PENELOPE'S IRISH EXPERIENCES
by Kate Douglas Wiggin.
Published 1901.
To my first Irish friend, Jane Barlow.
Contents.
Part First--Leinster.
I. We emulate the Rollo books.
II. Irish itineraries.
III. We sight a derelict.
IV. Enter Benella Dusenberry.
V. The Wearing of the Green.
VI. Dublin, then and now.
Part Second--Munster.
VII. A tour and a detour.
VIII. Romance and reality.
IX. The light of other days.
X. The belles of Shandon.
XI. 'The rale thing.'
XII. Life at Knockarney House.
XIII. 'O! the sound of the Kerry dancin'.'
XIV. 'Mrs. Mullarkey's iligant locks.'
XV. Penelope weaves a web.
XVI. Salemina has her chance.
Part Third--Ulster.
XVII. The glens of Antrim.
XVIII. Limavady love-letters.
XIX. 'In ould Donegal.'
XX. We evict a tenant.
XXI. Lachrymae Hibernicae.
Part Fourth--Connaught.
XXII. The weeping west.
XXIII. Beams and motes.
XXIV. Humours of the road.
XXV. The wee folk.
Part Fifth--Royal Meath.
XXVI. Ireland's gold.
XXVII. The three chatelaines of Devorgilla.
XXVIII. Round towers and reflections.
XXIX. Aunt David's garden.
XXX. The quest of the fair strangers.
XXXI. Good-bye, dark Rosaleen!
XXXII. 'As the sunflower turns.'
Part First--Leinster.
Chapter I. We emulate the Rollo books.
'Sure a terrible time I was out o' the way,
Over the sea, over the sea,
Till I come to Ireland one sunny day,--
Betther for me, betther for me:
The first time me fut got the feel o' the ground
I was strollin' along in an Irish city
That hasn't its aquil the world around
For the air that is sweet an' the girls that are pretty.'
--Moira O'Neill.
Dublin, O'Carolan's Private Hotel.
It is the most absurd thing in the world that Salemina, Francesca, and I
should be in Ireland together.
That any three spinsters should be fellow-travellers is not in itself
extraordinary, and so our former journeyings in England and Scotland
could hardly be described as eccentric in any way; but now that I am
a matron and Francesca is shortly to be married, it is odd, to say the
least, to see us cosily ensconced in a private sitting-room of a Dublin
hotel, the table laid for three, and not a vestige of a man anywhere to
be seen. Where, one might ask, if he knew the antecedent circumstances,
are Miss Hamilton's American spouse and Miss Monroe's Scottish lover?
Francesca had passed most of the winter in Scotland. Her indulgent
parent had given his consent to her marriage with a Scotsman, but
insisted that she take a year to make up her mind as to which particular
one. Memories of her past flirtations, divagations, plans for a life of
single blessedness, all conspired to make him incredulous, and the loyal
Salemina, feeling some responsibility in the matter, had elected to
remain by Francesca's side during the time when her affections were
supposed to be crystallising into some permanent form.
It was natural enough that my husband and I should spend the first
summer of our married life abroad, for we had been accustomed to do this
before we met, a period that we always allude to as the Dark Ages; but
no sooner had we arrived in Edinburgh, and no sooner had my husband
persuaded our two friends to join us in a long, delicious Irish holiday,
than he was compelled to return to America for a month or so.
I think you must number among your acquaintances such a man as Mr.
William Beresford, whose wife I have the honour to be. Physically the
type is vigorous, or has the appearance and gives the impression of
being vigorous, because it has never the time to be otherwise, since
it is always engaged in nursing its ailing or decrepit relatives.
Intellectually it is full of vitality; any mind grows when it is
exercised, and the brain that has to settle all its own affairs and all
the affairs of its friends and acquaintances could never lack energy.
Spiritually it is almost too good for earth, and any woman who lives in
the house with it has moments of despondency and self-chastisement,
in which she fears that heaven may prove all too small to contain the
perfect being and its unregenerate family as well.
Financially it has at least a moderate bank account; that is, it
is never penniless, indeed it can never afford to be, because it is
peremptory that it should possess funds in order to disburse them to
needier brothers. There is never an hour when Mr. William Beresford is
not signing notes and bonds and drafts for less fortunate men; giving
small loans just to 'help a fellow over a hard place'; educating
friends' children, starting them in business, or securing appointments
for them. The widow and the fatherless have worn such an obvious path to
his office and residence that no bereaved person could possibly lose
his way, and as a matter of fact no one of them ever does. This special
journey of his to America has been made necessary because, first, his
cousin's widow has been defrauded of a large sum by her man of business;
and second, his college chum and dearest friend has just died in Chicago
after appointing him executor of his estate and guardian of his only
child. The wording of the will is, 'as a sacred charge and with full
power.' Incidentally, as it were, one of his junior partners has been
ordered a long sea voyage, and another has to go somewhere for mud
baths. The junior partners were my idea, and were suggested solely that
their senior might be left more or less free from business care, but
it was impossible that Willie should have selected sound, robust
partners--his tastes do not incline him in the direction of selfish
ease; accordingly he chose two delightful, estimable, frail gentlemen
who needed comfortable incomes in conjunction with light duties.
I am railing at my husband for all this, but I love him for it just the
same, and it shows why the table is laid for three.
“Salemina,” I said, extending my slipper toe to the glowing peat, which
by extraordinary effort had been brought up from the hotel kitchen, as a
bit of local colour, “it is ridiculous that we three women should be in
Ireland together; it's the sort of thing that happens in a book, and of
which we say that it could never occur in real life. Three persons do
not spend successive seasons in England, Scotland and Ireland unless
they are writing an Itinerary of the British Isles. The situation is
possible, certainly, but it isn't simple, or natural, or probable. We
are behaving precisely like characters in fiction, who, having been
popular in the first volume, are exploited again and again until their
popularity wanes. We are like the Trotty books or the Elsie Dinmore
series. England was our first volume, Scotland our second, and here we
are, if you please, about to live a third volume in Ireland. We fall in
love, we marry and are given in marriage, we promote and take part
in international alliances, but when the curtain goes up again, our
accumulations, acquisitions--whatever you choose to call
them--have disappeared. We are not to the superficial eye the
spinster-philanthropist, the bride to be, the wife of a year; we are
the same old Salemina, Francesca and Penelope. It is so dramatic that my
husband should be called to America; as a woman I miss him and need him;
as a character I am much better single. I don't suppose publishers like
married heroines any more than managers like married leading ladies.
Then how entirely proper it is that Ronald Macdonald cannot leave his
new parish in the Highlands. The one, my husband, belongs to the first
volume; Francesca's lover to the second; and good gracious, Salemina,
don't you see the inference?”
“I may be dull,” she replied, “but I confess I do not.”
“We are three?”
“Who is three?”
“That is not good English, but I repeat with different emphasis WE are
three. I fell in love in England, Francesca fell in love in Scotland-”
And here I paused, watching the blush mount rosily to Salemina's grey
hair; pink is very becoming to grey, and that, we always say, accounts
more satisfactorily for Salemina's frequent blushes than her modesty,
which is about of the usual sort.
“Your argument is interesting, and even ingenious,” she replied, “but
I fail to see my responsibility. If you persist in thinking of me as
a character in fiction, I shall rebel. I am not the stuff of which
heroines are made; besides, I would never appear in anything so cheap
and obvious as a series, and the three-volume novel is as much out of
fashion as the Rollo books.”
“But we are unconscious heroines, you understand,” I explained. “While
we were experiencing our experiences we did not notice them, but they
have attained by degrees a sufficient bulk so that they are visible
to the naked eye. We can look back now and perceive the path we have
travelled.”
“It isn't retrospect I object to, but anticipation,” she retorted; “not
history, but prophecy. It is one thing to gaze sentimentally at the road
you have travelled, quite another to conjure up impossible pictures of
the future.”
Salemina calls herself a trifle over forty, but I am not certain of
her age, and think perhaps that she is uncertain herself. She has good
reason to forget it, and so have we. Of course she could consult the
Bible family record daily, but if she consulted her looking-glass
afterward the one impression would always nullify the other. Her hair is
silvered, it is true, but that is so clearly a trick of Nature that it
makes her look younger rather than older.
Francesca came into the room just here. I said a moment ago that she was
the same old Francesca, but I was wrong; she is softening, sweetening,
expanding; in a word, blooming. Not only this, but Ronald Macdonald's
likeness has been stamped upon her in some magical way, so that,
although she has not lost her own personality, she seems to have added
a reflection of his. In the glimpses of herself, her views, feelings,
opinions, convictions, which she gives us in a kind of solution, as
it were, there are always traces of Ronald Macdonald; or, to be more
poetical, he seems to have bent over the crystal pool, and his image is
reflected there.
You remember in New England they allude to a bride as 'she that was'
a so-and-so. In my private interviews with Salemina I now habitually
allude to Francesca as 'she that was a Monroe'; it is so significant
of her present state of absorption. Several times this week I have been
obliged to inquire, “Was I, by any chance, as absent-minded and dull in
Pettybaw as Francesca is under the same circumstances in Dublin?”
“Quite.”
“Duller if anything.”
These candid replies being uttered in cheerful unison I change the
subject, but cannot resist telling them both casually that the building
of the Royal Dublin Society is in Kildare Street, just three minutes'
from O'Carolan's, and that I have noticed it is for the promotion of
Husbandry and other useful arts and sciences.