Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Clearly rouse the slumbering morn
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill,
can possibly enjoy the skill shown by these authors in describing the joy of horses and the thrill of hunting. Nevertheless, the books of Miss Somerville and Martin Ross are heartily enjoyed by a host of readers who are neither Irish nor hunting people, for the simple reason that they are prompted to an explosion of laughter whenever they take up one of these stories. The bulk of these readers would wish to go no further in their appreciation: they embrace the givers of present laughter with so full a measure of enjoyment that it would seem to them unnecessary to probe any further into the chemistry of such excellence, nor perhaps would they deem it possible that any higher praise than their freely-expressed enjoyment could be looked for by any authors. Yet to my mind it is possible. While including in one's general testimony all that can be said by the most extravagant of these admirers, the taster who is considering the cellar of English literature which is being laid down for posterity may discern qualities not so apparent to the quaffer for immediate exhilaration. It is hard to conceive it, but the bubbles may vanish: if they do, the question is, what will be left? My point is that the work of Miss Somerville and Martin Ross has the qualities of a wine that will keep.
It cannot be a great wine, for the vineyard is too restricted. The high winds of emotion have not swept over its soil, nor has the soft rain of tenderness moistened it. It will always be bright and rather dry like Vouvray, gay but with a little bite in it: posterity may even call it "curious." But they will recognise that it holds the authentic flavours that distinguish infallibly the finer products of English literary bins. The authors have chosen a small field, but they direct on it an accuracy of vision which is remarkable, and, seeing that they were two, a unity of vision which is a miracle. In the expression of this vision they display an unfailing sureness of touch and a precision which is perfect in its admirable economy. They handle our language with a deftness and flexibility which is a rarity in itself, and their style, though always original, is nourished by a recollection of great models both in prose and poetry. Theirs is a literary equipment of the first class, solidly framed, well clothed, attractive in appearance, and ornamented with taste. They touch nothing that they do not embellish: events by their unflagging narrative power, which goes as unfalteringly as one of their choicest hunters, character by their sympathetic insight, scenery by their love of natural beauty, dialogue by their dramatic sense. It is not all Ireland that they draw, let that be admitted; they prefer to laugh, letting others weep. Yet, if the whole heart of Ireland does not beat within their pages, a part of it is there, pulsing with true Irish blood and throbbing with truly Irish emotions. Their aspect is no more that of Mr. James Joyce or Mr. Synge or Mr. Yeats than it is that of Mr. George Moore or Mr. Devlin, but, if they are justly praised for their merits, that praise cannot be diminished because they looked on Ireland with laughing eyes through a West Carberry window. Their books are literature no less certainly than Castle Rackrent is literature, and for very similar reasons.
Well, let us taste. It is a bright dry wine, I have said. It is not, perhaps, the quality which the authors would ascribe to what they consider their best work, The Real Charlotte—an estimate in which Mr. Stephen Gwynn agrees with them. This is a fine sombre story of a middle-aged woman's jealousy, for Charlotte is a kind of Irish Cousine Bette. But, if the subject is comparable to that of Balzac's novel, the treatment is certainly not so, and that is my reason for not regarding this as the work by which their achievement can best be judged. It is the work in which they have aimed highest, and the measure of their success is not small, but the theme of Charlotte's jealousy and the havoc in other lives which it caused needed for its convincing development all the powers of a great tragic artist. It is with no want of recognition of the authors' artistic aims or want of sympathy with their regret at abandoning them for others less lofty that this is said: but the work of an artist can best be judged from that part of it which most nearly reaches perfection. Miss Somerville and Martin Ross most nearly reached perfection in their lighter stories of Irish life, and it says much for their acumen that they saw the line on which their talent could naturally reach its maturity, courageously turning their backs on higher and more tragic paths likely to tax them beyond their capabilities. At the same time, it would be unjust not to point out that even in their best work comedy does not exclude the more poignant feelings. It would be the greatest mistake to regard these two writers as nothing more than jesters. Their humour is the true humour which runs hand-in-hand with pity, and the sympathy mingled with their laughter robs it of any taste of bitterness. There is a chapter in Some Irish Yesterdays which shows how their hearts were touched.[28] It treats of marriage and love, death and birth among the peasantry in the south-west of Ireland with a delicacy of feeling which is beyond praise, and shows that the writers did not observe with the aloofness of an explorer among savages, but that for them seeing and describing alike were deeply-felt emotional experiences. The chapter opens with a memory of a wedding in the little Roman Catholic chapel of the village, a simple ceremony, after which the bridegroom hauled his wife up beside him on to a shaggy horse and started for home at a lumbering gallop. Then, in a brilliant transition by way of Tom Cashen's reflections on marriage and a glimpse of his married life, we are introduced at Tom Cashen's funeral to the bride of twenty-five years ago, "a middle-aged stranger in a frilled cap and blue cloak, with handsome eyes full of friendliness," with her ill-health, her profusion of children, and "himself" whose "nose glowed portentously above a rusty grey beard and beneath a hat-brim of a bibulous tint." Then listen to the passage which follows:
[28] In Irish Memories Miss Somerville says that this chapter is the reprint of an article by Martin Ross—a fact which throws some light on the respective contributions of the two collaborators. I should like to mention another passage in which these writers touch the pathetic with distinction. It is that chapter in Dan Russell the Fox in which, while tending a poisoned hound, the Irish mother tries vainly to persuade her younger son to propose to the infatuated young lady. He rejects her suggestion as an outrage on the lady, and sets his face towards America. As the saved hound licks her hand, "It's no good now, poor puppy," she says.
The sunny Shrove Tuesday in early March lived again as she spoke, the glare of the sunshine upon the bare country brimming with imminent life, the scent of the furze, already muffling its spikes in bloom, the daffodils hanging their lamps in shady places. How strangely, how bleakly different was the life history summarised in the melancholy October evening! Instead of the broad-backed horse, galloping on roads that were white in the sun and haze of the strong March day, with the large frieze-clad waist to meet her arms about, and the laughter and shouting of the pursuers coming to her ear, there would be a long and miry tramping in the darkness, behind her spouse, with talk of guano and geese and pigs' food, and a perfect foreknowledge of how he would complete, at the always convenient shebeen, the glorious fabric of intoxication, of which the foundation had been well and truly laid at the funeral.
From the funeral we pass again to the cottage in which "the Triplets" are holding their reception, the three day-old babes cradled in the stuffy room, hazy with the smoke of the turf fire, the crowd in the doorway, the old woman rocking the cradle:
Obscure corners harboured obscure masses, that might be family raiment, or beds, or old women; somewhere among them the jubilant cry of a hen proclaimed the feat of laying an egg, in muffled tones that suggested a lurking-place under a bed. Between the cradle and the fire sat an old man in a prehistoric tall hat, motionless in the stupor of his great age; at his feet a boy wrangled with a woolly puppy that rolled its eyes till the blue whites showed, in a delicious glance of humour, as it tugged at the red flannel shirt of its playmate.
Such a passage in a Russian novelist would warrant ecstasies on the part of our illuminati: let us no less highly praise our own art when it is possible. The chapter concludes with some lights on the commercial methods of matrimony practised by the peasant class: the writers do not defend them, but call attention to the surprising bloom that is apt to spring from them. "From them springs, like a flower from a dust heap, the unsullied, uneventful home-life of Western Ireland." "There is here no material, of the accepted sort, for a playwright; no unsatisfied yearnings and shattered ideals, nothing but remarkable common sense, and a profound awe for the sacrament of Marriage. Marriage, humorous, commercial, and quite unlovely, is the first act; the second is mere preoccupation with an accomplished destiny; the last is usually twilight and much faithfulness." The dialogue is a masterpiece throughout, epigram, heart-piercing pathos, with humour, heavenly and inveterate, lubricating all. Of an elderly couple, married by a happy thought some thirty years before, it was said, as the authors' record, "their hearts were within in each other." This chapter, through which breathes all the soft beauty and humour of the soil, is a sufficient answer to those who would tax these writers with a uniform attitude of rather heartless derision or with following—what a blind criticism!—in the benighted footsteps of those who have given us the dreary horror of the traditional stage Irishman.