So all she could ask was that every one should become a total abstainer. I do not see how they can submit to be thus voiceless as to their own home regulations.
Saturday I took tea with Mrs. Haslam, a bright, lovely "come-outer" from the Friends. She had invited some twenty or thirty to be present at eight, and I spoke, they asking questions and I answering. Among them were a son of the Abolitionist Richard D. Webb, and ever so many nephews and nieces. Eliza Wigham's brother Henry and his wife had come ten miles to be there.... This afternoon I am going to the common council meeting with Alfred Webb, who is a member and a strong Home Ruler. The question of electing their own tax collector is to be discussed.
Cork, September 16.
My Dear Sister: ... Your heart would break if you were here to see the poverty and rags, and yet the people seem cheerful under it all. Something surely must be wrong at the root to bear such fruit. I have had an awfully "hard side of a board time" of ten hours in a third-class car, paying therefor just as much as I would on the N. Y. Central for a first-class ticket. I not only saved $4.25 by going third-class, but I saw the natives. Men, women, boys and girls who had been to the market towns with their produce were on the train, and to see them as they tumbled in toward evening, at town after town, one would think that whiskey and tobacco were the main articles they bought. Any number of men and boys, and at least four women, were drunk enough, and they brought bottles with them and added to their puling idiocy as they went on. Nothing short of a pig-sty could match the filth, but it is only in that class of cars that you see anything of the vast number of poor farmers and laborers. If they can not pay exorbitant rates, refined, educated men and women are thrust into pens and seated face to face with the smoking, drinking, carousing rabble. I have everywhere protested against this outrage and urged the women to demand that the railway companies should give them separate cars, with no smoking allowed....
Leamington, October 1.
My Dear Rachel: ... I must have told you of my good times at Belfast with Miss Tod, who gave a reception for me and I had a welcome all round.
Miss Osgood met me at Cork, and we went by rail to Macroom. Tuesday morning we visited the convent, nuns' schools, and the poorhouse with 400 helpless mortals, old and young; then took an Irish jaunting-car, and were driven some forty miles through "the Gap" to Glengariff. It rained almost all the way, much to our disgust. Next morning we packed into two great stages with thirty or more others, and started for the lakes of Killarney; but soon the rain poured again, and as we were losing so much of the scenery we stopped half-way at Kenmare. We visited the convent and the Mother Abbess showed us every cranny. Thirty girls were at work on beautiful Irish point and Limerick lace. These nuns have 400 pupils, and give 200 of the poorest their breakfast and lunch—porridge and a bit of bread. At two we took stage again, the sky looked promising, but alas! for half an hour it fairly poured. Then it grew lighter, and we got very fine views of hills and dales. Killarney is lovely....
Saturday I sauntered along the streets of Killarney, passed the market, and saw all sorts of poor humanity coming in with their cattle to sell or to buy. Many rode in two-wheeled carts without seat or spring, drawn by little donkeys, and nearly all the women and girls were bareheaded and barefooted. On the bridge I saw some boys looking down. I looked too and there was a spectacle—a ragged, bareheaded, barefooted woman tossing a wee baby over her shoulders and trying to get her apron switched around to hold it fast on her back. I heard her say to herself, "I'll niver do it," so I said, "Boys, one of you run down there and help her." At that instant she succeeded in getting the baby adjusted, and to my horror took up a bundle from the grass and disclosed a second baby! Then I went down. I learned that she had just come from the poorhouse, where she had spent six weeks, and before going further had laid her two three-weeks-old boys on the cold, wet grass, while she washed out their clothes in the stream. The clothing was the merest rags, all scrambled up in a damp bundle. She had heard her old mother was ill in Milltown and had "fretted" about her till she could bear it no longer, so had started to walk ten miles to her. I hailed a boy with a jaunting-car—told her to wait and I would take her home—got my luncheon—fed the boy's horse, bought lunch for boy and woman—and off we went, she sitting on one side of the car with her two babies, wet bundle, two milk bottles and rubber appendages, bare feet and flying hair, and I on the other, with the boy in front.
For a long way both babies cried; they were blue as pigeons, and had on nothing but little calico slips, no socks even. She had four children older than these—a husband who went to fairs selling papers and anything he could to support them all—and an aged father and mother who lived with them. She said if God had given her only one child, she could still help earn something to live on, but now He had given her two, she couldn't. When we reached Milltown I followed her home. It was in a long row of one-room things with a door—but no window. Some peat was smouldering under a hole in the roof called a chimney, and the place was thick with smoke. On the floor in one corner was some straw with a blanket on it, which she said was her bed; in another were some boards fastened into bed-shape, with straw packed in, and this belonged to her father and mother. Where the four other children, with the chickens and the pig, found their places to sleep, I couldn't see. I went to the home of another tenant, and there again was one room, and sitting around a pile of smoking-hot potatoes on the cold, wet ground—not a board or even a flag-stone for a floor—were six ragged, dirty children. Not a knife, fork, spoon or platter was to be seen. The man was out working for a farmer, his wife said, and the evidences were that "God" was about to add a No. 7 to her flock. What a dreadful creature their God must be to keep sending hungry mouths while he withholds the bread to fill them!...
I went back to Killarney heart-sick; wrote letters Sunday, and Monday took train for Limerick, where I rushed round for an hour or two.... Then went on to Galway. Tuesday morning took the mail-car to Connemara, and had company all the way—a judge, an Irish M.P., and two Dublin drummers—with whom I talked over the Irish problem. I had meant to make the tour of the western coast up to Londonderry, but my courage failed. It was to be the same soul-sickening sight all the way—only, I was assured, worse than anything yet seen. I took the stage back to Galway, every one saying it was sure to be a fine day, but it proved to be terrific wind and rain, and before I had gone ten miles my seat was a pool of water and it took all my skill to keep my umbrella right side out.... Once while the driver changed horses I stood in front of a big fire on the hearth of the best farmer's house I have seen here. Everything was clean and cheerful—two rooms—a bed made up with a spotless white spread—the old father smoking and the wife cooking dinner. She lifted a wooden cover from a jar and proudly showed me her butter—patted down with her hands, I could see—and near by was another jar with milk. Think of butter being made in a room full of tobacco-smoke! Then I went my last ten out of the fifty miles, having been soaking wet for eight hours. At my hotel I had room and fire on a "double-quick," bath-tub and hot water, and put myself through a regular grooming. In the morning I rode around Galway, saw Queen's College and the bay, and then took train for Belfast.
From the diary:
Sept. 11.—In Dublin. The Professor of Arabic took me through Trinity College, with its library of 200,000 volumes. Thence to the old Parliament House, now the Bank of Ireland. In the afternoon Alfred Webb went with me to the National League rooms and from there to Thomas Webb's for tea, where I saw the names of Garrison and N. P. Rogers written in 1840. We called on Michael Davitt, the leader of the Irish Land League, who impressed me as an earnest, honest man, deeply-rooted in the principles of freedom and equality, and claiming all for woman that he does for man.
Sept. 16.—At Youghal. Visited the home of Sir Walter Raleigh, Lady Hennessy, eighty years old, showing me around. Found in a library Children of the Abbey, and read again the story of Lord Mortimer and Amanda. Once it thrilled my young soul, but now it seems inexpressibly thin.
Sept. 20.—While I was talking in the car today with an Irishwoman about the poverty here, another behind me shouted: "It is very ill manners for an American to come over here and abuse the English government."
Sept. 29.—In Belfast. O, how I would like to purchase all the linen I want for myself and my friends! Have bought as much as I dared and after all perhaps I'm cheated—but it's done, so I won't worry.
Sept. 30.—Landed at Fleetwood and went direct to Rugby. Walked all around the famous school, but had not courage to go in and introduce myself to Doctor Jex-Blake, whose sister's guest I had so recently been.
Oct. 1.—At Leamington. Went direct to Kenilworth Castle, a grand old ruin; the home of Leicester, where Queen Elizabeth visited him in the olden days.
Oct. 2.—Mrs. Mullinor called at our hotel and accompanied us to Warwick Castle, a splendid pile. We lunched with her, and when Mr. M. put fork into the roast he remarked: "Wife asked me what she should order for dinner and I said, 'a leg of mutton, for Americans never see such a thing at home.'" We smiled and ate it with a relish.
Oct. 3.—At Stratford on Avon, and we have visited every spot sacred to the memory of Shakespeare, and walked through the meadows and down by the riverside....
Oct. 4.—In Oxford. I have visited many of the colleges, and as I saw where all the millions of dollars had been expended for the education of boys alone, I groaned in spirit and betook me to Somerville and St. Margaret's Halls, where at least there is a shelter for girls, and a beginning.
Oct. 5.—In London; and how almost like getting home it seems to come back here.
London, October 7.
My Dear Sister: Mrs. Stanton feels that she must stay with Hattie till the baby is a month old, and then have a week for farewell visits in London. Cousins Fannie and Charles Dickinson are here. Today I learned that I should have a chance to see and hear John Bright at a convention of the Liberal Party at Leeds, October 17; all these together have made me put off leaving a little longer. Since yesterday we have been in the midst of a genuine London fog. It is now 10 a. m. and even darker than it was two hours ago, when we dressed and breakfasted by gaslight. I saw smoky, foggy days here last March but they could not compare with this, and yet the people say, "O, this is nothing to what November will bring."...
London, October 27.
My Dear Sister: Since I last wrote you I have visited Leeds where I was the guest of Mrs. Hannah Ford, who has an elegant home—Adel Grange. There were several other guests who had come to attend the great Liberal demonstration, among them Mrs. Margaret Priestman Tanner, a sister-in-law of John Bright, and his son Albert. Mrs. Alice Scatcherd, of Leeds, was the person who had the sagacity to get women sent as delegates and secure them admission on terms of perfect equality. The amendment was a great triumph. She invited the friends to meet next day at her house, where I saw John Bright's daughter, Mrs. Helen Clark, and Richard Cobden's, Miss Jane Cobden. Both made speeches at the convention, and most fitting it was they should—the daughters of the two leading Radicals of a half century ago.
On Saturday, Mrs. Ford took me to Haworth, the home of the Brontë sisters. It is a bleak enough place now, and must have been even more so forty or fifty years ago when those sensitive plants lived there. A most sad day it was to me, as I looked into the little parlor where the sisters walked up and down with their arms around each other and planned their novels, or sat before the fireplace and built air-castles. Then there were the mouldering tombstones of the graveyard which lies in front and at one side of the house, and the old church-pew, directly over the vault where lay their loved mother and two sisters. And later, when Emily and Anne and the erring brother Branwell had joined the others, poor Charlotte sat there alone. The pew had to be removed every time the vault was opened to receive another occupant. Think of those delicate women sitting in that fireless, mouldy church, listening to their old father's dry, hard theology, with their feet on the cold, carpetless stones which covered their loved dead. It was too horrible! Then I walked over the single stone pathway through the fields toward the moor, opened the same wooden gates, and was, and still continue to be, dipped into the depths of their utter loneliness and sadness, born so out of time and place. How much the world of literature has lost because of their short and ill-environed lives, we can guess only from its increased wealth in spite of all their adverse conditions.
From Leeds I went to Birmingham to attend an Anti-Contagious Diseases Acts conference, and there heard the serene, lovely Josephine E. Butler.
Miss Müller has invited Mrs. Stanton and me to spend the rest of our time with her. Mrs. Lucas and some others are going to Liverpool to say good-by to us. The cordiality, instead of decreasing, grows greater and greater as the day of departure draws near.... I dread stepping on shipboard, but long to set foot upon my native soil again. Only think, I shall have been gone over nine months when I land in New York!