Penelope's Irish Experiences

“I won’t insist on the Round Towers,” smiled Salemina, “and I think Penelope’s idea a delightful one; we might add to it a sort of literary pilgrimage to the homes and haunts of Ireland’s famous writers.”

“I didn’t know that she had any,” interrupted Francesca.

This is a favourite method of conversation with that spoiled young person; it seems to appeal to her in three different ways: she likes to belittle herself, she likes to shock Salemina, and she likes to have information given her on the spot in some succinct, portable, convenient form.

“Oh,” she continued apologetically, “of course there are Dean Swift and Thomas Moore and Charles Lever.”

“And,” I added “certain minor authors named Goldsmith, Sterne, Steele, and Samuel Lover.”

“And Bishop Berkeley, and Brinsley Sheridan, and Maria Edgeworth, and Father Prout,” continued Salemina, “and certain great speech-makers like Burke and Grattan and Curran; and how delightful to visit all the places connected with Stella and Vanessa, and the spot where Spenser wrote the Faerie Queene.”

“‘Nor own a land on earth but one,
We’re Paddies, and no more,’”

sang Francesca. “You will be telling me in a moment that Thomas Carlyle was born in Skereenarinka, and that Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet in Coolagarranoe,” for she had drawn the guidebook toward her and made good use of it. “Let us do the literary pilgrimage, certainly, before we leave Ireland, but suppose we begin with something less intellectual. This is the most pugnacious map I ever gazed upon. All the names seem to begin or end with kill, bally, whack, shock, or knock; no wonder the Irish make good soldiers! Suppose we start with a sanguinary trip to the Kill places, so that I can tell any timid Americans I meet in travelling that I have been to Kilmacow and to Kilmacthomas, and am going to-morrow to Kilmore, and the next day to Kilumaule.”

“I think that must have been said before,” I objected.

“It is so obvious that it’s not unlikely,” she rejoined; “then let us simply agree to go afterwards to see all the Bally places from Ballydehob on the south to Ballycastle or Ballymoney on the north, and from Ballynahinch or Ballywilliam on the east to Ballyvaughan or Ballybunnion on the west, and passing through, in transit,

Ballyragget,

Ballysadare,

Ballybrophy,

Ballinasloe,

Ballyhooley,

Ballycumber,

Ballyduff,

Ballynashee,

Ballywhack.

Don’t they all sound jolly and grotesque?”

“They do indeed,” we agreed, “and the plan is quite worthy of you; we can say no more.”

We had now developed so many more ideas than we could possibly use that the labour of deciding among them was the next thing to be done. Each of us stood out boldly for her own project,—even Francesca clinging, from sheer wilfulness, to her worthless and absurd itineraries,—until, in order to bring the matter to any sort of decision, somebody suggested that we consult Benella; which reminds me that you have not yet the pleasure of Benella’s acquaintance.

Chapter III. We sight a derelict

‘O Bay of Dublin, my heart you’re troublin’,
Your beauty haunts me like a fever dream.’

    Lady Dufferin.

To perform the introduction properly I must go back a day or two. We had elected to cross to Dublin directly from Scotland, an easy night journey. Accordingly we embarked in a steamer called the Prince or the King of something or other, the name being many degrees more princely or kingly than the craft itself.

We had intended, too, to make our own comparison of the Bay of Dublin and the Bay of Naples, because every traveller, from Charles Lever’s Jack Hinton down to Thackeray and Mr. Alfred Austin has always made it a point of honour to do so. We were balked in our conscientious endeavour, because we arrived at the North Wall forty minutes earlier than the hour set by the steamship company. It is quite impossible for anything in Ireland to be done strictly on the minute, and in struggling not to be hopelessly behind time, a ‘disthressful counthry’ will occasionally be ahead of it. We had been told that we should arrive in a drizzling rain, and that no one but Lady Dufferin had ever on approaching Ireland seen the ‘sweet faces of the Wicklow mountains reflected in a smooth and silver sea.’ The grumblers were right on this special occasion, although we have proved them false more than once since.

I was in a fever of fear that Ireland would not be as Irish as we wished it to be. It seemed probable that processions of prosperous aldermen, school directors, contractors, mayors, and ward politicians, returning to their native land to see how Herself was getting on, the crathur, might have deposited on the soil successive layers of Irish-American virtues, such as punctuality, thrift, and cleanliness, until they had quite obscured fair Erin’s peculiar and pathetic charm. We longed for the new Ireland as fervently as any of her own patriots, but we wished to see the old Ireland before it passed. There is plenty of it left (alas! the patriots would say), and Dublin was as dear and as dirty as when Lady Morgan first called it so, long years ago. The boat was met by a crowd of ragged gossoons, most of them barefooted, some of them stockingless, and in men’s shoes, and several of them with flowers in their unspeakable hats and caps. There were no cabs or jaunting cars because we had not been expected so early, and the jarveys were in attendance on the Holyhead steamer. It was while I was searching for a piece of lost luggage that I saw the stewardess assisting a young woman off the gang plank, and leading her toward a pile of wool bags on the dock. She sank helplessly on one of them, and leaned her head on another. As the night had been one calculated to disturb the physical equilibrium of a poor sailor, and the breakfast of a character to discourage the stoutest stomach, I gave her a careless thought of pity and speedily forgot her. Two trunks, a holdall, a hatbox—in which reposed, in solitary grandeur, Francesca’s picture hat, intended for the further undoing of the Irish gentry—a guitar case, two bags, three umbrellas; all were safe but Salemina’s large Vuitton trunk and my valise, which had been last seen at Edinburgh station. Salemina returned to the boat, while Francesca and I wended our way among the heaps of luggage, followed by crowds of ragamuffins, who offered to run for a car, run for a cab, run for a porter, carry our luggage up the street to the cab-stand, carry our wraps, carry us, ‘do any mortial thing for a penny, melady, an’ there is no cars here, melady, God bless me sowl, and that He be good to us all if I’m tellin’ you a word of a lie!’

Entirely unused to this flow of conversation, we were obliged to stop every few seconds to recount our luggage and try to remember what we were looking for. We all met finally, and I rescued Salemina from the voluble thanks of an old woman to whom she had thoughtlessly given a three-penny bit. This mother of a ‘long wake family’ was wishing that Salemina might live to ‘ate the hin’ that scratched over her grave, and invoking many other uncommon and picturesque blessings, but we were obliged to ask her to desist and let us attend to our own business.

“Will I clane the whole of thim off for you for a penny, your ladyship’s honour, ma’am?” asked the oldest of the ragamuffins, and I gladly assented to the novel proposition. He did it, too, and there seemed to be no hurt feelings in the company.

Just then there was a rattle of cabs and side-cars, and our self-constituted major-domo engaged two of them to await our pleasure. At the same moment our eyes lighted upon Salemina’s huge Vuitton, which had been dragged behind the pile of wool sacks. It was no wonder it had escaped our notice, for it was mostly covered by the person of the sea-sick maiden whom I had seen on the arm of the stewardess. She was seated on it, exhaustion in every line of her figure, her head upon my travelling bag, her feet dangling over the edge until they just touched the ‘S. P., Salem, Mass., U.S.A.’ painted in large red letters on the end. She was too ill to respond to our questions, but there was no mistaking her nationality. Her dress, hat, shoes, gloves, face, figure were American. We sent for the stewardess, who told us that she had arrived in Glasgow on the day previous, and had been very ill all the way coming from Boston.

“Boston!” exclaimed Salemina. “Do you say she is from Boston, poor thing?”

(“I didn’t know that a person living in Boston could ever, under any circumstances, be a ‘poor thing,’” whispered Francesca to me.)

“She was not fit to be crossing last night, and the doctor on the American ship told her so, and advised her to stay in bed for three days before coming to Ireland; but it seems as if she were determined to get to her journey’s end.”

“We must have our trunk,” I interposed. “Can’t we move her carefully over to the wool sacks, and won’t you stay with her until her friends come?”

“She has no friends in this country, ma’am. She’s just travelling for pleasure like.”

“Good gracious! what a position for her to be in,” said Salemina. “Can’t you take her back to the steamer and put her to bed?”

“I could ask the captain, certainly, miss, though of course it’s something we never do, and besides we have to set the ship to rights and go across again this evening.”

“Ask her what hotel she is going to, Salemina,” we suggested, “and let us drop her there, and put her in charge of the housekeeper; of course if it is only sea-sickness she will be all right in the morning.”

The girl’s eyes were closed, but she opened them languidly as Salemina chafed her cold hands, and asked gently if we could not drive her to an hotel.

“Is—this—your—baggage?” she whispered.

“It is,” Salemina answered, somewhat puzzled.

“Then don’t—leave me here, I am from Salem—myself,” whereupon without any more warning she promptly fainted away on the trunk.

The situation was becoming embarrassing. The assemblage grew larger, and a more interesting and sympathetic audience I never saw. To an Irish crowd, always warm-hearted and kindly, willing to take any trouble for friend or stranger, and with a positive terror of loneliness, or separation from kith and kin, the helpless creature appealed in every way. One and another joined the group with a “Holy Biddy! what’s this at all?”

“The saints presarve us, is it dyin’ she is?”

“Look at the iligant duds she do be wearin’.”

“Call the docthor, is it? God give you sinse! Sure the docthors is only a flock of omadhauns.”

“Is it your daughter she is, ma’am?” (This to Salemina.)

“She’s from Ameriky, the poor mischancy crathur.”