The “ponderous notion” of which she spoke eventually developed into an article which she called “In Sickness and in Health.” It first appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine, and we reprinted it in “Some Irish Yesterdays.” It is, I think, a very delightful example of a class of writing in which she seems to me to be unequalled.
“Erin, the tear and the smile in thine eye,”
is a line that is entirely applicable to her, and to her outlook on the ways of Ross and its people. She loved them and she laughed at them, and even though she could hold Ross at arm’s length, to analyse, and to philosophise, and to make literature of it and of its happenings, she took it back to her heart again, and forgave what she could not approve, for no better reason than that she loved it.
I am aware that the prosperity of a letter, as of a jest, often lies in the ear of him that hears, or reads. Nevertheless I propose here and now to give a few extracts from her Ross letters. None of them have any connection with each other, or with anything else in particular, and anyone who fears to find them irrelevant or frivolous may, like Francie Fitzpatrick (when she eluded Master Whitty) “give a defiant skip and pass on.”
V. F. M. to E. Œ. S. (Ross, 1895.)
“Nurse B. gave, yesterday, a fine example of using the feminine for animals to imply cunning.
“‘Didn’t a big rat walk in the lardher windy, and me lookin’ at her this ways, through the door, an’ she took a bit o’ bacon to dhrag it with her. She was that long’ (indicating as far as her elbow), ‘an’ not that high!’ (measuring half her little finger). ‘Faith, Bridgie dhrove her the way she came!’
“Bridgie is of undaunted courage, runs after rats to slay them, and fears ‘neither God nor devil, like the Black Prosbitarians.’ She is a Topsy, lies and steals and idles, and is as clever as she can be. Could you but see her with a pink bow in her cap, and creaking Sunday boots, and her flaming orange hair and red eyes you would not be the better of it. She is fifteen, and for some mysterious reason, unknown to myself, I like her.... I am working at an article, badly. I am very stupid, and not the least clever, except at mending blinds, and the pump. I am tired of turning away my eyes from iniquity that I cannot rectify, of trying to get the servants up in the morning, of many things, but let me be thankful, I have had the kitchen whitewashed. I laugh foolishly when I think of the Herculaneum and Pompeii episode from which the cat and three kittens barely escaped with their lives. The cat, being in labour, selected as her refuge the old oven in the corner of the kitchen, a bricked cavern, warm, lofty, and secluded. There, among bottles, rags, and other concealments of Bridgie’s, she nourished and brought up her young in great calm, till the day that Andy set to work at the kitchen chimney. No one knew that the old oven had a special flue of its own, and it was down this flue that the soot elected to come. I was fortunately pervading space that day, and came in time to see a dense black cloud issuing from the oven’s mouth into the kitchen. I yelled to a vague assembly of Bridgets in the servants’ hall, all of whom were sufficiently dirty to bear a little more without injury, and having rushed into the gloom they promptly slammed the door on the unfortunate family inside, on whom then rained without intermission, soot, bricks, and jackdaws’ nests. Having with difficulty got the door open again, the party was disinterred, quite unhurt, but black, and more entirely mortified than anything you can imagine. For the rest of the day ‘Jubilee’ cleaned herself and her children in the coldest parts of the house, with ostentatious fury. She was offered the top turf-box on the back stairs, but instantly refused, and finally settled herself in a stone compartment of the wine-cellar; a top berth this time, you bet!”
V. F. M. to E. Œ. S. (Ross, 1901.)
“We did not achieve church this morning without some difficulty. I went round to the yard after breakfast, to see that things were en train, and was informed by Rickeen that he had not fed the grey pony, as he had found a weazel in the oats, ‘and sure there’s some kind of a pizen in thim.’ Being unable to combat this statement, I desired that the pony should be given hay. This was done, but at the last moment, just before she was being put into the shafts, she ‘sthripped a shoe.’ Mama’s old pony, Killola, was again a little lame—nothing for it but the monster Daisy, browsing in the lawn with her foal. It was then 10.45. I had on a voile skirt of stupendous length, with a floating train, my best gloves and other Sunday trappings, none the less must I help Rick to harness Daisy. Then the trouble was to shut her foal into the barn. In the barn was already immured the donkey, filled with one fierce determination to flee over to the White Field, where was Darcy’s donkey. I had to hold Daisy, and combat her maternal instincts, and endure her ceaseless shriekings; I also had to head off the donkey, which burst from the barn, with gallopings and capers, while Rickeen stuffed in the foal, who, like its mother, was shrieking at the top of its voice. I also was weak with laughing, as Rick’s language, both English and Irish, was terrific, and the donkey very ridiculous. Rick finally flailed it into what he called ‘the pig-shtyle,’ with many fervent ‘Hona-mig-a-dhiouls’ (Rick always throws in ‘mig,’ for pure intensity and rhythm). Then—(‘musha, the Lord save thim that’s in a hurry’)—the harness had to be torn off the grey, in the loose box, ‘for fear would she rub the collar agin the Major’ (which is what he calls the manger). Then we pitched Mama on to the car and got off. Daisy, almost invisible under her buffalo mane, as usual went the pace, and we got in at the First Lesson, and all was well.”