wine, and that fat proof copy of the new Borges biography still in its FedEx envelope in my suitcase - what better way to spend an evening in early summer?
We had booked - le mot juste - into St Ernan's, one of my favourite hotels anywhere. It is a fine old stone mansion standing on a tiny wooded island a few miles outside Donegal town. The history of this Big House is an exceptionally happy one. It was built in the 1820s by John Hamilton, an orphan who on coming of age had inherited a substantial fortune and an estate of 45,000 acres. He was a good landlord - indeed, better than good. To provide work for his tenants he laid roads throughout the estate, built a mill, and founded a school which started with seven pupils and within 18 months had a thousand. When famine threatened the area, he spent £1,000 on a relief fund to import grain and potatoes.
St Ernan's island is a few hundred yards offshore, and in those early days was separated from the mainland by a fast-flowing current. Hamilton set to building a causeway, the local workers giving their labour free as a gesture of gratitude for his diligence as a landlord. The project proved a difficult feat of engineering, but after a number of failed attempts the link was made. The causeway, a fine, solid structure, still stands, a monument to a good man and a reminder that Ireland's history in the 19th century is not all a record of injustice, deprivation and violence.
After Hamilton's death in 1884, the house passed through various hands. For 30 years up to 1983 it was a retirement home for Church of Ireland clergymen, the lucky old dogs. Then it was a restaurant and guesthouse, until the present owners, Brian and Carmel O'Dowd, took it over and restored it to its original character and turned it into a country house hotel. One must beware being fanciful about old houses, but it is hard not to think that the atmosphere of St Ernan's is at least in part a testament to its tranquil history.
Sitting at evening in the great bay window of the drawing room - yes, there is a turf fire, yes, there is a glass of wine - looking out on the tide washing in over the tawny sands of the estuary, one dares to believe, however briefly, that the world is not entirely foul, at least not everywhere, and not all the time.
I think of Donegal as the great undiscovered county, a notion at which Donegallers will snort - "Typical Dublin!" - but to my eyes there is something about the landscape and the light up here that is refreshingly unused. Few places nowadays in our trodden-on surroundings retain a sense of authenticity as does this north-west corner of the island.
Dragged away from the page, whingeing in weak protest, I drive up to Glenveagh National Park, where the ochre hills have an otherworldly aspect, as if they were the bumps and hollows of a distant planet uncannily similar to earth, and Glenveagh Castle on its plum-blue lake is a 19th-century Gothic folly of such architectural hideousness it is almost handsome.
As we drive home - St Ernan's is "home" already - the Blue Stacks loom in the windscreen like something dreamed. In Killybegs there is fish-and-chips, with the inevitable helping of coleslaw on the side. Along the coast road the gorse glows in the evening's raked sunlight and the hedges are white with bursts of hawthorn. And is that a fog, the reader's friend, coming in over the estuary?
John Banville travelled to Donegal as part of a summer series, in which Irish Times writers turn tourists in their own land. Next week: Donald Clarke goes shark fishing in Clew Bay
WHEN IN DONEGAL
St Ernan's (074-9721065, www.sainternans.com) is near Donegal town, and costs from €140 per person per night. Nearby Coxtown Manor (074-9734575, www.coxtownmanor.com), known for its Belgian-Irish cuisine, costs from €45 for B&B.
For more information on Glenveagh National Park, north Donegal, see www.dun-na-ngall.com/glenv.html.
Donegal Equestrian Holidays (071-9841288, www.donegalequestrianholidays.com), based in Bundoran, takes riders across a landscape that changes from sandy beaches, to cool forests, to bogland.
Rossnowlagh Beach is a beautiful spot for a walk, and has an abundance of what surfers call "world-class waves". Also in Bundoran are the Aqua Mara Seaweed Baths (071-9841172, www.waterworldbundoran.com).
The Donegal Craft Village (Ballyshannon Road, Donegal Town) is a cluster of units rented by professionals in a number of crafts, including metalwork, batik, sculpture and ceramics.
For more information on holidays in
Ireland, see www.ireland.ie.
Conor Goodman