“Nurse! Does this poor cat ever get anything to eat?”
“It’d be the quare cat if it didn’t!” replied Nurse, with a single glance at “Miss Wilet” to claim the victor’s laurel.
* * * * *
It was not until Martin and I began to write “The Real Charlotte” that I understood how wide and varied a course of instruction was to be obtained in a Dublin Sunday school. Judging by a large collection of heavily-gilded books, quite unreadable (and quite unread), each of which celebrates proficiency in some branch of scriptural learning, Martin took all the available prizes. In addition to these trophies and the knowledge they implied, she learnt much of that middle sphere of human existence that has practically no normal points of contact with any other class, either above or below it.
It was a rather risky experiment, as will, I think, be admitted by anyone who considers the manners and customs of the detestable little boys and girls who squabble and giggle in the first chapter of “The Real Charlotte.” There are not many children who could have come unscathed out of such a furnace. There is a story of a priest who was such a good man that he “went through Purgatory like a flash of lightning. There wasn’t a singe on him!”
Martin was adored, revered, was received as an oracle by her fellow scholars, and was, as was invariable with her, the wonder and admiration of her teacher. She has told me how she took part in dreadful revels, school feasts and the like, which, in their profound aloofness from her home-life, had something almost illicit about them. With her intensely receptive, perceptive brain, she was absorbing impressions, points of view, turns and twists of character wrought on by circumstance; yet, when that phase of her childhood had passed, “there wasn’t a singe on her!”
She had a spiritual reserve and seriousness that shielded her, like an armour of polished steel that reflects all, and is impenetrable. Refinement was surpassingly hers; intellectual refinement, a mental fastidiousness that rejected inevitably the phrase or sentiment that had a tinge of commonness; personal refinement, in her dress, in the exquisite precision of all her equipment; physical refinement, in the silken softness of her hair, the slender fineness of her hands and feet, the flower-bloom of her skin; and over and above all, she had the refinement of sentiment, which, when it is joined with a profound sensitiveness and power of emotion, has a beauty and a perfectness scarcely to be expressed in words.
She has told me stories of those times, and of the curious contrasts of her environment. Long, confidential walks with “Francie Fitzpatrick” and her fellows, followed by an abrupt descent from the position of “Sir Oracle,” to the status of the youngest of a number of sisters and brothers whose cleverness, smartness, and good looks filled her with awe and glory. She was intensely critical and intensely appreciative. The little slender brown-eyed girl, who was part pet, part fag of that brilliant, free-going, family crowd, secretly appraised them all in her balancing, deliberative mind, and, fortunately for all concerned, passed them sound. They taught her to brush their hair, and read her the poets while she was thus employed; they chaffed her, and called her The Little Philosopher, and unlike many elder sisters—(and I speak as an elder sister)—dragged her into things instead of keeping her out of them. It must have been a delightful house, full of good looks and good company. I was far away in South Cork, and knew of the Martins but distantly and dimly; after my eldest brother had met them and returned to chant their charms, I think that a certain faint hostility tinged my very occasional thoughts of them, which, after all, is not unusual.
The Martins’ house in Dublin was one of the gathering places for the clans of the family. Dublin society still existed in those days; things went with a swing, and there was a tingle in life. Probably there was no place in the kingdom where a greater number of pleasant people were to be met with. Jovial, unconventional, radiant with good looks, unfailing in agreeability, they hunted, they danced, they got up theatricals and concerts, they—the elder ones, at least—went to church with an equal enthusiasm, and fought to the death over the relative merits of their pet parsons.
Martin has told me of a Homeric and typical battle of which she was a spectator, between her mother and one of my many aunts, Florence Coghill. It began at tea, at the house of another aunt, with a suave and academic discussion of the Irish Episcopate, and narrowed a little to the fact that the diocese of Cork needed a bishop. My aunt Florence said easily,