“Andrew wrote his, and I mine, on a blank sheet, and there they remain for posterity. Andrew swears the verger didn’t know him, and that it was all the fur coat, and that our names were a bitter disappointment—why didn’t I put ‘Princess of Connemara’?
“Then to lunch. The B——s were very nice. He is tall and thin, she short, both as pleasant and unconventional and easy as nice Irish people alone are. After lunch she and Mrs. Lang tackled me in the drawing-room about the original of the Real C. I gaily admitted that she was drawn from life, and that you had known her a thousand times better than I. Then I told them various tales of her, and, without thinking, revealed her name.
“‘Oh yes!’ says Mrs. B. in ecstasy, ‘she was my husband’s cousin!’
“I covered my face with my hands, and I swear that the blush trickled through my fingers. I then rose, in strong convulsions, and attempted to fly the house. Professor B—— was called in to triumph over me, and said that she was only a very distant cousin, and that he had never seen her, and didn’t care what had been said of her. They were enchanted about it and my confusion, and they have asked me to go to their place in Ireland, with delightful cordiality.... Andrew L. and I then walked forth to Blackwood’s, a very fine old-fashioned place, with interesting pictures. We were instantly shown upstairs, to a large, pleasant room, where was Mr. Blackwood.... I broached the subject of the ‘Beggars,’ while Andrew stuck his nose into a book. Mr. Blackwood said he would like to see it.... Mr. Lang then spoke to him about an article on Junius that he is writing, and I put my nose into a book. We then left. There was no time to see Holyrood.... Thus to the train. My most comfortable thought during the two hours’ journey home was that in talking to Mrs. B. I had placed Charlotte on your shoulders! Andrew L. was very kind, and told me that if ever I wanted anything done that he could help me in, that he would do it.... My last impression of him is of his whipping out of the carriage as it began to move on, in the midst of an account of how Buddha died of eating roast pork to surfeit.”
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 appearing first in a weekly paper (since defunct). This involved a steady rate of production, and recurring “curtains,” which are alike objectionable; the former to the peace of mind of the author, while the latter are noxious trucklings to and stimulation of the casual reader. That, at least, is how the stipulated sensation at the end of each weekly instalment appeared to us at the time, and I have seen no reason for relinquishing these views. “The Silver Fox,” like most of our books, was the victim of many interruptions; it was finished in 1896, and as soon as its weekly career was careered, it was sold to Messrs. Lawrence and Bullen, who published it in October, 1897. It was a curious coincidence that almost in the same week we hunted a silver-grey fox with the West Carbery hounds. The hunt took place on Friday, the 13th of the month, we lost the fox in a quarry-hole, in which a farmer had, at the bidding of a dream, dug, fruitlessly, and at much expense, for fairy gold, and two of our horses were very badly cut. I saw the Silver Fox break covert, it was the Round Covert at Bunalun, and by all the laws of romance I ought to have broken my neck; but the Powers of Darkness discredited him, and neither he nor I were any the worse for the hunt. I do not remember ever seeing him again, and I presume he returned immediately to the red covers (without a t) of our book, from which he had been given a temporary outing.
It was in May and June, 1895, that we spent a happy and primitive fortnight in one of the Isles of Aran; we have described it in “Some Irish Yesterdays,” and it need not be further dealt with, though I may quote from my diary the fact that on “May 22. M. & I rescued a drowning child by the quay, and got very wet thereby. Several Natives surveyed performance, pleased, but calm, and did not offer assistance.”
In July, an entirely new entertainment was kindly provided for us by a General Election; our services were requisitioned by the Irish Unionist Alliance, and with a deep, inward sense of ignorance (not to say of play-acting), we sailed forth to instruct the East Anglian elector in the facts of Irish politics. It was a more arduous mission than we had expected, and it opened for us a window into English middle-class life through which we saw and learned many unsuspected things. Notably the persistence of English type, and the truth that was in George Eliot. We met John Bunyan, unconverted, it is true, but unmistakably he; cobbling in a roadside stall, full of theories, and endowed by heredity with a splendid Biblical speech in which to set them forth. Seth Bede was there, a house-painter and a mystic, with transparent, other-worldly blue eyes and a New Testament standard of ethics. Dinah Morris was there too, a female preacher and a saintly creature, who shamed for us the play-acting aspect of the affair into abeyance, and whose high and serious spirit recognised and met Martin’s spirit on a plane far remote from the sordid or ludicrous controversies of electioneering.
These few and elect souls we met by chance and privilege, not by intention. We had been given “professional” people, mainly, as our victims. Doctors, lawyers, and non-conforming parsons of various denominations. It taught us an unforgettable lesson of English honesty, level-headedness, and open-mindedness. Also of English courtesy. With but a solitary exception, we were received and listened to, seriously, and with a respect that we secretly found rather discomposing. They took themselves seriously, and their respect almost persuaded us that we were neither actors nor critics, but real people with a real message. The whole trend of Irish politics has changed since then. Every camp has been shifted, many infallibles have failed. I am not likely to go on the stump again, but I shall ever remember with pride that on this, our single entry into practical politics, our man got in, and that a Radical poster referred directly, and in enormous capital letters, to Martin and me as “IRISH LOCUSTS.”