104 



IRISH GARDENING 



JULY 



"IRISH GARDENING. 



AN ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY. 



Offices-53 Upper Sackville Street, Dublin. 



Subscription. -3 per annum, post Irce. 



Editorial. -All Kditonal Communications, copy, and photograplis 

 should be iiddressed to "The E.lilor." 



Business Cominunlcatlons.— All Idlers regarding Subscriptions, 

 Advertiseiiienls. and other business matters must be addressed to 

 •• The Manager." 



Charlotte Grace O'Brien. 



By W. F. P. Stockley, University Colleg-e, Cork. 

 "When my bones are dust and my g-ood spade rust, 

 when my house is pulled down and my garden asphalt 

 and bricks, my extra special wild 

 briars and my daffodils will still 

 linger on the hillside and scent the 

 bloomy air for generations that 

 know me not, nor mint*." 



There is much of Charlotte 

 O'Brien in the tone of these, her 

 last words. She was outwardly 

 strong, though she had known 

 trial, suffering' and sadness ; 

 she was courageous — 



Languor is not in your heart, 

 Weakness is not in your word — 



many have felt that, have 

 wondered at this impulsiveness, 

 have felt ashamed of them- 

 selves, doubtless, at times, 

 when their more arid hearts 

 have had dull leisure to 

 criticise her fulness of heart ; in « 



not sentimental indeed, nor 

 analysing her feelings, perhaps, vet over-flow- 

 ing with that great heartedness which some in 

 sorrow often remember when they think of 

 what she said or poured forth. She had made 

 her life, she had striven and fought. What life 

 was to her, as to others, was not what she may 

 have planned. But her life at Ardanoir, as her 

 garden, was herself, was a happiness to herself ; 

 even in later years, a happy rest, which (to revert 

 to Burke's words)hates sloth, butloves quiet. And 

 so it was to many others, and a happiness, and 

 a strengthening, to those who live among ugly, 

 stupid conventions, and who like to dwell in mind 

 at <\)TOAnoi|t on the hill of the gorse and gold. 

 Could it have seemed more beautiful than the 

 June day when loving hands carried her coffin 

 from it, under the clouds filled with sunlight, 

 with the glow of the laburnums over the rich wild- 

 ness of the flowers, the dark wood up the hill. 



Charlotte G. O'Brien 



and the wide Shannon shore so lovelv and so 

 loved ? That picture of it, of her, in the March 

 Irish Gardening, is beautiful. She herself 

 looks resting ; and these last months a certain 

 grey weariness seemed to lift less often from her 

 face. Her noble greeting seemed less buoj'ant. 

 She said that she did not look for long life ; 

 yet, what her readers have felt in her, of a wise 

 cheerfulness and practical acceptance of things, 

 those characteristics her personality passed 

 on — "taught" is not the word — to others: a 

 something spontaneous, inevitable, natural. 

 The poet did not say of just such a life — 



Glad hearts, without reproach or 



blot. 

 Who do liiy work .ind know it ttot — 



} et tile w ords are not in 

 applicable. The priest-friend 

 who spoke at the .Mass while 

 her body lay near the altar 

 told his hearers how his 

 thoughts had often been, 

 when ministering to her, 

 that a priest could well long 

 to have that simple, whole- 

 souled faith. Pasteur-like, " I 

 have the faith of the peasant, 

 and it I knew more I should 

 ha\ e the faith of the peasant's 

 wife." In earlier days she 

 had been much attracted by 

 Caroline Fox and such Friends; 

 > iif= as, later, all were embraced in 



mystical Catholicity. To the 

 present writer she wrote, in mingled distress and 

 amazement, of things of piety that she found 

 in one of Father Faber's books. If that 

 was Christianity and Catholicism — well, she 

 expressed herself strongly. .'Vnd I am not 

 saying she was discerning, or that it was her 

 characteristic to have a right judgment in all 

 things. The mood passed, I daresay. .'\nd she 

 was no great disputant. Like her guide, 

 Aubrey de Vere, whom she knew so well ; like 

 his brother, Sir Stephen de Vere, her neighbour 

 at Foynes, whom she revered for his love for 

 Ireland and for that care for the poor which 

 made him share their trials, in worse days 

 crossing to America. And I remember seeing 

 Miss O'Brien herself, a horrible emigrant figure, 

 lugging a huge, hideous carpet-bag into a Dublin 

 tram, spurning alarmed attentions. She wasjust 

 offfor the Cove of Cork. inthed:ivs when she would 



