Our life in the glorious west of Ireland, which followed our retirement from Devonport, has been so fully described by this pen of mine in “From Sketch-book and Diary” that I give but a slight sketch of it here. Those were days when one could give one’s whole heart, so to speak, to Erin, before the dreadful cloud had fallen on her which, as I write, has lent her her present forbidding gloom. That will pass, please God!
To come straight through from London and its noise and superfluous fuss and turmoil into the absolute peace and purity of County Mayo in perfect summer weather was such a relief to mind and body that one felt it as an emancipation. Health, good sleep, enjoyment of pure air and noble scenery; kindly, unsophisticated peasantry—all these things were there, and the flocks and herds and the sea birds. In the midst of all that appealing poetry, so peculiar to Ireland, I had a funny object lesson of a prosaic kind at romantic Mulranny, on Clewe Bay. In the little station I saw a big heap in sackcloth lying on the platform—“Hog-product from Chicago”—and the country able to “cure” the matchless Irish pig! I went on to get some darning wool in the hamlet—“Made in England”—and all those sheep around us! Outside the shop door a horse had the usual big nose-bag—”Made in Austria”! All these things, with a little energy, should have come out of the place itself, surely? I thought to encourage native industry, when found, by ordering woollen hose at the convent school. No two stockings of the same pair were of equal length. The bay was rich in fish, and one day came a little fleet of fishing boats—from France! There was Ireland to-day in a nutshell. What of to-morrow? Is this really Ireland’s heavy sleep before the dawn?
I have seen some of the most impressive beauties of our world, but never have I been more impressed than by the solemn grandeur of the mountain across Clewe Bay they call Croagh Patrick, as we saw it on the evening of our arrival at Mulranny. The last flush of the after-glow lingered on its dark slopes and the red planet Mars flamed above its cone, all this solemn beauty reflected in the sleeping waters. At Mulranny I spent nearly all my days making studies of sheep and landscape for the next picture I sent to the Academy—“A Cistercian Shepherd.” This gave me a period of the most exquisitely reposeful work. The building up of this picture was in itself an idyll. But the public didn’t want idylls from me at all. “Give us soldiers and horses, but pastoral idylls—no!” People had a slightly reproachful tone in their comments after seeing my poor pastoral on the Academy walls. Some one said, “How are the mighty fallen!”
We made our home in the heart of Tipperary, under the Galtee Mountains. It seemed time for us to seek a dignified repose, “the world forgetting, by the world forgot,” but we did not succeed in our intention. In 1906 my husband went on a great round of observation through Cape Colony and the (former) Boer Republics on a literary mission. I and E. went off to Italy, meanwhile; Rome as our goal. There I had the great pleasure of the companionship of my sister, and it may be imagined with what feelings we re-trod the old haunts in and about that city together.
“April 9th, 1906.—We had a charming stroll through the Villa d’Este gardens, where the oldest, hoariest cypresses are to be seen, and fountains and water conduits of graceful and fantastic shape, wherever one turns, all gushing with impetuous waters. The architects of these gardens revelled in their fanciful designs and sported with the responsive flood. Cascades spout in all directions from the rocks on which Tivoli is built. We had déjeuner under a pergola at the inn right over one of these waterfalls, where, far below us, birds flew to and fro in the mist of the spray. Nature and art have joined in play at Tivoli. I always have had a healthy dislike of burrowing in tombs and catacombs. The sepulchral, bat-scented air of such places in Egypt—the land, of all others, of limpid air and sunshine and dryness—is not in any way attractive to me, and I greatly dislike diving into the Roman catacombs out of the sunny Appian Way. On former occasions I went through them all, so this time I kept above ground. I learnt all that the catacombs teach in my early years, and am not likely to lose that tremendous impression.
“April 10th.—A true Campagna day, as Italianised as I could make it. We had a frugal colazione under the pergola of an Appian Way-side inn, watched by half a dozen hungry cats, that unattractive, wild, malignant kind of cat peculiar to Italy. The girl who waited on us drew our white wine in a decanter from what looked like a well in the garden. It had, apparently, not ‘been cool’d a long age in that deep-delved earth,’ but it did very well. I was perfectly happy. This old-fashioned al fresco entertainment had the local colour which I look for when I travel and which is getting rarer year by year. Our Colosseum moonlight was more weird than ever. At eleven we had our moon. It was a large, battered, woeful, waning old moon, that looked in at us through the broken arch. An opportune owl, which had been screeching like a cat in the shade, flitted across its sloping disc just at the supreme moment.”
To receive Holy Communion at the hands of the Holy Father is a privilege for which we should be very thankful. It was mine and E.’s on Easter morning that year, at his private Mass in the Sistine Chapel. There I saw Pius X. for the first time. Goodness and compassion shine from that sad and gentle face. It is the general custom to kiss the ‘Fisherman’s ring’ on the Pope’s hand before receiving, but Pius X. very markedly prevents this. One can understand! Our audience with the Holy Father took place on the eve of our departure. There was a never-absent look with him of what I may call the submissive sense of a too-heavy burden of responsibility. No photographs convey the right impression of this Pope. He was very pale, very spiritual, very kind and a little weary; most gentle and touching in his manner. The World War at its outset broke that tender heart. I sent him my “Letters from the Holy Land,” for which I received very urbane thanks from one of the cardinals. I don’t think the Holy Father knows a single word of English, and I wonder what he made of it.
As to our tour homeward, taking Florence and Venice on the way, I think we will take that as read. I revel in the Diary in all the dear old Italian details, marred only by the change I noticed in Venice as regards her broken silence. The hurry of modern life has invaded even the “silent city,” and there is too much electric glare in the lighting now, at night, for the old enjoyment of her moonlights. It annoyed me to see the moon looking quite shabby above the incandescent globes on the Riva.
From Venice to the Dublin Castle season is a big jump. We had an average of twenty-one balls in six weeks in each of the two seasons 1907—1908. Little did I think that it would be quite an unmixed pleasure to me to do chaperon for some five hours at a stretch; but so it turned out. It all depends what sort of daughter you have on the scene! The Aberdeens were then in power.
Lady Aberdeen was untiring in her endeavours to trace and combat the dire disease which seemed to fasten on the Irish in an especial manner. She went about lecturing to the people with a tuberculosis “caravan.” She brought it to Cashel, and my husband made the opening speech at her exhibition there. But her addresses came to nothing. The lungs exhibited in the “caravan” in spirits of wine appealed in vain. She actually asked the people that day to go back to their discarded oatmeal “stir-about”! They prefer their stewed tea and their artificially whitened, so-called bread, with the resultant loss of their teeth. My experiences at the different Dublin horse shows were sociable and pleasant. There you see the finest horses and the most beautiful women in the world, and Dublin gives you that hospitality which is the most admirable quality in the Irish nature.