Penelope's Irish Experiences

“She knows every nook and corner in the place,” continued Salemina; “she has even seen the house where I was born, and her name is Benella Dusenberry.”

“Impossible!” cried Francesca. “Dusenberry is unlikely enough, but who ever heard of such a name as Benella! It sounds like a flavouring extract.”

“She came over to see the world, she says.”

“Oh! then she has money?”

“No—or at least, yes; or at least she had enough when she left America to last for two or three months, or until she could earn something.”

“Of course she left her little all in a chamois-skin bag under her pillow on the steamer,” suggested Francesca.

“That is precisely what she did,” Salemina replied, with a pale smile. “However, she was so ill in the steerage that she had to pay twenty-five or thirty dollars extra to go into the second cabin, and this naturally reduced the amount of her savings, though it makes no difference since she left them all behind her, save a few dollars in her purse. She says she is usually perfectly well, but that she was very tired when she started, that it was her first sea-voyage, and the passage was unusually rough.”

“Where is she going?”

“I don’t know; I mean she doesn’t know. Her maternal grandmother was born in Trim, near Tara, in Meath, but she does not think she has any relations over here. She is entirely alone in the world, and that gives her a certain sentiment in regard to Ireland, which she heard a great deal about when she was a child. The maternal grandmother must have gone to Salem at a very early age, as Benella herself savours only of New England soil.”

“Has she any trade, or is she trained to do anything whatsoever?” asked Francesca.

“No, she hoped to take some position of ‘trust.’ She does not care at all what it is, so long as the occupation is ‘interestin’ work,’ she says. That is rather vague, of course, but she speaks and appears like a nice, conscientious person.”

“Tell us the rest; conceal nothing,” I said sternly.

“She—she thinks that we have saved her life, and she feels that she belongs to us,” faltered Salemina.

“Belongs to us!” we cried in a duet. “Was there ever such a base reward given to virtue; ever such an unwelcome expression of gratitude! Belong to us, indeed! We can’t have her; we won’t have her. Were you perfectly frank with her?”

“I tried to be, but she almost insisted; she has set her heart upon being our maid.”

“Does she know how to be a maid?”

“No, but she is extremely teachable, she says.”

“I have my doubts,” remarked Francesca; “a liking for personal service is not a distinguishing characteristic of New Englanders; they are not the stuff of which maids are made. If she were French or German or Senegambian, in fact anything but a Saleminian, we might use her; we have always said we needed some one.”

Salemina brightened. “I thought myself it might be rather nice—that is, I thought it might be a way out of the difficulty. Penelope had thought at one time of bringing a maid, and it would save us a great deal of trouble. The doctor thinks she could travel a short distance in a few days; perhaps it is a Providence in disguise.”

“The disguise is perfect,” murmured Francesca.

“You see,” Salemina continued, “when the poor thing tottered along the wharf the stewardess laid her on the pile of wool sacks-”

“Like a dying Chancellor,” again interpolated the irrepressible.

“And ran off to help another passenger. When she opened her eyes, she saw straight in front of her, in huge letters, ‘Salem, Mass., U.S.A.’ It loomed before her despairing vision, I suppose, like a great ark of refuge, and seemed to her in her half-dazed condition not only a reminder, but almost a message from home. She had then no thought of ever seeing the owner; she says she felt only that she should like to die quietly on anything marked ‘Salem, Mass.’ Go in to see her presently, Penelope, and make up your own mind about her. See if you can persuade her to—to—well, to give us up. Try to get her out of the notion of being our maid. She is so firm; I never saw so feeble a person who could be so firm; and what in the world shall we do with her if she keeps on insisting, in her nervous state?”

“My idea would be,” I suggested, “to engage her provisionally, if we must, not because we want her, but because her heart is weak. I shall tell her that we do not feel like leaving her behind, and yet we ourselves cannot be detained in Dublin indefinitely; that we will try the arrangement for a month, and that she can consider herself free to leave us at any time on a week’s notice.”

“I approve of that,” agreed Francesca, “because it makes it easier to dismiss her in case she turns out to be a Massachusetts Borgia. You remember, however, that we bore with the vapours and vagaries, the sighs and moans of Jane Grieve in Pettybaw, all those weeks, and not one of us had the courage to throw off her yoke. Never shall I forget her at your wedding, Penelope; the teardrop glistened in her eye as usual; I think it is glued there! Ronald was sympathetic, because he fancied she was weeping for the loss of you, but on inquiry it transpired that she was thinking of a marriage in that ‘won’erfu’ fine family in Glasgy,’ with whose charms she had made us all too familiar. She asked to be remembered when I began my own housekeeping, and I told her truthfully that she was not a person who could be forgotten; I repressed my feeling that she is too tearful for a Highland village where it rains most of the year, also my conviction that Ronald’s parish would chasten me sufficiently without her aid.”

I did as Salemina wished, and had a conference with Miss Dusenberry. I hope I was quite clear in my stipulations as to the perfect freedom of the four contracting parties. I know I intended to be, and I was embarrassed to see Francesca and Salemina exchange glances next day when Benella said she would show us what a good sailor she could be, on the return voyage to America, adding that she thought a person would be much less liable to sea-sickness when travelling in the first cabin.

Chapter V. The Wearing of the Green

‘Sir Knight, I feel not the least alarm,
No son of Erin will offer me harm—
For tho’ they love woman and golden store,
Sir Knight, they love honour and virtue more!’

    Thomas Moore.

“This is an anniversary,” said Salemina, coming into the sitting-room at breakfast-time with a book under her arm. “Having given up all hope of any one’s waking in this hotel, which, before nine in the morning, is precisely like the Sleeping Beauty’s castle, I dressed and determined to look up Brian Boru.”

“From all that I can recall of him he was not a person to meet before breakfast,” yawned Francesca; “still I shall be glad of a little fresh light, for my mind is in a most chaotic state, induced by the intellectual preparation that you have made me undergo during the past month. I dreamed last night that I was conducting a mothers’ meeting in Ronald’s new parish, and the subject for discussion was the Small Livings Scheme, the object of which is to augment the stipends of the ministers of the Church of Scotland to a minimum of 200 pounds per annum. I tried to keep the members to the point, but was distracted by the sudden appearance, in all corners of the church, of people who hadn’t been ‘asked to the party.’ There was Brian Boru, Tony Lumpkin, Finn McCool, Felicia Hemans, Ossian, Mrs. Delany, Sitric of the Silken Beard, St. Columba, Mickey Free, Strongbow, Maria Edgeworth, and the Venerable Bede. Imagine leading a mothers’ meeting with those people in the pews,—it was impossible! St. Columbkille and the Venerable Bede seemed to know about parochial charges and livings and stipends and glebes, and Maria Edgeworth was rather helpful; but Brian and Sitric glared at each other and brandished their hymn-books threateningly, while Ossian refused to sit in the same pew with Mickey Free, who behaved in an odious manner, and interrupted each of the speakers in turn. Incidentally a group of persons huddled together in a far corner rose out of the dim light, and flapping huge wings, flew over my head and out of the window above the altar. This I took to be the Flight of the Earls, and the terror of it awoke me. Whatever my parish duties may be in the future, at least they cannot be any more dreadful and disorderly than the dream.”

“I don’t know which is more to blame, the seed that I sowed, or the soil on which it fell,” said Salemina, laughing heartily at Francesca’s whimsical nightmares; “but as I said, this is an anniversary. The famous battle of Clontarf was fought here in Dublin on this very day eight hundred years ago, and Brian Boru routed the Danes in what was the last struggle between Christianity and heathenism. The greatest slaughter took place on the streets along which we drove yesterday from Ballybough Bridge to the Four Courts. Brian Boru was king of Munster, you remember” (Salemina always says this for courtesy’s sake), “or at least you have read of that time in Ireland’s history when a fair lady dressed in fine silk and gold and jewels could walk unmolested the length of the land, because of the love the people bore King Brian and the respect they cherished for his wise laws. Well, Mailmora, the king of Leinster, had quarrelled with him, and joined forces with the Danish leaders against him. Broder and Amlaff, two Vikings from the Isle of Man, brought with them a ‘fleet of two thousand Denmarkians and a thousand men covered with mail from head to foot,’ to meet the Irish, who always fought in tunics. Joyce says that Broder wore a coat of mail that no steel would bite, that he was both tall and strong, and that his black locks were so long that he tucked them under his belt,—there’s a portrait for your gallery, Penelope. Brian’s army was encamped on the Green of Aha-Clee, which is now Phoenix Park, and when he set fire to the Danish districts, the fierce Norsemen within the city could see a blazing, smoking pathway that reached from Dublin to Howth. The quarrel must have been all the more virulent in that Mailmora was Brian’s brother-in-law, and Brian’s daughter was the wife of Sitric of the Silken Beard, Danish king of Dublin.”

“I refuse to remember their relationships or alliances,” said Francesca. “They were always intermarrying with their foes in order to gain strength, but it generally seems to have made things worse rather than better; still I don’t mind hearing what became of Brian after his victory; let us quite finish with him before the eggs come up. I suppose it will be eggs?”

“Broder the Viking rushed upon him in his tent where he was praying, cleft his head from his body, and he is buried in Armagh Cathedral,” said Salemina, closing the book. “Penelope, do ring again for breakfast, and just to keep us from realising our hunger read ‘Remember the Glories of Brian the Brave.’”

We had brought letters of introduction to a dean, a bishop, and a Rt. Hon. Lord Justice, so there were a few delightful invitations when the morning post came up; not so many as there might have been, perhaps, had not the Irish capital been in a state of complete dementia over the presence of the greatest Queen in the world.[1 - Penelope’s experiences in Scotland, given in a former volume, ended, the meticulous proof-reader will remember, with her marriage in the year of the Queen’s Jubilee. It is apparent in the opening chapters of this story that Penelope came to Ireland the following spring, which, though the matter is hardly important, was not that of the Queen’s memorable visit. The Irish experiences are probably the fruit of several expeditions, and Penelope has chosen to include this vivid impression of Her Majesty’s welcome to Ireland, even though it might convict her of an anachronism. Perhaps as this is not an historical novel, but a ‘chronicle of small beer,’ the trifling inaccuracy may be pardoned.—K. D. W.] Privately, I think that those nations in the habit of having kings and queens at all should have four, like those in a pack of cards; then they could manage to give all their colonies and dependencies a frequent sight of royalty, and prevent much excitement and heart-burning.

It was worth something to be one of the lunatic populace when the little lady in black, with her parasol bordered in silver shamrocks, drove along the gaily decorated streets, for the Irish, it seems to me, desire nothing better than to be loyal, if any persons to whom they can be loyal are presented to them.

“Irish disaffection is, after all, but skin-deep,” said our friend the dean; “it is a cutaneous malady, produced by external irritants. Below the surface there is a deep spring of personal loyalty, which needs only a touch like that of the prophet’s wand to enable it to gush forth in healing floods. Her Majesty might drive through these crowded streets in her donkey chaise unguarded, as secure as the lady in that poem of Moore’s which portrayed the safety of women in Brian Boru’s time. The old song has taken on a new meaning. It begins, you know,—

‘Lady, dost thou not fear to stray
So lone and lonely through this dark way?’

and the Queen might answer as did the heroine,

‘Sir Knight, I feel not the least alarm,
No son of Erin will offer me harm.’”

It was small use for the parliamentary misrepresentatives to advise treating Victoria of the Good Deeds with the courtesy due to a foreign sovereign visiting the country. Under the miles of flags she drove, red, white, and blue, tossing themselves in the sweet spring air, and up from the warm hearts of the surging masses of people, men and women alike, Crimean soldiers and old crones in rags, gentry and peasants, went a greeting I never before heard given to any sovereign, for it was a sigh of infinite content that trembled on the lips and then broke into a deep sob, as a knot of Trinity College students in a spontaneous burst of song flung out the last verse of ‘The New Wearing of the Green.’[2 - Alfred Perceval Graves.]

‘And so upon St. Patrick’s Day, Victoria, she has said
Each Irish regiment shall wear the Green beside the Red;
And she’s coming to ould Ireland, who away so long has been,
And dear knows but into Dublin she’ll ride Wearing of the Green.’

The first cheers were faint and broken, and the emotion that quivered on every face and the tears that gleamed in a thousand eyes made it the most touching spectacle in the world. ‘Foreign Sovereign, indeed!’ She was the Queen of Ireland, and the nation of courtiers and hero worshippers was at her feet. There was the history of five hundred years in that greeting, and to me it spoke volumes.

Plenty of people there were in the crowd, too, who were heartily ‘agin the Government’; but Daniel O’Connell is not the only Irishman who could combine a detestation of the Imperial Parliament with a passionate loyalty to the sovereign.

There was a woman near us who ‘remimbered the last time Her Noble Highness come, thirty-nine years back,—glory be to God, thim was the times!’—and who kept ejaculating, “She’s the best woman in the wurrld, bar none, and the most varchous faymale!” As her husband made no reply, she was obliged in her excitement to thump him with her umbrella and repeat, “The most varchous faymale, do you hear?” At which he retorted, “Have conduct, woman; sure I’ve nothin’ agin it.”

“Look at the size of her now,” she went on, “sittin’ in that grand carriage, no bigger than me own Kitty, and always in the black, the darlin’. Look at her, a widdy woman, raring that large and heavy family of children; and how well she’s married off her daughters (more luck to her!), though to be sure they must have been well fortuned! They do be sayin’ she’s come over because she’s plazed with seein’ estated gintlemen lave iverything and go out and be shot by thim bloody Boers, bad scran to thim! Sure if I had the sons, sorra a wan but I’d lave go! Who’s the iligant sojers in the silver stays, Thady? Is it the Life Guards you’re callin’ thim?”