Experiences Of An Irish R .m.

EXPERIENCES OF AN IRISH R. M. - I899 - - INTRODUCTION - Edith CEnone Somemille and Violet Florence Martin, the authors of this book, were second cousins, a convenient degree of relationship that can be acknowledged or ignored as may be desired. Their mothers were first cousins, which is a more serious affair that cannot be evaded. But in the case of these second cousins the question of evasion did not arise. A few details of their family history may not be considered out of place and shall be offered. In the first place it may be said that they were both Irish, by birth and upbringing, and were proud of it. Their mutual great-grandfather was Lord Chief Justice of Ireland during the early years of the nineteenth century. He was Charles Kendal Bushe, a brilliant Irishman, a wit and an orator, and a man, in those days when bribery was rampant, so inilexibly honest, that the label Incorruptible was attached to his name. His wife was Nancy Crarnpton, an artist and a musician, as brilliant in her own line as he in his. They had a large family of sons and daughters, to whom they transmitted no small share of brains, and an ever widening company of great-grandchildren feel themselves honoured in being able to claim descent from The Chiefy and his Nancy. And among these were the two descendants of whom I now propose to speak. Both of them were daughters of old families that had struck roots deep into Irish soil. The Martins had come to Ireland with Strbngbow, and were one of the wellknown Tribes of Galway. In the year 1500 they moved out of Galway Town to the lands of Ross, and built themselves a house there, and, incidentally, provided Violet with a handy nom de plume. She was born at RossHouse, on l lth June 1862, and was the youngest of the eleven daughters of James Martin, D. L., of Ross, and of his wife, Anna Selina, daughter of Judge Fox and Katharine Bushe, a daughter of the Chief. Edith was born on 2nd May 1858, in Corfu, where her father was quartered with his regiment, the Buffs. She was the eldest v vi Introduction of the seven children of Lieut.-Colonel Thomas Henry Somerville, D. L., and of his wife, Adelaide, daughter of Admiral Sir Josiah Coghill, Bart., R. N., and Anna Maria Bushe, who was a daughter of the Chief. The first formative years of both young writers were spent in comfortable old-fashioned Irish country houses, whose atmosphere was surely enriched and mellowed by the pervading spirits of many generations of kindly ancestors. It would seem as though there had been deliberate intention on the part of Fate that these two cousins should write together, and that they should start their career as writers with a similar equipment of interests, tastes, and experiences. The children-of the two old houses, Ross and Drishane, had happy lives, full of dogs and horses, and boating on sea and lake. The atmosphere of their homes was full of good talk, of books and music, of pictures and politics, and they learned from their fathers tenants, in a mutual friendship as sincere as it was unselfconscious, the idiom of that delightful way of speech that among Irish countrypeople has sprung, like a wild flower, from the stiffer soil of the language of English Everyman and everywoman. This was the life in which Martin Ross and E. E...