“THE IRISH R.M.”
As had been the case with “The Real Charlotte,” so were we also in Paris
when “Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.”--to give the book its full and
cumbrous title--was published by Messrs. Longman in November, 1899.
It was probably better for us both that we should be where, beyond the
voices, there was peace, but it meant that most of the fun of publishing
a book was lost to us. The thrill, for example, of buying a chance
paper, and lighting upon a review in it. One might buy all the papers in
Paris without a moment of anxiety.
After a time, however, congested envelopes of “press cuttings,” mostly
of a reassuring character, began to arrive. Press-cuttings, received _en
gros_, are liable to induce feelings of indigestion, and with their
economy of margin and general suggestion of the waste-paper basket,
their tendency is to crush the romance out of reviews; but Martin and I
found them good reading. And gradually, letters from unknown readers
began to reach us. Pathetic letters, one from “an Irish Exile,” thanking
us for “a Whiff of Irish air,” another from Australia, proudly claiming
possession of “Five drops of Irish blood,” and offering them as an
excuse for “troubling us with thanks.” Serious inquiries, beginning, in
one instance, “Dear Sirs or Ladies, or Sir or Lady,”--as to whether we
were men or women, or both. A friendly writer, in America, informed us
that legend was already “crystalising all over us.” “There is a
tradition in our neighbourhood that you are ladies--also that you live
at Bally something--that you are Art Students in Paris--that you are
Music Students in Germany ... but my writing is not to inquire into your
identity--or how you collaborate ... a cumulative debt of gratitude fell
due....” The writer then proceeded to congratulate us on “having
accomplished the rare feat of being absolutely modern, yet bearing no
date,” and ended by saying “I think the stories will be as good in ten
years or fifty (which probably interests you less) as they are to-day.”
A kind forecast, that still remains to be verified. The same writer, who
was herself one of the trade, went on to say that she “_knew_ that the
Author is not insulted or aggrieved on hearing that perfect strangers
are eagerly awaiting the next book, or re-reading the last with complete
enjoyment,” and this chapter may be taken as a confirmation of the truth
of what she said. One may often smile at the form in which, sometimes,
the approval is conveyed, but I welcome this opportunity of thanking
those wonderful people, who have taken the trouble to write to Martin
and me, often from the ends of the earth, to tell us that our writing
had given them pleasure; not more, I think, than their letters have
given us, so we can cry quits over the transaction.
We have been told, and the story is well authenticated, of a young lady
who invariably slept with two copies of the book (like my aunt and her
“_Sommeliers_”), one on each side of her, so that on whichever side she
faced on waking, she could find instant refreshment. An assurance of
almost excessive appreciation came from America, informing us that we
“had Shakspere huddled into a corner, screaming for mercy.” We were told
of a lady (of the bluest literary blood) who had classified friends from
acquaintances by finding out if they had read and appreciated “The Real
Charlotte” or no, and who now was unable to conceive how she had ever
existed without the assistance of certain quotations from “The R.M.”
Perhaps one of the most pleasing of these tales was one of a man who
said (to a faithful hearer) “First I read it at full speed, because I
couldn’t stop, and then I read it _very_ slowly, chewing every word; and
then I read it a third time, dwelling on the bits I like best; and then,
and _not_ till then, thank Heaven! I was told it was written by two
women!”
An old hunting man, a friend and contemporary of Surtees and Delmé
Radcliffe, wrote to us saying that he was “The Evangelist of the Irish
R.M. It is the only doctrine that I preach.... It is ten years since I
dropped upon it by pure accident, and, like Keats, in his equally
immortal sonnet--
‘Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken,’
I am so deeply grieved that you cannot hunt. I can sympathise. It is
sixty years since I began hunting, and I know how you must miss it. Now
you realise the truth of John Jorrocks. ‘For hunting is like the air we
breathe, if we have it not, we die.’ But don’t do that. Ever yours, etc.
etc.”
We have had many letters containing inquiries of a sort that taxed both
memory and invention to find replies to them. Bewildering demands for
explanations, philological, etymological, zoological, of such statements
as “The Divil in the Wild Woods wouldn’t content him,” or Flurry Knox’s
refusal to “be seen
[Illustration: AT BUNALUN. “GONE TO GROUND.”
A. C.
]
[Illustration: WAITING FOR THE TERRIERS.
A. C.
]
dead at a pig fair” in certain articles of attire. Why a pig fair? Why
dead? Why everything? Martin’s elucidation of the pig fair problem
appeared in the _Spectator_, included in a letter from the inquirer,
“G.,” and is as follows:
“I have never given a necktie to a male friend, or even enemy; but a
necktie was once given to me. I showed it to a person whose opinion on
such matters I revere. He said at once, ‘I would not be seen dead in it
at a pig-fair.’ The matter of the tie ended there; to use the valuable
expression of the wife of the male friend, (in connection with a toy
that might possibly prove injurious to her young,) I ‘gradually threw it
away.’ That was my first experience of the pig-fair trope, and I have
never ceased to find comfort in it, nor ever questioned its
completeness. I am aware that nothing, presumably, will matter to me
when I am dead, yet, casting my mind forward, I do not wish the beholder
of my remains, casting his eye backward, to be scandalised by my taste
in ties, or other accompaniments, while I was alive. I do not myself
greatly care about being alive at a pig-fair, neither is it an
advantage, socially or otherwise, to be dead there. Yet this odium might
be enhanced, could even be transcended, in the eye of the beholder, by
the infamy of my necktie. To this point I have treated the beholder as a
person able to appreciate the discredit, not only of my necktie, but
also of being dead at a pig-fair. There remains, however, and in a
highly intensive manner, the pig-fair itself. We trust and believe the
pig-jobber is critical about pigs; but we do not expect from him
fastidiousness in artistic and social affairs. He will not, we hope,
realise the discredit of being dead at a pig-fair, but there can be
neckties at which he will draw the line. Considering, therefore, the
disapprobation of the pig-jobber, joined to that of the other
beholders, and finding that fore-knowledge of the callousness of death
could not allay my sense of these ignominies, I gradually threw away the
necktie.”
I trust “G.” will permit me to quote also the following from his letter.
“As reference has been made to the ‘R.M.’ your readers will be amused to
hear that a French sportsman who had asked the name of a good sporting
novel, and had been recommended the work in question, said with some
surprise, ‘But I did not think such things existed in Ireland.’ He
imagined the title to be ‘Some Reminiscences of an Irish Harem.’
A leading place among the communications and appreciations that we
received about our books was taken by what we were accustomed to call
Medical Testimonials. The number of quinzies and cases of tonsilitis
that Major Yeates has cured, violently, it is true, but effectually, the
cases of prostration after influenza, in which we were assured he alone
had power to rouse and cheer the sufferer, cannot possibly be
enumerated. We have sometimes been flattered into the hope that we were
beginning to rival the Ross “Fluit-player” of whom it was said, “A man
in deep concumption From death he would revive.”
We had but one complaint, and that was from a cousin, who said it had
reduced her to “Disabling laughter,” which, “remembering the awful
warning, ‘laugh, and grow F----!’” she had tried her utmost to restrain.
The envelopes of press cuttings became more and more congested as the
months went on, and the “R.M.” continued his course round the world;
and, thanks to his being, on the whole, an inoffensive person, he was
received with more kindness than we had ever dared to hope for. There
were, as far as I can remember, but few rose leaves with crumples in
them, and even they had their compensations, as, I think, the following
sample crumple will sufficiently indicate. I am far from wishing to hold
this pronouncement up to derision. There was a great deal more of it
than appears here, which, unfortunately, I have not space to quote. We
found many of its strictures instructive and bracing, and the suffering
that pulses in the final paragraph bears the traces of a genuine
emotion.
“The stories were originally published in a magazine, and would be less
monotonous and painful, no doubt, if read separately, and in small
doses.... The picture they give of Irish life is ... so depressingly
squalid and hopeless.... The food is appallingly bad, and the cooking
and service, if possible, worse. No one in the book, high or low, does a
stroke of work, unless shady horse-selling and keeping dirty public
houses can be said to be doing work.... On the whole, the horses and
hounds are far more important than the human beings, and the stables and
kennels are only a degree less dilapidated and disgusting than the
houses. Not a trace of romance, seriousness, or tenderness, disturbs the
uniform tone of the book.
“Such is the picture of our country, given, I believe, by two Irish
ladies. One, at least, is Irish--Miss Martin, a niece of the Honourable
Mrs. P. A more unfeminine book I have never perused, or one more devoid
of any sentiment of refinement, for even men who write horsey novels
preserve some tinge of romance in their feelings towards women which
these ladies are devoid of. A complete hardness pervades their treatment
of the female as of the male characters.”
It is seventeen years since we first perused this melancholy
indictment. Is it too late to do one act of justice and to restore to
the reviewer one illusion? Martin Ross cannot claim the relationship
assigned to her; the Honourable Mrs. P. leaves the court without a stain
on her character.
Among the best and most faithful of the friends of the R.M., we make
bold to count the Army. After the South African War, we were shown a
letter in which a Staff-officer had said that he “had worn out three
copies of the ‘Irish R.M.’ during the War, but it had preserved for him
his reason, which would otherwise have been lost.” Another wrote to tell
us of the copy of the book that had been found in General de Wet’s tent,
on one of the many occasions when that stout campaigner had got up a
little earlier than had been expected. Yet a third officer, no less than
a Director of Military Intelligence, said that a statue should be
erected in honour of the “R.M.” “For services rendered during the War.”
And, as Mr. Belloc has sung, “Surely the Tartar should know!”
Much later came a letter from Northern Nigeria, telling us that “the
book was ripping,” apologising for “frightful cheek” in writing, ending
with the statement that “even if we were annoyed,” the writer was, “at
any rate, a long way off!”
In very truth we were not annoyed. We have had letters that filled us
with an almost shamed thankfulness that we should have been able, with
such play-boys as Flurry Knox, and “Slipper,” and the rest, to give what
seemed to be a real lift to people who needed it; and, since 1914, it is
not easy to express what happiness it has brought us both to hear, as we
have often heard, that the various volumes of the R.M.’s adventures had
done their share in bringing moments of laughter, and, perhaps, of
oblivion for a while to their surroundings, to the fighters in France
and in all those other cruel places, where endurance and suffering go
hand in hand, and the lads lay down their lives with a laugh.
Nothing, I believe, ever gave Martin more pleasure than that passages
from the “Irish R.M.” should have been included among the Broad Sheets
that the _Times_ sent out to the soldiers. It was in the last summer of
her life, little as we thought it, that this honour was paid to our
stories, and had she been told how brief her time was to be, and been
asked to choose the boon that she would like best, I believe that to be
numbered among that elect company of consolers was what she would most
gladly have chosen.
A little book was sent to me, not long ago, which was published in the
spring of this year, 1917. It gives an account, worthy in its courage
and simplicity of the brilliant and gallant young life that it
commemorates. In it is told how Gilbert Talbot, of the Rifle Brigade,
“began the plan of reading aloud in the men’s rest times, and we heard
from many sources what the fun was, and the shouts of laughter, from his
reading aloud of ‘Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.’ ‘Philippa’s first
Foxhunt’ was a special success.” And in his last entry in his diary, he
himself tells of having “read one of the old R.M. stories aloud,” and
that it was “a roaring success.”
Yet one other story, and one that touches the fount of tears. It was
written to me by one who knew and loved Martin; one whose husband had
been killed in the war, and who wrote of her eldest son,
“I want to tell you that the R.M. helped me through what would have been
D----’s twenty-first birthday yesterday. I know Violet would have been
glad.”
I believe that she knows these things, and I am quite sure that she is
glad.