One Irish Summer

by William Eleroy Curtis

Myrtle Lodge; the Home of Sir Walter Raleigh

Myrtle Lodge remains very much as it was when Raleigh lived there. Few historical houses have been altered so little or have been preserved with greater care. Sir Walter’s study is hung with an original painting of the first governor of Virginia and a contemporary engraving of “Elizabeth, Queen of Virginia.” The long table at which he wrote, an oak chest in which he kept his papers, a little Italian cabinet filled with old deeds and parchments, some bearing his seal; two bookcases of vellum-bound volumes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and all of the furniture dates from his time. We are assured that there is nothing in the room that was not in the house at the time he occupied it. The dining-room is one of the choicest examples of fifteenth century domestic architecture that can be found, having a deep projecting bay window and porch, an orieled closet, a wide, arched fireplace, and walls wainscoted with rich, ripe Irish oak. The drawing-room has a carved oaken mantelpiece which rises to the ceiling. The cornice rests upon three figures representing Faith, Hope, and Charity. In the adjoining bedroom is another mantelpiece of oak, and the fireplace is lined with old Dutch tiles. Behind the wainscoting of this room, while repairs were being made fifty years ago, an ancient monkish library was found, which, it was thought, was hidden there to escape the Covenanters at the time of the Reformation.

A gentleman on our train to Youghal made the interesting statement that Sir Walter Raleigh was the first patron of Protestant foreign missions. He contributed £100 to start the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Lands. I had never heard of this fact before, but my informant said that it came out at the three hundredth anniversary of the organization of that society which was celebrated in London in 1906.

Until the Congested Districts Board undertook the work, lacemaking was practically confined to the convents. There are two classes of true Irish lace—needle-point, which is made by the needle, and the bobbin lace—the threads of which are twisted around small bobbins of bone, wood, or ivory. Both of these laces are made entirely by hand, which is not true of the Limerick and Carrickmacross laces. Needle-point lace was first introduced into Ireland by the sisters of the Presentation Convent of Youghal, as a means of helping the famine-stricken inhabitants to earn money in the terrible years of 1847-50. It was imitated from Italian models, but has since been much developed and enriched both in design and execution so that it may be considered original. Irish point lace has its individuality as strong as Brussels point.

The Presentation Convent was founded in 1833 by Rev. Mother Mary Magdalene Gould, a wealthy Irish woman, who had lived many years in foreign countries. She was distinguished for her benevolence and love for the poor, and consecrated her life and her property to the education of the children of the poor. When the famine occurred in 1847 she admitted to the convent every child that could be accommodated, and also gave asylum to many widows who were left homeless and destitute. In order to furnish her protégés some occupation and and enable them to earn a little for their own support, she decided to teach them the art of lacemaking, which had been carried on for centuries in the convents of Italy. She took some of her own lace, examined the process by which it had been made, unraveled the threads one by one, and put them back again over and over again until she at last succeeded in mastering the intricacies of the construction of needle-point. She next selected the brightest and most deft-fingered children and women in the convent and taught each separately what she herself had learned. Most of the women and girls displayed an aptitude for the work, and after the necessities of the occasion were over and the emergency passed, she had about her many well-trained lacemakers. Some of them developed considerable ingenuity and taste, inventing new designs and easier methods of handling the needle. Other convents throughout Ireland imitated the nuns of Youghal, and the same lace is now made in every part of the island.

Limerick lace is of two kinds, known as the “tambour” and “run lace.” “Tambour” is made on net and the pattern is formed by working with a tambour needle in white or colored thread. “Run lace” is made with an ordinary needle and a more open stitch. Limerick lace is in disfavor at present, owing to the large amount of miserable specimens that have been hawked about the streets of Limerick and forced upon the London markets.

Carrickmacross lace has been made in the neighborhood of that town, in County Monaghan, since the year 1820, when it was brought from Florence by Mrs. Grey-Porter, wife of the rector of the parish church, and introduced among the peasant women as a means of earning a livelihood. It is made upon a foundation of net. There are two varieties. In appliqué the pattern is traced out on fine muslin and sewed down round the edges to the net. So far it is not strictly a lace, but rather a sort of embroidery or net. Open spaces, however, are generally provided for, which leaves the effect and which are filled with lace stitches like those of flat point. In Carrickmacross guipure, much the same procedure as in appliqué is adopted, only that instead of the foundation being allowed to remain it is ultimately cut away, the figures of the pattern, which, as in appliqué, are wrought on muslin, being joined to each other by lace stitches known as “brides.” A very interesting and striking development of Carrickmacross lace is found in a combination of appliqué and guipure, the main design being appliqué, while the panels of guipure are introduced into it.

A little to the northward of Cork is the famous Trappist Monastery of Mount Mellery. It was founded here about thirty years ago upon the site of an ancient monastery by Cistercian monks who were expelled from France. They have about seven hundred acres of rich woodland, fertile pastures, and vegetable gardens, with large and comfortable buildings which they erected with their own hands. They maintain two schools, one free for poor children, and another for boarding pupils whose parents pay moderate fees for the instruction. There is a guesthouse in connection with the monastery, where all travelers are welcome to shelter, saint and sinner, Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Gentile, and no questions asked and no bills presented. Any person can have a bed with clean, sweet linen and a hard but comfortable mattress, coffee and rolls for breakfast, cold meat and milk for luncheon, soup and a roast and a tart or pie for dinner, without charge, although there is a box at the door where the guest at his departure is expected to drop a coin, large or small according to his means and disposition. There are limited accommodations for women, which are sparsely but comfortably furnished, and, what is more important, as clean as a Danish dairy—an unusual condition for Ireland.

There are seventy monks who dress in white and maintain perpetual silence, living entirely upon a vegetable diet with water and skimmed milk as their only drink. About twenty lay brothers, dressed in brown, do the heavy labor and the menial work about the place. The white monks rise at two o’clock in the morning and spend four hours in the chapel in silent devotion. Then they take a light meal and go to their work in the fields, the gardens, or the schoolroom, where the rule of silence is relaxed only enough to permit of imparting instruction. At six o’clock they have dinner, consisting of vegetable soup, boiled vegetables, bread, and skimmed milk, after which they spend two hours at prayer in the chapel, and retire at nine. This is the only Trappist community in Ireland, but there are two in the United States.

There has been very little trouble with the landlords in County Cork. Perhaps that is due to a considerable degree to the fact that the soil is rich and the harvests are good, and because the farmers are able to get a satisfactory return for their labor and their money. Nearly all the large estates are being broken up, however, and have been purchased by the tenants under the Act of 1903. Very soon County Cork and all the southern section of Ireland will be owned by the men who till the soil. Each farmer will have his own permanent home.