One Irish Summer

by William Eleroy Curtis

Sir Valentine Browne, Knight of Totteridge, Lincolnshire, England, was constable, warden, victualler, and treasurer of Berwick in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who sent him with Sir Henry Wallop in 1583 to survey escheated lands in Ireland. He remained on the island, was subsequently sworn of the privy council, represented the County of Sligo in parliament in 1588, and in June of the same year purchased from MacCarthy More, Earl of Glencare, certain lands, manors, etc., in counties Kerry and Cork, and obtained by patents from Queen Elizabeth all the remainder of the Glencare estates. He was afterward quite useful to her majesty, as his posterity have been to her successors.

Sir Valentine Browne, his grandson, was created Baronet of Kenmare in 1622 and received a grant, from which I have quoted, of all the lakes and all the lands and mountains round about them to the very bottom thereof. In 1689 these estates were forfeited by his son because of his fidelity to the unfortunate James II., but were restored to the family in 1720, and in 1724 Valentine, the fifth viscount, was made an earl. The late earl was one of the most devoted councilors and confidential advisers of the late Queen Victoria. She was very much attached to him, and he had charge of her household as vice chamberlain and lord chamberlain from 1872 to 1886, and was one of her lords in waiting until her death. His mother was Gertrude Thynne, a niece of the Earl of Bath, and is still living. The father died in 1905 at the age of eighty, after a useful and honorable career.

The present earl was educated at Eton and Oxford, served for a time in the army, went to Australia as an aid-de-camp to the Governor of Victoria, was state steward to the Earl of Aberdeen during the first term of the latter as lord lieutenant of Ireland, and married Elizabeth Baring, daughter of Lord Revelstoke of the famous firm of Baring Brothers, bankers, London. He has a brother-in-law in New York. The Earl of Kenmare is the most prominent and influential Roman Catholic in the Irish peerage. He is devoted to the interests of the church, is devout in his habits, maintains a private chapel in his London residence and at his mansion here, and a family chaplain in the old-fashioned way. He never leaves his house in the morning without prayers at which all the household and guests are present and the servants are called in from their tasks. There is a cathedral of pretentious architecture upon his grounds in the village to which his father contributed a quarter of a million dollars. It has been built within the last few years by Bishop Mangan of this diocese, and is already being enlarged, although to a stranger it seems to be big enough as it is.

Kenmare House, Killarney

Kenmare House has one hundred and nine rooms. The grand reception salon is 135 feet in length and 42 feet in width, with a deep recessed fireplace and a massive oak mantel; the library is 48 by 42 feet, the state dining-room 52 by 30 feet, the drawing-room 36 by 24 feet, the smoking-room 25 by 17 feet, the family dining-room 21 by 16 feet, the earl’s study 24 by 16 feet, her ladyship’s boudoir 18 by 30 feet, the state bedroom 33 by 24 feet, and nine other state apartments of similar dimensions. There are sixteen family bedrooms, each with a bath attached, on the second floor, and twenty-six double and single bedrooms on the third floor, with a bachelor’s wing of fifteen rooms entirely separate from the rest of the house and reached by a long corridor. There is a nursery and schoolroom 36 by 18 feet, a servants’ hall 30 by 20 feet, and fifteen bedrooms for servants. Altogether there are eighty living-rooms, amply furnished, besides the kitchens, bakery, storerooms, pantries, and servants’ quarters. There is a garage, and stabling for seventeen horses, a dairy, a fish hatchery which stocks the brooks with trout and the lakes with salmon; seven thousand acres of forest preserve with deer and other game, and, altogether, more than one hundred thousand acres of shooting upon the hills and mountains, the bogs and forests surrounding the Lakes of Killarney. In 1907 the game bag included 2,500 rabbits, 470 pheasants, 400 woodcock, 200 grouse, 150 hares, 100 snipe, and 40 teal ducks, 14 stags, 6 hinds, and 4 does. No account was taken of the trout and the salmon which abound in the lake and in the several rivers and brooks which feed it. It is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and attractive estates in all the United Kingdom.

The fishing is very good in the spring. An Englishman at our hotel brought in several beautiful ten and twelve pound salmon, which he caught with a fly, although it was warm weather and the poorest time of year for the fishing. His lordship charges a fee of five dollars for the privilege of fishing in his lake. That pays for a license of one year, but is not transferable. A transient guest at a hotel, however, can go out with licensed fishermen as often as he likes. In the spring, when the salmon are running, nets are used, and his lordship gets the proceeds of the catch. The fish are shipped to Dublin and London, and the returns are $3,000 and $4,000 a year. His lordship allows none but rowboats upon the lakes. He will not permit a steamer or motor launch or even a naphtha launch, and every one who has a boat has to take out a license, for which he collects ten shillings. But the boatmen make it up during the tourist season.

The Earl of Kenmare will share his blessings, so far as his park is concerned, with you or any one else for a sixpence, and they are well worth it. I do not know any place where a lover of nature or one who is fond of strolling through the woods can get as much for his money. The demesne or park contains about nineteen hundred acres of forest and garden with many miles of walks and drives. The lodgekeepers at every one of the six gates are always alert to collect the sixpence and give you a ticket, numbered and stamped and good for that day only. But you can pass the gates with it as often as you like until they are closed at night, and a wise man will spend as much time as he can spare within the demesne every day. When we were there in June the trees were glorious; hundreds of acres of rhododendrons were in flower and made great banks of purple blossoms; the hawthorns, arbutus, laburnums, and other flowering trees and the woodbine were in their greatest glory. And when they fade we can admire the oaks and beeches that have been growing there for hundreds of years. Many of the trees were planted after designs. There are long avenues that are completely roofed by boughs, and at one place a magnificent cathedral of beeches has been devised of foliage, three wide aisles made by five rows of venerable beech trees more than three hundred years old, which were trimmed almost to the top when young and the branches trained to overlap so that they are almost a rain-proof roof. The trunks are smooth and almost straight, like the columns of a basilica, and the ground is covered with half decayed shells of beech nuts that have fallen during the centuries.

But the most glorious part of the demesne is the garden, which surpasses any that I have seen for years. It occupies a terrace surrounding Kenmare House upon the highest eminence in the demesne and overlooks the lakes. It is laid out in the Italian style, and the gardener told us that it was designed by the Dowager Lady Kenmare when she was a bride. If that is true her ladyship must have been a very clever landscape gardener. The most striking feature is a tennis court inclosed within a hedge of cypress ten feet high and six feet thick, with the top trimmed to represent the wall of a castle, with arches for entrances and bays and recesses where benches have been placed to accommodate spectators. This unique wall of cypress is so dense that a tennis ball will rebound from it. Adjoining the tennis court is a croquet ground, and just behind them an exquisite little cottage where her ladyship serves tea every summer afternoon to her guests.