Another effort of what I may call the Sofa period was an account of a case that we had been privileged to see and hear in a County Galway Petty Sessions Court. We called it “An Irish Problem”; it appeared in the National Review, and is now reprinted in “All on the Irish Shore.” This book, which is a collection of short stories and articles, was published by Longmans, Green & Co. in March, 1903. The stories, etc., in it had all appeared in various serials, and one, “An Irish Miracle,” has called forth many letters and inquiries. Even during the present year of 1917 I have had a letter from a lady in Switzerland, asking for information as to how to use the charm.
In a letter from myself to Martin, written during a visit to an English country house, I have come upon a reference to it. “They have been reading ‘All on the Irish Shore’ here. It was nobly typical of Colonel D. (an old friend) to read ‘An Irish Miracle’ in silence, and then ask, grimly, how much of it was true. Nothing more. There is wonderful strength of character in such conduct—beyond most Irish people. It is all part of the splendid English gift of not caring if they are agreeable or no. Just think of the engaging anxiety of the middle-class Irishman to be simpatica to his company!”
I may here state, with my hand, so to speak, on my heart, that there is a charm, an actual form of words which may be divulged only by “a her to a him; or a him to a her.” It is of the highest piety, being based on the teaching of the Gospels, and should be used with reverence and conviction. I have heard of two occasions, and know of one, on which it took effect. Unfortunately it cannot be used in healing a horse, and whoever does so, loses henceforth the power of employing it successfully; more than this I cannot say. I learnt it in the Co. Meath, and those who would “Know my Celia’s Charms,” or any other charms, from “The Cure for a Worm in the Heart,” to “A Remedy for the Fallen Palate,” to say nothing of the Curing of Warts, and such small deer, are recommended to prosecute their inquiries in the Royal County.
In October, 1902, it was decreed that Martin should try what a rest cure would do for her. During her incarceration, and in the spring of 1903, I drew and wrote “Slipper’s A. B. C. of Fox Hunting,” which materialised as a large picture-book; it was published by Messrs. Longman, and I dedicated it, in a financial as well as a literary sense, to the West Carbery Foxhounds, of which pack, in the same spring, I became the Master.
It was while we were at Aix, that June, that we disinterred “The Irish Cousin,” and prepared it for a renewal of existence under the auspices of Messrs. Longman. Shuddering, we combed out youthful redundancies and intensities, and although we found it impossible to deal with it as drastically as we could have wished, having neither time nor inclination to re-write it, we gave it a handling that scared it back to London as purged and chastened as a small boy after his first term at a public school. During these early years of the century, my sister and I, with a solid backing from our various relations, instituted a choral class in the village of Castle Townshend. It flourished for several years; we discovered no phenomenal genius, but we did undoubtedly find a great deal of genuine musical feeling. It is worth mentioning that, in our experience, the gift of untrained Irish singers is rhythm. If once the measure were caught, and the “beat” of the stick felt, an inherent sense of time kept the choir moving with the precision that is so delightful a feature of their dancing of jigs and reels. Some pleasant voices we found, and it was noteworthy that the better and the more classical the music that we tried to teach, the more popular it was. Hardly any of them could read music, and it was the task of those who could to impart the alto, tenor, and bass of the glees to the class, by the arduous method of singing each part to its appropriate victims until exhaustion intervened. Once learnt, the iron memories of our people held the notes secure, but I shall not soon forget how one of my cousins spent herself in the task of teaching to a new member, a young farm labourer, a tenor part. L.’s own voice was a rich and mellow contralto, and the remembrance of her deep, impassioned warblings, and of her pupil’s random and bewildered bleatings, is with me still. Musical societies in small communities have precarious lives. Gradually our best singers left us, to be wasted as sailors, soldiers, servants, school teachers, and I only speak of the society now in order to justify and explain a letter of Martin’s in which is described an experience that she owed to it.
V. F. M. to E. Œ. S. (Dublin, October (year uncertain).)
“Miss K. ceaselessly flits from Committee to Lecture and from Lecture to Convention, and would hound me to all. She is much wrapped up in the Feis Ceoil, of which a meeting, about Village Choral Societies, was held in the Mansion House on Friday. She begged me to go, and see the Lord Mayor preside, and hear much useful information, so, in the interests of the C.T. Choral Class I went. It was five o’clock before I approached, for the first time in my life, the portals of the Mansion House, and in the hall I could see nothing but a dirty bicycle and a little boy of about ten, who murmured that I was to write my name in a book, which I did with a greasy pencil from his own pocket. He told me that I was to go to the stairs and take the first to the left. I did so, and found myself in a pitch dark drawing-room. I returned to the boy, who then told me to go up the stairs and turn to my left.
“I climbed two flights, of homely appearance, and found a quite dark landing at the top. As I stood uncertain, something stirred in the dark. It was very low and dwarfish, and my flesh crept; it said nothing, but moved past, no higher than my waist. It seemed, in the glimmer that came from the foot of the stairs, to be some awful little thing carrying a big bundle on its back or head. I shall never know more than this.
“There was light down a passage, and making for it I came to a room with little and big beds jammed up side by side, obviously a nursery. There was also a nurse. I murmured apologies and fled. The nurse, if it were indeed a nurse and not an illusion, took not the faintest notice. After various excursions round the dark landing, during which the conviction grew upon me that I was in a dream, I went back to the nursery passage and there met a good little slut-tweenie, without cap or apron, who took me downstairs and put me right for the meeting, which I entered in a state bordering on hysterics. That died away very soon under the influence of a very long speech about the hire of pianos. Very practical, but deadly. The room was interesting, panelled with portraits around, and the audience was scanty.... On the whole I think the information I obtained is entirely useless to you, but the mysterious life into which I stumbled was interesting, and had a pleasing Behind the Looking Glass bewilderment in it.... This morning I had a tooth out under gas. I am quite sure that all gassings and chloroformings are deeply uncanny. One dies, one goes off into dreadful vastness with one’s astral body. That was the feeling. A poor little clinging ME, that first clung to the human body that had decoyed it into B——’s chair, was cast loose from that, and then hung desperately on to an astral creature that was wandering in nightmare fastnesses,—(even as I wandered in the Mansion House)—quite separate—then that was lost, and that despairing ME said to itself quite plainly, ‘I am forsaken—I have lost grip—I don’t know how I am behaving—I must just endure.’ Long afterwards came an effect as of the gold shower of a firework breaking silently over my head. Then appeared a radiant head in a fog—B——’s. Delightful relaxation of awful effort at self-control, and sudden realisation that the brute was out. Then the usual restoration to the world, tipped B——, put on my hat, and so home. I am sure these visions happen when one dies, and I am convinced of the existence of an innermost self, who just sits and holds on to the other two.”
There came a spring when influenza fell upon Martin in London and could not be persuaded to release its grip of her throat. It was the second season after I took the hounds, and I was at home when, in the middle of March, Martin’s doctor commanded her to lose no time in getting as far South as was convenient. I handed over the hounds to my brother Aylmer, and started for London at a moment’s notice, with an empty mind and a Continental Bradshaw. In the train I endeavoured to fill the former with the latter, and, beginning with France, its towns and watering places, the third name on the list was Amélie-les-Bains. “Warm sulphur springs, which are successfully used in affections of the lungs. Known to the Romans. Thriving town, finely placed at the confluence of the rivers Tech and Mondony, at the foot of Fort-les-Bains. Owing to mildness of climate Baths open all the year. Living comparatively cheap.” The description was restrained but seductive, and I brooded over it all the way to Dublin.