There is reason in the roasting of eggs, and presumably in their
poaching, but we are beginning to think we shall never fathom the
principle which ordains that the hotel poached egg shall invariably be
underdone. Charmed we never so wisely, commanded we never so timely, the
same pinkish blobs were placed fluent and quaking before us, the same
lavish gush answered the diffident knife puncture, and in a moment our
plates became like sunrise painted by an impressionist, with red bacon
streaks weltering in the widespread orange glories, and the golden
mustard blob surmounting all as serenely as Phœbus Apollo.
This phenomenon was at all events our only specimen of a Letterfrack
sunrise. As we sat at breakfast in the coffee-room the mist blew softly
against the French windows, and swept past on the road like a
procession of ghostly ball dresses; the furniture seemed clammy to the
touch, and the paper decorations in the grate mocked the eye with their
futile elegance and affectation of summer heat. Our fellow guests,
evidently _habitués_ of the place, took only the most casual notice of
the weather, and talked of local matters with the zest which so
surprises the newcomer; of their single or conglomerated prowess in
scrambling up the Diamond mountain, of their tumbling down it, of their
tea, their sandwiches, and their wet boots; while we moodily ate our
breakfasts, without even self-respect enough to make conversation for
one another. Our depression was deepened soon afterwards, on hearing
that an ancient raw on Sibbie’s shoulder had been touched by the collar
in the drive of the day before, and that unless a person described as
“Jack’s father” could put some additional padding into the collar we
could not get on to Renvyle that day, though it was only a four mile
journey.
The prospect of a day spent in the coffee-room
[Illustration: JACK’S FATHER.]
and the little ladies’ drawing-room goaded us to energy. We determined
to see the damage for ourselves, and putting on our waterproofs, we
paddled out into the yard, and picked our way across it to the stable by
some convenient and apparently recognised stepping-stones. The invalid
Sibbie was in the darkest stall of the stable, standing in severe
preoccupation, with her back to the outer world, and as we delicately
approached her we became aware of an eye like that of a murderess
rolling at us with a white gleam in the obscurity, and saw that her
long, bell-rope tail was drawn tightly in. We hastily agreed that we
would take Jack’s word for the rubbed shoulder, and retired into the
yard again. At the door of another stable we found the person whose only
identity, or indeed profession, seemed to consist in being Jack’s
father, sitting on an upturned bucket, with Sibbie’s collar in his lap
and a monstrous needle in his hand. He explained that he was putting in
a pad at each side, stuffed with cotton wool that he had got “from
Herself, within in the house, because ’twould be kindher than the hay.”
He had a serious face, with a frill of grey beard, like a Presbyterian
minister of the most amiable type, and he looked up as he spoke with an
expression that we felt to be kinder even than the cotton wool. “If that
collar puts a hurt on the pony agin as long as yee’ll be thravellin’
Connemara, ye may--ye may call me blackbird!”
This handsome permission, emphasised by the tug with which the big
needle was dragged through the leather, was evidently the highest
reassurance known to the speaker, but, notwithstanding, we felt that
even to apply the opprobrious name of blackbird to Jack’s father would
be an indifferent consolation if in the midst of a wilderness of moor
and mountain we found the red spot appearing on Sibbie’s shoulder. We
looked, however, as properly impressed as we were able, and returned to
the house in better spirits.
It was not till the afternoon that the weather gave us a chance of
starting, and even then it required courage of a high order to turn out
of our comfortable quarters into the thick, damp air. The volcanic
mountain spikes, that last night had notched the sullen fire of the
evening sky, had with one accord taken the veil, and retired from public
observation, and the sloping pastures and turnip fields looked as nearly
repulsive as was possible for them. Under these circumstances we left
Letterfrack without emotion, and proceeded northward towards Renvyle.
After we had gone a little way we began to speculate as to whether the
road had been made with an eye to the possibility of a future
switchback railway. It seemed to us that at every hundred yards or so we
had to get out and trudge up a hill through the mud, our consciences
approving our consideration for Sibbie, and our every other feeling
bewailing it; then came the scrambling into the trap again at the top,
the tucking in of wet rugs, the difficult closing of the door, and
having driven down the far side, the next hill rose immediately before
us in the mist. The next thing we began to notice was that on every hill
we met a donkey-cart and some young cattle, evidently coming from some
fair or market. There were two courses of procedure on these occasions.
The calves turned and fled before us at full gallop along the way they
had come, until retrieved with huge expense of shouting and bad
language, or they at once jumped the fence by the roadside and stampeded
at large through the fields. The donkey-cart, which generally contained
a pig, and an old woman screaming in Irish, had but one method, which
was to cross to the wrong side of the road at the critical
[Illustration: AT TULLY FAIR.]
moment, and then, abandoning itself to panic, endeavour to retrace its
steps. During three or four miles these _recontres_ became more and more
frequent, till at length, when the mist lifted at the top of a hill, we
found that we had reached their source. In the hollow between the two
hills was a village, its single street black with people, and the roads
leading to it full of cattle and pigs. In other words, we had hit off
the fair of Tully.
My cousin and I began to wonder how we were to get to the other side of
it. We drove down into the town with dignity and circumspection, hoping
that our aristocratic appearance might clear the way for us; but after a
minute or two we were forced to the conclusion that the peasantry were
not impressed. Not till Sibbie’s aggrieved visage was thrust into their
midst did the groups separate, and even then they could scarcely spare
time from the ardours of debate to give us more than a passing stare of
bewilderment. An obstacle that seemed for a time likely to prevent our
ever getting to Renvyle was a donkey-cart, with its shafts propped on a
barrel so as to make a stall for the sale of sugar-stick, gooseberries,
and piles of the massive biscuits known as “crackers.” The press of
customers and their friends round this brought us to a standstill, and
my cousin, in a politely dignified voice, asked those nearest us to move
aside. There was a movement and a turning to stare.
“Holy Biddy! What’s thim?” exclaimed a girl, pushing back against the
donkey-cart, and in so doing sending some of the “crackers” sliding down
into the mud.
The proprietress, an old woman with protruding teeth and generally
terrific aspect, made a futile attempt to avert the catastrophe, and
then whirled round upon us with a ferocity whetted by this disaster and
matured by long combat with small boys.
“That the divil may blisther yerself and thim!” she screamed. “What call
have thim dirty thravellers here throwin’ down all before thim? Aha! I
knew ye,” she said, addressing herself to my second cousin in tones of
thunder, “and yer owld mother before ye, the time ye were thravelling
the counthry in a pack on her back, puckin’ at every hall-doore in the
counthry beggin’ spuds! For so grand as ye are, with yer specs on yer
nose and yer fine sailor hat on the back of yer head!”
My cousin and I should, of course, have passed on with a pale hauteur,
as if we had not heard this amazing effort of biographical romance, but
we are, unfortunately, not of the complexion that turns pale with ease;
on the contrary, we became a violent turkey-cock scarlet, and ended by a
collapse into unsuppressible laughter, in which the crowd joined with
unfeigned delight, as they at length made a way for us to pass.
“Don’t mind her at all, Miss,” said a cattle drover, encouragingly, as
he dragged a calf from before the wheel; “that one’d bother a rookery
with her tongue; there isn’t a fair in the counthry but she’ll be
bawling and fighting in it this way, so it’s little regard the people
pays to her and her chat. Sure, as Shakspeare says, “ye’ll always know a
rale lady wherever ye see her!”
This gallantry was so refreshing, that we did not stop to inquire more
closely into the whereabouts of the quotation, and we slowly made our
way out of the fair, past the bulging, grimy tents where porter and
whisky were sold, and the screaming crowd of children in front of a
showman’s booth, till the last knot of blue-cloaked women was
circumnavigated, and the last incensed pig was dragged from between
Sibbie’s forelegs.
We looked back as we crawled up the hill outside the village, and
wondered what the pleasure could be of standing all day long in the
drizzle, in mud ankle-deep, as many do who have nothing either to buy or
sell. But a fair is not to them merely a place of business, it is a
conversazione, extending from sunrise to sunset, at which the keen
spectacular enjoyment of bargaining is blended with the purely personal
pleasure of getting drunk.
Another mile or two of switchbacking brought us in sight of trees,
which, in Connemara, answers to coming in sight of land, as far as
civilisation is concerned; before long we were driving underneath them,
and pulling up at the entrance gate of a demesne. We drove down a long
avenue (when we say “avenue” in Ireland, we mean it according to the
true sense of the word, and do not necessarily imply that it is
over-arched with trees), with the sound of the sea in our ears, and
became aware that we were on a strip of land like the battlefield of
Lyonesse.
“On one side lay the ocean, and on one lay a great water.”
We wound by the edge of the lake, and might easily have mistaken the
frothy ripple along its shore for the salt lip of the tide, but for the
tall band of reeds that shook stiffly in the mist-laden wind. But we
were nearing the sea every moment. We emerged from a plantation, and
came in sight of it at last, and at the same time came to our
destination, a long, grey, two-storey house, with low Elizabethan
windows, and pale weather-slated walls, wholly unexpected, and
altogether unique, as far, at all events, as this part of Ireland is
concerned.
Anyone who knows Galway at all, knows the name of Blake; and anyone who
read the reports of the Parnell Commission will remember the Mrs. Blake
whose evidence there was thought by both sides to be of so remarkable a
kind. Renvyle House, at whose oaken, iron-studded door Sibbie was now
joyfully coming to a standstill, has been the home of the Blakes for
several centuries; now, in its old age, it is the home of any tourist
who chooses to go there. The bad times and the agitation hit Renvyle
very hard; so hard that when the fight with the Land League was over,
Mrs. Blake was not able to sit down and tranquilly enjoy her victory.
She had, on the contrary, to rise up and give all her energies to
repairing the ruin that such a victory meant. Her plan was a daring one
for a boycotted woman to undertake; but it was carried out to its
fullest intention. Before long, advertisements appeared in the
newspapers and the guide books to the effect that Renvyle House had been
added to the list of Connemara hotels, and the sound of traffic, “the
coorsing and recoorsing” of cars began to be heard on the long avenue
by the lake, as in the old times, when “exclusive dealing” and decrees
of isolation were unknown.
We cannot here say much about the difficulties she had to contend with.
Whatever they were they were overcome. It is both easier and pleasanter
to speak of the advantages at her command. The charming, rambling old
house, with its innumerable panelled bedrooms, the lakes, “shtiff” with
brown trout, the woods and rocks in which hide all manner of strange
beasts--from otters and seals downwards--the untainted Atlantic for the
tourist to disport himself in or upon, as seems good to him, and the
tallest mountains of Connemara to stare at across the bay, while
sprawling at ease on such a level, creamy stretch of sand as is seldom
found except in those places where it is the sole and much-bragged-of
attraction. We had heard of all these things in advance; we were
accustomed to thinking of Renvyle as an hotel; and yet, when we knocked
at the door, and a grave and decorous man-servant appeared, the look of
everything conspired to make us forget that we were tourists, prepared
to exercise our lawful right of “bed and board,” and we came very near
stammering out an inquiry if Mrs. Blake was at home.