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35 chapters
PREFACE
PREFACE
I have many people to thank, for many things, and I have an explanation to make, but the thanks must come first. I offer my most sincere gratitude to Mrs. Butler and to Professor Edgeworth, for their kindness in permitting me to print Miss Edgeworth’s letters to Mrs. Bushe; to Lord Dunsany, for the extract from “Plays of Gods and Men,” which has said for me what I could not say for myself; to the Editors of the Spectator and of Punch , for their permission to use Martin Ross’s letter and the qua
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THE TENTS OF THE ARABS.
THE TENTS OF THE ARABS.
King. What is this child of man that can conquer Time and that is braver than Love? Eznarza. Even Memory.... He shall bring back our year to us that Time cannot destroy. Time cannot slaughter it if Memory says no. It is reprieved, though banished. We shall often see it, though a little far off, and all its hours and days shall dance to us and go by one by one and come back and dance again. Why, that is true. They shall come back to us. I had thought that they that work miracles, whether in Heave
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INTRODUCTORY
INTRODUCTORY
Perhaps I ought to begin by saying that I have always called her “Martin”; I propose to do so still. I cannot think of her by any other name. To her own family, and to certain of her friends, she is Violet; to many others she is best known as Martin Ross. But I shall write of her as I think of her. * * * * * When we first met each other we were, as we then thought, well stricken in years. That is to say, she was a little over twenty, and I was four years older than she. Not absolutely the earlie
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CHAPTER I THE MARTINS OF ROSS
CHAPTER I THE MARTINS OF ROSS
A few years ago Martin wrote an account of her eldest brother, Robert, known and loved by a very wide circle outside his own family as “Ballyhooley.” He died in September, 1905, and in the following spring, one of his many friends, Sir Henniker Heaton, wrote to my cousin and begged her to help him in compiling a book that should be a memorial of Robert, of his life, his writings, and of his very distinguished and valuable political work as a speaker and writer in the Unionist cause. Sir Henniker
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CHAPTER II “THE CHIEF”
CHAPTER II “THE CHIEF”
It is a commonplace, even amounting to a bromide, to speak of the breadth, the depth, and the length of the ties of Irish kinship. In Ireland it is not so much Love that hath us in the net as Relationship. Pedigree takes precedence even of politics, and in all affairs that matter it governs unquestioned. It is sufficient to say that the candidate for any post, in any walk of life—is “a cousin of me own, by the Father”—“a sort of a relation o’ mine, by the Mother”—and support of the unfittest is
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CHAPTER III MAINLY MARIA EDGEWORTH
CHAPTER III MAINLY MARIA EDGEWORTH
There is a portrait of Mrs. Bushe that is now in the possession of one of her many great-grandchildren, Sir Egerton Coghill. It is a small picture, in pastel, very delightful in technique, and the subject is worthy of the technique. Nancy Crampton was her name, and the picture was probably done at the time of her marriage, in 1793, and is a record of the excellent judgment of the future Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. It would be hard to find a more charming face. From below a cloud of brown curl
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CHAPTER IV OLD FORGOTTEN THINGS
CHAPTER IV OLD FORGOTTEN THINGS
Chief Justice Bushe died in 1843, and Maria Edgeworth in 1849, but Mrs. Bushe lived on till 1857, a delight and an inspiration to her children and grandchildren. To her, even more than to the Chief, may be ascribed the inevitable, almost invariable turn for the Arts, in some form, frequently in all forms, that distinguishes their descendants, and to her also is attributed a quality in story-telling known as “Crampton dash,” which may be explained as an intensifying process, analogous to the swel
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CHAPTER V EARLY WEST CARBERY
CHAPTER V EARLY WEST CARBERY
I have already commented on the social importance, and value, of the feuds of a century ago. Fights were made, like the wall-papers, the carpets, the furniture, to last. Friendships too, I daresay, but though it was possible to dissolve a friendship, the full-fledged fight, beaked and clawed, was incapable as an eagle of laying down its weapons. Such a fight there was between two sisters, both long since dead. They were said to have been among “The Beauties of the Court of the Regent”—delightful
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CHAPTER VI HER MOTHER
CHAPTER VI HER MOTHER
I have spoken of that first cousinhood of seventy, the grandchildren of the Chief Justice, of whom my mother and Martin’s were not the least notable members. I want to say something more of these two, and if such tales as Martin and I have remembered may seem sometimes to impinge upon the Fifth Commandment, I would, in apology, recall the old story of the masquerade at which Love cloaked himself in laughter, and was only discovered when he laughed till he cried, and they saw that the laughter wa
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CHAPTER VII MY MOTHER
CHAPTER VII MY MOTHER
The men and women, but more specially the women, of my mother’s family and generation are a lost pattern, a vanished type. I once read a fragment, by John Davidson, that appeared some years ago in the Outlook . I grieve that I have lost the copy and do not remember its date. It was called, if I am not mistaken, “The Last of the Alanadoths,” and purported to be the final page of the history of a great and marvellous tribe, whose stature was twice that of ordinary beings, whose strength was as the
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CHAPTER VIII HERSELF
CHAPTER VIII 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
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CHAPTER IX MYSELF, WHEN YOUNG
CHAPTER IX MYSELF, WHEN YOUNG
I have deeply considered the question as to how far and how deep I should go in the matter of my experiences as an Art student. Those brief but intense visits to Paris come back to me as almost the best times that life has given me. To be young, and very ardent, and to achieve what you have most desired, and to find that it brings full measure and running over—all those privileges were mine. I may have taken my hand from the plough, and tried to “ cultiver mon jardin ” in other of the fields of
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CHAPTER X WHEN FIRST SHE CAME
CHAPTER X WHEN FIRST SHE CAME
“ Sure ye’re always laughing! That ye may laugh in the sight of the Glory of Heaven!” This benediction was bestowed upon Martin by a beggar-woman in Skibbereen, and I hope, and believe, it has been fulfilled. Wherever she was, if a thing amused her she had to laugh. I can see her in such a case, the unpredictable thing that was to touch the spot, said or done, with streaming tears, helpless, almost agonised, much as one has seen a child writhe in the tortured ecstasy of being tickled. The large
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CHAPTER XI “AN IRISH COUSIN”
CHAPTER XI “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
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CHAPTER XII THE YEARS OF THE LOCUST
CHAPTER XII THE YEARS OF THE LOCUST
Before I abandon these “Irish Cousin” years at Drishane, I should like to say something more of the old conditions there. I do not think I claim too much for my father and mother when I say that they represented for the poor people of the parish their Earthly Providence, their Court of Universal Appeal, and, in my mother’s case, their Medical Attendant, who, moreover, provided the remedies, as well as the nourishment, that she prescribed. The years of the ’eighties were years of leanness, “years
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CHAPTER XIII THE RESTORATION
CHAPTER XIII THE RESTORATION
It was in June, 1888, that Mrs. Martin became the tenant of Ross House and that she and her daughters returned to Galway, sixteen years, to the very month, since they had left it. It would demand one more skilled than I in the unfathomable depths of Irish Land Legislation to attempt to set forth the precise status of Ross, its house, demesne, and estate, at this time. It is not, after all, a matter of any moment, save to those concerned. Mrs. Martin had been staying in Galway, and had paid a vis
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CHAPTER XIV RICKEEN
CHAPTER XIV RICKEEN
The journey from Drishane to Ross was first made by me in February, 1889. As the conventional crow flies, or as, on the map, the direct line is drawn, the distance is no more than a hundred miles, but by the time you have steered east to Cork, and north-west to Limerick, and north to Ennis, and to Athenry, and to Galway, with prolonged changes (and always for the worse), at each of these places, you begin to realise the greatness of Ireland, and to regard with awe the independent attitude of min
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CHAPTER XV FAITH AND FAIRIES
CHAPTER XV FAITH AND FAIRIES
In our parts of Ireland we do not for a moment pretend to be too civilised for superstition. When Cromwell offered the alternative of “Hell or Connaught,” with, no doubt, the comfortable feeling that it was a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other, more creatures than he knew of accepted the latter refuge. And when, in the County Cork, the ancient saying was proved that “Beyond the Leap”—which is a village about twelve miles inland from the Western Ocean—was indeed “beyond the Law,” an
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CHAPTER XVI BELIEFS AND BELIEVERS
CHAPTER XVI BELIEFS AND BELIEVERS
There is, I imagine, some obscure connection between the Fairies and the Evil Eye. There was “an old Cronachaun of a fellow,” who lived in the parish of Myross, who was said to be “away with the Fairies” a great deal, and, whether as a resulting privilege or not I cannot say, he also had the Bad Eye. It was asserted that he could go to the top of Mount Gabriel, which is a good twenty miles away, in five minutes. It seems a harmless feat, but it must be said that Mount Gabriel, in spite of its na
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CHAPTER XVII LETTERS FROM ROSS
CHAPTER XVII LETTERS FROM ROSS
Taking the publication of “An Irish Cousin” as the beginning of our literary work, its next development was a series of short articles on Irish subjects that Martin wrote, single-handed, for the World . The sap was beginning to run up; more and more things began with her to throw themselves, almost unconsciously, into phrases and forms. Her thoughts blossomed in the fit words, as the life in the tree breaks in leaves. Everything appealed to her in this new life at Ross, which was the old, and wh
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CHAPTER XVIII “TOURS, IDLE TOURS”
CHAPTER XVIII “TOURS, IDLE TOURS”
The adverse opinion of her old and once-trusted comrade, Mrs. X., in the matter of “The Delegate” was not the only trial of the kind that Mrs. Martin had to face. I imagine that few things in her life had given her as much pleasure as Violet’s success as a writer. She had a very highly cultured taste, and her literary judgment, builded as it was upon the rock of the classics, was as sound as it was fastidious. Had a conflict been pressed between it and maternal pride, I believe the latter would
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CHAPTER XIX OF DOGS
CHAPTER XIX OF DOGS
Throughout these very discursive annals I have tried to keep in remembrance a lesson that I learnt a few years ago from a very interesting book of Mr. Seton Thompson’s called, I think, “In the Arctic Prairies.” In it he began by saying that travellers’ accounts of their sufferings from mosquitoes were liable to degenerate into a weariness to the reader; therefore he determined to mass all he had suffered into one chapter. Thenceforward, when the remembrance of the mosquitoes became too poignant
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CHAPTER XX “THE REAL CHARLOTTE.”
CHAPTER XX “THE REAL CHARLOTTE.”
“ The Real Charlotte” can claim resemblance with Homer in one peculiarity at least, that of a plurality of birthplaces. She was first born at Ross, in November, 1889, and achieved as much life as there may be in a skeleton scenario. She then expired, untimely. Her next avatar was at Drishane, when, in April, 1890, we wrote with enthusiasm the first chapter, and having done so, straightway put her on a shelf, and she died again. In the following November we did five more chapters, and established
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CHAPTER XXI SAINT ANDREWS
CHAPTER XXI SAINT ANDREWS
For the remainder of the year ’94 the exigencies of family life kept Martin and me apart, she at Ross, or paying visits, I at home, doing the illustrations for our Danish tour, with complete insincerity, from local models. My diary says, “Impounded Mother to pose as the Hofjägermesterinde, and Mary Anne Whoolly as a Copenhagen market-woman—as Tennyson prophetically said, ‘All, all are Danes.’ ” In the meantime “The Real Charlotte” continued to run the race set before her, with a growing tide of
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CHAPTER XXII AT ÉTAPLES
CHAPTER XXII AT ÉTAPLES
In February, 1895, I met Martin in London, and found her in considerable feather, consequent on her reviving visit to St. Andrews, and on that gorgeous review in which we had been called hard and pitiless censors, as well as sardonic, squalid, and merciless observers of Irish life. We felt this to be so uplifting that we lost no time in laying the foundations of a further “ferocious narrative.” This became, in process of time, “The Silver Fox.” It had the disadvantage, from our point of view, of
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CHAPTER XXIII PARIS AGAIN
CHAPTER XXIII PARIS AGAIN
We returned to Drishane in October, having by that time written and illustrated the third story of the series. Which was fortunate, as on the first of November, “November Day” as we call it in Carbery, we went a-hunting, and under my eyes Martin “took a toss” such as I trust I may never have to see again. It happened in the middle of a run; there was a bar across an opening into a field. It was a wooden bar, with bushes under it, and it was not very high, but firmly fixed. I jumped it, and calle
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CHAPTER XXIV HORSES AND HOUNDS
CHAPTER XXIV HORSES AND HOUNDS
I have thought of leaving it to our books to express and explain the part that hunting has played in Martin’s life and mine; but when I remember (to quote once again those much-quoted lines) how much of the fun that we have had in our lives has been “owed to horse and hound,” I feel an acknowledgment more direct and deliberate is due. Almost the first thing that I can remember is the duplicity of my grandfather on my behalf in the matter of the hounds. He had been forbidden by his doctor to hunt
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CHAPTER XXV “THE IRISH R.M.”
CHAPTER XXV “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
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CHAPTER XXVI OF GOOD TIMES
CHAPTER XXVI OF GOOD TIMES
In a Swiss Valley. * * * * * The effort of writing the twelve “R.M.” stories against time, and before she had even began to recover from the effects of the hunting accident, told upon Martin more severely than we could either of us have believed possible. For the following four years, 1900 to 1903, it was impossible for her to undertake any work that would demand steady application, and it was out of the question to bind ourselves to any date for anything. In looking over our records, the fact t
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CHAPTER XXVII VARIOUS OPINIONS
CHAPTER XXVII VARIOUS OPINIONS
While I have been writing this book the difficulty of deciding between the things that interested Martin and me, and those that might presumably interest other people, has been ever before me. In the path of this chapter there is another and still more formidable lion, accompanied—as a schoolchild said—by “his even fiercer wife, the Tiger.” By which I wish to indicate Irish politics, and Woman’s Suffrage. I will take the Tiger first, and will dispose of it as briefly as may be. Martin and I, lik
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CHAPTER XXVIII THE LAST
CHAPTER XXVIII THE LAST
I have come to what must be the final chapter, and the thought most present with me is that in writing it I am closing the door on these memories of two lives that made the world a pleasant place for each other, and I find now that although I began them with reluctance, it is with reluctance still that I must end them. It has been hard, often, to leave untold so many of those trivial things that counted for more, in the long run, than the occasional outstanding facts of two quite uneventful live
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APPENDIX I LETTERS FROM CHIEF JUSTICE CHARLES KENDAL BUSHE TO MRS. BUSHE
APPENDIX I LETTERS FROM CHIEF JUSTICE CHARLES KENDAL BUSHE TO MRS. BUSHE
Charles Kendal Bushe to Mrs. Bushe . Waterford. (Undated.) Probably July or August, 1798. “Within this day or two the United Irishmen rose in the Co Kilkenny and disarm’d every gentleman and man in the County except Pierce Butler. O’Flaherty, Davis, Nixon, Lee, and Tom Murphy was not spar’d and they even beat up the Quarters of Bob’s Seraglio, but he had the day before taken the precaution to remove his arms, and among them my double barrell’d Gun, to Pierce Butler’s as a place of safety, so tha
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APPENDIX II
APPENDIX II
The following is written by Captain Stephen Gwynn , M.P., Member for Galway City, who has very kindly permitted me to include it among these memories. Probably no one can have really known “Martin Ross” who did not spend some time in her company either in Connemara or West Cork. I, to my sorrow, only met her once, at a Dublin dinner table. That hour’s talk has left on my mind a curiously limited and even negative impression. She looked surprisingly unlike a person who spent much of her life in t
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APPENDIX III HER FRIENDS
APPENDIX III HER FRIENDS
In trying to include in these divagations the names of some of the chief among the friends of Martin Ross, I am met at once by the thought of her brothers and sisters. These were first in her life, and they held their place in it, and in her heart, in a manner that is not always given to brothers and sisters. Two griefs, the death of her eldest brother, Robert, and of the sister next to her in age, Edith Dawson, struck her with a force that can best be measured by what the loss of two people so
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APPENDIX IV BIBLIOGRAPHY
APPENDIX IV BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY R. CLAY AND SONS, LTD., BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E. 1, AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. FOOTNOTES: [1] Robert has told me how, hearing from Willie Wills that “the money-market was tight,” he went to proffer assistance. In Willie’s studio he was about to light a cigarette with a half-burned “spill” of paper, when he became aware that the “spill” was a five-pound note, an unsuspected relic of more prosperous times, that had already been used for a like purpose. E. Œ. S.
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