HERSELF
“It was on a Sunday, the eleventh day of a lovely June,” her sister,
Mrs. Edward Hewson, has written, “that Violet entered the family. A time
of roses, when Ross was at its best, with its delightful old-fashioned
gardens fragrant with midsummer flowers, and its shady walks at their
darkest and greenest as they wandered through deep laurel groves to the
lake. She was the eleventh daughter that had been born to the house, and
she received a cold welcome.
“‘I am glad the Misthress is well,’ said old Thady Connor, the steward;
‘but I am sorry for other news.’
“I think my father’s feelings were the same, but he said she was ‘a
pretty little child.’ My mother comforted herself with the reflection
that girls were cheaper than boys.
“At a year old she was the prettiest child I ever saw, with her glorious
dark eyes, and golden hair, and lovely colour; a dear little child, but
quite unnoticed in the nursery. Charlie was the child brought forward. I
think the unnoticed childhood had its effect. She lived her own life
apart. Then came the reign of the Governesses, and their delight in her.
I never remember the time she could not read, and she played the piano
at four years old very well. (At twelve years old she took first prize
for piano-playing at an open competition, held in Dublin, for girls up
to eighteen.)
“Her great delight at four or five years old was to slip into the
drawing-room and read the illustrated editions of the poets. Her
favourite was an edition of Milton, with terrifying pictures; this she
read with delight. One day there was an afternoon party, and, as usual,
Violet stole into the drawing-room and was quickly engrossed in her
loved Milton, entirely oblivious of the company. Later on, she was found
fast asleep, with her head resting on the large volume. The scene is
present with me; the rosy little face, and the golden hair resting on
the book.
“I remember that Henry H---- said ‘Some day I shall boast that I knew
Violet as a child!’”
She was christened Violet Florence, by her mother’s cousin, Lord
Plunket, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, in the drawing-room at Ross,
the vessel employed for the rite being, she has assured me, the silver
slop-basin, and at Ross she spent the first ten happy years of her life.
I, also, had a happy childhood, full of horses and dogs and boats and
dangers (which latter are the glory of life to any respectable child
with suitable opportunity), but after I had seen Ross I could almost
have envied Martin and her brother, Charlie, nearest to her in age,
their suzerainty over Ross demesne.
“I thravelled Ireland,” said someone, “and afther all, there’s great
heart in the County of Cork!”, and I am faithful to my own county; but
there is a special magic in Galway, in its people and in its scenery,
and for me, Ross, and its lake and its woods, is Galway. The beauty of
Ross is past praising. I think of it as I saw it first, on a pensive
evening of early spring, still and grey, with a yellow spear-head of
light low in the west. Still and grey was the lake, too, with the brown
mountain, Croagh-Keenan, and the grey sky, with that spear-thrust of
yellow light in it, lying deep in the wide, quiet water, that was
furrowed now and then by the flapping rush of a coot, or streaked with
the meditative drift of a wild duck; farther back came the tall
battalions of reeds, thronging in pale multitudes back to the shadowy
woods; and for foreground, the beautiful, broken line of the shore, with
huge boulders of limestone scattered on it, making black blots in the
pearl-grey of the shallows.
On higher ground above the lake stands the old house, tall and severe, a
sentinel that keeps several eyes, all of them intimidating, on all
around it. The woods of Annagh, of Bullivawnen, of Cluinamurnyeen, trail
down to the lake side, with spaces of grass, and spaces of hazel, and
spaces of bog among them. I have called the limestone boulders blots,
but that was on an evening in February; if you were to see them on a
bright spring morning, as they lie among primroses at the lip of the
lake, you would think them a decoration, a collar of gems, that respond
to the suggestions of the sky, and are blue, or purple, or grey, bright
or sullen, as it requires of them. Things, also, to make a child
delirious with their possibilities. One might jump from one huge stone
to another, till, especially in a dry summer when the lake was low, one
might find oneself far out, beyond even the Turf Quay, or Swans’ Island,
whence nothing but one’s own prowess could ever restore one to home and
family. If other stimulant were needed, it was supplied by the thought
of the giant pike, who were known to inhabit the outer depths. One of
them, stuffed and varnished, honoured the hall at Ross with its
presence. It looked big and wicked enough to pull down a small girl as
easily as a minnow.
When I first went to Ross, a grown-up young woman, I found that
seduction of the boulders, and of the chain of leaps that they
suggested, very potent. The attraction of the pike also was not to be
denied. (We used to try to shoot them with a shot-gun, and sometimes
succeeded.) What then must the lake not have meant to its own children?
I don’t suppose that any little girl ever had more accidents than
Martin. Entirely fearless and reckless, and desperately short-sighted,
full of emulation and the irrepressible love of a lark, scrapes, in the
physical as well as the moral sense, were her daily portion, and how she
came through, as she did, with nothing worse than a few unnoticeable
scars to commemorate her many disasters, is a fact known only to her
painstaking guardian angel. Tenants, who came to Ross on their various
affairs, found their horses snatched to be galloped by “the children,”
their donkeys purloined for like purposes (or the donkeys’ nearest
equivalent to a gallop)--and it may be noted that the harder the
victimised horses were galloped, the more profound was the admiration,
even the exultation, of their owners.
“Sure,” said a southern woman of some children renowned for their
naughtiness, “them’s very arch childhren. But, afther all, I dunno
what’s the use of havin’ childhren if they’re not arch!”
In certain of the essays in one of our books, “Some Irish Yesterdays,”
we have pooled memories of our respective childhoods, which,
fortunately, perhaps, for the peace of nations, were separated by some
hundred miles of moor and mountain, as well as by an interval of years.
Their conditions were similar in many respects, and specially so in the
government of the nursery. Our mothers, if their nurses satisfied their
requirements, had a large indifference to the antecedents of the
nurses’ underlings, who were usually beings of the type that is caught
at large on a turf-bog and imported raw into the ministry. One such was
once described to me--“An innocent, good-natured slob of a gerr’l that
was rared in a bog beside me. The sort of gerr’l now that if you were
sick would sit up all night to look afther ye, and if you weren’t, she’d
lie in bed all day!”
I believe the nurses enjoyed the assimilation of the raw product, much
as a groom likes the interest afforded by an unbroken colt, and they
found the patronage among the mothers of the disciples a useful asset.
In later years, Martin was discoursing of her nursery life, with her
foster-mother, who had also been her nurse, Nurse B., a most agreeable
person, gifted with a saturnine humour that is not infrequent in our
countrywomen.
“Sure didn’t I ketch Kit Sal one time”--(the reigning nursemaid)--“an’
she bating and kicking yerself on the avenue!” Nurse B. began. She then
went on to describe how she had fallen on Kit Sal, torn her hair, and
“shtuck her teeth in her.”
“The Misthress seen me aftherwards, and she axed me what was on me, for
sure I was cryin’ with the rage. ‘Nothin’ Ma’am!’ says I. But I told her
two days afther, an’ she goes to Kit Sal, an’ says she, ‘What call had
you to bate Miss Wilet?’ says she, ‘Ye big shtump!’ ‘She wouldn’t folly
me,’ says Kit. ‘Well indeed,’ says the Misthress, ‘I believe ye got a
bigger batin’ yerself from Nurse, and as far as that goes,’ says she, ‘I
declare to God,’ says she, ‘I wish she dhrank yer blood!’ says she.”
The tale is above comment, but for those who knew Mrs. Martin’s very
special distinction of manner and language, Nurse B.’s paraphrase of her
reproof has a very peculiar appeal.
Nurse B. was small, spare, and erect, with a manner that did not conceal
her contempt for the world at large--(with one cherished exception,
“Miss Wilet”)--and a trenchancy of speech that was not infrequently
permitted to express it. At Ross, at lunch one day, during the later
time when Mrs. Martin had returned there, the then cat--(the pampered
and resented drawing-room lady, not the mere kitchen cat)--exhibited a
more than usually inordinate greediness, and Mrs. Martin appealed, with
some reproach, to Nurse B., who was at that time acting--and the word
may be taken in its stage connection--the part of parlour-maid.
“Nurse! _Does_ this poor cat _ever_ get _anything_ to eat?”
“It’d be the quare cat if it didn’t!” replied Nurse, with a single
glance at “Miss Wilet” to claim the victor’s laurel.
* * * * *
It was not until Martin and I began to write “The Real Charlotte” that I
understood how wide and varied a course of instruction was to be
obtained in a Dublin Sunday school. Judging by a large collection of
heavily-gilded books, quite unreadable (and quite unread), each of which
celebrates proficiency in some branch of scriptural learning, Martin
took all the available prizes. In addition to these trophies and the
knowledge they implied, she learnt much of that middle sphere of human
existence that has practically no normal points of contact with any
other class, either above or below it.
It was a rather risky experiment, as will, I think, be admitted by
anyone who considers the manners and customs of the detestable little
boys and girls who squabble and giggle in the first chapter of “The Real
Charlotte.” There are not many children who could have come unscathed
out of such a furnace. There is a story of a priest who was such a good
man that he “went through Purgatory like a flash of lightning. There
wasn’t a singe on him!”
Martin was adored, revered, was received as an oracle by her fellow
scholars, and was, as was invariable with her, the wonder and admiration
of her teacher. She has told me how she took part in dreadful revels,
school feasts and the like, which, in their profound aloofness from her
home-life, had something almost illicit about them. With her intensely
receptive, perceptive brain, she was absorbing impressions, points of
view, turns and twists of character wrought on by circumstance; yet,
when that phase of her childhood had passed, “there wasn’t a singe on
her!”
She had a spiritual reserve and seriousness that shielded her, like an
armour of polished steel that reflects all, and is impenetrable.
Refinement was surpassingly hers; intellectual refinement, a mental
fastidiousness that rejected inevitably the phrase or sentiment that had
a tinge of commonness; personal refinement, in her dress, in the
exquisite precision of all her equipment; physical refinement, in the
silken softness of her hair, the slender fineness of her hands and feet,
the flower-bloom of her skin; and over and above all, she had the
refinement of sentiment, which, when it is joined with a profound
sensitiveness and power of emotion, has a beauty and a perfectness
scarcely to be expressed in words.
She has told me stories of those times, and of the curious contrasts of
her environment. Long, confidential walks with “Francie Fitzpatrick” and
her fellows, followed by an abrupt descent from the position of “Sir
Oracle,” to the status of the youngest of a number of sisters and
brothers whose cleverness, smartness, and good looks filled her with awe
and glory. She was intensely critical and intensely appreciative. The
little slender brown-eyed girl, who was part pet, part fag of that
brilliant, free-going, family crowd, secretly appraised them all in her
balancing, deliberative mind, and, fortunately for all concerned, passed
them sound. They taught her to brush their hair, and read her the poets
while she was thus employed; they chaffed her, and called her The Little
Philosopher, and unlike many elder sisters--(and I speak as an elder
sister)--dragged her into things instead of keeping her out of them. It
must have been a delightful house, full of good looks and good company.
I was far away in South Cork, and knew of the Martins but distantly and
dimly; after my eldest brother had met them and returned to chant their
charms, I think that a certain faint hostility tinged my very occasional
thoughts of them, which, after all, is not unusual.
The Martins’ house in Dublin was one of the gathering places for the
clans of the family. Dublin society still existed in those days; things
went with a swing, and there was a tingle in life. Probably there was no
place in the kingdom where a greater number of pleasant people were to
be met with. Jovial, unconventional, radiant with good looks, unfailing
in agreeability, they hunted, they danced, they got up theatricals and
concerts, they--the elder ones, at least--went to church with an equal
enthusiasm, and fought to the death over the relative merits of their
pet parsons.
Martin has told me of a Homeric and typical battle of which she was a
spectator, between her mother and one of my many aunts, Florence
Coghill. It began at tea, at the house of another aunt, with a suave and
academic discussion of the Irish Episcopate, and narrowed a little to
the fact that the diocese of Cork needed a bishop. My aunt Florence
said easily,
“Oh--Gregg, of course!”
My cousin Nannie (Mrs. Martin) replied with a sweet reasonableness, yet
firmly, “I think you will find that Pakenham Walsh is the man.”
The battle then was joined. From argument it passed on into shouting,
and thence neared fisticuffs. They advanced towards each other in large
armchairs, even as, in these later days, the “Tanks” move into action.
They beat each other’s knees, each lady crying the name of her champion,
and then my aunt remembered that she had a train to catch, and rushed
from the room. The air was still trembling with her departure, when the
door was part opened, the monosyllable “Gregg!” was projected through
the aperture, and before reply was possible, the slam of the hall door
was heard.
Mrs. Martin flung herself upon the window, and was in time to scream
“Paknamwalsh!” in one tense syllable, to my aunt’s departing long, thin
back.
My aunt Florence was too gallant a foe to affect, as at the distance she
might well have done, unconsciousness. Anyone who knows the deaf and
dumb alphabet will realise what conquering gestures were hers, as
turning to face the enemy she responded,
“G ! R ! E ! G ! G !”
and with the last triumphant thump of her clenched fists, fled round the
corner.
And she was right. “Gregg & son, Bishops to the Church of Ireland,” have
passed into ecclesiastical history.