“AN IRISH COUSIN”
I think that the final impulse towards the career of letters was given
to us by that sorceress of whom mention has already been made. By her we
were assured of much that we did, and even more that we did not aspire
to (which included two husbands for me, and at least one for Martin);
but in the former category was included “literary success,” and, with
that we took heart and went forward.
It was in October, 1887, that we began what was soon to be known to us
as “The Shocker,” and “The Shaughraun,” to our family generally, as
“that nonsense of the girls,” and subsequently, to the general public,
as “An Irish Cousin.” Seldom have the young and ardent “commenced
author” under less conducive circumstances. We were resented on so many
grounds. Waste of time; the arrogance of having conceived such a
project; and, chiefly, the abstention of two playmates. They called us
“The Shockers,” “The Geniuses” (this in bitter irony), “The
Hugger-muggerers” (this flight of fancy was my mother’s); when not
actually reviled, we were treated with much the same disapproving
sufferance that is shown to an outside dog who sneaks into the house on
a wet day. We compared ourselves, not without reason, to the Waldenses
and the Albigenses, and hid and fled about the house, with the
knowledge that every man’s hand was against us.
Begun in idleness and without conviction, persecution had its usual
effect, and deepened somewhat tepid effort into enthusiasm, but the
first genuine literary impulse was given by a visit to an old and lonely
house, that stands on the edge of the sea, some twelve or thirteen miles
from Drishane. It was at that time inhabited by a distant kinswoman of
mine, a pathetic little old spinster lady, with the most charming,
refined, and delicate looks, and a pretty voice, made interesting by the
old-fashioned Irish touch in it; provincial, in that it told of life in
a province, yet entirely compatible with gentle breeding. She called me
“Eddith,” I remember (a pronunciation entirely her own), and she
addressed the remarkable being who ushered us in, half butler, half
coachman, as “Dinnis,” and she asked us to “take a glass of wine” with
her, and, apologising for the all too brief glimpse of the fire
vouchsafed to the leg of mutton, said she trusted we did not mind the
meat being “rare.”
The little lady who entertained us is dead now; the old house, stripped
of its ancient portraits and furniture, is, like many another, in the
hands of farmer-people; its gardens have reverted to jungle. I wonder if
the tombstone of the little pet dog has been respected. In the shade of
a row of immense junipers, that made a sheltering hedge between the
flower garden and the wide Atlantic, stood the stone, inscribed, with
the romantic preciosity of our hostess’s youth,
“Lily, a violet-shrouded tomb of woe.”
But it was the old house, dying even then, that touched our
imaginations; full of memories of brave days past, when the little
lady’s great-grandfather, “Splendid Ned,” had been a leading blade in
“The County of Corke Militia Dragoons,” and his son, her grandfather,
had raised a troop of yeomanry to fight the Whiteboys, and, when the
English Government disbanded the yeomen, had, in just fury, pitched
their arms over the cliff into the sea, rather than yield them to the
rebels, and had then drunk the King’s health, with showy loyalty, in
claret that had never paid the same King a farthing.
We had ridden the long thirteen miles in gorgeous October sunshine;
before we had seen the gardens, and the old castle on the cliff, and the
views generally, the sun was low in the sky, but we were not allowed to
leave until a tea, as colossal as our lunch had been, was consumed. Our
protests were unheeded, and we were assured that we should be “no time
at all springing through the country home.” (A suggestion that moved
Martin so disastrously, that only by means of hasty and forced
facetiousness was I enabled to justify her reception of it.) The sunset
was red in the west when our horses were brought round to the door, and
it was at that precise moment that into the Irish Cousin some thrill of
genuineness was breathed. In the darkened façade of the long grey house,
a window, just over the hall-door, caught our attention. In it, for an
instant, was a white face. Trails of ivy hung over the panes, but we saw
the face glimmer there for a minute and vanish.
As we rode home along the side of the hills, and watched the fires of
the sunset sink into the sea, and met the crescent moon coming with
faint light to lead us home, we could talk and think only of that
presence at the window. We had been warned of certain subjects not to be
approached, and knew enough of the history of that old house to realise
what we had seen. An old stock, isolated from the world at large,
wearing itself out in those excesses that are a protest of human nature
against unnatural conditions, dies at last with its victims round its
death-bed. Half-acknowledged, half-witted, wholly horrifying; living
ghosts, haunting the house that gave them but half their share of life,
yet withheld from them, with half-hearted guardianship, the boon of
death.
The shock of it was what we had needed, and with it “the Shocker”
started into life, or, if that is too much to say for it, its authors,
at least, felt that conviction had come to them; the insincere ambition
of the “Penny Dreadful” faded, realities asserted themselves, and the
faked “thrills” that were to make our fortunes were repudiated for ever.
Little as we may have achieved it, an ideal of Art rose then for us, far
and faint as the half-moon, and often, like her, hidden in clouds, yet
never quite lost or forgotten.
* * * * *
Probably all those who have driven the pen, in either single or double
harness, are familiar with the questions wont to be propounded by those
interested, or anxious to appear interested, in the craft of letters. It
is strange how beaten a track curiosity uses. The inquiries vary but
little. One type of investigator regards the _métier_ of book-maker as a
kind of cross between the trades of cook and conjurer. If the recipe of
the mixture, or the trick of its production, can be extracted from those
possessed of the secret, the desired result can be achieved as simply as
a rice pudding, and forced like a card upon the publishers. The
alternative inquirer approaches the problem from the opposite pole, and
poses respectfully that conundrum with which the Youth felled Father
William:
“What makes you so awfully clever?” “How do you think of the things?”
And again, “How can you make the words come one after the other?” And
yet another, more wounding, though put in all good feeling, “But how do
you manage about the spelling? I suppose the printers do that for you?”
With Martin and me, however, the fact of our collaboration admitted of
variants. I have found a fragment of a letter of mine to her that sets
forth some of these. As it also in some degree expounds the type of the
examiner, I transcribe it all.
E. Œ. S. to V. F. M. (_circa_ 1904).
“She was wearing white kid gloves, and was eating heavily buttered
teacake and drinking tea, with her gloves buttoned, and her veil
down, and her loins, generally, girded, as if she were keeping the
Passover. She began by discussing Archdeacon Z----’s wife.
“‘Ah, she was a sweet woman, but she always had a very delicate,
puny sort of a colour. Ah no, _not_ strong.’ A sigh, made
difficult, but very moving, by teacake, followed by hurried
absorption of tea. ‘And the poor Archdeacon too. Ah, he was a very
clever man.’ (My countenance probably expressed dissent.) ‘Well, he
was very clever at _religion_. Oh, he was a wonderfully holy man!
Now, _that’s_ what I’d call him, holy. And he used to talk like
that. Nothing but religion; he certainly was most clever at it.’
“Later on in the conversation, which lasted, most enjoyably, for
half an hour, ‘Are _you_ the Miss Somerville who writes the books
with Miss Martin? Now! To think I should have been talking to you
all this time! And is it you that do the story and Miss Martin the
words?’ (etc., etc., for some time). ‘And which of you holds the
pen?’ (To this branch of the examination much weight was attached,
and it continued for some time.) ‘And do you put in everyone you
meet? No? Only sometimes? And sometimes people who you _never_ met?
Well! I declare, that’s like direct inspiration!’
“She was a delightful woman. She went on to ask me,
“‘Do you travel much? I love it! I think Abroad’s very pritty. Do
you like Abroad?’
“She also told me that she and ‘me daughter’ had just been to
Dublin--‘to see the great tree y’know.’ By the aid of ‘direct
inspiration’ I guessed that she meant Beerbohm of that ilk, but as
she hadn’t mentioned the theatre, I think it was rather a fine
effort.”
The question put by this lady, as to which of us held the pen, has ever
been considered of the greatest moment, and, as a matter of fact, during
our many years of collaboration, it was a point that never entered our
minds to consider. To those who may be interested in an unimportant
detail, I may say that our work was done conversationally. One or the
other--not infrequently both, simultaneously--would state a proposition.
This would be argued, combated perhaps, approved, or modified; it would
then be written down by the (wholly fortuitous) holder of the pen, would
be scratched out, scribbled in again; before it found itself finally
transferred into decorous MS. would probably have suffered many things,
but it would, at all events, have had the advantage of having been well
aired.
I have an interesting letter, written by a very clever woman, herself a
writer, to a cousin of ours. She found it impossible to believe in the
jointness of the authorship, though she admitted her inability to
discern the joints in the writing, and having given “An Irish Cousin” a
handling far more generous than it deserves, says:
“But though I think the book a success, and cannot pick out the
fastenings of the two hands, I yet think the next novel ought to be by
_one_ of them. I wonder by which! I say this because I thought the
conception and carrying out of ‘Willy’ much the best part of the
character drawing of the whole book. It had the real thing in it. If
Willy, and the poor people’s talk, were by one hand, that hand is the
better of the two, say I!”
I sent this letter to Martin, and had “the two hands” collaborated in
her reply, it could not more sufficingly have expressed my feelings.
V. F. M. to E. Œ. S. (Sept., 1889.)
“You do not say if you want Miss ----’s most interesting letter
back. Never mind what she says about people writing together. We
have proved that we can do it, and we shall go on. The reason few
people can, is because they have separate minds upon most subjects,
and fight their own hands all the time. I think the two Shockers
have a very strange belief in each other, joined to a critical
faculty; added to which, writing together is, to me at least, one
of the greatest pleasures I have. To write with you doubles the
triumph and the enjoyment, having first halved the trouble and
anxiety.”
On January 3rd, 1888, we had finished the first half of “An Irish
Cousin.”
I find in my diary: “A few last revisionary scratches at the poor
Shocker, and so farewell for the present. Gave it to mother to read. She
loathes it.”
All through the spring months we wrote and rewrote, and clean-copied,
and cast away the clean copies illegible from corrections.
Intermittently, and as we could, we wrote on, and in Martin’s diary I
find a quotation from an old part-song that expressed the general
attitude towards us:
“Thus flies the dolphin from the shark,
And the stag before the hounds.”
Martin and I were the dolphin and the stag. As a propitiatory measure
the Shocker was read aloud at intervals, but with no great success. Our
families declined to take us seriously, but none the less offered
criticisms, incessant, and mutually destructive. In connection with this
point, and as a warning to other beginners, I will offer a few
quotations from letters of this period.
E. Œ. S. to V. F. M. (Spring, 1888.)
“Minnie says you are too refined, and too anxious not to have
anything in our book that was ever in anyone else’s book. Mother,
on the other hand, complained bitterly of the want of love
interest. Minnie defended us, and told her that there was now
plenty of love in it. To which Mother, who had not then read the
proposal, replied with infinite scorn, ‘only squeezing her hand, my
dear!’ She went on to say that she ‘_liked_ improprieties.’ I
assured her I had urged you in vain to permit such, and she
declared that you were quite wrong, and when I suggested the
comments of The Family, she loudly deplored the fact of our writing
being known, ignoring the fact that she has herself blazoned it to
the ends of the earth _and_ to Aunt X.”
Following on this, a protest is recorded from another relative, on the
use of the expression “he ran as if the devil were after him,” but the
letter ends with a reassuring postscript.
“Mother has just said that she thought Chapter IX _excellent_, ‘most
fiery love’; though she said it had rather taken her by surprise, as she
‘had not noticed a stream of love leading up to it--only jealousy.’”
At length, in London, on May 24th, the end, which had seemed further off
than the end of the world, came. The MS., fairly and beautifully
copied,--typewriters being then unborn,--was sent off to Messrs. Sampson
Low. In a month it returned, without comment. We then, with, as Dr.
Johnson says, “a frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from
censure, or from praise,” placed it in the hands of a friend to do with
it as he saw fit, and proceeded to forget all about it.
It was not until the following December that the dormant Shocker
suddenly woke to life. It was on Sunday morning, December 2nd, 1888,
that the fateful letter came. Messrs. R. Bentley & Son offered us £25 on
publication, and £25 on sale of 500 copies of the book, which was to be
published in two volumes at half a guinea each.
“All comment is inadequate,” says Martin’s diary; “wrote a dizzy letter
of acceptance to Bentley, and went to church, twice, in a glorified
trance.”
(Thus did a huntsman of mine, having slain two foxes in a morning, which
is a rarer feat in Carbery than--say--in Cheshire, present himself in
gratitude at the priest’s night-school.)
Passing over intermediate matters, I will follow the career of the
Shocker, which was not published for six months after its assignment to
Messrs. Bentley, six months during which Martin had written several
admirable articles for _The World_ (then edited by Mr. Edmund Yates),
and I had illustrated a picture-book, “The Kerry Recruit,” and written
an indifferent short story, and we had begun to think about “The Real
Charlotte.” For some reason that I have now forgotten, my mother was
opposed to my own name appearing in “An Irish Cousin.” Martin’s _nom de
plume_ was ready to hand, her articles in _The World_ having been signed
“Martin Ross,” but it was only after much debate and searching of
pedigrees that a Somerville ancestress, by name Geilles Herring, was
selected to face the music for me. Her literary career was brief, and
was given a death-blow by Edmund Yates, who asked “Martin Ross” the
reason of her collaboration with a grilled herring; and as well as I
remember, my own name was permitted to appear in the second edition.
This followed the first with a pleasing celerity, and was sold out by
the close of the year. Any who have themselves been through the mill,
and know what it is to bring forth a book, will remember the joys, and
fears, and indignations, and triumphings, that accompany the appearance
of a first-born effort. Many and various were the letters and
criticisms. Our vast relationship made an advertising agency of the most
far-reaching and pervasive nature, and our friends were faithful in
their insistence in the matter at the libraries.
“_Have_ you ‘An Irish Cousin?’” was demanded at a Portsmouth bookshop.
“No, Madam,” the bookseller replied, with _hauteur_, “I have _no_
H’Irish relations.”
Looking back on it now, I recognise that what was in itself but a very
moderate and poorly constructed book owed its success, not only with the
public, but with the reviewers, to the fact that it chanced to be the
first in its particular field. Miss Edgeworth had been the last to write
of Irish country life with sincerity and originality, dealing with both
the upper and lower classes, and dealing with both unconventionally.
Lever’s brilliant and extravagant books, with their ever enchanting
Micky Frees and Corney Delaneys, merely created and throned the stage
Irishman, the apotheosis of the English ideal. It was of Lever’s period
to be extravagant. The Handley Cross series is a case in point. Let me
humbly and hurriedly disclaim any impious thought of depreciating
Surtees. No one who has ever ridden a hunt, or loved a hound, but must
admit that he has his unsurpassable moments. “The Cat and Custard-pot
day,” with that run that goes with the rush of a storm; the
_tête-à-tête_ of Mr. Jorrocks and James Pigg, during which they drank
each other’s healths, and the healths of the hounds, and the _séance_
culminated with the immortal definition of the state of the weather, as
it obtained in the cupboard; Soapey Sponge and Lucy Glitters “sailing
away with the again breast-high-scent pack”--these things are indeed
_hors concours_. But I think it is undeniable that the hunting people of
Handley Cross, like Lever’s dragoons, were always at full gallop. With
Surtees as with Lever, everyone is “all out,” there is nothing in
hand--save perhaps a pair of duelling pistols or a tandem whip--and the
height of the spirits is only equalled by the tallness of the hero’s
talk. That intolerable adjective “rollicking” is consecrated to Lever;
if certain of the rank and file of the reviewers of our later books
could have realised with what abhorrence we found it applied to
ourselves, and could have known how rigorously we had endeavoured to
purge our work of anything that might justify it, they might, out of the
kindness that they have always shown us, have been more sparing of it.
Lever was a Dublin man, who lived most of his
[Illustration: EDITH ŒNONE SOMERVILLE.]
life on the Continent, and worked, like a scene-painter, by artificial
light, from memoranda. Miss Edgeworth had the privilege, which was also
ours, of living in Ireland, in the country, and among the people of whom
she wrote. Of the Irish novels of Miss Lawless the same may be said,
though the angle at which she chose to regard that many-sided and deeply
agreeable person, the Irish peasant, excluded the humour that permeates
Miss Edgeworth’s books. (One recalls with gratitude the “quality toss”
of Miss Judy McQuirk.) That Miss Edgeworth’s father was a landlord, and
a resident one, deepened her insight and widened her opportunities.
Panoramic views may, no doubt, be obtained from London; and what a
County Meath lady spoke of as a “_ventre à terre_ in Dublin” has its
advantages; but I am glad that my lot and Martin’s were cast “in a fair
ground, in a good ground, In Carbery:”--(with apologies to Mr.
Kipling)--“by the sea.”
* * * * *
I will not inflict the undeservedly kind comments of the reviewers of
“An Irish Cousin” upon these pages, though I may admit that nothing that
I have ever read, before or since, has seemed to me as entirely
delightful as the column and a half that _The Spectator_ generously
devoted to a very humble book, by two unknowns, who had themselves
nearly lost belief in it.
August, 1889, was a lucky month for Martin and me. We had a “good
Press”--we have often marvelled at its goodness--we were justified of
our year of despised effort; the hunted Shockers emerged from their
caves to take a place in the sun; we had indeed “Commenced Author.”