Irish Memories :: CHAPTER XVII LETTERS FROM ROSS

CHAPTER XVII LETTERS FROM ROSS

Taking the publication of “An Irish Cousin” as the beginning of our literary work, its next development was a series of short articles on Irish subjects that Martin wrote, single-handed, for the World.

The sap was beginning to run up; more and more things began with her to throw themselves, almost unconsciously, into phrases and forms. Her thoughts blossomed in the fit words, as the life in the tree breaks in leaves. Everything appealed to her in this new life at Ross, which was the old, and while she weeded the flower-beds in the garden, or painted doors in the house, or drove her mother for long miles on the outside car, she was meditating, and phrase-making, and formulating her impressions. These, presently, passing through her letters to me, as through a filter, developed into an article, which was primarily inspired by the death of one of the older retainers of Ross.

Mr. Edmund Yates then had the World at his feet, having created it not very many years before, and that he possessed the flair for good work was evident in the enthusiasm for her writing that, from the first, he did not attempt to conceal from Martin.

If, in things literary, the buyer would forget his traditional pose of saying “it is naught,” and would woo the thirsty, tremulous soul of the artist with appreciation, the bargain would not often work out to his disadvantage. Edmund Yates had the courage of his opinions, and the admiration that he was too generous to withhold more than counterbalanced the minuteness of the cheque that came from his cashier.

The first of these articles, “A Delegate of the National League,” appeared in July, 1889, and was received by our friends with mingled emotions. It is my mature conviction that they were horrified by its want of levity. That “a Shocker” should preach, that “one of the girls” should discourse on what was respectfully summarised by a young lady of my acquaintance as “Deep subjects of Life and Death,” was not quite what anyone enjoyed. Mrs. H. Ward’s book, “Robert Elsmere,” had just appeared; it was considered to be necessary to read it, and to talk intellectually about it, and it was found wearing that Martin should also be among the Prophets, and should write what one of her cousins called “Potted Carlyle.” None the less, she followed up “The Delegate,” in a month or two, with another article in the same vein, entitled “Cheops in Connemara.” In some of her letters of this period she speaks of these articles.

“I weed the garden a good deal,” she says, “and give meat to my household, and I got a sort of grip of the Education article to-day, and hope it may continue. But I am a fraud in the way of writing. I heap together descriptions, with a few carefully constructed moralities interspersed, and hide behind them, so that no one shall discern my ignorance and hesitation.

“I am ploughing along at an article, and have a most ponderous notion in my head for another about the poor women of the West of Ireland, their lives, their training, their characters, all with a view as to whether they would be the better for having votes, or would give a better or worse vote than the men. I feel overwhelmed and inadequate. I think I write worse every time I try” (which was obviously absurd).

“Mama has had a most kind letter from Sir William Gregory. He has many literary friends and so has Augusta” (Lady Gregory), “and he says they will both do their best for The Shocker, and that he hopes his conscience will allow him to praise it with trumpets and shawms. Poor Mama required a little bucking up after the profound gloom in which she was plunged by a letter from her oldest ally, Mrs. X., saying she thought the ‘Delegate’ was ‘high-flown and verbose’—‘merely, of course, the faults of young writing,’ says Mrs. X. Mama was absolutely staggered, and has gone about saying at intervals, ‘Knee-buckles to a Highlander!’ by which she means to express her glorious contempt for Mrs. X.’s opinion of the classics.”

The “ponderous notion” of which she spoke eventually developed into an article which she called “In Sickness and in Health.” It first appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine, and we reprinted it in “Some Irish Yesterdays.” It is, I think, a very delightful example of a class of writing in which she seems to me to be unequalled.

“Erin, the tear and the smile in thine eye,”

is a line that is entirely applicable to her, and to her outlook on the ways of Ross and its people. She loved them and she laughed at them, and even though she could hold Ross at arm’s length, to analyse, and to philosophise, and to make literature of it and of its happenings, she took it back to her heart again, and forgave what she could not approve, for no better reason than that she loved it.

I am aware that the prosperity of a letter, as of a jest, often lies in the ear of him that hears, or reads. Nevertheless I propose here and now to give a few extracts from her Ross letters. None of them have any connection with each other, or with anything else in particular, and anyone who fears to find them irrelevant or frivolous may, like Francie Fitzpatrick (when she eluded Master Whitty) “give a defiant skip and pass on.”

V. F. M. to E. Œ. S. (Ross, 1895.)

“Nurse B. gave, yesterday, a fine example of using the feminine for animals to imply cunning.

“‘Didn’t a big rat walk in the lardher windy, and me lookin’ at her this ways, through the door, an’ she took a bit o’ bacon to dhrag it with her. She was that long’ (indicating as far as her elbow), ‘an’ not that high!’ (measuring half her little finger). ‘Faith, Bridgie dhrove her the way she came!’

“Bridgie is of undaunted courage, runs after rats to slay them, and fears ‘neither God nor devil, like the Black Prosbitarians.’ She is a Topsy, lies and steals and idles, and is as clever as she can be. Could you but see her with a pink bow in her cap, and creaking Sunday boots, and her flaming orange hair and red eyes you would not be the better of it. She is fifteen, and for some mysterious reason, unknown to myself, I like her.... I am working at an article, badly. I am very stupid, and not the least clever, except at mending blinds, and the pump. I am tired of turning away my eyes from iniquity that I cannot rectify, of trying to get the servants up in the morning, of many things, but let me be thankful, I have had the kitchen whitewashed. I laugh foolishly when I think of the Herculaneum and Pompeii episode from which the cat and three kittens barely escaped with their lives. The cat, being in labour, selected as her refuge the old oven in the corner of the kitchen, a bricked cavern, warm, lofty, and secluded. There, among bottles, rags, and other concealments of Bridgie’s, she nourished and brought up her young in great calm, till the day that Andy set to work at the kitchen chimney. No one knew that the old oven had a special flue of its own, and it was down this flue that the soot elected to come. I was fortunately pervading space that day, and came in time to see a dense black cloud issuing from the oven’s mouth into the kitchen. I yelled to a vague assembly of Bridgets in the servants’ hall, all of whom were sufficiently dirty to bear a little more without injury, and having rushed into the gloom they promptly slammed the door on the unfortunate family inside, on whom then rained without intermission, soot, bricks, and jackdaws’ nests. Having with difficulty got the door open again, the party was disinterred, quite unhurt, but black, and more entirely mortified than anything you can imagine. For the rest of the day ‘Jubilee’ cleaned herself and her children in the coldest parts of the house, with ostentatious fury. She was offered the top turf-box on the back stairs, but instantly refused, and finally settled herself in a stone compartment of the wine-cellar; a top berth this time, you bet!”

V. F. M. to E. Œ. S. (Ross, 1901.)

“We did not achieve church this morning without some difficulty. I went round to the yard after breakfast, to see that things were en train, and was informed by Rickeen that he had not fed the grey pony, as he had found a weazel in the oats, ‘and sure there’s some kind of a pizen in thim.’ Being unable to combat this statement, I desired that the pony should be given hay. This was done, but at the last moment, just before she was being put into the shafts, she ‘sthripped a shoe.’ Mama’s old pony, Killola, was again a little lame—nothing for it but the monster Daisy, browsing in the lawn with her foal. It was then 10.45. I had on a voile skirt of stupendous length, with a floating train, my best gloves and other Sunday trappings, none the less must I help Rick to harness Daisy. Then the trouble was to shut her foal into the barn. In the barn was already immured the donkey, filled with one fierce determination to flee over to the White Field, where was Darcy’s donkey. I had to hold Daisy, and combat her maternal instincts, and endure her ceaseless shriekings; I also had to head off the donkey, which burst from the barn, with gallopings and capers, while Rickeen stuffed in the foal, who, like its mother, was shrieking at the top of its voice. I also was weak with laughing, as Rick’s language, both English and Irish, was terrific, and the donkey very ridiculous. Rick finally flailed it into what he called ‘the pig-shtyle,’ with many fervent ‘Hona-mig-a-dhiouls’ (Rick always throws in ‘mig,’ for pure intensity and rhythm). Then—(‘musha, the Lord save thim that’s in a hurry’)—the harness had to be torn off the grey, in the loose box, ‘for fear would she rub the collar agin the Major’ (which is what he calls the manger). Then we pitched Mama on to the car and got off. Daisy, almost invisible under her buffalo mane, as usual went the pace, and we got in at the First Lesson, and all was well.”

V. F. M. to E. Œ. S. (Ross.)

“I had a long walk on Thursday in search of turf, to burn with logs. A sunset, that was boiling up orange steam on to grey clouds, kept turning me round all the way to Esker. At the turn to Pribaun I heard a frightful ruction going on. Two men in a cart using awful language at the tops of their voices, and Pat Lydon, on the fence, giving it back to them, asserting with unnecessary invocations, that there was nothing he hated like ‘thim liars.’ The men drove on as I came up, still chewing the last mouthful of curses as they passed, and Pat came forward with his hat off and the sweetest smile.

“‘What was all that about?’ said I.

“‘Oh, thim was just tellin’ me the price o’ pigs in Ochtherard yesterday.’ (This in a tone of the barest interest.) ‘And how’s Mama? Divil a one in the counthry’s gettin’ fat, only Mama!’ This was, of course, the highest compliment, and I recognised that I was expected to enquire no more into the matter of the price of pigs. He then advised me to go to Jimmy X. (the song-maker) for turf, and I found him at Esker, dreamily contemplating an immense and haggard-looking sow, on whom, no doubt, he was composing a sonnet. He assured me that he would sell Mama a rick of turf. I asked how much was in the rick.

“‘Well, indeed Miss, of that matter I am quite ignorant, but Jimmy Darcy can value it—(stand in off the road for fear anyone would hear us!)’ (Then in a decorous whisper) ‘But him and me is not very great since he summonsed me little girl for pullin’ grass in the Wood of Annagh——’

“There followed much more, in a small and deprecating voice, which, when told to Jim Darcy, he laughed to scorn.

“‘There’s not a basket, no, nor a sod he doesn’t know that’s in that rick!’

“The end of it was that the two Jimmys wrangled down in the Bog of Pullagh the greater part of the next day, and nothing more than that has been accomplished.

“Poor old Kitty has been in trouble. I have not time now to give you the particulars, but will only note her account of the singular effects of remorse upon her, as unfolded to me by her, subsequent to the interview between her and her accuser and Katie.

“‘Faith the hair is dhroppin’ out o’ me head, and the skin rollin’ off the soles o’ me feet, with the frettin’. Whin I heard what Mrs. Currey said, I went back to that woman above, an’ she in her bed. I dhragged her from the bed,’ (sob) ‘an’ she shweatin,’ (sob) ‘an’ I brought her down to Mrs. Currey at the Big House——’

“I have been doctoring Honor Joyce up in Doone for some days. She has had agonising pain, which the poor creature bore like a Trojan. I asked her to describe it, and she said feebly,

“‘I couldn’t give ye any patthern of it indeed, but it’s like in me side as a pairson ’d be polishin’ a boot, and he with a brush in his hand.’ Which was indeed enlightening. Such a house! One little room, with some boards nailed together for a bed, in which was hay with blankets over it; a goat was tethered a few feet away, and while I was putting the mustard-leaf on, there came suddenly, and apparently from the bed itself, ‘a cry so jubilant, so strange,’ that indicated that somewhere under the bed a hen had laid an egg.

“‘God bless her!’ says Honor, faintly.

“Next I heard a choking cough in the heart of the blankets. It was a sick boy, huddled in there with his mother—quite invisible—buried in the bedclothes, like a dog.... A beautiful day yesterday, fine and clear throughout. To-day the storm stormeth as usual, and the white mist people are rushing after each other across the lawn, sure sign of hopeless wet. Poor Michael (an old tenant) died on Thursday night—a very gallant, quiet end, conscious and calm. His daughter did not mean to say anything remarkable when she told me that he died ‘as quiet, now as quiet as a little fish’; but those were her words. I went up there to see his old wife, and coming into a house black with people, was suddenly confronted with Michael’s body, laid out in the kitchen. His son, three parts drunk, advanced and delivered a loud, horrible harangue on Michael and the Martin family. The people sat like owls, listening, and we retired into a room where were whisky bottles galore, and the cream of the company; men from Galway, respectably drunk, and magnificent in speech.... The funeral yesterday to which I went (Michael was one of our oldest and most faithful friends) was only a shade less horrifying. At all events the pale, tranced face was hidden, and the living people looked less brutal without that terrific, purified presence——”

One other picture, of about the same period, may be given, and in connection with these experiences two things may be remembered. That they happened more than twenty years ago; also, that among these people, primitive, and proud, tenacious of conventions, and faithful to their dead, a want of hospitality at a funeral implied a want of respect for the one who had left them.

Unfortunately, it has not even yet been learnt that hospitality is not necessarily synonymous with whisky.

V. F. M. to E. Œ. S. (Ross, 1895.)

“William L.’s wife died suddenly, having had a dead baby, two days ago, and was buried yesterday, up at the Chapel on the Hill. I went to the back gate and walked with the funeral from there. It was an extraordinary scene. The people who had relations buried there, roared and howled on the graves, and round the grave where Mrs. L. was being buried, there was a perpetual whining and moaning, awfully like the tuning of fiddles in an orchestra. Drunken men staggered about; one or two smart relations from Galway flaunted to and fro in their best clothes, occasionally crossing themselves, and three keeners knelt together inside the inmost ring by the grave, with their hands locked, rocking, and crying into each other’s hoods, three awful witches, telling each other the full horrors that the other people were not competent to understand. There was no priest, but Mrs. L.’s brother read a kind of Litany, very like ours, at top speed, and all the people answered. Every Saint in the calendar was called on to save her and to protect her, and there poor William stood, with his head down, and his hat over his eyes. It was impressive, very, and the view was so fresh and clean and delightful from that height. The thump of the clods and stones on the coffin was a sound that made one shudder, and all the people keened and cried at it.... There have been many enquiries for you since I came home. Rickeen thinks he never seen the like of a lady like you that would have ‘that undherstandin’ of a man’s work; and didn’t I see her put her hand to thim palings and lep over them! Faith I thought there was no ladies could be as soople as our own till I seen her. But indeed, the both o’ yee proved very bad that yee didn’t get marri’d, and all the places yee were in!’”

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