The greatest favourite we ever had among our guests at the Authors’ Club was “Ballahooley”—Robert Jasper Martin of Cromartin, better known as Bob Martin—a magnificent-looking Irish squire of the Charles Lever type, who bubbled over with natural wit.
Bob Martin was a brother of Violet Martin of Ross, and cousin of Edith Œnone Somerville the lady M.F.H., who collaborated in Some Reminiscences of an Irish R.M. and other famous books of Irish life and character, and though he did not write much, he had the same limitless fund of humour.
The first time that ever I took him to the Authors’ Club the late Lord Wolseley was the guest of the evening, and an admirable guest of the evening he was—illustrious, interesting, urbane, a brilliant talker. He and Martin were old friends, and after Lord Wolseley’s health had been proposed and he had responded in a speech which told us all about his literary work—like Moltke, he was an author by instinct—Martin got up to tell us some of his inimitable Irish stories. The first was one about Lord Wolseley himself. In the days when he was only a colonel, a sergeant-major came to him for a day’s leave to help his wife in doing the Company’s washing.
“I’ve been speaking to your wife, Pat,” said Colonel Wolseley, “and she begged me, whenever you came to me for leave on her washing-day, to refuse you because you get in her way so.”
The man saluted, and turned to leave the room, but when he got to the door he turned round and saluted again, and asked, “Have I your leave to say something, Colonel?”
“Yes, Pat.”
“Well, what I wish to say, sir, is that one of us two must be handling the truth rather carelessly, because I haven’t got a wife.”
True or untrue, Lord Wolseley did not deny the impeachment.
That same night “Ballahooley” told us of his first experience of the Castle at Dublin. He was asked to stay there the first time he ever came to town, and he was not used to town ways. When his jaunting-car pulled up at the door of the Castle, he told the footman to give the coachman a drink, which was the custom of the country at Cromartin. The footman stared at him.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” he asked.