Word comes from the West that St Cleran's, the former home of John Huston, is to be opened as a hotel early next year by a Californian group fronted by the former US television talk-show host Merv Griffin.
St Cleran's Manor, which is just outside Craughwell on the way to Loughrea, was Huston's home - and his joy - for 18 years in the 1950s and 1960s. It was in this magical world of the hunting estate, with its manor house, 13th-century tower, trout stream, groom's quarters, stables and steward's cottage, that Huston revelled in the role of benevolent country squire.
It was here, too, and in that already doomed world, that his daughter, Angelica, and his son, Tony (who wrote the fine screen adaptation of Joyce's The Dead for his father), spent most of their childhood.
When Huston bought it from the Land Commission it was virtually derelict, and, as Huston described in his autobiography, An Open Book, it took "a small fortune and the better part of two years to restore".
He set about it with gusto. "Even before the restoration of St Cleran's was finished I began to collect things wherever I went around the world. From Japan I had an entire Japanese bath, with shoji doors and mats, sent over and installed. The bath accommodated up to six bathers, and was wonderful for after hunting."
Art, food, horses
Huston liked fine things - whether it be art, food and drink, horses or women (in no particular order) - and did not stint on any of them. "In the third-floor hallway two Chinese porcelain drum-stools flanked the Red Sitting Room - so called from the colour of its silk wallcoverings . . . There were Chinese porcelain; Etruscan, Magna Grecia and Arrezzo ceramics; and paintings by Juan Gris and Morris Graves . . . "A Bhutan Room contained bronzes and fabrics from that little-known country . . . "My bedroom had a big, canopied four-poster Florentine matrimonial bed, carved with doves and flowers, two Louis XIV leather chairs with brass studs, a 13th-century Greek ikon and a chest of drawers which had originally been used for vestments in a French cathedral."
Of course, the ebullient Huston loved to entertain, and over the years St Cleran's played host to "a constant stream of visitors with famous names - motion-picture stars, writers, musicians and painters . . . I remember with nostalgia the lovely countryside, the horses and the people - those wonderful Irish people who were my neighbours . . . but my neighbours seldom had any idea who these [famous visitors] were. When they did, they were not the least impressed. For them the only truly important thing in the world was the hunt. Hunting was enough."
The same, it might be argued, was true of Huston. Hunting was his passion, and his engagement in the sport reached its apex with his elevation to become Joint Master of the Galway Blazers: "They were 10 of the best years of my life."
"Wonderful haven"
"St Cleran's was a wonderful haven," he wrote. "When I came back from a trip abroad and entered that atmosphere, it was a world apart. The style of life was charming. People dressed for dinner - women in long gowns, men in black ties or even formal attire for members of the hunt: scarlet tailcoats with white silk lapels. It was as beautiful and fantastic as a masquerade. We ate dinner by the light of 50 candles, and in the winter the hearth was always going. This was a lifestyle that had existed for hundreds of years, but by the time I moved to Ireland it was already a dying tradition."
As Huston chronicles, those years could not last. Inflation meant the days of the big house were over. Slowly, his neighbours were forced to sell. "My turn came. I had spent 18 years in St Cleran's, but at last had to give it up. The decision was forced upon me. I sometimes feel that I sold a little bit of my soul when I let St Cleran's go."
Bawdy bards
I cannot say for certain that the news of the more recent sale of St Cleran's has prompted them into action; whatever, that boisterous band of bawdy bards and bardettes who gather under the BAFFLE banner have turned to Huston for inspiration for their latest poetry event. (The Diary introduced you to Loughrea's lewd laureates last year. Founded in 1983 by the habitues of a one-time pub in the town, Bowes Kennedy, BAFFLE is the Bowes Academic Fellowship and Fraternity of Literary Esoterics.)
The theme for this year's open competition is "Advice", based on Huston's deathbed admissions to his grandchildren: I would spend more time with my children,
I would make money before spending it,
I would learn the joys of wine instead of hard liquor,
I would not smoke cigarettes when I had pneumonia,
I would not marry the fifth time.
Like Huston, who had no time for small measures, BAFFLE has expanded this year from a single evening's entertainment to a full, three-day festival this bank holiday weekend (October 24th-26th). The festival will include readings and lectures from such luminaries as Rita Ann Higgins, Michael Hartnett and Dermot Healy.
The highlight, of course, will be the open poetry competition on Saturday night, which will be held in various hostelries. (Details are sketchy, but that's Galway.) Further information is available from Fionnuala McNally, (091) 841 295.
My advice is that we're in for a howl.