(Yet the mention of Shakespeare, and the wish to be sincere, force me to recall a tale of two of these first cousins of Martin’s mother and mine, the one an artist of delightful achievement, the other, amongst her many gifts, an astronomer and writer. The latter reproached the former for her neglect of Shakespeare, and announced her intention of reading aloud to her one of his plays. The artist replied with a high and characteristic tranquillity, “Shakespeare was a coarse man, my dear, but you may read him to me if you like. I can go into a reverie.”)
It is not out of place to mention here that the first writing in which Martin and I collaborated was a solemnly preposterous work, a dictionary of the words and phrases peculiar to our family, past and present, with derivations and definitions—the definitions being our opportunity. It might possibly—in fact I think some selections would—entertain the public, but I can confidently say it will never be offered to it; Bowdler himself would quail at the difficulties it would present.
* * * * *
Martin has, in her memoir of her brother Robert, given a sketch of life at Ross as it was in the old days, in its patriarchal simplicity, its pastoral abundance, its limitless hospitality, its feudal relations with the peasants. Its simplicity was, I imagine, of a more primitive type than can be claimed for any conditions that I can personally remember in my own country. The time of which she has written was already passing when she arrived on the scene, and she had to rely mainly on the records of her elders. The general atmosphere there and in my country was much the same, but a certain degree of sophistication may have set in a little earlier here, and when I say “here,” I speak of that fair and far-away district, the Barony of West Carbery, County Cork, the ultimate corner of the ultimate speck of Europe—Ireland. You will not find West Carbery’s name in the atlas, but Cape Clear will not be denied, and there is nothing of West Carbery west of Cape Clear, unless one counts its many sons and daughters who have gone even farther west, to the Land of the Setting Sun.
The Ireland that Martin and I knew when we were children is fast leaving us; every day some landmark is wiped out; I will try, as she has done, to recapture some of the flying memories.
To begin with
Castle Townshend.
Castle Townshend is a small village in the south-west of the County of Cork, unique in many ways among Irish villages, incomparable in the beauty of its surroundings, remarkable in its high level of civilisation, and in the number of its “quality houses.” “High ginthry does be jumpin’ mad for rooms in this village,” was how the matter was defined by a skilled authority, while another, equally versed in social matters, listened coldly to commendation of a rival village, and remarked, “It’s a nice place enough, but the ginthry is very light in it. It’s very light with them there entirely.”
I hasten to add that this criticism did not refer to the morals of the gentry, merely to their scarcity—as one says “a light crop.”
Castlehaven Harbour, to whose steep shores it adheres, defiant of the law of gravity, by whose rules it should long since have slipped into the sea, has its place in history. The Spanish Armada touched en passant (touched rather hard in some places), one of Queen Elizabeth’s admirals, Admiral Leveson, touched too, fairly hard, and left cannon-ball bruises on the walls of Castlehaven Castle. The next distinguished visitors were a force of Cromwell’s troopers. Brian’s Fort, built by Brian Townshend, the son of one of Cromwell’s officers, still stands firm, and Swift’s tower, near it, is distinguished as the place where “the gloomy Dean; (of autre fois) wrote a Latin poem, called “Carberiae Rupes.” A translation of this compliment to the Rocks of Carbery was printed one hundred and seventy years ago in Smith’s “History of the Co. Cork.” It was much admired by the historian. A quotation from it may be found in “A Record of Holiday,” in one of our books, “Some Irish Yesterdays,” but candour compels me to admit that four of its lines, descriptive of the coast of Carbery—