And, to make it harder, I was only thirty years old.
It was at this depressing period in my career that I received a letter from Fairharbor, Massachusetts, signed Fletcher Farrell. The letter was written on the business paper of the Farrell Cotton Mills, and asked if I were related to the Farrells of Duncannon, of the County Wexford, who emigrated to Massachusetts in 1860. The writer added that he had a grandfather named Fletcher and suggested we might be related. From the handwriting of Fletcher Farrell and from the way he ill-treated the King's English I did not feel the ties of kinship calling me very loud. I replied briefly that my people originally came from Youghal, in County Cork, that as early as 1730 they had settled in New York, and that all my relations on the Farrell side either were still at Youghal, or dead. Mine was not an encouraging letter; nor did I mean it to be; and I was greatly surprised two days later to receive a telegram reading, “Something to your advantage to communicate; wife and self calling on you Thursday at noon. Fletcher Farrell.” I was annoyed, but also interested. The words “something to your advantage” always possess a certain charm. So, when the elevator boy telephoned that Mr. and Mrs. Farrell were calling, I told him to bring them up.
My first glance at the Farrells convinced me the interview was a waste of time. I was satisfied that from two such persons, nothing to my advantage could possibly emanate. On the contrary, from their lack of ease, it looked as though they had come to beg or borrow. They resembled only a butler and housekeeper applying for a new place under the disadvantage of knowing they had no reference from the last one. Of the two, I better liked the man. He was an elderly, pleasant-faced Irishman, smooth-shaven, red-cheeked, and with white hair. Although it was July, he wore a frock coat, and carried a new high hat that glistened. As though he thought at any moment it might explode, he held it from him, and eyed it fearfully. Mrs. Farrell was of a more sophisticated type. The lines in her face and hands showed that for years she might have known hard physical work. But her dress was in the latest fashion, and her fingers held more diamonds than, out of a showcase, I ever had seen.
With embarrassment old man Farrell began his speech. Evidently it had been rehearsed and as he recited it, in swift asides, his wife prompted him; but to note the effect he was making, she kept her eyes upon me. Having first compared my name, fame, and novels with those of Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, and Archibald Clavering Gunter, and to the disadvantage of those gentlemen, Farrell said the similarity of our names often had been commented upon, and that when from my letter he had learned our families both were from the South of Ireland, he had a premonition we might be related. Duncannon, where he was born, he pointed out, was but forty miles from Youghal, and the fishing boats out of Waterford Harbor often sought shelter in Blackwater River. Had any of my forebears, he asked, followed the herring?
Alarmed, lest at this I might take offense, Mrs. Farrell interrupted him.
“The Fletchers and O'Farrells of Youghal,” she exclaimed, “were gentry. What would they be doing in a trawler?”
I assured her that so far as I knew, 1750 being before my time, they might have been smugglers and pirates.
“All I ever heard of the Farrells,” I told her, “begins after they settled in New York. And there is no one I can ask concerning them. My father and mother are dead; all my father's relatives are dead, and my mother's relatives are as good as dead. I mean,” I added, “we don't speak!”
To my surprise, this information appeared to afford my visitors great satisfaction. They exchanged hasty glances.
“Then,” exclaimed Mr. Farrell, eagerly; “if I understand you, you have no living relations at all—barring those that are dead!”