Penelope's Irish Experiences

Chapter VIII. Romance and reality

At midnight I heard a faint tap at my door, and Francesca walked in, her eyes wide and bright, her cheeks flushed, her long, dark braid of hair hanging over her black travelling cloak. I laughed as I saw her, she looked so like Sir Patrick Spens in the ballad play at Pettybaw,—a memorable occasion when Ronald Macdonald caught her acting that tragic role in his ministerial gown, the very day that Himself came from Paris to marry me in Pettybaw, dear little Pettybaw!

“I came in to find out if your bed is as bad as mine, but I see you have not slept in it,” she whispered.

“I was just coming in to see if yours could be any worse,” I replied. “Do you mean to say that you have tried it, courageous girl? I blew out my candle, and then, after an interval in which to forget, sat down on the outside as a preliminary; but the moon rose just then, and I could get no further.”

I had not unpacked my bag. I had simply slipped on my macintosh, selected a wooden chair, and, putting a Cromwellian towel over it, seated myself shudderingly on it and put my feet on the rounds, quoting Moore meantime—

Francesca followed my example, and we passed the night in reading Celtic romances to each other. We could see the faint outline of sweet Slievenamann from our windows—the mountain of the fair women of Feimheann, celebrated as the hunting-ground of the Finnian Chiefs.

In the Finnian legend, the great Finn McCool, when much puzzled in the choice of a wife, seated himself on its summit. At last he decided to make himself a prize in a competition of all the fair women in Ireland. They should start at the foot of the mountain, and the one who first reached the summit should be the great Finn’s bride. It was Grainne Oge, the Gallic Helen, and daughter of Cormac, the king of Ireland, who won the chieftain, ‘being fleetest of foot and longest of wind.’

We almost forgot our discomforts in this enthralling story, and slept on each other’s nice clean shoulders a little, just before the dawn. And such a dawn! Such infinite softness of air, such dew-drenched verdure! It is a backward spring, they say, but to me the woods are even lovelier than in their summer wealth of foliage, when one can hardly distinguish the beauty of the single tree from that of its neighbours, since the colours are blended in one universal green. Now we see the feathery tassels of the beech bursting out of their brown husks, the russet hues of the young oak leaves, and the countless emerald gleams that ‘break from the ruby-budded lime.’ The greenest trees are the larch, the horse-chestnut, and the sycamore, three naturalised citizens who apparently still keep to their native fashions, and put out their foliage as they used to do in their own homes. The young alders and the hawthorn hedges are greening, but it will be a fortnight before we can realise the beauty of that snow-white bloom, with its bitter-sweet fragrance. The cuckoo-flower came this year before instead of after the bird, they tell us, showing that even Nature, in these days of anarchy and misrule, is capable of taking liberties with her own laws. There is a fragrance of freshly turned earth in the air, and the rooks are streaming out from the elms by the little church, and resting for a bit in a group of plume-like yews. The last few days of warmth and sunshine have inspired the birds, and as Francesca and I sit at our windows breathing in the sweetness and freshness of the morning, there is a concert of thrushes and blackbirds in the shrubberies. The little birds furnish the chorus or the undertone of song, the hedge-sparrows, redbreasts, and chaffinches, but the meistersingers ‘call the tune,’ and lead the feathered orchestra with clear and certain notes. It is a golden time for the minstrels, for nest-building is finished, and the feeding of the younglings a good time yet in the future. We can see one little brown lady hovering warm eggs under her breast, her bright eyes peeping through a screen of leaves as she glances up at her singing lord, pouring out his thanks for the morning sun. There is only a hint of breeze, it might almost be the whisper of uncurling fern fronds, but soft as it is, it stirs the branches here and there, and I know that it is rocking hundreds of tiny cradles in the forest.

When I was always painting in those other days before I met Himself, one might think my eyes would have been even keener to see beauty than now, when my brushes are more seldom used; but it is not so. There is something, deep hidden in my consciousness, that makes all loveliness lovelier, that helps me to interpret it in a different and in a larger sense. I have a feeling that I have been lifted out of the individual and given my true place in the general scheme of the universe, and, in some subtle way that I can hardly explain, I am more nearly related to all things good, beautiful, and true than I was when I was wholly an artist, and therefore less a woman. The bursting of the leaf-buds brings me a tender thought of the one dear heart that gives me all its spring; and whenever I see the smile of a child, a generous look, the flash of sympathy in an eye, it makes me warm with swift remembrance of the one I love the best of all, just ‘as a lamplight will set a linnet singing for the sun.’

Love is doing the same thing for Francesca; for the smaller feelings merge themselves in the larger ones, as little streams lose themselves in oceans. Whenever we talk quietly together of that strange, new, difficult life that she is going so bravely and so joyously to meet, I know by her expression that Ronald’s noble face, a little shy, a little proud, but altogether adoring, serves her for courage and for inspiration, and she feels that his hand is holding hers across the distance, in a clasp that promises strength.

At five o’clock we longed to ring for hot water, but did not dare. Even at six there was no sound of life in the cosy inn which we have named The Cromwell Arms (‘Mrs. Duddy, Manageress; Comfort, Cleanliness, Courtesy; Night Porter; Cycling Shed’). From seven to half-past we read pages and pages of delicious history and legend, and decided to go from Cappoquin to Youghal by steamer, if we could possibly reach the place of departure in time. At half-past seven we pulled the bell energetically. Nothing happened, and we pulled again and again, discovering at last that the connection between the bell-rope and the bell-wire had long since disappeared, though it had been more than once established with bits of twine, fishing-line, and shoe laces. Francesca then went across the hall to examine her methods of communication, and presently I heard a welcome tinkle, and another, and another, followed in due season by a cheerful voice, saying, “Don’t desthroy it intirely, ma’am; I’ll be coming direckly.” We ordered jugs of hot water, and were told that it would be some time before it could be had, as ladies were not in the habit of calling for it before nine in the morning, and as the damper of the kitchen-range was out of order. Did we wish it in a little canteen with whisky and a bit of lemon-peel, or were we afther wantin’ it in a jug? We replied promptly that it was not the hour for toddy, but the hour for baths, with us, and the decrepit and very sleepy night porter departed to wake the cook and build the fire; advising me first, in a friendly way, to take the hearth brush that was ‘kapin’ the windy up, and rap on the wall if I needed annything more.’ At eight o’clock we heard the porter’s shuffling step in the hall, followed by a howl and a polite objurgation. A strange dog had passed the night under Francesca’s bed, and the porter was giving him what he called ‘a good hand and fut downstairs.’ He had put down the hot water for this operation, and on taking up the burden again we heard him exclaim: “Arrah! look at that now! May the divil fly away with the excommunicated ould jug!” It was past saving, the jug, and leaked so freely that one had to be exceedingly nimble to put to use any of the smoky water in it. “Thim fools o’ turf do nothing but smoke on me,” apologised the venerable servitor, who then asked, “would we be pleased to order breakquist.” We were wise in our generation, and asked for nothing but bacon, eggs, and tea; and after a smoky bath and a change of raiment we seated at our repast in the coffee-room, feeling wonderfully fresh and cheerful. By looking directly at each other most of the time, and making experimental journeys from plate to mouth, thus barring out any intimate knowledge of the tablecloth and the waiter’s linen, we managed to make a breakfast. Francesca is enough to give any one a good appetite. Ronald Macdonald will be a lucky fellow, I think, to begin his day by sitting opposite her, for her eyes shine like those of a child, and one’s gaze lingers fondly on the cool freshness of her cheek. Breakfast over and the bill settled, we speedily shook off as much of the dust of Mrs. Duddy’s hotel as could be shaken off, and departed on the most decrepit sidecar that ever rolled on two wheels, being wished a safe journey by a slatternly maid who stood in the doorway, by the wide Mrs. Duddy herself, who realised in her capacious person the picturesque Irish phrase, ‘the full-of-the-door of a woman,’ and by our friend the head waiter, who leaned against Mrs. Duddy’s ancestral pillars in such a way that the morning sun shone full upon his costume and revealed its weaknesses to our reluctant gaze.

The driver said it was eleven miles to Cappoquin, the guide-book fourteen, but this difference of opinion, we find, is only the difference between Irish and English miles, for which our driver had an unspeakable contempt, as of a vastly inferior quality. He had, on the other hand, a great respect for Mrs. Duddy and her comfortable, cleanly, and courteous establishment (as per advertisement), and the warmest admiration for the village in which she had appropriately located herself, a village which he alluded to as ‘wan of the natest towns in the ring of Ireland, for if ye made a slip in the street of it, be the help of God ye were always sure to fall into a public-house!’

“We had better not tell the full particulars of this journey to Salemina,” said Francesca prudently, as we rumbled along; “though, oddly enough, if you remember, whenever any one speaks disparagingly of Ireland, she always takes up cudgels in its behalf.”

“Francesca, now that you are within three or four months of being married, can you manage to keep a secret?”

“Yes,” she whispered eagerly, squeezing my hand and inclining her shoulder cosily to mine. “Yes, oh yes, and how it would raise my spirits after a sleepless night!”

“When Salemina was eighteen she had a romance, and the hero of it was the son of an Irish gentleman, an M.P., who was travelling in America, or living there for a few years,—I can’t remember which. He was nothing more than a lad, less than twenty-one years old, but he was very much in love with Salemina. How far her feelings were involved I never knew, but she felt that she could not promise to marry him. Her mother was an invalid, and her father a delightful, scholarly, autocratic, selfish old gentleman, who ruled his household with a rod of iron. Salemina coddled and nursed them both during all her young life; indeed, little as she realised it, she never had any separate existence or individuality until they both died, when she was thirty-one or two years old.”

“And what became of the young Irishman? Was he faithful to his first love, or did he marry?”

“He married, many years afterward, and that was the time I first heard the story. His marriage took place in Dublin, on the very day, I believe, that Salemina’s father was buried; for Fate has the most relentless way of arranging these coincidences. I don’t remember his name, and I don’t know where he lives or what has become of him. I imagine the romance has been dead and buried in rose-leaves for years; Salemina never has spoken of it to me, but it would account for her sentimental championship of Ireland.”

Chapter IX. The light of other days

If you want to fall head over ears in love with Ireland at the very first sight of her charms, take, as we did, the steamer from Cappoquin to Youghal, and float down the vale of the Blackwater—

The shores of this Irish Rhine are so lovely that the sail on a sunny day is one of unequalled charm. Behind us the mountains ranged themselves in a mysterious melancholy background; ahead the river wended its way southward in and out, in and out, through rocky cliffs and well-wooded shores.

The first tributary stream that we met was the little Finisk, on the higher banks of which is Affane House. The lands of Affane are said to have been given by one of the FitzGeralds to Sir Walter Raleigh for a breakfast, a very high price to pay for bacon and eggs, and it was here that he planted the first cherry-tree in Ireland, bringing it from the Canary Islands to the Isle of Weeping.

Looking back just below here, we saw the tower and cloisters of Mount Melleray, the Trappist monastery. Very beautiful and very lonely looked ‘the little town of God,’ in the shadows of the gloomy hills. We wished we had known the day before how near we were to it, for we could have claimed a night’s lodging at the ladies’ guest-house, where all creeds, classes, and nationalities are received with a cead-mile-failte,3 and where any offering for food or shelter is given only at the visitors pleasure. The Celtic proverb, ‘Melodious is the closed mouth,’ might be written over the cloisters; for it is a village of silence, and only the monks who teach in the schools or who attend visitors are absolved from the vow.

Next came Dromana Castle, where the extraordinary old Countess of Desmond was born,—the wonderful old lady whose supposed one hundred and forty years so astonished posterity. She must have married Thomas, twelfth Earl of Desmond, after 1505, as his first wife is known to have been alive in that year. Raleigh saw her in 1589, and she died in 1604: so it would seem that she must have been at least one hundred and ten or one hundred and twelve when she met her untimely death,—a death brought about entirely by her own youthful impetuosity and her fondness for athletic sports. Robert Sydney, second Earl of Leicester, makes the following reference to her in his Table-Book, written when he was ambassador at Paris, about 1640:—

‘The old Countess of Desmond was a marryed woman in Edward IV. time in England, and lived till towards the end of Queen Elizabeth, so she must needes be neare one hundred and forty yeares old. She had a new sett of teeth not long afore her death, and might have lived much longer had she not mett with a kinde of violent death; for she would needes climbe a nut-tree to gather nuts; so falling down she hurt her thigh, which brought a fever, and that fever brought death. This my cousin Walter Fitzwilliam told me.’

It is true that the aforesaid cousin Walter may have been a better raconteur than historian; still, local tradition vigorously opposes any lessening of the number of the countess’s years, pinning its faith rather on one Hayman, who says that she presented herself at the English court at the age of one hundred and forty years, to petition for her jointure, which she lost by the attainder of the last earl; and it also prefers to have her fall from the historic cherry-tree that Sir Walter planted, rather than from a casual nut-tree.

Down the lovely river we went, lazily lying back in the sun, almost the only passengers on the little craft, as it was still far too early for tourists; down past Villierstown, Cooneen Ferry, Strancally Castle, with its ‘Murdering Hole’ made famous by the Lords of Desmond, through the Broads of Clashmore; then past Temple Michael, an old castle of the Geraldines, which Cromwell battered down for ‘dire insolence,’ until we steamed slowly into the harbour of Youghal—and, to use our driver’s expression, there is no more ‘onderhanded manin’’ in Youghal than the town of the Yew Wood, which is much prettier to the eye and sweeter to the ear.

Here we found a letter from Salemina, and expended another eighteenpence in telegraphing to her:—

PEABODY, Coolkilla House, near Mardyke Walk, Cork.

We are under Yew Tree at Myrtle Grove where Raleigh and Spenser smoked, read manuscript Faerie Queene, and planted first potato. Delighted Benella better. Join you to-morrow. Don’t encourage archaeologist.

We had a charming hour at Myrtle Grove House, an unpretentious, gabled dwelling, for a time the residence of the ill-fated soldier captain, Sir Walter Raleigh. You remember, perhaps, that he was mayor of Youghal in 1588. After the suppression of the Geraldine rebellion, the vast estates of the Earl of Desmond and those of one hundred and forty of the leading gentlemen of Munster, his adherents, were confiscated, and proclamation was made all through England inviting gentlemen to ‘undertake’ the plantation of this rich territory. Estates were offered at two or three pence an acre, and no rent was to be paid for the first five years. Many of these great ‘undertakers,’ as they were called, were English noblemen who never saw Ireland; but among them were Raleigh and Spenser, who received forty-two thousand and twelve thousand acres respectively, and in consideration of certain patronage ‘undertook’ to carry the business of the Crown through Parliament.

Francesca was greatly pleased with this information, culled mostly from Joyce’s Child’s History of Ireland. The volume had been bought in Dublin by Salemina and presented to us as a piece of genial humour, but it became our daily companion.

I made a rhyme for her, which she sent Miss Peabody, to show her that we were growing in wisdom, notwithstanding our separation from her.

‘You have thought of Sir Walter as soldier and knight, Edmund Spenser, you’ve heard, was well able to write; But Raleigh the planter, and Spenser verse-maker, Each, oddly enough, was by trade ‘Undertaker.‘’

It was in 1589 that the Shepherd of the Ocean, as Spenser calls him, sailed to England to superintend the publishing of the Faerie Queene: so from what I know of authors’ habits, it is probable that Spenser did read him the poem under the Yew Tree in Myrtle Grove garden. It seems long ago, does it not, when the Faerie Queene was a manuscript, tobacco just discovered, the potato a novelty, and the first Irish cherry-tree just a wee thing newly transplanted from the Canary Islands? Were our own cherry-trees already in America when Columbus discovered us, or did the Pilgrim Fathers bring over ‘slips’ or ‘grafts,’ knowing that they would be needed for George Washington later on, so that he might furnish an untruthful world with a sublime sentiment? We re-read Salemina’s letter under the Yew Tree:—

MY DEAREST GIRLS,—It seems years instead of days since we parted, and I miss the two madcaps more than I can say. In your absence my life is always so quiet, discreet, dignified,—and, yes, I confess it, so monotonous! I go to none but the best hotels, meet none but the best people, and my timidity and conservatism for ever keep me in conventional paths. Dazzled and terrified as I still am when you precipitate adventures upon me, I always find afterwards that I have enjoyed them in spite of my fears. Life without you is like a stenographic report of a dull sermon; with you it is by turns a dramatic story, a poem, and a romance. Sometimes it is a penny-dreadful, as when you deliberately leave your luggage on an express train going south, enter another standing upon a side track, and embark for an unknown destination. I watched you from an upper window of the Junction Hotel, but could not leave Benella to argue with you. When your respected husband and lover have charge of you, you will not be allowed such pranks, I warrant you.

Benella has improved wonderfully in the last twenty-four hours, and I am trying to give her some training for her future duties. We can never forget our native land so long as we have her with us, for she is a perfect specimen of the Puritan spinster, though too young in years, perhaps, for determined celibacy. Do you know, we none of us mentioned wages in our conversations with her? Fortunately she seems more alive to the advantages of foreign travel than to the filling of her empty coffers. (By the way, I have written to the purser of the ship that she crossed in, to see if I can recover the sixty or seventy dollars she left behind her.) Her principal idea in life seems to be that of finding some kind of work that will be ‘interestin’’ whether it is lucrative or not.

I don’t think she will be able to dress hair, or anything of that sort—save in the way of plain sewing, she is very unskilful with her hands; and she will be of no use as courier, she is so provincial and inexperienced. She has no head for business whatever, and cannot help Francesca with the accounts. She recites to herself again and again, ‘Four farthings make one penny, twelvepence make one shilling, twenty shillings make one pound’; but when I give her a handful of money and ask her for six shillings and sixpence, five and three, one pound two, or two pound ten, she cannot manage the operation. She is docile, well mannered, grateful, and really likable, but her present philosophy of life is a thing of shreds and patches. She calls it ‘the science,’ as if there were but one; and she became a convert to its teachings this past winter, while living in the house of a woman lecturer in Salem, a lecturer, not a ‘curist,’ she explains. She attended to the door, ushered in the members of classes, kept the lecture-room in order, and so forth, imbibing by the way various doctrines, or parts of doctrines, which she is not the sort of person to assimilate, but with which she is experimenting: holding, meantime, a grim intuition of their foolishness, or so it seems to me. ‘The science’ made it easier for her to seek her ancestors in a foreign country with only a hundred dollars in her purse; for the Salem priestess proclaims the glad tidings that all the wealth of the world is ours, if we will but assert our heirship. Benella believed this more or less until a week’s sea-sickness undermined all her new convictions of every sort. When she woke in the little bedroom at O’Carolan’s, she says, her heart was quite at rest, for she knew that we were the kind of people one could rely on! I mustered courage to say, “I hope so, and I hope also that we shall be able to rely upon you, Benella!”

This idea evidently had not occurred to her, but she accepted it, and I could see that she turned it over in her mind. You can imagine that this vague philosophy of a Salem woman scientist superimposed on a foundation of orthodoxy makes a curious combination, and one which will only be temporary.

We shall expect you to-morrow evening, and we shall be quite ready to go on to the Lakes of Killarney or wherever you wish. By the way, I met an old acquaintance the morning I arrived here. I went to see Queen’s College; and as I was walking under the archway which has carved upon it, ‘Where Finbarr taught let Munster learn,’ I saw two gentlemen. They looked like professors, and I asked if I might see the college. They said certainly, and offered to take my card into some one who would do the honours properly. I passed it to one of them: we looked at each other, and recognition was mutual. He (Dr. La Touche) is giving a course of lectures here on Irish Antiquities. It has been a great privilege to see this city and its environs with so learned a man; I wish you could have shared it. Yesterday he made up a party and we went to Passage, which you may remember in Father Prout’s verses:—

Dr. La Touche calls Father Prout an Irish potato seasoned with Attic salt. Is not that a good characterisation?