“Such is the picture of our country, given, I believe, by two Irish ladies. One, at least, is Irish—Miss Martin, a niece of the Honourable Mrs. P. A more unfeminine book I have never perused, or one more devoid of any sentiment of refinement, for even men who write horsey novels preserve some tinge of romance in their feelings towards women which these ladies are devoid of. A complete hardness pervades their treatment of the female as of the male characters.”
It is seventeen years since we first perused this melancholy indictment. Is it too late to do one act of justice and to restore to the reviewer one illusion? Martin Ross cannot claim the relationship assigned to her; the Honourable Mrs. P. leaves the court without a stain on her character.
Among the best and most faithful of the friends of the R.M., we make bold to count the Army. After the South African War, we were shown a letter in which a Staff-officer had said that he “had worn out three copies of the ‘Irish R.M.’ during the War, but it had preserved for him his reason, which would otherwise have been lost.” Another wrote to tell us of the copy of the book that had been found in General de Wet’s tent, on one of the many occasions when that stout campaigner had got up a little earlier than had been expected. Yet a third officer, no less than a Director of Military Intelligence, said that a statue should be erected in honour of the “R.M.” “For services rendered during the War.” And, as Mr. Belloc has sung, “Surely the Tartar should know!”
Much later came a letter from Northern Nigeria, telling us that “the book was ripping,” apologising for “frightful cheek” in writing, ending with the statement that “even if we were annoyed,” the writer was, “at any rate, a long way off!”
In very truth we were not annoyed. We have had letters that filled us with an almost shamed thankfulness that we should have been able, with such play-boys as Flurry Knox, and “Slipper,” and the rest, to give what seemed to be a real lift to people who needed it; and, since 1914, it is not easy to express what happiness it has brought us both to hear, as we have often heard, that the various volumes of the R.M.’s adventures had done their share in bringing moments of laughter, and, perhaps, of oblivion for a while to their surroundings, to the fighters in France and in all those other cruel places, where endurance and suffering go hand in hand, and the lads lay down their lives with a laugh.
Nothing, I believe, ever gave Martin more pleasure than that passages from the “Irish R.M.” should have been included among the Broad Sheets that the Times sent out to the soldiers. It was in the last summer of her life, little as we thought it, that this honour was paid to our stories, and had she been told how brief her time was to be, and been asked to choose the boon that she would like best, I believe that to be numbered among that elect company of consolers was what she would most gladly have chosen.
A little book was sent to me, not long ago, which was published in the spring of this year, 1917. It gives an account, worthy in its courage and simplicity of the brilliant and gallant young life that it commemorates. In it is told how Gilbert Talbot, of the Rifle Brigade, “began the plan of reading aloud in the men’s rest times, and we heard from many sources what the fun was, and the shouts of laughter, from his reading aloud of ‘Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.’ ‘Philippa’s first Foxhunt’ was a special success.” And in his last entry in his diary, he himself tells of having “read one of the old R.M. stories aloud,” and that it was “a roaring success.”
Yet one other story, and one that touches the fount of tears. It was written to me by one who knew and loved Martin; one whose husband had been killed in the war, and who wrote of her eldest son,
“I want to tell you that the R.M. helped me through what would have been D——’s twenty-first birthday yesterday. I know Violet would have been glad.”
I believe that she knows these things, and I am quite sure that she is glad.