November 29, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
15 
life anil letters; 
By J. G. Squire 
Irish Memories 
THE large sect which reveres the " Irish R.^.." 
books will automatically buy Irish Memories (Long- 
mans, los. 6d. net), the last book which will bear the 
names of E. CE. Somerville and Martin Ross. Miss 
Violet Martin, " Martin Ross," died a little time ago, and the 
new volume has been written by her collaborator, with the 
help of some of Miss Ross's letters and papers. It is a book, 
liowever, with less of a general appeal tlian one had expected. 
A good deal of it is family and local history, dealing with 
persons who are not of sufficient note to be interesting to 
English strangers, unless treated with that fullness which 
will make almost anyone interesting. Miss Martin's family 
was very clever, and' still more numerous — she herself was 
the eleventh successive girl, and was received into the world, 
she alleges, with the least amount of rejoicing on record — 
but the material here given is insufficient to intrigue one with 
any of them except her mother. That lady, who was very 
caustic about her daughter's early literary attempts, was, it 
is said, imposing, slowjand stately to a remarkable degree : 
It was alleged by her graceless family that only by aligning 
her with some fixed and distant object, and by close observa- 
tion of the one in relation to the other, was it possible to see 
her move. One of the stories turned on the mistake of one 
f>f their children, short-sighted like herself. " Oh, there's 
Mamma coming at last ! " A pause. Then, in tones of 
disappointment, " So, it's only a tramcar." 
In any book by these hands there were bound to be sufficient 
anecdotes of that kind to make it worth the reader's while to 
go on, and Miss Somerville scatters them fjeely. She does 
not specialise in " bulls," but gives a good one from a tenant 
who said that he had "a long serious family, and God knows 
how I'll make the two ends of the candle meet." But about 
her chastest tale is that of the deferential lady at the garden 
party, who said to her host ' " Oh, what a handsome sunset 
you have." 
* • * * * 
The two ladies were of old Irish landowning families, and 
took the point of view, political and social, of their class, 
though never in a purely mechanical way. " Martin Ross,' 
at the end, was remarkably open on the subject of Home Rule, 
and the correspondence between her and Captain Gwynn, 
M.P., her? given, shows how little it really is that 
differentiates the best minds on each side. But what one 
really wants from this book is not new light upon Home 
Rule, or the Irish Famine, but sorriething which will illus- 
trate the workings of one of the closest and most puzzling 
collaborations on record. Here Miss Somerville, although 
with all the airs of candour, is a little reticent. She gives us 
the history of the partnership. She tells us what they got 
from the publishers for their early novels — and the prices were 
larger than they would have obtained in these days of reduced 
prices and enormous over-production — and she is very 
amusing about the stupids who were continually asking 
them " which one held the pen." She suggests — as has been 
revealed before — that the co-operation between the two was 
extraordinarily close, and that each word, almost, was 
debated between them ; but she does not really show us the 
tiling happening. We are left to make our own deductions 
from the specimens of writing by each separately now given, 
in which the components of the mixture separate out and are 
revealed as very distinct from each other. 
« « « • « 
Explanation or no explanation, the results of the partner- 
ship will always be a puzzle. Generally speaking, collaborators 
write alternate chapters ; or one writes the dialogue and the 
other the descriptions ; or they sink their differences in 
some method which is quite impersonal. The queer thing 
about this pair is that they produced a style, which was the 
style of neither of them, and which nevertheless had an in- 
dividual personality written all over it. That personality 
was more vivacious and irresponsible than "Martin Ross's " ; 
more thoughtful and sagacious than Miss Somerville's ; and 
the style was terser, more vivid, more flexible than either's. 
The epithets, the images, the scenes, the very jests seem 
always things that must have sprung spontaneously from 
a single mind ; were it not that All on the Irish Shore and some 
others were written before he had been thought of, we should 
find it easier to believe that Major Sinclair Ycatcs was a 
real person and author than that two women had sat solemnly 
down to concoct their tales with interminable discission. It 
was a great and a mysterious feat. 
* '« * * * 
One lias said that the devotees of the Irish R.M. are nume- 
rous. They were from the start. During the Boer War 
a Staff Officer wrote to say that Some Adventures, of which 
he had worn out three copies, had alone stood between him 
and lunacy ; and another copy was found in one of the tents 
hastily evacuated by General de Wet, to whose credit this 
must eternally stand. As Miss Somerville remarks, the pair 
never had anything to complain of in their treatment by the 
Press. The fact remains that Some Adventures and Further 
Adventures — The Tinker's Dog tempts one to include All 
on the Irish Shore as well — are still nothing like as well known 
as they might be in some circles w'here they would be highly 
appreciated. It is all due to people's prepossessions. The 
titles sound local. . The stories are about Ireland, and we 
have all read enough Irish stories to last us a lifetime. 'Yhey 
are, partly, as their title indicates, about the Garrison, and 
the slightest peep shows that they are largely concerned with 
hunting. This in itself is enough to choke off many 
connoisseurs who do not realise that people, especially in 
Ireland, may hunt without being fools or bigots. I-'inally, 
they are liked by many simple people who think Bergson is 
a patent browni bread, and nev-er lieard of Nietzsche before 
the war. This means that others, who have a contempt for 
these simple people, cannot persuade themselves that there 
is anything in the " R.?-T." for themselves. The fact remains 
that, in their limited sphere, the best of these stories are 
perfect in conception and execution. 
* * tf * # 
Of all the characters in them, we are told, only Slipper and 
Maria were taken straight from life. Maria, being a dog, was 
fair game. One remembers her greatest exploit, the boarding 
of the yacht in The House of Fahy. There have been many 
euphemisms about sea-sickness, but none more happy than 
that with which we are made cognisant of Maria's condition 
on the yacht ; 
" She found out that she was able to move," said Bemardt 
who had crossed to our sidS of the deck ; " It was somehow 
borne in upon her when I got at her with a boot-tree. I 
wouldn't advise you to keep her in your lap, Yeates. She 
stole half a ham after dinner, and she might take a notion to 
make the only reparation in her power." 
No dog has ever been more accurately and exhaustively 
portrayed ; but the invented .characters. Major Yeates, 
Philippa, Flurry Knox, Dr. Hickey. Miss Shute. and Bernard, 
old Mrs. Knox and dozens of retainers and peasants, have all 
the force and clearness of good portraits. The landscapes 
are as good ; the humour scarcely ever over-reaches itself, 
and the phraseology is often thought out with the solicitous 
care of a Gautier. For an illustration, I open the pages quite 
literally at random and strike the place in which Major Yeates 
gets out of an Irish train to buy a fish, the guard promising 
him that he will have heaps of time for his connection. He 
hears a whistle and bolts for the station : 
Needless to say, it was uphill, and at the steepest gradien* 
another whistle stabbed me like a spur ; above the station- 
roof successive and advancing puffs of steam warned me that 
the worst had probably happened, but still I ran. When I 
gained the platform my train was already clear of it, but the . 
Personal Element still held good. Every soul in the station, 
or so it seemed to me, lifted up his voice and yelled. The 
stationmaster put his lingers in his mouth and sent after 
the departing train an unearthly whistle, with a high 
trajectory' and a serrated edge. It took effect ; the train 
slackened. I plunged from the platform aiid followed it up 
the rails, and every window in both trains blossomed with 
the heads of deeply-interested spectators. The guard met 
me on the line, very apologetic and primed with an explana- 
tion that the gentleman going for the boat-train wouldn't 
let him wait any longer, while from our rear came an ex« 
ultant cry from the stationmaster : "Ye told him ye would'nt 
forget him 1 '' 
Or take, again the brisk opening of The Pug-Nosed.Fox : 
" 5 Turkies and their Mother, 
5 Ducks and the Drake, 
5 Hins and the Cock. 
Catherine O'Donovak, Skea^h." 
A leaf from a copy-book, with these words written on it, was 
placed in my hand as 1 was in the act of dragging on a new 
pair of gloves in the stableyard. There was something 
rhythmic in the categon,-, suggestive of burnt-offerings and 
incantations ; some touch of pathos, pointing to tragedy ; 
something, finally, that in the light of previous events, re- 
called to me suddenly and unpleasantlv my new-born position 
of M.F.H. 
These are casual extracts ; if one picked out the best things one 
would give a less accurate impression. But if Maria Edge- 
worth is mentioned in the literary histories. 1 don't see why 
these ladies sliould not be. 
