I trust I may be pardoned for quoting this encomium. The virtues enumerated by Nurse Davin have not often been ascribed to me.
CHAPTER XVII
LETTERS FROM ROSS
Taking the publication of “An Irish Cousin” as the beginning of our literary work, its next development was a series of short articles on Irish subjects that Martin wrote, single-handed, for the World.
The sap was beginning to run up; more and more things began with her to throw themselves, almost unconsciously, into phrases and forms. Her thoughts blossomed in the fit words, as the life in the tree breaks in leaves. Everything appealed to her in this new life at Ross, which was the old, and while she weeded the flower-beds in the garden, or painted doors in the house, or drove her mother for long miles on the outside car, she was meditating, and phrase-making, and formulating her impressions. These, presently, passing through her letters to me, as through a filter, developed into an article, which was primarily inspired by the death of one of the older retainers of Ross.
Mr. Edmund Yates then had the World at his feet, having created it not very many years before, and that he possessed the flair for good work was evident in the enthusiasm for her writing that, from the first, he did not attempt to conceal from Martin.
If, in things literary, the buyer would forget his traditional pose of saying “it is naught,” and would woo the thirsty, tremulous soul of the artist with appreciation, the bargain would not often work out to his disadvantage. Edmund Yates had the courage of his opinions, and the admiration that he was too generous to withhold more than counterbalanced the minuteness of the cheque that came from his cashier.
The first of these articles, “A Delegate of the National League,” appeared in July, 1889, and was received by our friends with mingled emotions. It is my mature conviction that they were horrified by its want of levity. That “a Shocker” should preach, that “one of the girls” should discourse on what was respectfully summarised by a young lady of my acquaintance as “Deep subjects of Life and Death,” was not quite what anyone enjoyed. Mrs. H. Ward’s book, “Robert Elsmere,” had just appeared; it was considered to be necessary to read it, and to talk intellectually about it, and it was found wearing that Martin should also be among the Prophets, and should write what one of her cousins called “Potted Carlyle.” None the less, she followed up “The Delegate,” in a month or two, with another article in the same vein, entitled “Cheops in Connemara.” In some of her letters of this period she speaks of these articles.
“I weed the garden a good deal,” she says, “and give meat to my household, and I got a sort of grip of the Education article to-day, and hope it may continue. But I am a fraud in the way of writing. I heap together descriptions, with a few carefully constructed moralities interspersed, and hide behind them, so that no one shall discern my ignorance and hesitation.
“I am ploughing along at an article, and have a most ponderous notion in my head for another about the poor women of the West of Ireland, their lives, their training, their characters, all with a view as to whether they would be the better for having votes, or would give a better or worse vote than the men. I feel overwhelmed and inadequate. I think I write worse every time I try” (which was obviously absurd).
“Mama has had a most kind letter from Sir William Gregory. He has many literary friends and so has Augusta” (Lady Gregory), “and he says they will both do their best for The Shocker, and that he hopes his conscience will allow him to praise it with trumpets and shawms. Poor Mama required a little bucking up after the profound gloom in which she was plunged by a letter from her oldest ally, Mrs. X., saying she thought the ‘Delegate’ was ‘high-flown and verbose’—‘merely, of course, the faults of young writing,’ says Mrs. X. Mama was absolutely staggered, and has gone about saying at intervals, ‘Knee-buckles to a Highlander!’ by which she means to express her glorious contempt for Mrs. X.’s opinion of the classics.”