CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 FROM 
 
 S.H.B-ornham 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS 3539.H764 
 
 A book of hours 
 
 3 1924 021 709 849 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021709849 
 
^ "BOOK^OF HOUT(S 
 
 by 
 Ellen Thompson 
 
 ^?{ew York 
 TH6 FO^ieST T%SSS 
 
 ipop 
 
Copyright, 1909, by J. M. Bowles 
 
 Printed by the Forest Press, New Ytri 
 
'But Friendship is a nobler thing,- 
 Of Friendship it is good to sing. 
 For, truly, when a man shall end. 
 He lives in memory of his friend. 
 
THESE papers were selected from Miss 
 Thompson's notes for her "hours," 
 talks on literature given in and about 
 Boston for the last twenty years of her life, and 
 which had come to be, from her large and per- 
 manently devoted audiences, one of the insti- 
 tuted charms of culture in the city. 
 
 A skilled working love for books is too valu- 
 able an influence to let die. 
 
COS^TES^TS 
 
 The Friendliness of Books i 
 
 In Praise of London : Charles Lamb's 
 
 Letters and Essays 17 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends in 
 
 East Anglia 49 
 
 Oxford's Walks and Gardens 93 
 
 From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 133 
 
 Some Irish Villages That I Know 178 
 
THE FRIENDLINESS OF BOOKS 
 
 ALTHOUGH I were to talk to you long 
 and earnestly on the friendliness of 
 ■■ books, I could not sufficiently celebrate 
 their dear friendliness. It is impossible to tell all 
 the joy that comes from the companionship of 
 books — that is something that one must feel. 
 
 But I shall like to tell you many reasons why 
 books are dear to me. I cannot remember when 
 books began to be my friends, because I have no 
 memory of learning to read; ever since I can re- 
 member books have been my greatest delight. 
 
 My education was somewhat like Bridget 
 Elia's, and here at the very threshold of this 
 hour, let me tell you that two of your dearest 
 friends, if you're reading girls, will be Charles 
 and Mary Lamb. If you already know them, 
 you may rest assured that they are your lifelong 
 friends. In the essays which he signs Elia, 
 Charles Lamb always calls his sister " my cousin 
 Bridget," and this is the way he tells us that she 
 read: "Her education in youth was hot much 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 attended to; and she happily missed all that 
 female garniture which passeth by the name of 
 accomplishments. She was tumbled early, by ac- 
 cident or design, into a spacious closet of good 
 old English reading, without much selection or 
 prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair 
 and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls, 
 they should be brought up exactly in this fash- 
 ion. I know not whether their chances in wed- 
 lock might be diminished by it ; but I can answer 
 for it, that it makes (if the worst comes to the 
 worst) most incomparable old maids." 
 
 In my youth, I was tumbled into a closet of 
 good English reading, and it was my chief de- 
 light. So much is it my habit and my pleasure to 
 read, that when I enter a room, the first thing 
 for which my eye instinctively looks is a book. 
 I don't like to sleep in a room where there are 
 no books. In my own room, I open my eyes every 
 morning to my friends on the shelves, hundreds 
 of them, and say, " There you are, old friends," 
 and I like to fancy they are not insensible to my 
 greeting. 
 
 When I have a house of my own, it is to con- 
 sist principally of one large room, which shall 
 be living room, dining room and library. I quite 
 
 2 
 
The Friendliness of Books 
 
 know how it will be furnished — long low book- 
 cases and leaded windows above, a big, big fire- 
 place, and when my friends visit me, we shall sit 
 at table and chat about books and book-folk, and 
 when playful controversies arise about this or 
 that, we shall immediately refer to the books to 
 the right or left of us, so you see formal parties 
 will be quite out of the question in my house, but 
 we shall sit and talk as at a feast. That is what 
 I believe most talk should be — a kind of feast. 
 
 It happens that I do not live permanently in 
 any place, and some might say that I have no 
 home, but my home is where my books are, and 
 when I am withdrawn from my books, I think 
 back to them as to the home to which I shall 
 return. 
 
 Once, after a long tarry abroad, when I re- 
 turned to the room which was then my home, 
 there was no person to welcome me save the 
 very kindly housemaid. She — and I remember 
 this so gratefully after all these years — had put 
 flowers in my room, and as I stood looking lov- 
 ingly at the backs of the books, and caressing 
 one and then another, she said, " Your books 
 creak on their shelves to welcome you back." 
 I liked the conceit of that. They do welcome 
 
 3 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 me back, and they speed my going, too, because 
 from my reading my books, I am much better 
 able to enjoy the countries where the makers of 
 English literature have lived. And I would like 
 to illustrate to you just that point — how much 
 more meaningful England is to me because of 
 the reading of its literature that I have done. 
 
 Thackeray says : " To be the most beloved of 
 English writers, what a title that is for a man ! " 
 He says it of Goldsmith whom I love, and I 
 love Thackeray, too, but, to me, without ques- 
 tion, the best beloved of English writers is 
 Charles Lamb — " Saint Charles," Thackeray 
 called him once. He didn't write the most pro- 
 found books, but his essays are so full of his 
 love for humanity, his love for his books, and 
 they are written in a style so exquisite, that one 
 must have joy in them. 
 
 Not only do I care for Lamb, but I have 
 much regard for those that love him, and very 
 little for those who temper their enthusiasm re- 
 specting him. It gives me pleasure to know that 
 in some minor ways I am like Lamb. He says : 
 " I am a bundle of prejudices, made up of lik- 
 ings and dislikings, the veriest thrall to sym- 
 pathies, apathies, antipathies." 
 
 4- 
 
The Friendliness of Books 
 
 So, years ago, when Mr. Frederick Harrison 
 in a very much read article, " On the Choice 
 of Books," said, " Poor Lamb has a great deal 
 to answer for," I permitted myself to dislike 
 Mr. Harrison, and for years I cherished any- 
 thing but kindly feelings for him. Then, some 
 years ago at Oxford, he delivered an essay on 
 " Style," and in the course of it he said that 
 Charles Lamb and Thackeray came nearest the 
 great French stylists in purity of diction, in 
 grace, and in all the essentials of fine writing. 
 Then I found my ill-feeling toward Mr. Har- 
 rison disappearing, and ever since then I have 
 had pleasant sentiments toward him. 
 
 I care for him so much that I always have a 
 feeling of pleasant comradeship for anyone that 
 writes appreciatively of Lamb. It is no hyper- 
 bolic statement for me to say that he is one of 
 my best-loved friends, and even when circum- 
 stances prevent my frequent reading of him, I 
 have ever the same delicious pleasure in think- 
 ing that this friendship is a possession that 
 will be lifelong. Nothing will alienate me from 
 him, and no power can take from me the joy 
 there is in his exquisite work and his sweet 
 spirit. 
 
 5 
 
A Book oj Hours 
 
 This was point one that I wished to show 
 you, how a writer himself may become our per- 
 sonal friend, and the second point that I wish to 
 make is that some character in a book may 
 become our friend. 
 
 A young girl that I admire very much is 
 Elizabeth Bennet. Do you know her? She is 
 the heroine of " Pride and Prejudice," Lord 
 Beaconsfield claimed to have read " Pride and 
 Prejudice " seventeen times. 
 
 If you don't know Elizabeth I hope you will 
 all make her acquaintance soon. She is one of 
 my most admired friends, bright, vivacious, 
 winsome, and her creator, Jane Austen, has, 
 too, a style. Style is something very hard to de- 
 fine, but is the essential quality which makes one 
 writer's work differ from another, and gives it 
 its distinctive value. Were I talking to you much 
 about literature, I should be continually harping 
 on style, because to my mind it makes the writer. 
 There is a certain edition of " Pride and Preju- 
 dice " in which I have much pleasure. It is 
 illustrated by Mr. Hugh Thomson, and has an 
 introduction by Prof. Saintsbury, which is most 
 sympathetic. He says a world of charming 
 things about Elizabeth Bennet, and in the 
 6 
 
The Friendliness of Books 
 
 course of his little essay he mentions several 
 other heroines: I wonder if you know them. 
 
 He says : " In the novels of the last hundred 
 years there are vast numbers of young ladles 
 with whom it might be a pleasure to fall in love ; 
 there are, at least, five with whom, as it seems 
 to me, no man of taste and spirit can help doing 
 so. Their names are, in chronological order, 
 Elizabeth Bennet, Diana Vernon, Beatrix Es- 
 mond, Argemone Lavington, Barbara Grant. I 
 should have been most in love with Beatrix and 
 Argemone, for occasional companionship I 
 should have preferred Barbara or Diana, but 
 to live with and marry not one of them is com- 
 parable to Elizabeth Bennet." 
 
 These heroines are all in my acquaintance, 
 and once I wrote a little story where these hero- 
 ines came together. It was at the home of 
 Barbara Grant that they met, and Barbara 
 Grant lived in Edinburgh, and were there time 
 I could explain to you fully and satisfactorily, 
 I am sure, why they met there, rather than at 
 Longbourne, the Bennets' home, or Whitford 
 Priors, where the Lavingtons lived, or at Ken- 
 sington, where Rachel Esmond lived with her 
 beautiful daughter. Osbaldistone Hall, Diana's 
 
 7 
 
A Book of Hours 
 nominal home, is too remote. So Edinburgh 
 seemed the most convenient place. Barbara is 
 playing on her harpsichord, and saying over the 
 lines she so saucily sung to David Balfour: 
 
 " I am Miss Grant, sib to the advocate. You, 
 I believe, are " 
 
 " Diana Vernon," calls out Diana, and she 
 enters with her riding whip. Of course she rode; 
 no one would expect Diana to come any other 
 way, and very likely she took, two or three five- 
 barred gates on the way. 
 
 Barbara says : " Sit ye down and we'll have ' a 
 two-handed crack' before anyone else comes in." 
 
 "Are you expecting anyone else?" 
 
 " It may be that Beatrix Esmond may 
 look in." 
 
 Now there are very complicated political rea- 
 sons which can only be understood by those 
 that know Diana and Beatrix, why Diana should 
 frown on the spoiled beauty, but when Beatrix 
 comes in her sedan-chair, Diana is courteous, 
 and even admires the lace stomacher which 
 Beatrix wears, and which she tells us is maline 
 lace her cousin Colonel Esmond brought her 
 from Flanders. Then Argemone comes, very 
 elegant in a britzska, and lastly Elizabeth Ben- 
 
The Friendliness of Books 
 
 net, who has walked, and whose eyes are glow- 
 ing and whose cheeks are brightly red. 
 
 It is a very animated conversation that these 
 young ladies had, and, if I were sure that you 
 all knew them as well as do I, I would tell you 
 all they said, but it would be dull listening to 
 the talk of strangers. 
 
 Charles Lamb may represent for us the au- 
 thor we know, and Elizabeth Bennet and her 
 friends will give us characters whose acquaint- 
 ance we made in books ; and Charles Lamb sug- 
 gests the essay to us, and Elizabeth Bennet the 
 novel, and now I'd like to show you how a bit 
 of poetry now and again helps us to enjoy the 
 country ways of old England. 
 
 I have great love for rivers in mountain coun- 
 tries, and the River Rothay in Westmoreland 
 has a large piece of my heart. It rises up in 
 Easdale Tarn, foaming and tossing, then be- 
 comes quieter. " Sing him thy best, for few or 
 none sing him aright now he is gone." 
 
 The rude old church, with hare, bald tower is 
 here, 
 
 Beneath it highborn Rothay flows, 
 Rothay, remembering well who slumbers here, 
 
 And with cool murmur lulling his repose. 
 
 9 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 Behind Helm Crag and Silver How the sheen 
 
 Of the retreating day is less and less, 
 Soon will the lordlier summits here unseen 
 
 Gather the night about their nakedness. 
 The half-heard bleat of sheep comes from the 
 hill, 
 
 Faint sounds of childish play are in the air, 
 The river murmurs past, all else is still. 
 
 The very graves seem stiller than they were. 
 
 And this is a touch of evening stillness : 
 
 " Star follows star into the eve and the blue 
 far above us, so blue and so far. And as a spray 
 of honeysuckle flower brushes across a tired 
 traveler's face and starts him that he thinks a 
 ghost went by, so Hoden brushed by Hermod's 
 side." 
 
 And this scherzo gives a loving humorous 
 fancy tonight: 
 
 Night is to work in, night is for playtime, 
 Good Heavens, not daytime. 
 Oh, to sit on the bough 
 That zigzags low by the woodland pool. 
 And loudly laugh at man, the fool, 
 That vows to the vulgar sun. 
 But Oh, the sweetness, and Oh, the light. 
 Of the high fastidious night! 
 Oh, to awake with the wise old stars. 
 The cultured, the careful, the Chesterfield stars! 
 10 
 
The Friendliness of Books 
 
 It is a beautiful country, but every inch of the 
 way has association. Here a poet has lived, 
 there a poet wrote. And it is only when this 
 poetry is your own that the full joy of the coun- 
 try can be yours. 
 
 Sometimes it is said to me by those who know 
 I spend a good deal of time abroad, " You must 
 be fond of traveling." Now, as a matter of fact, 
 I am not fond of mere traveling, but I do love 
 to see a place which is consecrated to me because 
 some poet has dwelt in it or written of it. I 
 would travel far to see that. And what gives me 
 my desire is the same friendly book. 
 
 I want to see the things of which Shakespeare 
 and Milton have sung. What shall we read in 
 preparation for England? It may be an unsat- 
 isfactory answer, perhaps, but I say read., read 
 English literature, the English poets and essay- 
 ists, and novelists, too. Suppose you hear a lark's 
 song. It is sweet. But if you know what Shake- 
 speare says of it, and Shelley and Meredith, 
 'twill be infinitely sweeter. And so of every bird 
 that sings, and every flower that grows, the 
 friendly book will give you greater enjoyment 
 of them. 
 
 Every part of England has its associations. I 
 
 // 
 
A Book of Hours 
 stopped short with the lake country. One of the 
 most interesting towns in the world is Oxford ; 
 it interests one person for one thing, another for 
 some other reason, but here again to me are all 
 my book associations. Magdalen Bridge brings 
 Shelley to memory, Pembroke College, Samuel 
 Johnson; then among the illustrious names that 
 troop from Oxford's past are Sir Joshua Reyn- 
 olds, Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund 
 Burke, Burne- Jones, William Morris.^It is said 
 that to call Oxford's roll is to include the 
 best of England's genius. Everywhere about 
 this beautiful city are there memories of those 
 that have given lovely, lasting things to lit- 
 erature. 
 
 But one may read for the mere joy of read- 
 ing, and something that has always been a de- 
 light to me is a purely lyrical poem — one that in 
 itself has the elements of a song. The saying 
 aloud of such poems is to me the enjoyment of 
 possessing an art. It takes the place of what 
 other people have in technic for music or paint- 
 ing or writing. 
 
 Let me quote you these songs just for lyrical 
 joy, the first, the song from Yeat's " Land of 
 Heart's Desire," 
 
 12 
 
The Friendliness of Books 
 
 The wind blows out of the gates of day, 
 The wind blows over the lonely of heart 
 And the lonely of heart is withered away, 
 While the fairies dance in a place apart, 
 Shaking their milk-white feet in a ring. 
 Tossing their milk-white arms in the air; 
 For they hear the wind laugh, and murmur and 
 
 sing 
 Of a land where even the old are fair. 
 And even the wise are merry of tongue; 
 But I heard a reed of Coolaney say, 
 " When the wind has laughed and murmured 
 
 and sung. 
 The lonely of heart is withered away! " 
 
 And this from Sidney Lanier's " Song of the 
 Chattahoochee," 
 
 Out of the hills of Habersham, 
 
 Down the valleys of Hall, 
 I hurry amain to reach the plain. 
 Run the rapid and leap the fall. 
 Split at the rock and together again. 
 Accept my bed or narrow or wide. 
 And flee from folly on every side 
 With a lover's pain to attain the plain 
 
 Far from the hills of Habersham, 
 
 Far from the valleys of Hall. 
 
 * * * 
 
 But, oh, not the hills of Habersham, 
 And oh, not the valleys of Hall 
 
 13 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 Avail: I am fain for to water the plain. 
 Downward the voices of Duty call — 
 Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main, 
 The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, 
 And a myriad powers mortally yearn, 
 And the lordly main from beyond the plain 
 Call o'er the hills of Habersham 
 Calls through the valleys of Hall. 
 
 And then this is from " The Symphony " of 
 Sidney Lanier. 
 
 " O trade! O trade! would thou wert dead! 
 The time needs heart — 'tis tired of head: 
 fVe're all for love," the violins said. 
 " Of what avail the rigorous tale 
 Of bill for coin and box for bale? 
 Grant thee, O trade! thine uttermost hope; 
 Level red gold with blue sky slope, 
 And base it deep as devils grope: 
 When all's done, what hast thou won 
 Of the only sweet that's under the sun? 
 Ay, canst thou buy a single sigh 
 Of true love's least, least ecstasy? 
 
 Life! Life! thou sea fugue. 
 Writ from east to west. 
 
 Love, Love alone can pore 
 
 On thy dissolving score 
 
 Of harsh half-phrasings. 
 Blotted ere writ. 
 
The Friendliness of Books 
 
 And doubled erasings 
 Of chords most fit. 
 Yea, Love, sole music master blest 
 May read thy weltering palimpsest. 
 To follow Time's dying melodies through. 
 And never to lose the old in the new, 
 And ever to solve the discords true — 
 
 Love alone can do. 
 And ever Love hears the poor folks crying. 
 And ever Love hears the women sighing. 
 And ever sweet Knighthood' s death defying. 
 And ever wise childhood's deep implying, 
 But never a trader's glazing and lying. 
 
 And yet shall Love himself be heard, 
 Though long deferred, though long deferred: 
 O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred; 
 Music is Love in search of a word." 
 
 But notwithstanding the social and intimate 
 friendliness of books, the extension they give to 
 our culture and interest, and the actual posses- 
 sion of a personal art to one who memorizes 
 and quotes from them, all readers will proba- 
 bly agree that the fundamental advantage of a 
 love for books is the comfort of them, their 
 substitution for the things of life which we miss, 
 yet need not miss, having all written down for 
 us in the heart's blood of those who knew. 
 
 Sir John Herschel said regarding this point : 
 
 15 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 " Were I to pray for a taste that should stand 
 me in stead under every variety of circumstances, 
 and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to 
 me during life, and a shield against its ills, how- 
 ever things might go amiss and the world frown 
 upon me, it would be a taste for reading. Give a 
 man this taste and the means of gratifying it, 
 and you can hardly fail of making him a happy 
 man. You place him in contact with the best so- 
 ciety in every period of history — ^with the wisest, 
 the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the 
 purest characters who have adorned humanity. 
 You make him a denizen of all nations, a con- 
 temporary of all ages. The world has been cre- 
 ated for him." And Macaulay says likewise : " I 
 would rather be a poor man in a garret with 
 plenty of books, than a king who did not love 
 reading." 
 
 But to my own particular books which live in 
 the room with me, I am most sensitive to their 
 friendliness, and to that sweet spirit of friend- 
 liness which emanates from them I feel most 
 humbly, 
 
 . , . O my master, 
 Pardon me, if in vain thou art my master, 
 And I fail to bring before men's eyes 
 The image of the thing my heart is filled with. 
 j6 
 
IN PRAISE OF LONDON: 
 
 CHARLES LAMB'S LETTERS AND 
 
 ESSATS 
 
 ^ 
 
 HE phrase, " in praise of London," 
 ■ may be misunderstood, so let me ex- 
 plain at once. I am going to let Charles 
 Lamb praise London, while I praise Charles 
 Lamb. London ne'er had so loving, so loyal a 
 son as was Lamb, and while I shall not limit my- 
 self to one element of his " Letters and Essays," 
 I wish to emphasize that London had Lamb's 
 warm love from his earliest days to the last. In 
 the last years of his life he removed to Enfield, 
 but he hoped some time to go to London " to 
 breathe the fresher air of the metropolis." He 
 removed from one house to another in Enfield, 
 and liked the second one better because it was 
 forty inches nearer town. How he loved the life 
 of London. " I have shed tears in the motley 
 Strand for fullness of joy in so much living. . . . 
 Is any night walk comparable to a walk from 
 St. Paul's to Charing Cross, for lighting and 
 
A Book of Hours 
 paving, for crowds going and coming without 
 respite, the rattle of coaches, and the cheerful- 
 ness of shops? " 
 
 During the years that I have talked on vari- 
 ous subjects allied to literature, I have never 
 asked any audience to listen twice to a disquisi- 
 tion on Charles Lamb — for which I owe the au- 
 diences an apology, as I ought every season to 
 try to make them better acquainted with his 
 sweet, diffusive life, and with his delightsome 
 literary work. Although Lamb is to me " the 
 best beloved of English writers," I have hesi- 
 tated to accentuate the pleasure I have in his 
 work, lest my hearers grow weary of my note. 
 
 I shall not tell you anything new about Lamb, 
 there is nothing new to tell, but lovers of Lamb 
 like to hear the old retold. I have not made any 
 startlingly original criticism — how can I, when 
 for seventy years nearly, ever since Lamb's death 
 in 1834, critical appreciations have been forth- 
 coming? 
 
 It was a pleasant surprise to Dr. Holmes to 
 know that his feeling for his great-grandmother 
 was not peculiar to him, but that everyone 
 shared it. I shall like to know that you share 
 my feeling with Lamb's admirers — a sense of 
 18 
 
In Praise of London 
 
 kinship, fellowship. Margaret Ogilvie was wont 
 to designate people as blacks if they failed of 
 her approval. " He is a black" she used to say 
 of Stevenson, because he had a larger public 
 than her son. In the same spirit I call Carlyle a 
 black, because he failed to give the kind word to 
 Lamb. He is a signal exception among the men 
 of letters, but he, the great celebrant of heroes, 
 overlooked the heroic in Charles Lamb, and had 
 no better word for him than "that he was a sorry 
 phenomenon with an insuperable proclivity to 
 gin." It is a pleasant unction to my soul to recall 
 Swinburne's remark, that " the * Essays of Elia ' 
 will be found to have kept their perfume, and 
 the ' Letters of Charles Lamb ' their sweet sa- 
 vor, when ' Sartor Resartus ' lies darkening 
 under the dust that covers its rarely disturbed 
 pages." 
 
 I hope you are not going to demand the most 
 temperate expressions from me this hour. I 
 think I may disappoint you if you insist upon 
 that. Mr. Hamilton Mabie says : " There are 
 days for Shakespeare, and days for Sir Thomas 
 Browne, and days for Lamb, although I am 
 often of the opinion that all days are for Lamb." 
 For myself I do not know anyone whose pres- 
 
 19 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 ence is so unobtrusive and acceptable at all times 
 as is Charles Lamb's. And I was long ago of 
 the opinion that all days are for Lamb. 
 
 Lamb tells his own story in very frank auto- 
 biography. It is a pleasure to put his " Essays 
 and Letters " in an order that tell a story of his 
 life so completely that, to use his own expres- 
 sion, " no additaments are required " to a full 
 reading of it. Not only with the main events, 
 but with the minute details one may become ac- 
 quainted. His literary tastes are declared with 
 charming candor in " Old and New Schoolmas- 
 ter," " Detached Thoughts on Books and Read- 
 ing," " Old China," to name only a trio of es- 
 says. 
 
 In one of Lamb's letters to Southey he writes : 
 " I am a Christian, Englishman, Londoner, 
 Templar. God help me when I come to put off 
 these snug relations and get abroad in the world 
 to come." Lamb's claim to being a Templar 
 should be allowed, I think. He was born in the 
 Temple, and had several homes in it, and it is 
 Lamb's Temple, primarily, that one haunts in 
 London to-day. And may I say just a word ex- 
 planatory of this Temple, hallowed to the en- 
 thusiast because of the association with Lamb, 
 
 20 
 
In Praise of London 
 
 Goldsmith, Johnson, Spencer, Shakespeare, 
 Sheridan. It was originally a lodge of the 
 Knights Templars, which, as you know, was an 
 order, military and religious, founded in the 
 twelfth century to protect the Holy Sepulcher. 
 On the dissolution of the order in 13 13, it be- 
 came crown property, and after some vicissi- 
 tudes in ownership it passed into possession of 
 the Knights of St. John, who, in 1346, leased it 
 to the students of common law. From that day, 
 more than five and a half centuries ago, until 
 now the group of buildings have been a school 
 of law. There were formerly three divisions of 
 the Temple buildings: inner temple was the 
 name given to those within the precincts of the 
 city, middle temple and outer temple without 
 the city. The buildings of the outer temple are 
 removed. The buildings and courts of the Tem- 
 ple extend from the Strand to the Thames. 
 One enters by passages so narrow that there is 
 danger of overlooking them in a hasty journey 
 along the Strand. But these narrow, dark ways 
 lead to a church, one part of which was com- 
 pleted in 1 1 85, and the other in 1240, deco- 
 rated with the heraldic emblems of the Tem- 
 plars, and containing monuments of the Tem- 
 
 21 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 plars, and beside the church is a labyrinth of 
 courts, a terrace, and cloisters. I unhesitatingly 
 concur in the judgment that pronounces it " the 
 most elegant spot in the metropolis " — and how 
 came it to be Lamb's birthplace? Why, his fa- 
 ther, John Lamb, was servant to Samuel Salt, 
 one of the benchers of the inner temple. 
 
 " I was born under the shadow of St. Dun« 
 Stan's steeple, just where the conflux of the east- 
 ern and western inhabitants of this twofold city 
 meet and jostle in friendly opposition at Tem- 
 ple Bar." " I was born and passed the first seven 
 years of my life in the Temple. What a transi- 
 tion for a countryman visiting London for the 
 first time ! Classic green recesses 1 " What a 
 transition for a Londoner, too! So many have 
 never been in the Temple, and several looked 
 upon me as an eccentric for going so often to 
 the classic place. It was through the influence of 
 Samuel Salt that Lamb secured his entrance to 
 Christ Hospital, the school founded by Edward 
 VI, the boy patron of boys, on site of thir- 
 teenth century Grey Friars, some of whose walls 
 are still standing. There is a Charles Lamb 
 prize now given every year to the best English 
 essayist among Blue Coat boys, consisting of a 
 
 22 
 
In Praise of London 
 
 silver medal on one side of which is a laurel 
 wreath, inwrapped around the hospital's arms, 
 on the other side Lamb's profile. It is worthy 
 of consideration how favorable were these early 
 surroundings for fostering Lamb's inherent taste 
 for the quaintnesses of an earlier age. He was 
 some years at Christ Hospital, passing his days 
 between cloister and cloister — the Knights Tem- 
 plars of the twelfth century to the Grey Friars 
 of the thirteenth. Nobody needs to be told the 
 tributes he has paid to his school — ^the " mag- 
 nificent eulogy " he has pronounced in his own 
 name, "Recollections of Christ Hospital"; 
 then, with his delight in mystification, conceive 
 the pleasure he must have had in writing from 
 the other point of view, styling the article 
 " Christ Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," 
 over the signature Elia: 
 
 " I remember Lamb at school, and can well 
 recollect that he had some peculiar advantages, 
 which I and other of his schoolfellows had not. 
 His friends lived in town, and were near at 
 hand; and he had the privilege of going to see 
 them almost as often as he wished, through 
 some invidious distinction, which was denied to 
 us. He had his tea and hot rolls in a morning, 
 
 23 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 while we were battening upon our quarter-of-a- 
 penny loaf — our crug moistened with attenuated 
 small beer, in wooden piggins, smacking of the 
 pitched leathern jack it was poured from. Our 
 Monday's milk porridge, blue and tasteless, and 
 the pea soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, 
 were enriched for him with a slice of ' extraordi- 
 nary bread and butter ' from the hot loaf of the 
 Temple." 
 
 Then he assumes the personality of Cole- 
 ridge. " I was a poor friendless boy. My par- 
 ents, and those who should care for me, were 
 far away. Those few acquaintances of theirs 
 which they could reckon upon as being kind to 
 me in the great city, after a little forced notice 
 which they had the grace to take of me on my 
 first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my 
 holiday visits. They seemed to them to recur 
 too often, though I thought them few enough; 
 and one after another they failed me, and I felt 
 myself alone among six hundred playmates." 
 This paragraph has such a hold on my imagina- 
 tion, and pictures so touchingly the lonely little 
 Christ Hospital boy, that one evening last sum- 
 mer, when a little fellow wearing the garb of 
 the hospital was a guest at the table where I ate, 
 24 
 
In Praise of London 
 
 I was quite concerned lest he should feel some 
 lack of cordiality in his welcome and entertain- 
 ment. 
 
 After going on for some paragraphs in the 
 character of Coleridge, Lamb takes on his own 
 identity, and makes his famous apostrophe to 
 Coleridge: "Come back into memory like as 
 thou wert in the dayspring of thy fancies — 
 with hope like a fiery column before thee, the 
 dark pillar not yet turned, Samuel Taylor Cole- 
 ridge, logician, metaphysician, bard. How have 
 I seen the casual passer through the cloisters 
 stand still, entranced with admiration (while he 
 weighed the disproportion between the speech 
 and the garb of the young Mirandula), to hear 
 thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, 
 the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for 
 even in those years thou waxedest not pale at 
 such philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer 
 in his Greek or Pindar — ^while the walls of the 
 old Grey Friars reechoed to the accents of the 
 inspired charity boy! " 
 
 Lamb was happy at school ; favorite with fel- 
 low-pupils and instructors, one hears, nothing of 
 the tyranny of Boyer, the head master, exercised 
 over Lamb — "protected by some attraction of 
 
 25 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 temper in the quaint child." Lamb's rank at 
 school would have entitled him to a university 
 education at Cambridge or Oxford, the bounty 
 bestowed on the best scholars by the hospital, 
 but acceptance implied the taking of orders, 
 and the impediment in Lamb's speech prevented 
 his looking to the Church, and, furthermore, his 
 assistance was needed at home in the support of 
 the family. Doubtless when he left, aged nearly 
 fifteen, he had some acquaintance with his life- 
 long " midnight darlings," above all, he had 
 nurtured himself upon the plays of Shakespeare, 
 which were the " strongest and sweetest food of 
 his mind from infancy." 
 
 " Melancholy was the transition at fourteen 
 from the abounding playtime." Now for thirty- 
 five years Lamb was to know the " dull drudg- 
 ery of the desk's dead wood." Samuel Salt had 
 died, the Lambs had removed to poor quarters 
 in Little Queen Street, and here it was that 
 Mary, the sister, in a fit of temporary madness, 
 killed her mother. Always when I have spoken 
 of this event, I have let the barest mention suf- 
 fice, lest I should harrow the feelings of my au- 
 ditors, but I am going to read to you a little 
 concerning it, and my defense is this: after 
 26 
 
In Praise of London 
 reading Dr. Brown's story, " Rab and His 
 Friends," many said: "Why did you make me 
 suffer so?" When that was told the father of 
 Dr. Brown, he said: "And why shouldn't they 
 suffer? It will do them good, for pity — genuine 
 pity — as old Aristotle says, is ' of power to purge 
 the mind.' " 
 
 " During those lamentable days Lamb saw 
 his sister but seldom. ' Alas ! I too often hear 
 her I Her rambling chat is better to me than the 
 sense and sanity of this world.' That is to me 
 the most tender and touching utterance in all the 
 letters since letters were invented." 
 
 The newspaper report of this affair is grati- 
 fying because of its decent reticence. No names 
 are given. Benjamin Ellis Martin says: "One 
 error the reporter did make. It was not the 
 landlord, but Charles, who came at the child's 
 cries, luckily at hand just in time to disarm his 
 sister, and thus prevent another harm. So he 
 was at hand from that day on, all through his 
 life, holding her and helping her in the frequent 
 successive returns of her wretched malady. His 
 gentle, loving, resolute soul proved its fine and 
 firm fiber under the strain of more than forty 
 years of undeviating devotion to which I know 
 
 27 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 no parallel. He quietly gave up all other ties 
 and cares for this supreme duty; he never re- 
 pined, nor posed; he never even said to himself 
 that he was doing a fine thing." He took his 
 duty to be " wedded to the fortunes of my sister 
 and my poor old father." The father would 
 complain: "If you won't play with me, you 
 might as well not come home at all." The jus- 
 tice of this Lamb recognized, and gave the even- 
 ings to his father. In " Benchers of the Inner 
 Temple " he has given a picture of his father in 
 his prime, of his honesty, his cleverness — then 
 " I saw him in the last stage of human weak- 
 ness, ' a remnant ' most forlorn of what he was. 
 He would weep till I have wished that sad sec- 
 ond childhood might have a mother still to lay 
 its head upon her lap. But the common mother 
 of us all received him gently into hers." 
 
 Of life with his sister Mary, he writes: " We 
 house together, old bachelor and maid, with oc- 
 casional bickerings, as it should be among near 
 relations." In his life there was from now on 
 " mingling of the grave, even terrible, with the 
 gay, and 'twas reflected in his work." There 
 were periods when Mary and he lived quietly 
 together, working, caring one for the other, and 
 28 
 
In Praise of London 
 
 then there came weeks or months when they 
 were separated and Lamb was left alone. But 
 friends grew in numbers, and the hospitality of 
 the Lambs was famous. The Lambs went back 
 to live in the Temple, and for fifteen or sixteen 
 years the loved locality was their home. Have 
 you every walked down dingy Inner Temple 
 Lane, or along King's Bench Walk, and pic- 
 tured to yourself the goodly company that came 
 to those humble rooms ? There was a repast set 
 out, and everyone helped himself to the cold 
 roast or boiled, the smoking roasted potatoes, 
 and foaming porter from a Fleet Street tap ! It 
 hasn't a delicate savor — ^but decline the material 
 viands if you will, you can't pretend to find bet- 
 ter company elsewhere. Coleridge, Wordsworth, 
 Hazlitt, Godwin, Captain Burney, his son Mar- 
 tin, Leigh Hunt, Tom Hood, De Quincey, Ser- 
 geant Talfoned, Crabb Robinson — these were a 
 few of the stars, and the brightest that graced 
 the rooms. Crabb Robinson says: "In that 
 humble apartment I spent many happy hours, 
 and saw a greater number of excellent persons 
 than I had ever seen collected together in one 
 room." There was whist, and probably the 
 rigor of the game was maintained usually, even 
 
 29 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 to the standard of Sarah Battle; but the rigor 
 must have been relaxed somewhat on the occa- 
 sion when Lamb made the famous remark to 
 Martin Burney: " Martin, if dirt were trumps, 
 what a hand you would hold ! " But it is of this 
 same Martin that Lamb says: " Free from self- 
 seeking, any low design, I have not known a 
 whiter soul than thine." 
 
 'Twas here in the Temple that Charles and 
 Mary, the bachelor and spinster, did Shake- 
 speare into fine form for the children whom they 
 loved. Mary says: "You would like to see us, 
 as we often sit writing on one table (but not on 
 one cushion sitting), like Hermia and Helena 
 in ' A Midsummer Night's Dream,' or, rather, 
 like an old literary Darby and Joan, I taking 
 snuff, and he groaning all the while, and saying 
 he can make nothing of it, which he always says 
 till he has finished, and then he finds he has made 
 something of it." 
 
 Have you ever been to Covent Garden some 
 morning to see the fruit and flowers? Did you 
 go down Russell Street from Drury Lane, pass 
 the theater on your left, and 20 Russell Street 
 on your right — did you stop to look a minute at 
 20 Russell Street, and ponder, " Here were writ- 
 30 
 
In Praise of London 
 
 ten the essays that have charmed readers for 
 three generations and will go on charming them 
 for many more." Daily, Charles Lamb, a clerk 
 in the East India House, wended his way from 
 Russell Street to Leadenhall Street, performed 
 his clerkly duties from ten to four; here were be- 
 gun in 1820 the " Essays of Elia." Lamb writes 
 to Dorothy Wordsworth when they take up 
 their home in Russell Street: " We are in the in- 
 dividual spot that I like best in all this great 
 city." In Lamb's parlor, in Russell Square, 
 Coleridge used to repeat his own Kubla Khan 
 so entrancingly that " it irradiates and brings 
 heaven and elysian bowers into my parlor while 
 he sings or says it." And from here stood the 
 permanent invitation, " Cards and cold mutton 
 in Russell Street on Friday at eight to nine. Gin 
 and jokes from one half past that time to 
 twelve." 
 
 It was in the last years of his dwelling in the 
 Temple and the six in Russell Street that he did 
 most of his writing. From Russell Street, after 
 six years, they removed to Islington, 19 Cole- 
 brook Row. 
 
 Although it is not my purpose here to speak 
 with any detail of Lamb's friends, I must, in con- 
 
 31 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 nection with Colebrook Row, mention George 
 Dyer. He appears repeatedly in Lamb's let- 
 ters, and on several occasions in his essays. 
 Scholarly, absent, and eccentric naturally, there 
 is no doubt he was, but Lamb has gently, play- 
 fully elaborated upon those qualities, and the 
 George Dyer that one meets in Lamb's works 
 is a delightful creation. Augustine Birrell has 
 suggested that one with time at his command 
 should hunt George Dyer through Lamb's let- 
 ters, and find it excellent game. 
 
 When I was looking in Cambridge for some 
 books relating to its history, a bookseller put in 
 my hand the " History of Cambridge," by 
 George Dyer, and there flashed before me a 
 vision of Lamb's dear absent-minded friend, 
 George Dyer. 
 
 Lamb says: " D. has been engaged, he tells 
 me, through a long course of laborious years in 
 an investigation into all curious matter connected 
 with the two universities. The ardor with which 
 he engages in these liberal pursuits, I am afraid, 
 has not met with all the encouragement it de- 
 serves, either here or at Cambridge." 
 
 " When you come Londonward, you will no 
 longer find us in Covent Garden, but in Cole- 
 32 
 
In Praise of London 
 
 brook Row." It was to this house in Colebrook 
 Row that Lamb came home forever when his 
 employers gave the very kind recognition of his 
 long service by retiring him upon a handsome 
 pension. " 'Twas with some pain we were 
 evulsed from Colebrooke ; you may find some of 
 our flesh sticking to the doorposts. To change 
 habitations is to die to them; and in my time I 
 have died seven deaths. But I do not know 
 whether every such change does not bring with 
 it a rejuvenescence. 'Tis an enterprise, and 
 shoves back the sense of death's approximating. 
 My house deaths have generally been periodical, 
 recurring after seven years, but this last is pre- 
 mature by half that time. Cut off in the flower 
 of Colebrooke! The Middletonian stream and 
 all its echoes mourn. Even the minnows dwin- 
 dle." 
 
 Then when he moved again he writes : 
 " We have finally torn ourselves outright 
 away from Colebrooke, where I had no health, 
 and are about to domiciliate for good at Enfield, 
 where I have experienced good." Then the 
 Lambs went still farther into the country to En- 
 field. At first they kept house, but the care was 
 too great for Mary, and they went to board in 
 
 33 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 the next house. " We have taken a farewell of 
 the pompous troublesome trifle called housekeep- 
 ing, and are settled down into poor boarders and 
 lodgers, at next door, with an old couple, the 
 Baucis and Baucida of Enfield." 
 . In " Best Letters " he writes : " I have passed 
 all my days in London, until I have formed as 
 many and intense local attachments as any of you 
 mountaineers can have done with dead nature." 
 "A garden was the primitive prison until man 
 with Promethean felicity and boldness luckily 
 sinned himself out of it." But Lamb's essays 
 reveal another phase of his love for London — 
 a love for humanity, all humanity, but particu- 
 larly for those that are, because of accident, 
 apart from their fellows. He has written essays 
 of exquisite finish, of the tenderest humor. Their 
 literary quality cannot be denied — it is the finest ; 
 but diffused throughout them is the element 
 which makes us love the man Lamb apart from 
 the artist — it is the quality of humanity, the love 
 of his kind, which pervades his work. Next to 
 the pleasure of reading Lamb himself is the sat- 
 isfaction one gets in a thoroughly good apprecia- 
 tion of him, and Walter Pater's subtle analysis 
 of Lamb's work cannot fail to please one. Pater 
 34 
 
In Praise of London 
 
 says: "His simple mother pity for those who 
 suffer by accident, or unkindness of nature, 
 blindness or fateful disease of mind like his sis- 
 ter's, has something primitive in its largeness." 
 I shall like to instance two or three of Lamb's 
 essays in which this kindly spirit animates the 
 whole. Do you know the essay " In Praise of 
 Chimney Sweepers " ? Poetical it is. Professor 
 Gates says that " the chimney sweeper comes out 
 all cobwebbed with a gossamer beauty — a sort 
 of prince from the Land of Dreaming, a subli- 
 mated little symbol of thoughts and feelings 
 that in actual life are leagues out of his ken." 
 That is true; but underneath that airy, fantastic 
 little figure he evolves is the genuine, grimy lit- 
 tle sweep whom Lamb loves and pities for his 
 hard, unchildlike lot. From '' On the Decay of 
 Beggars," no one will for a moment fancy that 
 Lamb is seriously an advocate of mendicity, but 
 he is pleading for charity of heart as well as 
 pocket, for the unfortunate, maimed, and blind 
 whose untoward fortune has given them to bear 
 wallet and clap dish. His essay " Poor Rela- 
 tions " begins with raillery, but ends with a dig- 
 nified portrait of the self-respecting poor rela- 
 tion. 
 
 35 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 But do not for a moment think that, consid- 
 ered as literature, I would have you put the 
 autobiographic quality of the essays above the 
 literary value. I have been emphasizing the per- 
 sonal element, the love we give to the man, irre- 
 spective of the artist, but it is quite time that we 
 consider the rare quality of the artistic output, 
 irrespective of the man. Lamb might have been 
 all that he was — a loving brother, a devoted son, 
 a constant friend; underneath the blithe surface 
 there might have been the same tragic under- 
 current, and had his work been without intrinsic 
 value he would never have come into our ken — 
 for our love and admiration. There is a danger 
 that the personal may be made to dominate, 
 that the anecdotal will entirely satisfy, and 
 Lamb's work remain unread ; but let it not be so 
 with you. For himself, and from his own point 
 of view, the exercise of his gift, of his literary 
 art, came to gild or sweeten a life of monotonous 
 labor, and seemed, as far as regarded others, no 
 very important thing, availing to give them a 
 little pleasure and inform them a little, chiefly 
 in a retrospective manner, but in no way con- 
 cerned with the turning of the tides of the great 
 world. And yet this very modesty, this unambi- 
 3(> 
 
In Praise of London 
 
 tious way of conceiving his work, has impressed 
 upon it a certain exceptional enduringness. Of 
 the remarkable English writers contemporary 
 with Lamb, many were occupied with religious, 
 moral, political ideas, which have since, in some 
 sense or other, entered permanently into the gen- 
 eral consciousness, and these having no longer 
 any stimulus for a generation provided with a 
 different stock of ideas; the writings of those 
 who spent so much of themselves in their propa- 
 gation have lost with posterity something of 
 what they gained by them in immediate influ- 
 ence. 
 
 There is a point in Lamb where autobiogra- 
 phy and literary imagination meet In such 
 charming wholeness that, although the subject 
 is so delicate and personal, sad and fruitless, we 
 may benefit by the evanescence of its truthful- 
 ness, to enjoy and speak of it as, perhaps, spir- 
 itual biography. I refer to his two loves — for 
 Alice we have that New Year's letter. 
 
 " I would scarce now have any of those un- 
 toward accidents and events of my life reversed. 
 I would no more alter them than the incidents 
 of some well-contrived novel. Methinks it is 
 better that I should have pined away seven of 
 
 37 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the fair 
 
 hair and fairer eyes of Alice W than that so 
 
 passionate a love adventure should be lost." And 
 here is the exquisite reverie of the " Dream Chil- 
 dren " ; " ' We are not of Alice nor of thee, nor 
 are we children at all. The children of Alice call 
 Bertram father. We are nothing, less than noth- 
 ing and dreams. We are only what might have 
 been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of 
 Lethe millions of ages before we have existence 
 and a name ' — and immediately awaking I found 
 myself quietly seated in my bachelor armchair 
 with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my 
 side." 
 
 And of Hester, the lovely Quakeress, to 
 whom he never spoke, and whom he adored si- 
 lently and from afar, only knowing that she was 
 named Hester, he leaves : 
 
 When maidens such as Hester die, 
 Their place we may not well supply, 
 Though ye among a thousand try, 
 With vain endeavor. 
 
 A month or more hath she been dead, 
 Yet cannot I by force be led 
 To think upon the wormy bed 
 And her together. 
 
 38 
 
In Praise of London 
 
 My sprightly neighbor gone before, 
 To that unknown and silent shore, 
 Shall we not meet as heretofore 
 Some summer morning, 
 
 When from thy cheerful eyes a ray 
 Hath struck a bliss upon the day, 
 A bliss that would not go away, 
 A sweet forewarningf, 
 
 Three important elements of Lamb's work 
 are his style, humor, and critical faculty. 
 
 His criticisms on art, drama, and literature 
 are keen, sincere, sane. No art critic has done 
 better by Hogarth. Actors, both men and women, 
 that were Lamb's contemporaries are kept in 
 memory now because of his delicate, discriminat- 
 ing criticism. 
 
 Ainger, in speaking of Lamb's defense of 
 Congreve and Wycherly, says: " It must be ad- 
 mitted that Lamb does not convince us of the 
 sincerity of his reasoning, and probably he did 
 not convince himself. He loved paradox, and, 
 moreover, he loved to find some soul of good- 
 ness in things evil." As Hartley Coleridge adds, 
 " it was always his way to take hold of things 
 by the better handle." 
 
 Of his humor, unexpectedness is its character- 
 
 39 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 istic. John Sterling, it is said, used to chuckle 
 again and again over the sudden way in which 
 he turned up Adam. Just as unexpected in his 
 talk, too, are the slight digressions which make 
 immense wit. Would you not have liked to be 
 his companion one day in the stage coach — " we 
 traveled," he says, " with one of those trouble- 
 some fellow-passengers that is called a well-in- 
 formed man." They had discussed all subjects, 
 and Lamb was thinking of getting outside to es- 
 cape the annoyance, when the man put the un- 
 lucky question : " What sort of a crop of turnips 
 would we have this year ? " Lamb replied with 
 the greatest gravity that he believed it depended 
 on the boiled legs of mutton. That clinched the 
 conversation. He replied to the bishop who in- 
 quired how he had learned to smoke such furious 
 pipes : " Sir, I have toiled for it as some men 
 toil for virtue." Brander Matthews in an essay 
 whose title I have forgotten, in a book that 
 shares the essay's fate, has stated a list of claims 
 that Americans have in Lamb, and this quality 
 of unexpectedness in his humor constitutes one 
 of the claims. 
 
 One of his friends said of his faulty speech: 
 " That stammer was worth an annuity to him as 
 40 
 
In Praise of London 
 
 an ally for his wit. Firing under cover of that 
 advantage, he did double execution; for in the 
 first place, the distressing sympathy of the hear- 
 ers with his distress of utterance won for him 
 invariably the silence of deep attention ; and then 
 while he had us all hoaxed into this attitude of 
 mute suspense by an appearance of distress that 
 he perhaps did not feel, down came a plunging 
 shot into the very thick of us, with ten times the 
 effect it would else have had." 
 
 But before I leave the subject of Lamb's hu" 
 mor, let me once again refer to Walter Pater's 
 appreciation of Lamb. He says, in estimating 
 the humor of Elia, " we must no more- forget 
 the strong undercurrent of this great misfortune 
 and pity than we could forget it in his actual' 
 story." I have in other connections quoted to 
 you Pater's statement of humor, " it proceeds 
 from the amalgam of pity and mirth," but here 
 it belongs. It is from his appreciation of Lamb- 
 that he gives the definition. 
 
 There is no doubt that the quaint, somewhat 
 archaic style that Lamb gives us in his essays is 
 partly his native style of expression, his distinct- 
 ive mode of clothing his thought ; neither is there 
 any doubt that his inherent tendency was fos- 
 
 41 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 tered by constant association with Browne, Mar- 
 vel, Massinger, and other beloved worthies of 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is the 
 happiest vehicle for his thought, and to fail to 
 appreciate how perfectly his thought and expres- 
 sion blend is to lose the essential pleasure from 
 Lamb's style. 
 
 Elia has been accused of affectation of style. 
 Better that a writer should be natural in a self- 
 pleasing quaintness than to affect a naturalness 
 that should be strange to him. " I delight in 
 Lamb," I had said to some one. " Why, I 
 should not fancy you'd care for him. Do you 
 like his ' Chapter on Ears? ' — ' Twin append- 
 ages, hanging ornament, and, architecturally 
 speaking, handsome volutes to the human capi- 
 tal.' Do you like that sort of thing? " Think 
 of anyone's losing the light touch of playfulness 
 and taking that essay with solid seriousness. 
 
 Those that must have the abstract will not 
 find satisfajction in Lamb. He is ever " close to 
 the concrete, to the details great or small of 
 actual things, no part blurred to his view by 
 abstract theories." In his delightful essay, one 
 of his most delightful essays, " Imperfect Sym- 
 pathies," one may find explanation why his 
 42 
 
In Praise of London 
 
 essays will hot gratify all — " Never judging 
 systemwise of things, but fastening on par- 
 ticulars." 
 
 " They will cost you in cash, these two vol- 
 umes (his letters), full as they are from title- 
 page to colophon, with the sweetness and nobil- 
 ity, the mirth and the melancholy of their au- 
 thor's life, touched as every page of them is with 
 traces of a hard fate bravely borne, seven shil- 
 lings sixpence. It is the cab fare to and from a 
 couple of dull dinners." 
 
 Who, I wonder, ever managed to squeeze into 
 a correspondence of forty years truer humor, 
 madder nonsense, sounder sense, or more tender 
 sympathy ! They do not prate about first princi- 
 ples, but they contain many things conducive to 
 a good life here below. The earlier letters strike 
 the more solemn notes. As a young man. Lamb 
 was deeply religious, and for a time the appall- 
 ing tragedy of his life, the death of his mother 
 by his sister's hand, deepened this feeling. His 
 letters to Coleridge in September and October, 
 1776, might very well appear in the early chap- 
 ters of a saint's life. They exhibit the rare union 
 of a colossal strength, entire truthfulness (no 
 single emotion being ever exaggerated) , with the 
 
 43 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 tenderest and most refined feelings. How peo- 
 ple, reading these letters, can ever have the im- 
 pudence to introduce into the tones of their 
 voices, when they are referring to Lamb, the 
 faintest suspicion of condescension, as if they 
 were speaking of one weaker than themselves, 
 must always remain an unsolved problem of 
 human conceit. His notes are all high. He 
 is sublime, heartrending, excruciatingly funny, 
 outrageously ridiculous, sometimes possibly an 
 inch or two overdrawn. He carries the charm of 
 incongruity and total unexpectedness to the high- 
 est. 
 
 Lamb said of his own reading : " My reading 
 has been lamentably desultory and unmethod- 
 ical, odd, out-of-the-way old plays and treatises," 
 then he playfully exaggerates his own ignorance. 
 " Mary must have a story, well, ill, or indiffer- 
 ently told; while I am hanging for the. thou- 
 sandth time over Burton or his strange contem- 
 poraries she is abstracted in some modern tale 
 or adventure, whereof our common reading table 
 is daily fed with assiduously fresh supplies. . . . 
 I can read anything that is a book. I have no 
 repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for 
 me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. There are 
 4i 
 
In Praise of London 
 
 things in that shape which I cannot allow for 
 such: Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket- 
 books, Draught Boards, bound and lettered at 
 the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Stat- 
 utes — the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, 
 Beattie, works of Flavius Josephus, that learned 
 Jew, and Paley's ' Moral Philosophy.' With 
 these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I 
 thank my stars for a taste so catholic, so unex- 
 cluding." 
 
 Now I am going to quote from some great 
 lovers of Lamb testimonies of his beautiful 
 spirit. For, after passing through his literary 
 genius, we all, great lovers and obscure, come 
 back with our most voluble if not final word 
 and affection for the dearness of the man. 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald quotes Thackeray thus: 
 " ' Saint Charles ! ' said Thackeray to me thirty 
 years ago, putting one of Charles Lamb's letters 
 to his forehead," one that Charles wrote to Ber- 
 nard Barton. Lionel Johnson has caught the 
 phrase up into a poem: 
 
 Saint Charles! for Thackeray called thee so: 
 Saint, at whose name our fond hearts glow: 
 See now, this age of tedious woe, 
 That snaps and snarls! 
 
 45 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 Thine was a life of tragic shade, 
 A life of care and sorrow made: 
 But naught could make thine heart afraid, 
 Gentle Saint Charles/ 
 
 Encumbered dearly with old books. 
 Thou, by the pleasant chimney nooks 
 Didst laugh, with merry-meaning looks. 
 
 Thy griefs away; 
 JVe, bred on modern magazines. 
 Point out how much our sadness means 
 
 Day by dull day. 
 
 Lover of London! whilst thy feet 
 Haunted each old familiar street. 
 Thy brave heart found life's turmoil sweet. 
 
 Despite life's pain. 
 We fume and fret and, when we can. 
 Cry up some new and noisy plan, 
 Big with the Rights and Wrongs of Man; 
 
 And where' s the gain? 
 
 Gentle Saint Charles! I turn to thee, 
 Tender and true: thou teachest me 
 To take with joy what joys there be. 
 
 And bear the rest. 
 Walking thy London day by day. 
 The thought of thee makes bright my way. 
 And in thy faith I fain would stay 
 
 Doing my best. 
 46 
 
In Praise of London 
 
 Coleridge responded to Lamb's desire for con- 
 solation, " I look upon you as a man called by- 
 sorrow and anguish, and a strange desolation of 
 hopes, into quietness, and a soul set apart and 
 made peculiar to God." 
 
 Oh, he was good, if ever good man was. 
 The love of friends without a single foe. 
 
 Archbishop Leighton, standing beside Lamb's 
 grave, said : " This sweet, diffusive, bountiful 
 soul, desiring only to do good." 
 
 And so Lamb always had his own in life and 
 memory, his friends were always just such ones 
 as he required and deserved, his environment 
 suited his taste and development, but there re- 
 mains but one false note in all his monuments — 
 he is not buried in his beloved London. And 
 William Watson writes the lament of it, " At 
 Lamb's Grave in Edmonton." 
 
 Not here, O teeming city, was it meet 
 
 Thy lover, thy most faithful should repose, 
 But where the multitudinous life tide flows. 
 Whose ocean murmur was to him more sweet 
 Than melody of birds at morn, or bleat 
 
 Of flocks in springtime; there should earth eu' 
 close 
 
 ^ 47 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 His earth, amid thy thronging joys and woes, 
 There 'neath the music of thy million feet. 
 
 In love of thee this lover had no peer, 
 
 Thine eastern or thine western fane had made 
 Fit habitation for his noble shade. 
 
 Mother of mighties, nurse of none more dear. 
 
 Not here in rustic exile, O not here 
 Thine Elia like an alien should be laid. 
 
 48 
 
EDWARD FITZGERALD AND 
 
 HIS FRIENDS IN EAST 
 
 ANGLIA 
 
 THE Edward Fitzgerald to whom we are 
 to give the hour is not the hero of 
 picturesque anecdote. The teller of his 
 days must be content to relate how he read his 
 beloved books by his fireside, looked for the 
 daffodils to take the winds of March with beau- 
 ty, and the yearly return of the birds, sailed his 
 boat in home seas, and, as he sailed, read and 
 translated the ancient classics, consorted with 
 fisher folk, and found in their simple life more 
 in harmony with his taste than in the deadly 
 complex strife waged in other spheres. He was 
 a writer, but " he shunned notoriety as sedulous- 
 ly as most people seek it." > 
 
 His latest biographer, Mr. Arthur Chris- 
 topher Benson, after saying that Fitzgerald's 
 life is singularly void of incident, sums it up 
 tersely and truly : " It is the history of a few 
 great friendships, much quiet benevolence, ten- 
 
 49 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 der loyalty, wistful enjoyment. The tangible re- 
 sults are a single small volume of poetry, of im- 
 perishable quality, some accomplished transla- 
 tions of no great literary importance, a little 
 piece of delicate prose writing, and many beauti- 
 ful letters. But over the whole is the indefinable 
 charm of temperament and personality." 
 
 And that explains succinctly why I talk of Ed- 
 ward Fitzgerald, why he is our friend, as are 
 other men greater in the world of letters — there 
 is over what he has done the indepnable charm 
 of temperament and personality that binds us to 
 him as to a dear friend, in a less degree than we 
 are bound to Lamb, or Goldsmith, or Thack- 
 eray, but the quality is akin. Fitzgerald is our 
 personal friend, and because he is, you listen in- 
 dulgently to my retelling what you know of him. 
 
 This scholarly recluse was modest almost be- 
 yond imagining in his estimation of himself, af- 
 fectionate, ever most ready to serve his friends, 
 but rarely seeking them out, and protesting 
 against their taking any trouble to find him, as 
 he had so little to offer; a man whose benefac- 
 tions were boundless, but most unostentatiously 
 bestowed. 
 
 Our best acquaintance with him comes not 
 50 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 through any biography, but through the "friend- 
 ly human letters," as Carlyle calls them, Carlyle, 
 in gratefully acknowledging one of Fitzgerald's 
 letters, says : "One gets so many mhuman letters, 
 ovine, bovine, porcine; I wish you would write 
 a little oftener; when the beneficent Daimon 
 suggests, fail not to lend an ear to him." 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald was born in East Anglla, 
 near Woodbridge, in Suffolk, in an old Jacobean 
 manor house, in 1809. His father was John Pur- 
 cell, who had married his cousin Miss Fitzger- 
 ald, and upon her father's death, whose heiress 
 she was, Mr. Purcell assumed her name and coat 
 of arms. The family owned several English es- 
 tates, but when Edward was a child they lived 
 for many years in France. In Paris, they lived 
 in a house once occupied by Robespierre. Among 
 their friends in Paris were the Kembles, and in 
 E. F.'s letters to Mrs, Fanny Kemble in later 
 life, and in her reminiscences, we get glimpses of 
 these early days. In her " Old Woman's Gos- 
 sip " Mrs. Kemble says: "The mother was a 
 remarkable woman, eccentric, of great beauty, 
 and strength of character. Mrs. Fitzgerald is 
 among the most vivid memories of my girlish 
 days. Her husband was a most amiable and ge- 
 
 51 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 nial Irish gentleman," After describing her per- 
 sonal appearance, Mrs. Kemble says: "I also 
 remember as a feature of sundry dinners at their 
 house, the first gold dessert service and table or- 
 naments that I ever saw, the magnificence of 
 which made a great impression upon me." 
 
 Edward writes of his mother to Mrs. Kem- 
 ble : " My mother was a remarkable woman, as 
 you said in a former letter: and as I constantly 
 believe in outward Beauty as an Index of a Beau- 
 tiful Soul within, I used sometimes to wonder 
 what Feature in her fine Face betrayed what was 
 not so good in her Character. I think as usual 
 the Lips : there was a twist of Mischief in them 
 now and then like that in the Tail of a Cat ! — 
 otherwise so smooth and amiable ! " 
 
 One of Fitzgerald's peculiarities in writing 
 was his fondness for capitals. Capitals for 
 nouns! And I can see now how that statement 
 of his looked, besprinkled with large letters. 
 
 Edward was sent to a school at Bury St. Ed- 
 munds, Edward VI's school, and several of his 
 schoolfellows were lifelong friends — James 
 Spedding, the Baconian; J. M. Kemble, the 
 brother of Fanny Kemble, and a famous Anglo- 
 Saxon scholar; and William Bodham Donne, the 
 52 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 historical writer. The school had a great repu- 
 tation, and the Master, Dr. Malkin, gave special 
 attention to the writing of English. 
 
 Bury St. Edmunds is an interesting corner of 
 East Anglia, and always held the affection of 
 Fitzgerald. He visited it the day before he died, 
 in June, 1883. It was one of the most famous 
 of English shrines. In the year 867 the pagan 
 Danes martyred the Christian king, Edmund, 
 the last Saxon king of East Anglia. In 903 his 
 remains were translated to Bury St. Edmunds, 
 and the shrine became one of the most famous 
 in England, antedating Becket's shrine by three 
 centuries. 
 
 One of the famous abbots — the most famous 
 — was Abbot Sampson. To me, the figure of 
 Abbot Sampson, who presided over the monas- 
 tery from 1 1 83 to 1202, is intensely interesting. 
 He it is who is the hero of Carlyle's enthusiastic 
 comment in " Past and Present." He is far and 
 away the most picturesque figure connected with 
 Bury St. Edmunds, and if one will but read Car- 
 lyle's setting forth of the story, old Bury St. 
 Edmunds will have tenfold the interest it can 
 have without his dramatic painting of the do- 
 ings of Abbot Sampson and his compeers. As I 
 
 53. 
 
A Book of Hours 
 walked about the ruins of Bury St. Edmunds 
 with the loquacious gardener, he explained many 
 points in a way distinctly his own. I was looking 
 at some slabs that were unearthed not such a 
 very long time ago, and the gardener explained : 
 " During some recent eskervations those pantiles 
 were uncovered, and one of them is probably 
 that of Abbot Sampson." I am sure the good 
 man could not understand the fervor of my tone, 
 as I exclaimed : " Oh, I hope it is the tomb of 
 the abbot!" nor the eagerness with which I 
 scanned the eskervated pantiles. 
 
 But if Abbot Sampson is to me the most In- 
 teresting figure, the most interesting event is one 
 that occurred a few years after the death of the 
 abbot. Everyone knows of the tyranny of John 
 Lackland, King of England, of his abuse of 
 power, and how his barons wearied of his bad 
 government, his nonfulfillment of promises, his 
 exactions, demanded and obtained the Magna 
 Charta; but perhaps you have forgotten that it 
 was here at Bury St. Edmunds, in the beautiful 
 old abbey, during the saint's festival, in the year 
 12 14, that the doughty barons made their vows 
 to demand their rights. To me, the ruins of the 
 high altar, before which the barons solemnly 
 54 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 swore that unless the king granted them the 
 charter they would unite against him, arm their 
 retainers, and fight until they gained their end, 
 is one of the most sacred places I have ever seen. 
 This seems a long digression from Fitzgerald, 
 perhaps, but it is an intentional one, as I wish 
 you to know that these East Anglia places which 
 have some slight interest from Edward Fitzger- 
 ald's brief tarrying may have great interest 
 apart from him, too. And Bury St. Edmunds is 
 the next place chosen for a historic pageant, suc- 
 ceeding Warwick in 1906, and Sherburne In 
 1905, transcending either in historic episodes, 
 to my mind. Of course King Edward's school 
 will figure In the pageant, and If any of you hap- 
 pily see it, remember that " dear old Fitz " was 
 for many years a King Edward's schoolboy, 
 that some of the most valued friendships of his 
 life began here, and he used to say the finest 
 declamation he ever listened to was Kemble's 
 recitation of Hotspur's speech, " My liege, I did 
 deny no prisoners," on a prize day at Bury. 
 
 From Bury St. Edmunds Fitzgerald matric- 
 ulated at Trinity College, Cambridge ; he lodged 
 at No. 19 King's Parade, looking out on the 
 screen of King's College. The master of Trln- 
 
 55 
 
A Book of Hours 
 ity at this time was Christopher Wordsworth, 
 brother of the poet, a man who is described of 
 " majestic appearance and donnish manners." 
 Fitzgerald and his irreverent friends named him 
 " the Meeserable Sinner," from his affected 
 manner of responding in the college chapel. The 
 same irreverent undergraduates called William 
 Wordsworth the " Meeserable Poet," although 
 Fitzgerald had previously styled him " Daddy " 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 At Cambridge Fitzgerald did no grinding, he 
 made friends and enjoyed them, and it is a most 
 distinguished list: Thompson, the famous mas- 
 ter of Trinity (to become) ; Spedding and Kem- 
 ble from the old school; William Makepeace 
 Thackeray; Monckton Milnes, afterward Lord 
 Houghton ; and the three Tennysons, who were 
 his contemporaries, but he came to know them 
 better after college days. He was most regard- 
 less of his appearance. His clothes were always 
 in a sad state of dilapidation, and once, when 
 his stately mother came in her coach and four 
 to call on him, and sent her manservant to look 
 him up, Fitzgerald could not see his lady 
 mother, as his only pair of boots was at the cob- 
 bler's. 
 
 56 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 Thackeray and Fitzgerald were warm friends, 
 and there is a charming account of their meet- 
 ing in Paris, but let Thackeray tell it, as he does 
 in one of his delightful " Roundabout Papers " : 
 " I remember I had but 1 2 j. left after a certain 
 little Paris excursion (about which my benight- 
 ed parents never knew anything) at Dover. I 
 remember ordering for dinner a whiting, a beef- 
 steak, and a glass of negus, and the bill was: 
 dinner 7^., glass of negus 2J., waiter &d., and 
 only half a crown left, as I was a sinner, for the 
 guard and coachman on the way to London! 
 And I was a sinner. I had gone without leave. 
 What a long, dreary, guilty journey it was from 
 Paris to Calais, I remember I This was the 
 Easter vacation of 1830. I always think of it 
 when I am crossing to Calais. Guilt, sir, guilt, 
 remains stamped on the memory, and I feel eas- 
 ier in my mind that it is liberated of the old pec- 
 cadillo. I met my old college tutor only yester- 
 day. He had the very next room to mine. After 
 he had gone into his apartment, having shaken 
 me quite kindly by the hand, I felt inclined to 
 knock at his door and say : ' Doctor Bentley, I beg 
 your pardon, but do you remember when I was 
 going down at the Easter vacation in 1830 you 
 
 57 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 asked me where I was going to spend my vaca- 
 tion, and I said with my friend Slingsby, in 
 Huntingtonshire ? Well, sir, I grieve to have to 
 confess that I told you a fib. I had got twenty 
 pounds, and was going for a lark to Paris, where 
 my friend Edward was staying.' There it is 
 out." And are we not all glad of this boyish es- 
 capade of Thackeray's and his Paris meeting 
 with Fitzgerald, since we have the confession in 
 the delightful paper? 
 
 Because Fitzgerald's " Euphranor " is scened 
 at Cambridge I will speak of it here, although 
 it was not written until 1851. It is a dialogue 
 on chivalry, and, as Fitzgerald says, " disfigured 
 by some confounded smart writing," although 
 in another place he says it is a pretty piece of 
 chiseled cherry stone. But when you are at Cam- 
 bridge, counting up its worthies, I shall be glad 
 if you will number among them " dear old 
 Fitz," and when you sit in some lovely nook 
 along the banks there will be no harm if you 
 take a peep at " Euphranor," and read the con- 
 cluding passage which Tennyson pronounced one 
 of the finest bits of prose in our literature : 
 
 " We walked along the fields by the Church, 
 crossed the Ferry, and mingled with the crowd 
 58 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 upon the opposite shore ; Townsmen and Gowns- 
 men, with the tassel'd Fellowcommoner sprin- 
 kled here and there — Reading men and Sporting 
 men — Fellows and even Masters of Colleges, 
 not indifferent to the prowess of their respective 
 crews — all these conversing on all sorts of top' 
 ics, from the slang in Bell's ' Life ' to the last 
 new German Revelation, and moving in evei^ 
 changing groups down the shore of the river, at 
 whose farther bend was a little knot of Ladies 
 gathered upon a green knoll, faced and illumi- 
 nated by the beams of the setting sun. Beyond 
 which point was at length heard some indistinct 
 shouting, which gradually increased until ' They 
 are off — they are coming ! ' suspended other 
 conversation among ourselves, and suddenly the 
 head of the first boat turn'd the corner; and then 
 another close upon it; and then a third; the 
 crews pulling with all their might compacted 
 into perfect rhythm; and the crowd on shore 
 turning round to follow along with them, wav- 
 ing hats and caps, and cheering, ' Bravo, St. 
 John 1 ' ' Go it, Trinity 1 ' — the high crest and 
 blowing forelock of Phidippus's mare, and he 
 himself, shouting encouragement to his crew, 
 conspicuous over all — until, the boats reaching 
 
 59 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 us, we also were caught up in the returning tiHe 
 of spectators, and hurried back toward the goal; 
 where we were just in time to see the Ensign 
 of Trinity lowered from its pride of place and 
 the Eagle of St. John's soaring there instead. 
 Then waiting a little while to hear how the 
 winner had won, and the loser lost, and watch- 
 ing Phidippus engaged in eager conversation 
 with his defeated brethren, I took. Euphranor 
 and Lexilogus under either arm, and walk'd 
 home with them across the meadow leading to 
 the town, whither the dusky groups of Gowns- 
 men with all their confused voices seem'd, as it 
 were, evaporating in the twilight, while a Night- 
 ingale began to be heard among the flowering 
 Chestnuts of Jesus." 
 
 Fitzgerald, soon after leaving college, in Jan- 
 uary, 1830, makes this forecast of his future 
 life. He is writing to his beloved friend Allen: 
 *' Tell Thackeray that he is never to invite me 
 to his house, as I intend never to go; not that I 
 would not go there rather than any place, but I 
 cannot stand seeing new faces in the polite cir- 
 cles. You must know I am going to become a 
 great bear : and I have got all sorts of Utopian 
 ideas into my head about society; these may all 
 60 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 be very absurd, but I try the experiment on my- 
 self, so I can do no great harm." 
 
 Among the estates that the Fitzgeralds 
 owned there was one which included the battle- 
 field of Naseby, and the year after the promul- 
 gation of the social principles I have quoted in 
 the letter, he wrote at Naseby what is, to me, by 
 far his most interesting piece of verse, " The 
 Meadows in Spring." It was published anony- 
 mously in Howe's " Table Book," and was by 
 many attributed to Lamb, and Lamb admired 
 it, and owned that he would gladly have been 
 its author. Fitzgerald was but twenty-two when 
 this appeared. Lamb was just at his fifty-fifth 
 birthday, and the spirit of tender retrospect 
 which makes the poem the exquisite thing it is 
 seems more natural for Lamb's maturity than 
 for the youthful Fitzgerald : 
 
 'Tis a dull sight 
 
 To see the year dying 
 
 When winter winds 
 
 Set the yellow wood sighing, 
 Sighing, oh! sighing. 
 
 And the pleasant comment that Fitzgerald 
 makes: "If my verses be not good, they are 
 good-humored, and that is something." A poem 
 
 6i 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 like " The Meadows in Spring " helps to win 
 our love for the man, but so does a letter like 
 this: 
 
 " London, November 27, 1832. 
 " My dear Allen : The first thing I do in 
 answering your letter is to tell you that I am 
 angry at your saying that your conscience pricks 
 you for not having written to me before. I am 
 of that superior race of men that are quite con- 
 tent to hear themselves talk, and read their own 
 writing. But, in seriousness, I have such love of 
 you, and of myself, that once every week, at 
 least, I feel spurred on by a sort of gathering 
 up of feelings to vent myself in a letter upon 
 you: but if once I hear you say that it makes 
 your conscience thus uneasy till you answer, I 
 shall give it up. Upon my word, I tell you that 
 I do not in the least require it. You who do not 
 love writing cannot think that anyone else does : 
 but I assure you that I have a very young-lady- 
 like partiality to writing to those that I love." 
 
 His letters show his reading, as he frequently 
 gave criticisms on what he read, and when he 
 found odd, out-of-the-way beauty in prose or 
 poetry, he was often at the pains of copying it 
 that his correspondents might share his delight. 
 He delighted much in Shakespeare's sonnets, 
 and says in one of his early letters: " Shake- 
 62 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 speare's sonnets seem stuck all about my heart, 
 like the ballads that used to be on the walls of 
 London." 
 
 Perhaps one does not associate Fitzgerald 
 with the lake country, but a casual visit that 
 he and Tennyson paid to that region has 
 been interestingly chronicled by Fitzgerald and 
 Hallam Tennyson. In Hallam's " Life of Lord 
 Tennyson " he has given fascinating glimpses of 
 it. It was in 1835 that Tennyson and Fitzger- 
 ald went to visit Spedding at his home near 
 Bassenthwaite Water, under Skiddaw, and if 
 you ever walk from Keswich to Bassenthwaite 
 Water, a pretty but rather lonely walk, you may 
 like to recall some of the memories of this 
 merry visit to beguile the way. " The friends 
 rambled about, talked, smoked, read. Late at 
 night in the silent house, Tennyson would de- 
 claim, in a voice like the murmur of a pinewood, 
 out of a little red book, some of the poems 
 afterwards to become immortal. Spedding was 
 not to read aloud, because Tennyson said that 
 he read too much, as if he had bees about his 
 mouth. Old Mr. Spedding showed a practical 
 man's contempt for the whole business. 'Well, 
 Mr. Fitzgerald,' he would say, ' and what is it? 
 
 63 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 Mr. Tennyson reads, and Jim criticises, is that 
 it? ' Tennyson was sulky and wouldn't go to 
 Rydal Mount to see Wordsworth, although 
 Wordsworth was hospitably inclined toward 
 him. Both Spedding and Fitzgerald amused 
 themselves by making sketches of Tennyson, re- 
 produced in Lord Tennyson's life of his father." 
 This letter of Fitzgerald's recalls their visit 
 to Ambleside, where they spent a week after the 
 visit to Spedding: 
 
 " Manchester, May 23, 1835. 
 " Dear Allen: Alfred Tennyson stayed with 
 me at Ambleside. I will say no more of Ten- 
 nyson than that the more I have seen of him, 
 the more cause I have had to think him great. 
 His little humors and grumpinesses were so 
 droll that I was always laughing: I must, how- 
 ever, say further that I felt what Charles Lamb 
 described a sense of depression at times from 
 the overshadowing of a so much more lofty in- 
 tellect than my own: this (though it may seem 
 vain to say so) I have never experienced before, 
 though I have often been with much greater 
 intellects ; but I could not be mistaken in the uni- 
 versality of his mind; and perhaps I have re- 
 ceived some benefit in the now more than dis- 
 tinct consciousness of my dwarfishness. I think 
 you should keep all this to yourself, my dear 
 
 64 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 Allen : I mean that it is only to you that I would 
 write so freely about myself. You know most of 
 my secrets, and I am not afraid of intrusting 
 even my vanities to so true a man." 
 
 Fitzgerald to Tennyson : 
 
 " I have heard you say that you are bound 
 by the want of such and such a sum, and I vow to 
 the Lord that I could not have a greater pleas- 
 ure than in transferring it to you on such an occa- 
 sion. I could not dare say such a thing to a 
 smaller man; but you are not a small man as- 
 suredly; and even if you do not make use of my 
 offer, you will not be offended, but put it to the 
 right account. It is very difficult to persuade 
 people in this world that one can part with a 
 banknote without a pang." 
 
 Then he writes of Tennyson: 
 
 " Resting our oars one calm day on Winder- 
 mere, at the end of May, 1835, and looking 
 into the lake quite unruffled and clear, Alfred 
 quoted from the lines he had lately read from 
 the manuscript ' Morte d' Arthur ' about the 
 lonely lady of the lake and Excalibur : 
 
 Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps 
 Upon the hidden bases of the hills. 
 
 and he would remark, ' Not bad that, Fitz, is 
 it'?" 
 
 65 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 While they were in the lake country they 
 met Hartley Coleridge, who was mightily taken 
 with Tennyson, and wrote a sonnet to him. 
 
 The Fitzgeralds had had a country home 
 at Wherstend, near Ipswich, for many years, 
 but in 1835 Mr. John Fitzgerald removed to 
 Boulge Hall, about two and a half miles from 
 Woodbridge, a spacious Queen Anne house, sur- 
 rounded by fine trees. The River Deben winds 
 through the meadows of flowers. 
 
 I have already said enough, I am sure, to 
 show you that Fitzgerald had no share in the 
 ambitious strivings of the time. Soon after his 
 family removed to Boulge Hall he had a desire 
 to have a den of his own, and he took up his 
 abode in a little thatched lodge of two rooms 
 standing near the Boulge Gate. Here, with a 
 cat and dog and parrot, he began what he called 
 a very pleasant Robinson-Crusoe sort of life. 
 He was waited upon by an old couple. He in- 
 stalled his books and pictures in the cottage. 
 The place was a scene of desperate confusion; 
 " he led a thoroughly indolent life, though with 
 dreams of literary ambition." 
 
 He was fond of inviting Barton and Crabbe 
 to his cottage, calling them " the wits of Wood- 
 66 
 
EJwat d Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 bridge." About the time that the Fitzgeralds 
 went to Boulge Hall to live, George Crabbe, 
 the son of the poet, was appointed to the living 
 of Budfield near by, and he and Edward became 
 great friends, and Fitzgerald, too, was on terms 
 of intimate friendship with Bernard Barton, the 
 poet, whose greatest claim to fame is that he 
 was the friend and correspondent of Lamb, that 
 many of Lamb's most delightful letters were ad- 
 dressed to him. 
 
 Before 1842, when Fitzgerald's acquaintance 
 with Carlyle began, there are sundry amusing 
 references to Carlyle's works in Fitzgerald's let- 
 ters. He writes to Bernard Barton : " I'm try- 
 ing to get through a new book much in fashion 
 — Carlyle's ' French Revolution ' — ^written in 
 a German style. An Englishman writes of 
 French Revolution in a German style 1 People 
 say the book is very deep ; but it appears to me 
 that the meaning seems deep from lying under 
 mystical language." 
 
 To Thompson (afterwards Master of Trin- 
 ity) he writes: " Have you read poor Carlyle's 
 raving book about heroes? Of course you have, 
 or I would ask you to buy my copy. I don't like 
 to live with it in the house. It smolders ! " But 
 
 67 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 it was not long after writing thus that Fitzger- 
 ald met " Gurlyle," as Thackeray called the 
 Sage of Chelsea. Thackeray never seemed con- 
 tent until he had transformed a name into some 
 less conventional form. It was under Thack- 
 eray's wing that Fitzgerald called upon Carlyle 
 in 1842. I have told you that Fitzgerald's fa- 
 ther owned the estate which included the battle- 
 field of Naseby. When Carlyle was writing his 
 life of Cromwell he had visited the field, and an 
 obelisk erected by Fitzgerald's father merely to 
 mark the highest ground, they had supposed 
 marked the place where the hottest engagement 
 took place, and had gone away satisfied, not hav- 
 ing surveyed the real battlefield at all. Fitzger- 
 ald, guided by local tradition, conducted some 
 excavations at Naseby, and found the remains 
 of many skeletons. Carlyle was much excited 
 by the discoveries, but Fitzgerald did not care 
 much for " bone rummaging," as he called it, 
 and did not continue the excavations. 
 
 Fitzgerald continued to live at the little 
 lodge, reading, writing, and visiting his hum- 
 ble country friends. In 1849 Bernard Barton 
 died, leaving his daughter very ill-provided for. 
 Fitzgerald appears to have promised Bernard 
 68 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 Barton that the daughter should be provided 
 for, and this was looked upon as tantamount to 
 an offer of marriage. I think I will dispose of 
 that matter at once. Fitzgerald married Lucy 
 Barton, but it was a most unfortunate affair; 
 they were altogether unsuited to each other, and 
 in a few weeks they separated, Fitzgerald mak- 
 ing a very handsome settlement upon her, and 
 no blame attached to either, except it had been 
 so much better had they never had the unhappy 
 experience. 
 
 When Fitzgerald's brother John succeeded 
 to the estates in 1851, Edward retreated from 
 his cottage; he could not bear the proximity of 
 his brother, with whom he had no tastes in 
 common, and he went to live at Farlingay Hall, 
 near Woodbridge. In 1854 Carlyle, being over- 
 worked, announced his intention of coming to 
 stay with Fitzgerald. It is mingled amusement 
 and consternation that Fitzgerald feels at the 
 prospect of entertaining the sage, and he writes 
 to Mrs. Carlyle: " Only, dear Mrs. Carlyle, let 
 me know what Carlyle is to Eat, Drink, and 
 Avoid ! " Carlyle writes, with entire absence of 
 thought for anybody except himself : " It will 
 be pleasant to see your face at the end of my 
 
 69 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 shrieking, mad (and to me quite horrible) rail 
 operations, I hope to get to Farlingay not long 
 after four o'clock, and have a quiet mutton- 
 chop in due time, and have a ditto pipe or pipes ; 
 nay, I could even have a bathe if there was any 
 sea water left in the evening." 
 
 Carlyle afterwards wrote that Fitzgerald 
 " discharged the sacred rites of hospitality with 
 a kind of Irish zeal or piety." Fitzgerald him- 
 self was a vegetarian, and most abstemious 
 liver; but in no way required others to follow 
 his regimen. When he had guests, he would 
 regale them upon the best that could be had 
 — oysters and ale— while he himself would 
 pace up and down the room munching an 
 apple or a turnip, and drinking long draughts 
 of milk. 
 
 Living his secluded life, Fitzgerald saw very 
 few of his old friends, and he and Thackeray 
 drifted apart, but though they almost never 
 wrote during the last years of Thackeray's life, 
 we have the sweetest proof that Thackeray cher- 
 ished Fitzgerald's friendship. Toward the close 
 of his life his daughter asked him which of his 
 friends he cared most for, and he answered: 
 " Why, dear old Fitz, to be sure, and Brook- 
 70 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 field." And then do you not all remember the 
 letter that Thackeray wrote Fitzgerald on the 
 eve of his departure for America? A letter I 
 have read so many, many times, and never with- 
 out swelling throat. 
 
 (< 
 
 I should like my daughters to remember 
 that you are the best and oldest friend their fa- 
 ther ever had, and that you should act as such, 
 as my literary executor, and so forth. Does not 
 this sound gloomy? Well, who knows what 
 Fate has in store, and I feel not at all downcast, 
 and very grave and solemn, just at the brink of 
 a great voyage — and the great comfort I have 
 in thinking about my dear old boy is that recol- 
 lection of our youth when we loved each other, 
 as I now do while I write farewell." 
 
 And after Thackeray's death, Fitzgerald 
 writes to Samuel Lawrence, in 1864: 
 
 " I am surprised almost to find how much I 
 am thinking of him ; so little as I had seen him 
 for the last ten years ; not once for the last five. 
 I had been told — by you, for one — that he was 
 spoiled. I am glad therefore that I have scarce 
 seen him since he was ' old Thackeray.' I keep 
 reading his ' Newcomes ' of nights, and, as it 
 were, hear him saying so much in it; and it 
 seems to me as if he might be coming up my 
 
 7/ 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 stairs and about to come (singing) into my 
 room, as in Old Charlotte Street thirty years 
 ago." 
 
 To Thompson, of Trinity, he writes : 
 
 " My interest in him is a little gone from 
 hearing he had become somewhat spoiled; 
 which, also, some of his later writings hinted to 
 me of themselves. But his letters and former 
 works bring me back the old Thackeray. I had 
 never read ' Pendennis ' and ' The Newcomes ' 
 since their appearance till this last month. They 
 are wonderful. Fielding's seems to me coarse 
 work in comparison. I have, indeed, been think- 
 ing of little this last month but of these Books 
 and their Author. Of his Letters to me, I have 
 kept some Dozen, just to mark the different 
 Epochs of our Acquaintance." 
 
 And this in reference to Anne Thackeray: 
 
 " Just as I was going out of the Royal Acad- 
 emy, who should come up to me but Annie 
 Thackeray, who took my hands as really glad to 
 see her father's old friend. I am sure she was, 
 and I was taken aback somehow and, out of 
 sheer awkwardness, began to tell her that I 
 didn't care for her new Novel ! And then, after 
 she had left her party to come to me, she ran 
 off." 
 
 Could we have a better picture of the shy 
 
 72 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 recluse than this self-revelation in the letter? 
 He was overcome with a sense of his apparent 
 unfriendliness, then he went back, to the Acad- 
 emy to look up Anne Thackeray, but could not 
 find her. " I have been so vext with myself ! " 
 and it is easy to fancy the vexation that the 
 kindly, friendly man felt at the awkwardness 
 of it all. 
 
 But Fitzgerald himself was to live on many 
 years — ^twenty years after the death of Thack- 
 eray. In i860 he came to Woodbridge to live, 
 in the market place over the gunsmith's. How 
 much interest one has in that market place \ Here 
 he lived for more than a dozen years. In the 
 meantime he bought a place just on the edge 
 of the village, which he called Little Grange, 
 but he seemed disinclined to use it, and for years 
 it was left to the occupancy of his nieces and 
 such relatives as liked to use it for a few months 
 of the year; even when he went there to live, he 
 kept but one room for himself. 
 
 But as one waits at the Bull Inn for a trap 
 to drive out to Boulge she may Mkely recall to 
 herself some of the stories she has heard of the 
 famous host of the inn. There Tennyson and 
 his son visited Fitzgerald. His house undergo- 
 
 73 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 ing repairs, he put them up at the Bull. Wood- 
 bridge should feel honored, Fitzgerald told the 
 landlord, and the landlord asked Archdeacon 
 Groome for explanation, and the archdeacon 
 said: " He is the Poet Laureate," and the land- 
 lord said indifferently: " He may be that, but 
 he doesn't fare to know much about horses, I 
 showed him my stables 1 " 
 
 And when one explores the market place, she 
 looks for the rooms over the gunsmith's where 
 Fitzgerald lodged for years with Berry. But 
 Berry became engaged to a widow, and Fitzger- 
 ald most impohtically remarked that " Old Ber- 
 ry would now have to be called ' Old Goose- 
 berry.' " This unwise remark was repeated to 
 the widow, and the result was that Fitzgerald 
 was ordered to quit. Berry had some compunc- 
 tion about turning out his old friend and lodger, 
 but the widow, fearing that his courage would 
 give way, remained at the bottom of the stairs, 
 calling out: "Be firm. Berry 1 Remind him of 
 what he called you." 
 
 During these Woodbridge days he spent 
 
 much time on the sea, which he always loved, 
 
 and which he best loved when it was rough. In 
 
 the summer months he spent a deal of time cruis- 
 
 74 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Frienas 
 ing about in his yacht, which he named " The 
 Scandal," because, he said, that was the princi- 
 pal product of Woodbridge. He was sometimes 
 accompanied by a friend or two, and always by 
 plenty of books. It was in the cabin of his boat 
 that he translated much of Calderon and ^s- 
 chylus. 
 
 Fitzgerald was not a traveler, and some very 
 apocryphal stories are told apropos of his in- 
 curiosity and unwillingness to change from his 
 usual course. It is told that he made a sailing 
 trip over to Holland to see Paul Potter's "Bull" 
 — but when he arrived in Rotterdam there was 
 such a good breeze for returning to England 
 that he immediately set sail for home, and didn't 
 go to The Hague at all. It's a capital story, but 
 his own experience was a little different — though 
 he did not see The Hagu^ Gallery. He went to 
 The Hague, but the gallery was closed and was 
 not to be opened the next day — " So in Rage 
 and Despair I tore back to Rotterdam." 
 
 So Fitzgerald, " the peaceable, affectionate, 
 and ultra-modest man," as Carlyle calls him, 
 lived his innocent far niente life. He enjoined 
 upon his friends not to come out of their way 
 to call on him, but if they were passing through 
 
 75 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 to call. One day Tennyson was passing through 
 and called — but let Fitzgerald himself tell it, as 
 he does in one of his delightful letters to Fanny 
 Ken»ble : 
 
 " And now, who should send in his card to 
 me last week — ^but the old Poet himself — he 
 and his elder son, Hallam, passing through 
 Woodbridge from a tour in Norfolk. ' Dear old 
 Fitz,' ran the card in pencil. ' I am passing 
 thro'.' I had not seen him in twenty years, and 
 what really surprised me was that we fell at once 
 into the old humor, as if we had only been 
 parted twenty days instead of so many years. 
 He stayed two days, and went over the same old 
 grounds of debate, told some of the same old 
 stories, and so all was well. I suppose I may never 
 see him again, and so I suppose both thought 
 as the Rail carried him away. I liked Hallam 
 much, unafFected, unpretending, no slang, none 
 of young England's nonchalance^ speaking of 
 his Father as Papa, never calling him Governor, 
 and tending him with great care, love, and dis- 
 cretion." 
 
 Lord Tennyson in the memoir of his father 
 has given a pleasant account of this visit. He 
 says the views that Fitzgerald expressed on lit- 
 erature were interesting, but the old man never 
 76 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 got off his own platform to look at the work of 
 modern authors. Hallam Tennyson says some- 
 where that Fitzgerald never approved of any- 
 thing his friends wrote unless he first saw it in 
 manuscript. He surely did not let his friendli- 
 ness blind him to qualities to which his literary 
 standard objected. " Old Fitzcrochet! " he calls 
 himself in a letter to Tennyson, when he is writ- 
 ing some strictures on " Queen Mary." — " Still 
 your old Fitzcrochet, you see! And so will be 
 to the end, I suppose." And while Tennyson 
 was visiting him at Woodbridge he told the 
 poet frankly that he had written nothing worth 
 while since 1842, adding that he had ceased to 
 be a poet and become an artist. 
 
 Tennyson seemed to be much impressed by 
 the picture of Fitzgerald sitting under the trees 
 at Little Grange, and the pigeons alighting on 
 Fitzgerald's head, courtesying and cooing, and 
 he put the scene in the dedication to " Tiresias." 
 
 But before the poem was published Fitzger- 
 ald had been taken to his last rest under the 
 tower of the little church of Boulge. He had 
 fallen asleep on the night of June 14, 1883, and 
 in the morning his friend found it was the last 
 sleep. Then Tennyson added an epilogue to the 
 
 77 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 poem, which concludes, you remember, with the 
 line: 
 
 One height and one far-shining fire. 
 
 This is the dedication : 
 
 Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange, 
 
 Where once I tarried for a while, 
 Glance at the wheeling orb of change, 
 
 And greet it with a kindly smile; 
 Whom yet I see as there you sit 
 
 Beneath your sheltering garden tree,^ 
 And while your doves about you flit. 
 
 And plant on shoulder, hand, and knee, 
 Or on our head their rosy feet, 
 
 As if they knew your diet spares 
 Whatever moved in that full sheet. 
 
 Let down to Peter at his prayers; 
 Who live on milk and meal and grass, 
 And once for ten long weeks I tried 
 Your table of Pythagoras. 
 
 And seem'd at first a thing enskied, 
 {As Shakespeare has it) airy light 
 
 To float above the ways of men. 
 Then fell from that half-spiritual height, 
 
 Chill' d till I tasted flesh, again. 
 One night when Earth was winter-black. 
 And all the heavens flashed in frost; 
 And on me, half-asleep, came back 
 That wholesome heat the flood had lost, 
 
 78 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 And set me climbing icy capes 
 
 And glaciers, over which there roll'd 
 To meet me long-arm' d vines with grapes 
 
 Of Eschol hugeness; for the cold 
 Without and warmth within me wrought 
 
 To mold the dream; but none can say 
 That Lenten fare makes Lenten thought 
 
 Who reads your golden Eastern lay 
 Than which I know no version done 
 
 In English more divinely well; 
 A planet equal to the sun 
 
 Which cast it, that large infidel. 
 Your Omar, and your Omar drew 
 
 Full-handed plaudits from our best 
 In modern letters, and from two 
 
 Old friends outvaluing all the rest. 
 Two voices heard on earth no more; 
 
 But we old friends are still alive, 
 And I am nearing seventy-four. 
 
 While you have touched at seventy-five. 
 And so I send a birthday line 
 
 Of greeting; and my son, who dipt 
 In some forgotten book of mine 
 
 With sallow scraps of manuscript. 
 And dating many a year ago, 
 
 Has hit on this which you take, 
 My Fitz, and welcome, as I know 
 
 Less for its own than for the sake 
 Of one recalling gracious times 
 
 79 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 When, in our younger London days, 
 You found some merit in my rhymes 
 
 And I more pleasure in your praise. 
 One height and one far-shining fire. 
 
 Then the epilogue : 
 
 And while I fancied that my friend 
 
 For this brief idyll would require 
 A less diffuse and opulent end. 
 
 And would defend his judgment well 
 If I should deem it overnice. 
 
 The tolling of his funeral bell 
 Broke on my pagan Paradise, 
 
 And mixed the dreams of classic times 
 And all the phantoms of the dream, 
 
 With present grief, and made the rhymes 
 That miss'd his living welcome seem 
 
 Like would-be guests, an hour too late 
 Who down the highway moving on 
 
 With easy laughter, find the gate 
 Is bolted and the master gone. 
 
 Gone into darkness, full light 
 Of friendship! fast, in sleep, away 
 
 By night, into the deeper night! 
 
 I thought it well to round out the tale of this 
 
 friendship, though I yet had more to tell you of 
 
 Fitzgerald. For nearly threescore years these 
 
 -men had been friends, and Tennyson, like 
 
 80 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 Thackeray, gave a first place to " dear old 
 Fitz." 
 
 During the last dozen years of his life Fitz- 
 gerald wrote many letters to Fanny Kemble, and 
 they are published by themselves in a most read- 
 able volume. When Mrs. Kemble in her " Old 
 Woman's Gossip " wrote some memories of the 
 Fitzgeralds, Edward begged that when they 
 were given book form the passage relating to 
 him should be dropped, as the world would 
 scarcely care to know of him, and he did not de- 
 serve her words. In his own copy of her work 
 he pasted over the pages relating to himself. 
 But since Mrs. Kemble so delightfully summa- 
 rizes his life, I am going to give it as a brief 
 recapitulation, particularly as she itemizes what 
 I have designedly omitted — all his literary work. 
 
 " One member of the family, Edward Fitz- 
 gerald, has remained my friend till this day. His 
 parents and mine are dead. Of his brothers and 
 sisters I retain no knowledge, but with him I 
 still keep up an affectionate and, to me, valuable 
 and interesting correspondence. He was distin- 
 guished from the rest of his family, and, indeed, 
 from most people, by the possession of very rare 
 intellectual and artistic gifts. A poet, a painter, 
 a musician, an admirable scholar and writer, if 
 
 8i 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 he had not shunned notoriety as sedulously as 
 most people seek it, he would have achieved a 
 foremost place among the eminent men of his 
 day, and left a name second to that of very few 
 of his contemporaries. His life was spent in lit- 
 erary leisure, or literary labors of love of singular 
 excellence, which he never cared to publish be- 
 yond the circle of his intimate friends. ' Euphra- 
 nor ' and ' Polonius ' are full of keen wisdom, 
 fine observation and profound thought, sterling 
 philosophy, written in the purest, simplest, and 
 raciest English ; noble translations or rather free 
 adaptations of Calderon's finest dramas, a splen- 
 did paraphrase of the ' Agamemnon ' of iEs- 
 chylus, which fills the reader with regret that he 
 should not have Englished the whole of the 
 great trilogy with the same severe sublimity. In 
 America, this gentleman is better known by his 
 translation or adaptation (how much more it is 
 his own than the author's, I should like to know 
 if I were Irish) of Omar Khayyam, the astron- 
 omer poet of Persia. While these were Edward 
 Fitzgerald's studies and pursuits, he led a curious 
 life of almost entire estrangement from society, 
 preferring the companionship of the rough sail- 
 ors and fishermen of the Suffolk coast to that of 
 lettered folk. He lived with them in the most 
 friendly intimacy, helping them in their sea ven- 
 tures and cruising about with one, an especially 
 fine sample of his sort, in a small fishing smack, 
 82 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 which Edward Fitzgerald's bounty had set 
 afioat, and in which the translator of Calderon 
 and ^chylus passed his time, better pleased with 
 the intercourse of the captain and crew of his 
 small fishing craft than with that of more edu- 
 cated and sophisticated humanity." 
 
 There is one word in Mrs. Kemble's article 
 to which I object, and that is estrangement. It 
 might be inferred from that, although that im- 
 plying was not Mrs. Kemble's intention, that he 
 was at war with his fellows, or that he was a 
 misanthrope, and we that know Fitzgerald know 
 how true is Mr. Groome's statement : " There 
 was a vein of misanthropy toward men in the 
 abstract, but tender-hearted sympathy for actual 
 men and women ; being the reverse of Carlyle's 
 description of the philanthropist, ' One who 
 loves man in the abstract, but is intolerant of 
 Jack and Tom.' " 
 
 There is one of Fitzgerald's friends of whom 
 I have made no mention, whose influence on 
 Fitzgerald was most significant, and to whom 
 indirectly we owe thanks for the exquisite quat- 
 rains which make Fitzgerald's most important 
 literary work. It was as early as 1846 that Fitz- 
 gerald made the acquaintance of Mr. Cowell, 
 
 83 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 afterwards Professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge. 
 Professor Cowell had great gifts for literature, 
 and it was he that introduced Fitzgerald to 
 Omar Khayyam. Professor Cowell said humor- 
 ously of himself that his chief function was to 
 encourage other people to work. Fitzgerald be- 
 gan to read the Oriental poets with Cowell, and 
 in 1856 "he was working in his easy way at 
 Omar Khayyam, reading, enjoying, and adapt- 
 ing." 
 
 It seems to me so entirely unnecessary to tell 
 you any of the circumstances regarding the pub- 
 lishing of Fitzgerald's wonderful free adapta- 
 tions from Omar Khayyam. It surely can have 
 escaped no one's knowing, all the detail has 
 been told again and again in introductions to 
 editions of the " Rubaiyat," and there remains 
 nothing new to be told. The first edition was 
 published by Quaritch in 1859, and fell perfect- 
 ly flat, so that the undesired books were offered 
 among a lot of unsalable volumes — with the leg- 
 end, " All these a penny each." Then the next 
 chapter in the romance is that two young poets, 
 Rossetti was one, chanced upon the undesired 
 book, and, discovering its rare worth, invested 
 several pennies, and the book was talked about 
 84 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 among their friends. When one of those little 
 books of 1859 strays into the hands of a book- 
 seller now, he knows he may demand any price 
 he will for it. I have not followed the buying 
 and selling of this issue of 1859, but I remem- 
 ber very well that in 1898 rather more than a 
 hundred dollars was paid for one of the little 
 volumes, and Mr. Quaritch, the original pub- 
 lisher, was the purchaser. 
 
 The edition was unsigned, and Carlyle was 
 twelve years finding out that his friend Fitzger- 
 ald was the translator of Omar, and the circum- 
 stances are interesting. In September, 1863, 
 Mr. Ruskin addressed a letter to the translator 
 of the Rubaiyat of Omar, which he intrusted 
 to Mrs. Burne-Jones, who, after an interval of 
 nearly ten years, handed it to Mr. Charles Eliot 
 Norton. By him it was transmitted to Carlyle, 
 who sent it to Fitzgerald with the following 
 letter: 
 
 " Chelsea, 14 April, 1873. 
 
 " Dear Fitzgerald: Mr. Norton " (he speaks 
 in most complimentary terms of Mr. Norton), 
 " with whom I have had pleasant walks, dia- 
 logues, and other communications of late 
 months, in the course of which he brought to 
 my knowledge for the first time your notable 
 
 85 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 ' Omar Khayyam,' insisted on giving me a copy 
 from the third edition, which I now possess and 
 duly prize. From him, too, by careful cross- 
 questioning, I identified, beyond dispute, the 
 hidden Fitzgerald, the translator; and indeed 
 found that his complete silence and unique mod- 
 esty in regard to said meritorious and successful 
 performance was simply a feature of my own 
 Edward FI The translation is excellent; the 
 book Itself a kind of jewel in its way; I do Nor- 
 ton's mission without the least delay, as you per- 
 ceive. Ruskln's message to you passes through 
 my hands sealed. I am ever your affectionate 
 
 " T. Carlyle." 
 
 Then ten years after Ruskin's writing Fitz- 
 gerald wrote his thanks. 
 
 After the third edition, his friend, W. B. 
 Donne wrote : "I am so delighted at the glory 
 Edward Fitzgerald has gained by his transla- 
 tion of the ' Rubaiyat ' of Omar Khayyam. It 
 Is full time that FItz should be disinterred and 
 exhibited to the world as one of the most gifted 
 of Britons." 
 
 Not only do you know all the circumstances 
 
 attending the publication, but you know all 
 
 about Omar, the tentmaker, as his poetical name 
 
 tells us he was at one time. He was an astrono- 
 
 86 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 mer-poet of Persia, In the eleventh century, 
 who, as Fitzgerald put it, " having failed (how- 
 ever mistakenly) of finding any Providence but 
 Destiny, and any world but this, set about mak- 
 ing the best of it, preferring rather to soothe the 
 soul through the senses into acquiescence with 
 things as he saw them than to perplex it with 
 vain disquietude after what might be." 
 
 I like to call to the attention of readers of the 
 quatrains that Omar was living at the time of 
 the Battle of Hastings, that event so meaningful 
 to all English-speaking people. 
 
 Yea thou wert singing when that arrow clave 
 
 Through helm and brain of him 
 Who could not save 
 
 His England, even of Harold, Godwin's 
 son. 
 The high tide murmurs by the hero's grave. 
 
 His was the age of Faith, when all the West 
 Looked to the priest for torment or for rest; 
 
 And thou wert living then, and didst not heed 
 The Saint who banned thee, or the Saint who 
 blessed. 
 
 How matchless is the first quatrain as it was 
 in the first edition : 
 
 87 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night, 
 Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to 
 Flight. 
 
 And Lol the Hunter of the East has caught 
 The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light. 
 
 There are five hundred or more of the " Ru- 
 balyat" of Omar, but Fitzgerald has given 
 about a hundred in his final and fourth edition ; 
 he says many of the quatrains " are mashed 
 together and something lost, I doubt not, of 
 Omar's simplicity." A commentator (Way) 
 says : " What modesty ! Fitzgerald has crystal- 
 lized the five hundred quatrains of the original 
 into the one hundred and one of the fourth edi- 
 tion." 
 
 But had he not given us his beautiful quat- 
 rains he would still have given hostage for our 
 love and admiration in his letters, one of the 
 most delightful collections in existence. I most 
 advisedly gave this hour the name " With Ed- 
 ward Fitzgerald and his Friends in East Anglia 
 and Elsewhere," after thinking what would 
 probably be included in and omitted from the 
 hour. While I had no intention to ignore Fitz- 
 gerald's literary work, I was without intention 
 to emphasize it. It was my wish to emphasize 
 88 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 his friendships, which, I think, are among the 
 most interesting and tenderly endearing in the 
 range of English literature. Not only do they 
 make Fitzgerald more interesting, but they re- 
 veal a depth of sweet friendliness in each of his 
 friends. I love to spend my time in the friendly 
 atmosphere of Fitzgerald's letters. It is not 
 alone for his spirit, but the reflection of the spirit 
 of friendship in others. 
 
 Although Fitzgerald's life was spent for the 
 most part in East Anglia, we have seen that 
 Cambridge will have an added interest if we re- 
 call the remarkable group of young men that 
 were undergraduates at Trinity at the beginning 
 of the second quarter of the nineteenth century; 
 that among the literary associations of Lake 
 Land we may recall the visit of Tennyson and 
 Fitzgerald, when Tennysons early gems were in 
 the process of making, and I could have told 
 you of meeting after meeting in London with all 
 these beloved people. There was one notable day 
 when Thackeray, Dickens, Tennyson, and Fitz- 
 gerald went driving together — " a precious car- 
 riageful," Fitzgerald comments. 
 
 One of Fitzgerald's last journeys was to Chel- 
 sea, about a month before his death, and his 
 
 89 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 mention of the visit is in the last letters he wrote 
 to Mrs. Kemble and to Professor Norton: " I 
 wanted to see the statue on the embankment and 
 the old No. 5 Cheyne Row, which I had not 
 seen for five-and-twenty years. The statue I 
 thought very good, though looking somewhat 
 small and ill set off by its dingy surroundings. 
 And No. 5 (now 24), which had cost Jane Car- 
 lyle so much of her life to make habitable for 
 him, now all neglected, unswept, ungarnished, 
 uninhabited, ' To Let.' " He waS greatly moved 
 by these scenes and the memories they evoked. 
 
 My last visit to these Chelsea shrines was the 
 happiest I have ever made. The Carlyle house 
 is now a memorial, and why the special privi- 
 lege was vouchsafed us I know not, but my 
 friends and I were invited to tea in the kitchen — 
 in the very kitchen where Carlyle and Tennyson 
 had smoked their pipes in absolute silence and 
 had such a thoroughly enjoyable evening. 
 
 But to return to East Anglia, the country thaJt 
 Fitzgerald loved and knew, its pleasant blossom- 
 ing meadows, its winding streams and shelter- 
 ing nooks. It is the country of the two great 
 English landscapists, Constable and Gainsbor- 
 ough; both were East Anglians, and repeatedly 
 90 
 
Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 
 
 portrayed on canvas the beauties of their native 
 corner of England. 
 
 Fitzgerald was much interested in the racy 
 vernacular of East Anglia, and made careful 
 study of it ; his knowledge of the fisher folk was 
 so intimate that Tennyson applied to him for de- 
 tail when he was writing " Enoch Arden." To 
 me, recalling East Anglia, with its many water- 
 ways and its abundance of flowers, it seems most 
 suited to Fitzgerald, with his delight in boating, 
 and his love for flowers ; always I think of it as 
 " a pleasant water'd land, a land of roses." 
 
 Mr. Groome describes Fitzgerald as " a tall 
 sea-bronzed man. He could be seen later in life 
 walking down into Woodbridge with an old In-, 
 verness cape, slippers on feet, and a handker- 
 chief tied over his hat; yet one always recog- 
 nized in him the Hidalgo, Never was there a 
 more perfect gentleman; eccentric he certainly 
 was, as was all his family." 
 
 I was guest in an old Flemish house in Span- 
 ish Ipswich, whose ceilings were adorned with 
 cherubs and lilies and roses which marked the 
 decoration of the early seventeenth century, and 
 after my days of roaming about the country I 
 met in the evening people who remembered Fitz- 
 
 91 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 gerald, his oddities, his kindnesses, and his ap- 
 pearance, as he went about wrapped in his In- 
 verness cape. 
 
 It was a very pleasant summer day when I 
 went out to Boulge churchyard to visit the 
 grave of Fitzgerald. A beautiful path shaded 
 with magnificent trees leads to the church, and 
 in the small yard one easily finds the grave of 
 Edward Fitzgerald — simply marked with date 
 of birth and death, and the verse : " It is He that 
 hath made us and not we ourselves." On the 
 grave there was blooming a rose, whose parent 
 tree grew over the grave of Omar Khayyam at 
 Naishapur — the most poetic tribute that poets 
 could make to a poet, I have always thought. 
 
 Ten years after Fitzgerald died the Omar 
 Khayyam Club planted the rose tree over Fitz- 
 gerald's grave, Theodore Watts Dunton giving 
 these lines: 
 
 Hear us, ye winds, North, East and West and 
 South! 
 
 This granite covers him whose golden mouth 
 Made wiser ev'n the work of wisdom's King, 
 
 Blow softly o'er the grave of Omar's herald, 
 Till roses rich of Omar's dust shall spring 
 
 From richer dust of Suf oik's rare Fitzgerald. 
 
 92 
 
OXFORD'S WALKS AND 
 GARDENS 
 
 WHEN I ask you to listen to an hour's 
 talk on Oxford, it is not Oxford ar- 
 chitecturally or historically that I 
 shall try to present, nor is it the history of any 
 one college, nor yet the university, but it is Ox- 
 ford of romantic and literary memories, entire- 
 ly distinct from the life and action of to-day. 
 Obviously, the contemporary and undergradu- 
 ate will have no part in my tale, but yesterday's 
 poet, the hero of bygone tale, the heroine of 
 centuries of tradition — these are they whom I 
 wish to bring before you. 
 
 To attempt to give any notion of the charm 
 of Oxford is entirely vain. " Know you the se- 
 cret none can utter?" the poet asks. Though 
 many know the secret- — that is, many know the 
 charm of Oxford — I have never yet known it 
 adequately set forth. A brief phrase is often 
 happier in suggestion of Oxford's great charm 
 than a long description. Cardinal Newman says 
 
 93 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 of the city he so loved: " As beautiful as youth, 
 as venerable as age." Beauty and age do con- 
 tribute to the charm. Matthew Arnold, another 
 son of Oxford, says : " Lovely at all times she 
 lies, lovely to-night." " That sweet city with 
 its dreaming spires," says William Morris. 
 
 I know several vantage grounds, Mesopo- 
 tamia, Headington Hill, Shotover, sometimes 
 Magdalen Bridge, from which I have realized 
 Andrew Lang's sentiment, " Oxford looks like 
 a fairy city of the Arabian Nights, a town of 
 palaces and princesses, rather than proctors," 
 
 I shall conclude this hour with a mention of 
 Matthew Arnold's threnodies which enshrine 
 the beautiful country about Oxford, and it will 
 not be inappropriate if here at the beginning of 
 the hour I call to your mind a prose tribute he 
 has paid to Oxford. He is speaking of the search 
 for truth, and says : " We are all seekers still ! 
 Seekers often make mistakes, and I wish mine 
 to redound to my own discredit only, and not to 
 touch Oxford. Beautiful city! So venerable, so 
 lovely, so unravaged by the fierce intellectual 
 life of our century, so serene I And yet steeped 
 in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens 
 to the moonlight, and whispering from her tow- 
 94 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 ers the last enchantments of the Middle Ages, 
 who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable 
 charm keeps ever calling us nearer to the true 
 goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection, to 
 beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen from 
 another side? " This is from the preface to the 
 first series of " Essays on Criticism." 
 
 " It is the Oxford that lies spreading its gar- 
 dens to the moonlight and whispering from its 
 towers the last enchantment of the Middle 
 Ages " that has the special appeal to me, I know 
 Oxford at several seasons, during Term, when 
 the usual aspect of Term is on, when it is re- 
 splendent with color and full of the animated 
 joyous company attracted by Eights; but I pre- 
 fer it when the college barges are deserted, and 
 the rivers are left to the resident Oxonian, and 
 the city is wrapped in the drowsiness of the 
 Long Vacation. 
 
 In Charles Lamb's essay, " Oxford in Vaca- 
 tion," he speaks of the sense of possession that 
 one has in walking through the colleges and gar- 
 dens in vacation. Indulging in one of his pleas- 
 ant concerts, he says that if one in his youth has 
 been denied the sweets of academic instruction, 
 he may here play the gentleman, enact the stu- 
 
 95 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 dent, fancy himself of any degree or calling he 
 pleases. In a mood of humility, he may enact 
 the servitor; if the peacock vein rises, he may 
 strut a gentleman commoner, or in grave mo- 
 ments proceed master of arts. 
 
 It was not in fancying myself in various sta- 
 tions that I had my greatest pleasure, as I 
 strolled unmolested about Oxford, " peeped 
 into sculleries redolent of antique hospitality and 
 looked at spits which had cooked for Chaucer." 
 It was not myself in various guises that I saw, 
 but Oxford became a rallying ground for fair 
 women, brave men, the poets, the sages who had 
 known Oxford in the generations agone. 
 
 So as I strolled by the Cherwell, of Isis, the 
 rivers that give the beautiful frame to Oxford, 
 or walked under the limes at Trinity, or sat 
 'neath the giant catalpa at New College, or in 
 the cedar shade of Wadham, or as I climbed 
 the Cumnor Hill or crossed the ferry at Bab- 
 lock-hythe, although I appeared alone, I had 
 really the best of company — ^memories of ro- 
 mance, poetry, history, that rush out from one's 
 reading at touch of Oxford. 
 
 Oxford lies in low country; it is almost sur- 
 rounded by the two rivers, the Cherwell and Isis, 
 96 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 as the Thames is called where it flows past the 
 University. I think no people love their rivers 
 more than do the Oxonians, and in summer 
 
 Young and old come forth to play, 
 On a sunshine holiday. 
 
 Many a time I have seen a family party, in 
 which several generations have been represent- 
 ed, give over the day to the river, the Cherwell 
 preferred for its quiet, sequestered nooks. It is 
 delightful to row along the sinuous river, lilies 
 float on the surface, the trees bend and dip over 
 the river, here and there are clumps of beautiful 
 forget-me-not, may be, and when I have seen a 
 hand go out to pluck it, I have uttered the re- 
 straining " Don't," because I am Emersonian to 
 the degree that I can " love the wild rose and 
 leave it on its stalk." The Thames about Ox- 
 ford has numberless attractions. 
 
 Iffley is not far away; if one walks along the 
 turning path she comes ere long to this mill, so 
 many times the subject of the artist's pencil, the 
 poet's pen, and if we have come to the mill we 
 shall be unwise if we do not go once again to 
 Iffley Church, though it may be for the twen- 
 tieth time. It is a most interesting old Norman 
 
 97 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 church, the stone carving of the doors being un- 
 usually interesting. Of many visits here, one 
 stands out with especial clearness — it was a day 
 in Eights' Week when I spent a serene hour here 
 watching the starlings build in the wall and 
 tower. Antiquarian taste, this bird has to select 
 the Norman structure for nesting. The busy lit- 
 tle house builder gave never an eye to the soli- 
 tary under the yew, but builded on and on. The 
 cuckoo shouted, and here amidst the flowers and 
 birds I had a happy hour. 
 
 Here are some bits farther up the river at 
 Nuneham Courtney, which I have reached by 
 boat or by walking, the picturesque cottages I 
 would go far to see were there no other feature 
 that is attractive. 
 
 Now, if you will trust to my guidance, I shall 
 like to take you about Oxford, strolling about 
 its walks and rambling through Its gardens, and 
 we will start from my favorite rooms in Holly- 
 well Street directly opposite one of the entrances 
 to New College Gardens, and I shall resist the 
 allurement of New College Garden this time, 
 but perhaps remembering to tell you that a part 
 of the ancient wall of Oxford is incorporated 
 into the wall of New College Garden. 
 98 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 Our first objective point is Magdalen Bridge 
 —and here I shall begin my rehearsal of associa- 
 tions after I call your attention to that name 
 " Maudlin," the universal pronunciation, al- 
 though my landlady, a most delightful creature, 
 says : " I say Magdalen, but the silly softs, they 
 say ' Maudlin.' " However, the silly softs are 
 the ruling majority, and it was only on that one 
 occasion that I ever knew her superior to the 
 rest of the world. 
 
 Of Magdalen College and its association I 
 shall speak later, but here on Magdalen Bridge 
 I am very likely to recall Shelley, who was an 
 undergraduate at University College during the 
 short time that he was in residence in Oxford. 
 University College, according to tradition, was 
 founded by Alfred the Great. We have most 
 interesting glimpses of Shelley given by his 
 friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who was his 
 college friend, and shared Shelley's expulsion 
 when his too-daring views made his presence un- 
 desired by college authorities. 
 
 " One Sunday we had been reading Plato to- 
 gether so diligently that the usual hour of exer- 
 cise passed away unperceived; we sallied forth 
 hastily to take the air for half an hour before 
 
 99 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 dinner. In the middle of Magdalen Bridge we 
 met a woman with a child in her arms. Shelley 
 was more attentive to our conduct in a life that 
 was past, or to come, than to a decorous regu- 
 lation of the present. With abrupt dexterity he 
 caught hold of the child. The mother, who 
 might well fear that it was about to be thrown 
 over the parapet of the bridge into the sedgy 
 waters below, held it fast by its long train. ' Will 
 your baby tell us anything about preexistence, 
 madam ? ' he asked with a piercing tone and 
 wistful look. The mother made no reply, but 
 perceiving Shelley's object was not murderous, 
 but altogether harmless, she dismissed her ap- 
 prehensions, and relaxed her hold. ' Will your 
 baby tell us anything about preexistence, mad- 
 am ? ' he repeated with unabated earnestness. 
 ' He cannot speak, sir,' said the mother ear- 
 nestly, and said further that he was only a few 
 weeks old. Shelley's argument that that was 
 only a greater reason why he should tell 
 about preexistence met with no comprehension 
 from the mother, who firmly asserted, ' I have 
 never heard him speak, nor any child of his 
 age.' " 
 
 The walks about Oxford are increasingly in- 
 
 700 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 teresting to us when we know that every inch 
 of the ground was known to these two young 
 men. In the rivers and lakelets about, Shelley 
 used to indulge his peculiar whim for sailing 
 paper boats. He would start out with a book, its 
 fly-leaf would go to make the boat. The story 
 is told that, all other paper lacking, he resorted 
 to bank notes, but Hogg says that is a myth. In 
 the Bodleian Library, with its rich treasures, to 
 me one of the most interesting collections is the 
 case of Shelley relics, a miniature showing the 
 marvelous fairness of the young poet, personal 
 possessions of one kind or another, but the chief 
 interest was the volume of Sophocles that was 
 found in Shelley's pocket when the body was 
 washed on the Italian shore after the capsizing 
 of the ill-starred Ariel. I have thought how in- 
 teresting this case must be to young poets. If I 
 have time later I wish to come to Shelley once 
 again to tell you of his favorite walk, worthily 
 the favorite walk of any poet or lover of the 
 beautiful, -the walk over Shotover Plain, but 
 from University College it is but a step to Oriel, 
 which we need not pass from any lack of asso- 
 ciation, and to me the chiefest interest is that 
 Dr. Newman was here a tutor and fellow. 
 
 lOI 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 It is not the polemical work of Newman that 
 I recall, but what I have heard of his personal 
 charm and grace. He is inseparably associated 
 with a great religious movement. Before he 
 came to Oriel he was an undergraduate at Trin- 
 ity. Whenever the lover of all things that are 
 quiet and gentle and true, in life and literature, 
 visits Oxford, he will find himself wondering 
 whether the snapdragon still grows outside the 
 windows of the rooms in Trinity where once 
 lived the author of the " Apologia." It is these 
 poetic associations of Cardinal Newman that 
 abound in Oxford. In the church of St. Mary 
 the Virgin I think of the picture that Matthew 
 Arnold has drawn for us : " Who could resist 
 the charm of that apparition, gliding in the dim 
 afternoon light through the aisles of St. Mary's, 
 rising into the pulpit, and then, in the most en- 
 trancing of voices, breaking the silence with 
 words and thoughts which were a religious music 
 — subtle, sweet, mournful? I seem to hear him 
 saying: 'After the fever of life, after weari- 
 nesses and sicknesses, fightings and despairings, 
 languor and fretfulness, struggling and succeed- 
 ing; after all the changes and chances of this 
 troubled, unhealthy state, at length comes death, 
 
 102 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 at length the white throne of God, at length the 
 beautiful vision.' " 
 
 But opposite Oriel is an entrance to Christ 
 Church College, and now we will not go linger- 
 ingly, because I wish to take you to an humble 
 college, Pembroke. The magnificent church 
 might taunt Pembroke upon its few and humble 
 associations, but cannot Pembroke return? "And 
 is not Johnson ours, himself a host?" That 
 stanch old hero, Samuel Johnson, " whose foi- 
 bles we care more for than most great men's vir- 
 tues," was an undergraduate here, and, too, an 
 undergraduate who did not gracefully conform 
 to the rules of his college. He did not consider 
 his tutor of sufficiently good attainments, so he 
 cut the lecture after the first morning. To the 
 civil inquiry of his tutor as to the cause of his 
 absence, he replied: "Sliding on the ice." He 
 was fined twopence. " You have sconced me 
 tuppence for a lecture not worth a penny." 
 
 Friend Taylor was at Christ Church opposite. 
 Johnson in- going to get Taylor's notes second- 
 hand saw that his ragged shoes were noticed 
 by Christ Church men and went no more. Ma- 
 caulay says : " He was driven from the quad- 
 rangles of Christ Church by the sneering looks 
 
 103 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 which the members of that aristocratlcal society 
 cast at the holes in his boots. . . ." 
 
 I've always liked that amusing, forceful pas- 
 sage of Carlyle's on the story of Johnson's 
 boots, in which he calls him a " picturesque, 
 ragged servitor." Dr. Birkbeck Hill, the best 
 Johnson historian to-day, tells us that he was 
 not a servitor. 
 
 Johnson always visited his college when he 
 came to Oxford. " The church where Johnson 
 worshiped in the era of Voltaire is a venerable 
 place." We can see at Oxford the desk where 
 Johnson wrote his dictionary, his manuscript 
 prayers and meditations, and his teapot. To my 
 Johnsonian eye the teapot had great interest, an 
 immense blue and white one. His prowess as a 
 tea drinker is well known. On one occasion he 
 drank five-and-twenty cups, and he described 
 himself as a " hardened and shameless tea 
 drinker — ^who with tea amuses the evenings, 
 with tea solaces the midnights, and with tea 
 welcomes the mornings." 
 
 On leaving Pembroke, with its association 
 with Johnson, the last literary king, I should 
 take you for a peep at Exeter College, because 
 of two of its men, the most antithetical to John- 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 son, but men who have contributed very much 
 to the art of England and the world, William 
 Morris and Burne-Jones. The building where 
 they had their rooms has been destroyed, but 
 in the chapel of Exeter College is a tapestry 
 designed by Burne-Jones and executed by Mor- 
 ris. Burne-Jones (from King Edward's School 
 at Birmingham) and William Morris (from 
 Marlborough School) took their examinations 
 side by side for Exeter College, and at once be- 
 came great friends, but none of the Exeter men 
 were in their " set," which was made up almost 
 wholly of Pembroke men who had been Burne- 
 Jones's schoolfellows. They formed a " set " of 
 their own, and as their acquaintance ripened they 
 were not without thought of giving a perma- 
 nence to their union by forming themselves into 
 a monastic brotherhood, as nearly all of them 
 had at that time the thought of reading for 
 Holy Orders. A book had come out which in- 
 fluenced them very much, and by which they 
 were guiding their lives — " The Heir of Redr 
 clyffe." Morris, the wealthiest one of the group, 
 had most shaped his life to conform to the 
 model of the High Church hero, and he medi- 
 tated using his fortune to found a monastery. 
 
 105 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 But they talked of poetry. Whatever may be the 
 custom of undergraduates to-day, and they say 
 that very little literature is talked of now, fifty 
 years ago, when William Morris and Burne- 
 Jones were at Oxford, they and their friends 
 talked of Tennyson, Keats, Shelley, Milton — 
 talked and read them. 
 
 Always, since I first heard of the incident 
 some years ago, have; I had a fond memory for 
 the evening when two of the friends, Dixon and 
 Price, of Pembroke, went to Burne-Jones's 
 room, where they found Morris, and Burne- 
 Jones exclaimed wildly, as they entered the 
 room, " He's a big poetl " " Who is? " " Why, 
 Topsy " — the name for Morris among his inti- 
 mate friends all his life, so dubbed from his 
 mass of dark, curly hair. 
 
 But a delicious bit that I cannot refrain from 
 telling you we learn from one of Burne-Jones's 
 letters, written on the first of May, 1853. Then, 
 as now, the time-honored custom of first of May 
 was observed, and an evening's supplementary 
 confusion seems to have been in order in the time 
 of Morris and Burne- Jones, who writes on May 
 day: "Ten o'clock, evening. I have just been 
 pouring basins of water on the crowd below 
 106 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 from Dixon's garret — such fun, by Jove ! *' and 
 then goes on : " I have set my heart on founding 
 a Brotherhood. Learn ' Sir Galahad ' by heart. 
 He is to be the patron of our Order." Later he 
 writes : " We must enlist you in this Crusade and 
 Holy Warfare against the Age." This picture 
 of the social regenerator, the modern Sir Gala- 
 had, pouring basins of water on the heads of the 
 passers-by, shows him to have some features in 
 common with other undergraduates. 
 
 It is possible I might give you a peep at the 
 rooms that were occupied by Walter Pater — but 
 In this hasty run from college to college I have 
 done what I so decidedly reprehend in others. 
 Visitors often try to see Oxford in a few hours, 
 but when one remembers there are more than 
 twenty colleges as well as numberless other fea- 
 tures of interest, it is easy to understand that a 
 brief tarry means, necessarily, a very superficial 
 glance. I had an amusing example of the way 
 Oxford may be seen. One morning a cycling 
 party of three came down the Broad, a gentle- 
 man and two ladies. The gentleman had been 
 smoking, but, removing his pipe, holding the 
 bowl in hand and usiag stem for pointer, he 
 said: "That's the Sheldonian." "The what?" 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 one of his companions called back. " The Shel- 
 donian," he again told them, and they all cycled 
 on, without vouchsafing a second glance at " The 
 Sheldonian." It is this theater, founded by 
 Archbishop Sheldon, and designed by Chris- 
 topher Wren, in which is held yearly the Com- 
 memoration of Founders and Benefactors, here 
 the honorary degree of D.C.L. is conferred on 
 eminent men whom the university wishes to dis- 
 tinguish. The area is arranged for graduates 
 and strangers — a ladies' gallery, while here are 
 donors', and there the undergraduates' gallery. 
 The undergraduate is an animal very much given 
 to chaff, and pays no respect to persons — ^to Dr. 
 Holmes: " Did you come in a one-hoss shay? " 
 To Tennyson: "Did your mother call you 
 early? " And to a distinguished don, who was 
 delivering a long Latin eulogy on some departed 
 dignitary: "That will do very well. Now, sir, 
 construe, please." 
 
 But the outward appearance of the Oxford 
 colleges gives no suggestion, or at the most, 
 meager suggestion, of the delights there are 
 within. In this way Cambridge differs markedly 
 from the sister university. So many of the Cam- 
 bridge charms are open to every eye, but Mag- 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 dalen College, as it abuts on the street, gives no 
 hint whatever of the wealth within of chapel, 
 cloister, park, garden. A dean of New College, 
 which, by the way, was new in 1379, says: " Our 
 forefathers built in a different spirit from our- 
 selves. They contrived a lowly portal, reserving 
 the best attractions for the interior, and well did 
 they know how to charm the soul that had first 
 entered by the gate of humility." 
 
 The college architecture is quadrangular. 
 England has maintained the example set for her 
 by that eminent ecclesiastic and architect, Wil- 
 liam, of Wyckham, the founder of New Col- 
 lege, and entering the portal, one passes through 
 successive quadrangles, each vying with the 
 other in charm. 
 
 Let us enter one of these portals, although in 
 this instance It is not a lowly portal; it is the 
 " Faire Gate " of Christ Church. The lower 
 towers are of the time of the founder. Cardinal 
 Wolsey; the upper, Tom Tower, was added in 
 the next century by Wren. The name was origi- 
 nally Cardinal College. Upon the fall of Wol- 
 sey, Henry VIII went on with the work, and 
 gave his own name to the foundation ; then later 
 it took the name Christ Church College. The 
 
 log 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 quadrangle into which we first come is magnifi- 
 cent in size, and is known by the undignified 
 appellation of Tom Quad. The entire scheme 
 of this college was on a truly magnificent scale, 
 and it is one of the finest, perhaps in many re- 
 spects it is the finest, academic foundation in Eu- 
 rope. Crossing the quadrangle, we come to the 
 stairway, which leads to the dining hall, a beau- 
 tiful entrance to a mediseval hall of great 
 beauty, its only rival being Westminster Hall in 
 London. We must linger for a little to notice 
 the fan vaulting of the roof. Here in the hall 
 are portraits of the famous men associated with 
 the college, portraits from the brushes of Hol- 
 bein, Vandyke, Lely, Kneller, all the painters that 
 have wrought in England since the establishment 
 of the college. Cardinal Wolsey's portrait has 
 not the place of honor over the dais; it is rele- 
 gated to one side, while Henry VIII looks from 
 the central position. It would weary you were I 
 to tell over the names of the sons of Christ 
 Church. It is considered the most aristocratic of 
 Oxford colleges. It was here that King Edward 
 VII was In residence during the short time he 
 was at Oxford. It is notable, too, for the states- 
 men it reckons in its numbers. Three succes- 
 
 IIO 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 sive premiers — Mr. Gladstone, Lord Salisbury, 
 Lord Rosebery — ^were Christ Church men. 
 
 It will illustrate the varying interests of this 
 hall if I tell you a very simple experience of a 
 morning visit. The custodian of the hall is an 
 old man, naturally full of pride in the rich asso- 
 ciations of the place as well as in its material 
 richness. We fraternized pleasantly, and one 
 morning I stood on the edge of a group to which 
 he was pointing out some of the interesting por- 
 traits. " That is Lewis Carroll," he said very 
 tenderly, and as it met with no response I said, 
 merely because I did not like to see the old man's 
 loving enthusiasm wasted: " ' Alice in Wonder- 
 land'?" "Yes, 'Alice in Wonderland,'" he 
 said. Of course, Lewis Carroll, who lived for 
 years and years at Christ Church, was a famil- 
 iar and dear figure to him. One young lady de- 
 tached herself from the group and said : " Could 
 you, by any chance, tell me at which one of these 
 tables Charles Wesley sat?" Now I could not 
 by any chance tell, nor had I ever even specu- 
 lated as to the location at table of the great 
 Methodist leader, but her question interested me 
 because it showed what diverse interests may 
 bring one a pilgrim to this hall. It may be of 
 
 III 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 interest to you if I remind you newly that both 
 John and Charles Wesley were of this college. 
 
 The cathedral of Oxford is the chapel of 
 Christ Church College, a condition that some- 
 times leads to complications in the etiquette of 
 precedence ; but while one pays many visits here, 
 and grows very much to love this oddly-placed 
 cathedral in the heart of the college buildings, 
 and while its early history is in the fascinatingly 
 remote Saxon times, and its founder is a Saxon 
 saint of the eighth century, I cannot give any 
 further time to this quarter of Oxford, because 
 other places call. 
 
 New College is aboundingly attractive. The 
 entrance is of the lowly portal order, but the 
 ages have poetized this — if you will permit that 
 use of the word — so that this is to me one of the 
 most delightful nooks in the altogether charm- 
 ing city. The chapel, with its window designed 
 by Reynolds, the cloisters and bell tower, the 
 gardens, are as familiar to me as may be, and 
 the gardens are most satisfactory, particujarly in 
 early summer, when the great spikes of the 
 chestnut show against the old wall — particularly 
 in later summer, when the foliage is dense, and 
 the " adoring vines " make green the tower and 
 
 112 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 parapets. But I must not exhaust epithet and 
 praise on New College Gardens, because I shall 
 like to have you share with me the delight I have 
 in St. John's Garden, and I know just the sea- 
 son of the year, the hour of the day, that I should 
 wish for your first visit to this spot. It shall not 
 be in early summer, although there would then 
 be flowers without number — the chestnut, the 
 laburnum, the hawthorn — the flowers that are 
 beautiful when the year is young; in May, the 
 walls lack the dense infolding that I love, though 
 there is the purple of the wistaria, the white of 
 the clematis, and the suggestion that spring blos- 
 soms are trying to gladden this old wall, and 
 give it a springtime air, but I like it better when 
 summer is advanced, and the maturer vines have 
 a hint now and again in their richness that sum- 
 mer is at its height — so here let us come some 
 rather late summer day, not when the sun is 
 lingering low adown in the red west, but " in 
 the perfect middle of a splendid afternoon " ; 
 even then there is an affluence of time, because 
 the English afternoons are so much longer than 
 ours, the shadows are long on the velvety turf, 
 there will be no sound harsher than the chime or 
 a bird note. It realizes a notion of an earthly 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 paradise, and, if my favorite lines are also yours, 
 you will say so heartfeltly, I am sure: 
 
 Oh, the old wall here! How I could pass 
 
 Life in a long midsummer day, 
 My feet confined to a plot of grass, 
 
 My eyes from a wall not once away! 
 And lush and lithe do the creepers clothe 
 
 Low wall I watch, with a wreath of green. 
 
 This wall is the library front, founded by 
 Archbishop Laud, designed by Inigo Jones. 
 There are in this library, if you care to go within, 
 some rather grewsome relics of Laud — the cap 
 in which he was beheaded, the staff which sup- 
 ported him to the scaffold, his episcopal crosier. 
 There is a legend that Laud walks the room; a 
 certain grave historian tells us there is no foun- 
 dation in that legend — ^^disappointing to me. 
 When Laud was Chancellor of the University 
 he entertained the king and queen, and entire 
 court, here at St. John. There is in this library 
 a portrait of Charles I, having the book of 
 Psalms written on the lines of his face and the 
 hairs of his head. When Charles II was at Ox- 
 ford he begged this picture, and offered to give 
 them anything they asked in return. They reluc- 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 tantly yielded. "And now what would you 
 like." " The picture back again, please, your 
 Majesty," and Charles restored the portrait — 
 so the story goes. 
 
 But Magdalen College shares with St. John 
 the admiration given to pleasant places. The 
 water walks of Magdalen are shaded by ancient 
 trees, and border on the Che.rwell that meanders 
 with lazy motion. The excess of beauty of St. 
 John and Magdalen has not escaped the critic, 
 Mr. Andrew Lang, who is neither of St. John 
 nor of Magdalen, but of Merton College. He 
 says: " It is easy to understand that men find it 
 a weary task to read in sight of the beauty of 
 the groves of Magdalen and the gardens of St. 
 John. When Kubla Khan ' a stately pleasure 
 dome decreed,' he did not mean to settle stu- 
 dents there, and to ask them for metaphysical 
 essays and for Greek and Latin prose composi- 
 tions." Kubla Khan, Mr. Lang thinks, would 
 have found a palace to his desire in the gardens 
 of St. John or the groves of Magdalen, " but 
 here," he adds, " is scarcely the training-ground 
 of first-class men." 
 
 But it is quite time that we stroll out from 
 Oxford to one, at least, of the many-storied 
 
 115 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 places in the vicinity. One of the most romantic 
 pages of English history is filled with the story 
 of Rosamond de Clifford, " that Rosamond 
 whom men call fair." In some way or another, 
 we learn the story of the far-away times of 
 Henry II, while we are yet quite unlearned in 
 the Hanoverian period, and not wholly familiar 
 with the ups and downs of the Victorian age. 
 Rosamond de Clifford was a reality of the 
 twelfth century, but tradition has spun such a 
 veil of romance about her that it is not always 
 easy to believe that Rosamond actually lived, 
 even in the far-away time. Her royal lover, 
 Henry II, built her bower at Woodstock, which 
 is but a few miles from Oxford. The entrance 
 to the bower was so labyrinthine that to traverse 
 it was impossible to the uninitiated save by 
 means of a clue; a green silk thread is said to 
 have been the means which took Queen Eleanor 
 to the hiding place of the beauty. According to 
 tradition, the queen was momentarily enthralled 
 by Rosamond's wondrous charm, but she quick- 
 ly recovered her self-possession, and gave her 
 the choice of dagger or poison bowl which she 
 bore in either hand, notwithstanding the diffi- 
 culties that beset her ingress. Tennyson in 
 ii6 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 his " Becket " has lavished description on this 
 bower of Rosamond. 
 
 HENRY. / hade them clear 
 
 A royal pleasaunce for thee in the 
 
 wood, 
 Not leave these country-fold at 
 court. 
 
 ROSAMOND. / brought them 
 
 In from the wood and set them 
 
 here. 
 I love them 
 More than the garden flowers, that 
 
 seem at most 
 Sweet guests or foreign cousins, not 
 
 half speaking 
 The language of the land. 
 
 HENRY. Yet these tree towers, 
 
 Their long bird-echoing minster 
 
 aisles — the voice 
 Of the perpetual brook, these gold- 
 en slopes, 
 Of Solomon, spanning flowers — 
 that was your saying, 
 All pleased you so at first. 
 
 One drinks from \^|; Rosamond's well, and 
 I have mentioned her to give interest to the 
 first short walk; we may take Godstow Nun- 
 
 117 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 nery, or its ruins; it is perhaps two miles from 
 Oxford; for the most part the walk is along the 
 Thames, by a shaded path; on one side is the 
 river with boats and canoes, beyond the river 
 are broad meadows, where hundreds of horses 
 and cattle graze. Though one be alone, she is 
 never alone, the gay parties along the stream af- 
 fording constant company. The boatmen are 
 not all in motion, some lie in boats — 
 
 Moored to the banks mid wide grass meadows 
 
 which the sunshine fills, 
 And watch the warm, green, muffled Cumnor 
 
 Hills. 
 
 After " no more than two miles' walk " we 
 come to the ruins of Godstow Nunnery. 'Twas 
 at the nunnery that Rosamond was educated, 
 here she fled for protection when she was not 
 poisoned by Queen Eleanor. She died naturally, 
 but it is supposed that a chalice, or some such 
 figure on her tomb, gave rise to the tale of poi- 
 son. Several times during her residence at Wood- 
 stock she visited Godstow, and, it is said, she 
 was lectured by the nuns. 
 
 A fifteenthrcentury balladist describes thus the 
 twelfth-century beauty : 
 ii8 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 Her crisped locks like threads of gold 
 
 Appeared to all men's sight, 
 Her sparkling eyes, like Orient pearls, 
 
 Did cast a heavenly light. 
 
 To return to Oxford, one of the glories of 
 many-gloried Oxford is Magdalen College, with 
 its majestic tower, from the top of which the 
 May morn is greeted with the Latin hymn, its 
 cloisters, chapel, water walks. As I walked, 
 time and again where the Cherwell goes " mean- 
 dering with a lazy motion," I grew accustomed 
 to a presence which I could not dissociate from 
 Magdalen, although he had more to do with 
 Christ Church College. Cardinal Wolsey, in his 
 robes of office and dignity, came often before my 
 eyes. To Wolsey has been attributed the build- 
 ing of the tower here at Magdalen, but if he 
 had any connection with it, it was the prosaic, 
 although necessary one, of paying the bills when 
 he was bursar to the college. 
 
 The great cardinal and chancellor was in- 
 terested in the new learning which was agitating 
 all Europe, and without doubt, desirous of mak- 
 ing a monument to his greatness, founded the 
 college, now Christ Church College, calling it 
 Cardinal College. Contemporaneously with his 
 
 119 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 founding the college, he established a school at 
 Ipswich for feeding the college; that died with 
 his power. Cardinal Wolsey had a faithful fol- 
 lower, George Cavendish, by name, who at- 
 tended him to his death, and afterward led a 
 life of retirement, meditating on the vanity of 
 human ambition as exemplified in Wolsey's life. 
 After a time he wrote a life of Wolsey, but 
 then people were not ready for a life of the car- 
 dinal; "men were busy undoing his work." — 
 " Not till the , days of Mary did Cavendish 
 gather together his notes. Wolsey had become 
 to him a type of the vanity of human; endeavor, 
 and points the morals of the superiority of a 
 quiet life with God over the manifold activities 
 of aspiring ambition." The work remained in 
 manuscript until the next century. There were 
 several copies in manuscript; one is now in the 
 British Museum which you may see; " one copy 
 must have fallen into the hands of Shakespeare, 
 who condensed,; with his usual quickness of per- 
 ception, what the public could understand of it 
 in the play of Henry VIII. It says much for 
 Wolsey, that he chose as his personal attendant 
 a man of the sweet, sensitive, retiring type of 
 George Cavendish, though it was not till after 
 
 120 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 his fall from power that he learned the value 
 of such a friend." 
 
 As I paced the water walks at Magdalen, I 
 often thought of Cardinal Wolsey's career, 
 often the play of Henry VIII was in my hand» 
 and it is not strange that the scene became the 
 stage in my imagination for the play. Many 
 times the words with which we are so familiar 
 sounded in my ears. I used to see the scene 
 wherein Cardinal Wolsey, deprived of his seal, 
 the haughty lords leave him — 
 
 So fare you well, my little good lord cardinal. 
 
 And he: 
 
 So farewell to the little good you bear me. 
 Farewell! a long farewell to all my greatness! 
 
 Cromwell, Cromwell, 
 
 Had I but served my God with half the zeal 
 
 1 served my king, He would not in mine age 
 Have left me naked to mine enemies. 
 
 The repudiated Queen Katherine looked 
 upon Wolsey as the cause of her sorrow, and 
 after the cardinal's death, we have, from Cav- 
 endish's note, with Katherine and her gentlemen 
 usher, Griffith, the remarkable portrait which 
 
 121 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 gives the summing up of Wolsey's character 
 that I wish to present to you, the blending of 
 good and bad, the mingling of faults and vir- 
 tues which posterity accepts, although his con- 
 temporaries did not take this charitable view; 
 and, further, it is a tribute to his work at Christ 
 Church. The queen enters assisted by gentle- 
 man usher and waiting woman. 
 
 KATHERINE. Didst tkou not tell me, Griffith, 
 as thou ledst me. 
 That the great child of honor, 
 Cardinal fFolsey, was dead? 
 
 Prithee, good Griffith, tell me how 
 
 he died: 
 If well, he stepped before me, 
 
 happily, 
 For my example. 
 
 GENTLEMAN USHER. Well, the voice goes, 
 madame: 
 
 Then follows the account condensed from 
 Cavendish : 
 
 He was never. 
 But where he meant to ruin, pitiful: 
 
 His promises were as he then was, mighty; 
 But his performance, as he now is, nothing. 
 
 122 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 On the diametrically opposite side of Oxford 
 are Worcester College Gardens. These gardens 
 have a lake, and as one sits on the shore of this 
 lake, like Sir Bedevere, " revolving many mem- 
 ories," Amy Robsart, the ill-starred heroine of 
 " Kenilworth," may be the subject of her rev- 
 eries. 
 
 Before the foundation of Worcester College, 
 an earlier college, Gloucester Hall, stood on the 
 site. When Amy Robsart was murdered at 
 Cumnor Hall, but four miles away, her body 
 was brought to Gloucester Hall, and lay in state. 
 I think I am right in telling you that Robert 
 Dudley, her husband, was Chancellor of Glou- 
 cester Hall at this time. Her body lay in state 
 in the hall, the hall was hung in mourning. The 
 gentlewomen did watch, the mourners did dine. 
 She was buried in the Church of St. Mary the 
 Virgin. It Is said that the agitated clergymen 
 more than once in the course of the sermon said 
 murdered instead of slain. 
 
 Cumnor Hall, where Amy lived, stood in the 
 field adjoining the church. Its psychic sense is 
 poignant, being one of the most romantically 
 mysterious of castles because of the long-suffer- 
 ing vigil kept by a solitary lady. An eighteenth 
 century ballad says : j2? 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 The village maids with fearful glance, 
 Avoid the ancient moss-grown wall; 
 
 Nor ever lead the merry dance 
 Among the groves of Cumnor Hall. 
 
 Full many a traveler oft hath sighed 
 And pensive wept the countess' fall, 
 
 As wandering onward they've espied 
 The haunted spires of Cumnor Hall. 
 
 Now the pensive traveler would like to weep 
 the countess's fall at sight of the towers, but 
 there are no towers; every vestige of them is 
 gone, but the memory of Amy remains. Not 
 very long ago, an old man lived in Cumnor who 
 remembered that when he and his boy friends 
 £shed in the ponds near by, a general scamper- 
 ing could be brought about by some one's call- 
 ing out, " Dame Dudley is coming, Dame Dud- 
 ley is coming 1 " 
 
 Now that I have brought you four miles from 
 Oxford to Cumnor Hall, I will take you 
 through the fields, and we will cross the strip- 
 ling Thames at Bablock-hythe. How willingly 
 would I travel weary miles simply to cross the 
 Thames at Bablock-hythe 1 Call the ferryman 
 and he will take us over, and then it is only a 
 couple of miles or so farther to Stanton Har- 
 124 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 court, where, in the chamber of the tower, Pope 
 translated the " Iliad." Perhaps we will climb 
 the stair — the stair that makes us think of our 
 Virgil only to invert the quotation. The Man- 
 tuan poet tells us the descent to Avernus is easy, 
 but to retrace our steps and gain the upper air, 
 there is the toil, the difficulty, but as one climbs 
 the steep narrow stairs, with nothing but the 
 blank slippery wall for hand support, she thinks 
 the ascent is difficult, but to retrace one's steps 
 in descent will be more difficult still — and then 
 there is a heretical minute when physical dis- 
 comfort is in excess of pilgrim zeal, when one 
 wonders whether this sort of thing pays. But 
 if one has had Pope, Gay, Lady Mary Worthey 
 Montague, and others of that set for her famil- 
 iar friends, she quickly forgets the discomfort, 
 in her pleasure at seeing the places associated 
 with them. 
 
 One of the most famous letters in literary his- 
 tory is connected with this place. I believe the 
 fact is that Gay wrote the letter to Fortescue, 
 but Pope admired it sufficiently to copy it, elab- 
 orate it, and send it off to Lady Mary. After 
 their quarrel, he disclaimed the letter. It tells 
 the story of those lovers killed by lightning who 
 
 J25 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 are buried in the churchyard here at Stanton 
 Harcourt, and we go to look at the tablet on 
 the side of the church with the poetical tribute 
 by Pope. It was of this that Lady Mary cyni- 
 cally wrote: 
 
 Now they are happy in their doom, 
 For Pope has writ upon the tomb. 
 
 We will go home by Eynsham, and will have 
 made a fifteen-mile round. Perhaps I should 
 not dare tell you how far the round is before we 
 started out. 
 
 Before I leave Worcester College Gardens 
 altogether, I wish to say that if by day one's 
 memories there revert to Amy Robsart and her 
 melancholy fortunes, at evening the memories 
 awakened may be vastly different. Here during 
 commemoration week are always enacted some 
 pastoral plays. The gardens are lighted with 
 fairy lamps and lanterns, the stage is set under 
 a huge, widely spreading beech tree, near which 
 a flowering elder bush displays its wealth of 
 white. Sometimes, it's the Merry Wives and 
 Falstaff that come under the Greenwood Tree 
 here, or Julia may seek her recreant lord. Na- 
 ture has a tricksy sense of the humorous. Never 
 126 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 did she display it more aptly than one evening 
 last summer. The " Two Gentlemen of Vero- 
 na " had taken possession of the magically 
 lighted garden, and Proteus had just begun his 
 soliloquy : 
 
 O, how this spring of love resemhleth 
 The uncertain glory of an April day, 
 
 Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, 
 And by and by a cloud takes all away! 
 
 When plash came down an English shower, and 
 elevated umbrellas took all glory and romance 
 away for a little while. 
 
 I should like you to peep into Wadham Gar- 
 dens with me. My friends sometimes protest 
 here, and say, " We don't care anything about 
 that seventeenth-century mystery, John Ingle- 
 sant, that you say belongs in these gardens," but 
 let me tell you one word of him. When Charles 
 I was driven from London by that obstreperous 
 Parliament, he took up his quarters, as every 
 one knows, in the loyal city of Oxford. Here 
 he held court, here the loyalist Parliament met. 
 Gay dames and gallants made very merry in 
 the beautiful city, and seemed quite oblivious of 
 the fate impending for the king and kingdom. 
 
 127 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 A very good picture of Oxford at this time is 
 in the early chapters of " John Inglesant." It 
 would be difficult to define the hero, a compound 
 of mystic, courtier, Jesuit, but his quarters were 
 at Wadham, and after the exacting duties of his 
 office in the court, I think of him returning to 
 the cedar walk here at Wadham, where even in 
 his day, three centuries ago, the trees were an- 
 cient, and here in the quiet retirement forgetting 
 the turmoils of the court. 
 
 Perhaps you know the beautiful old quad- 
 rangle at Balliol, and the garden with its stately 
 trees. I never, I think, enter the precincts of 
 Balliol without recalling the friendship of two 
 Balliol men which is immortalized in the verse 
 of one of them. Matthew Arnold and Arthur 
 Hugh Clough, a poet too, were Oxford men, 
 lovers of the country about Oxford. After 
 Clough's death in Florence, Matthew Arnold 
 commemorated their friendship in the most 
 beautiful verse, and enshrined in the poems the 
 delightful scenes about Oxford. Had I gone to 
 Oxford without Matthew Arnold's " Scholar 
 Gypsy" and "Thyrsis " for company, my pleas- 
 ure had been less, I know. Lines from those 
 poems were in my heart and on my tongue : 
 128 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 Come, let me read the oft-read tale again; 
 
 The story of the Oxford scholar poor, 
 Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain, 
 
 Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door, 
 One summer morn forsook his friends. 
 
 And went to learn the gypsy-lore, 
 And roamed the world with that wild brother- 
 hood. 
 
 And came as most men deem'd to little good. 
 But came to Oxford and his friends no more. 
 
 But once, years after, in the country lanes. 
 
 Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew, 
 Met him, and of his way of life inquired. 
 
 Whereat he answered that the gypsy-crew, 
 His mates, had arts to rule as they desired 
 
 The workings of men's brains. 
 And they can bind them to what thoughts they 
 will. 
 
 "And I," he said, "the secret of their art 
 When fully learned will to the world impart, 
 
 But it needs heaven-sent moments for this 
 skill" 
 
 This said, he left them, and returned no more — 
 But rumors hung about the countryside. 
 
 That the lost scholar long was seen to stray 
 Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue- 
 tied. 
 
 In hat of antique shape and cloak of gray, 
 The same the gypsies wore. 
 
 * * * i2g 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 For most, I know, thou lov'st retired ground! 
 
 Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe, 
 Returning home on summer-nights have met 
 
 Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock- 
 hithe. 
 Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet. 
 
 As the point's rope chops round; 
 And leaning backward in a pensive dream, 
 
 And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers. 
 Pluck' d in shy fields and distant JVychwood 
 bowers. 
 
 And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream. 
 
 And this from Thyrsis : 
 
 That single elm tree bright against the west — 
 
 / miss it! it is gone? 
 We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said. 
 
 Our friend, the Gypsy Scholar, was not dead; 
 While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on. 
 
 But hush! the upland hath a sudden loss 
 Of quiet! — Look, adown the dusk hillside, 
 
 A troop of Oxford hunters going home. 
 As in old days, jovial and talking, ride! 
 
 From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they 
 come. 
 
 I cannot take time for a leisurely walk over 
 Shotover Hill, beloved of Shelley, but I should 
 entreat you to take the walk, a broad grassy 
 130 
 
Oxford's Walks and Gardens 
 
 plateau, edged with trees and hedges. When 
 the world is white with May, there is a beauti- 
 ful frame for the plateau. 
 
 The first time I was on Shotover Plain, I was 
 on my way to Forest Hill. I went miles out of 
 my way, so perhaps you would not care to ac- 
 company me. I began to despair. I thought I 
 should have to return, failing in my quest, but 
 at last as I was giving way to my feeling that 
 the pale mark of failure must be set on me, I 
 caught sight of a village straggling up a tree- 
 lined street. My heart told me that it was the 
 place — ^but why my desire to see Forest Hill at 
 all? Commentators are not agreed as to the 
 place that gave Milton his picture for " L' Al- 
 legro " and "II Penseroso"; the most are for 
 Horton, some for Forest Hill, but no one can 
 deny that he met, wooed, and married .Mary 
 Powell here. I expect that those poems of Mil- 
 ton, " II Penseroso " and " L' Allegro," gave me 
 some of my first and greatest anticipatory pleas- 
 ures in English rural life and songs. Conse- 
 quently I was most ready to believe Forest Hill 
 suggested the poems, if I found it satisfactory 
 to me, and it was ideal. Scarcely had I discov- 
 ered the sweet village before I also saw, 
 
 131 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes 
 
 From betwixt two aged oaks, 
 Where Corydon and Thyrsis met. 
 
 Sometimes my remarks about the Cherwell, 
 its beauty and the pleasure It gives the Oxford- 
 ians, seem to have been taken rather in the na- 
 ture of a glove thrown down — ^which Is far from 
 my intention — but in my passage from one New 
 England town to another, I have had queries 
 like this discharged at me : " Do you know the 
 Sudbury well?" "Very little." "The first 
 day this spring that's suitable for boating, you 
 are to spend all day with us on the Sudbury. 
 I'm sure you'll say it's as beautiful as any Eng- 
 lish river you ever saw." And here has my lis- 
 tener forgotten the most forceful statement that 
 I bring to my work — it is not the intrinsic 
 beauty alone, it is the association which adds 
 a glamour indescribable to Oxford's charms. 
 
 My prints will suggest little to you of the 
 outward beauty, my tongue is feeble to express 
 to you the poetry of association, so until you 
 have seen " the sweet city with her dreaming 
 spires " you can not picture to yourself its de- 
 lights. 
 
FROM LOUGH NEAGH TO 
 LOUGH FOTLE 
 
 IT might be assumed that anyone knows 
 where Lough Neagh is, but false postu- 
 late. It is in the heart of Ulster — border- 
 ing on five counties, Tyrone, Dury, Antrim, 
 Down, Armagh, and is the largest lake in the 
 United Kingdom. The Irish are not perfectly 
 acquainted with it. "Is the water salt?" 
 " Nay, man alive, dinna ye ken, that an interior 
 lake of this size were it salt would be the world's 
 wonder?" Its surface is little diversified, hav- 
 ing only one island of any size, Ram Island, 
 and its shores are not picturesque. 
 
 But whether one may locate the lake, every- 
 one knows its origin, from a spring with mirac- 
 ulous power of overflowing if the stone cover 
 were not properly replaced. A woman that had 
 heard her crying child and ran to it, lifted the 
 cover of the spring to look beneath and forgot 
 to put it back, hence the inundated country, sub- 
 merged towns, and towers for twenty miles, 
 
 133 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 and where the places were, Lough Neagh is! 
 This is the commonest version, known by every- 
 one and credited by many. 
 
 Moore's lines have fixed the legend ineradi- 
 cably. 
 
 On Lough Neagh' s banks as the fisherman strays 
 When the clear soft eve^s declining, 
 
 He sees the round towers of other days 
 In the wave beneath him shining. 
 
 This is the meager legend that accounts for 
 Lough Neagh. Few enough of the northern 
 peasants have heard an elaboration of the story 
 which I am going to give you. 
 
 There is in Dublin, in the possession of the 
 Royal Irish Academy, a book called the " Book 
 of the Dun Cow." It is the oldest manuscript 
 book of miscellaneous literature of Ireland. It 
 was transcribed from older books by a learned 
 scribe in 1106. It is mutilated, but one hundred 
 and thirty-four large vellum pages now remain, 
 of poetry, stories, biographies — all kinds of lit- 
 erature. It is called the book of the Dun Cow 
 from the parchment on which it was transcribed. 
 Some notion of the value of this book may be 
 got from a little knowledge of the history of 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 Ireland. When a conqueror dictated his terms 
 of peace, and the concessions that the van- 
 quished were to make, an item of importance 
 besides lands and stores was — the " Book of 
 the Dun Cow." When arms were resumed, one. 
 of the objects to gain was this same book of the 
 Dun Cow. The book is not beautiful to look 
 at, as are the " Book of Kells," the " Book of 
 Darrow," the " Book of Armagh," and others of 
 the transcendently beautiful illuminated manu- 
 scripts over which the monks toiled, but know- 
 ing the history of the Dun Cow, it has a roman- 
 tic interest for me, a quality of interest that 
 the more artistic do not possess. 
 
 When I returned to my home in North Ire- 
 land, my host, after giving me the never-want- 
 ing " Welcome home," added, " Did you see 
 the book of the Dun Cow? " — a book in which 
 he shared my interest. 
 
 Among the stories in this famous book is 
 one that tells of Lough Neagh and its origin. It 
 should be told in something other than this 
 day's vernacular. 
 
 Long, long years ago, centuries ago, a certain 
 king of Munster had a son, Ecca by name, who 
 became alienated from his father. The estrange- 
 
 135 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 ment grew, so that the son, with a following, 
 left the country to found a new kingdom. His 
 men had with them horses and many posses- 
 sions. One night, when they had encamped in a 
 strange country, the ruler of the country ordered 
 their immediate withdrawal, and upon their 
 failing to go, he killed all their horses, and said, 
 " To-night we have slain the beasts, to-morrow, 
 if ye tarry, 'twill be the men." " But how can 
 we go on," asked Ecca, "when we have no 
 horses to carry our burdens? " " I will provide 
 means," said the chief, and there appeared one 
 gigantic horse able to carry all their belongings. 
 He warned Ecca that the horse must be kept 
 continually in motion, that if it were permitted 
 to stop for a moment a very dire disaster would 
 befall the expedition. The company went on 
 until it came to the Plain of the Gray Copse, 
 which they selected for their new home. In the 
 distribution of goods, the immense horse stood 
 still. They were forgetful of the warning, and 
 a spring started from the ground. Ecca, re- 
 membering then that he had been cautioned 
 about results, knew that the spring must be 
 watched lest it should bring disaster upon his 
 new colony. He built a house around the 
 '36 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 spring, gave it into the care of a woman, and 
 commanded her to let no one draw water except 
 they came from the palace. For a long time 
 the woman was most vigilant, and no harm 
 came to the Plain of the Gray Copse; all was 
 prosperous. 
 
 Now Ecca had two daughters, Arin and 
 Liban. The husband of Arin had the " fatal 
 gift of prophecy," but, like other prophets, his 
 words availed naught. He implored Ecca to 
 quit the Plain of the Gray Copse, predicting the 
 destruction of all if they remained. 
 
 Come forth, come forth, ye valiant men: build 
 
 boats and build them fast! 
 I see the waters surging out, a torrent deep and 
 
 vast; 
 I see our chief and all his host o'erwhelmed be- 
 
 neath the wave, 
 And Arin, too, my best beloved, alas, I cannot 
 
 save. 
 But Liban east and west shall swim. 
 
 Long ages on the ocean's brim 
 By mystic shores and islets dim 
 And down in the deep sea. 
 
 So Cuman, the son-in-law of Ecca, is repre- 
 sented as saying, going up and down the land in 
 
 137 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 great distress of mind. And finally his words 
 proved true. The spring was left unguarded for 
 a moment and the waters came rushing out; all 
 things and people were engulfed and destroyed, 
 save only Liban, Curnan, and one other. It is 
 only with Liban's fate that we are concerned, 
 and here ends the story as far as Lough Neagh, 
 but the rest of the story attaches to the country 
 immediately about the Lough. 
 
 Liban remained under the water in her cham- 
 ber for a year, and her lapdog remained with 
 her. One day when she saw the salmon splash- 
 ing beneath the water, she wished she were a 
 salmon, and straightway she became one, except 
 as to her breast and head, which retained Li- 
 ban's form, and her lapdog was changed to an 
 otter. She swam east, and she swam west, as 
 Curnan had predicted. One day, Beoc, from the 
 ecclesiastical house, was starting off in his cur- 
 ragh on a mission to Pope Gregory, in Rome. 
 As he sailed over the water, he heard beautiful, 
 entrancing singing; it was Liban, and she said 
 to Beoc, " Come to OUarba near the end of the 
 year, with boats and fishing nets to take me 
 from the water." OUarba was what is now 
 Lame Water, on the Antrim coast. Beoc most 
 138 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 composedly sailed on, executed his commission 
 in Rome, but on His return to Ireland he told 
 the other saints In the monastery, and a goodly 
 company came on a day near the end of the year, 
 as appointed by LIban. She was caught In the 
 net of one Fergus of Meellch, and although 
 there was some contention between him and 
 Beoc as to the possession of her. It was soon 
 amicably settled: she was conveyed In a chariot 
 drawn by yoked oxen to sanctuary, and imme- 
 diately translated to joys of Paradise. 
 
 Arboe is on the shores of Lough Neagh, In 
 county Tyrone, in the region famous for its 
 Rapparees, a few centuries ago. 'Twas not far 
 away that Rory, the Rapparee, most famous of 
 all, terrorized the English invader. 
 
 Full oft have the hills of Tyrone 
 
 With cry of the gallow-glass rang, 
 When down on the red ranks of Cromwell 
 
 With hatred and fury they sprang. 
 
 But never in breach or in battle, 
 
 In onset, in foray or raid, 
 Oh, ne'er saw the hills of Tyrone 
 
 Such charge as the Rapparees made. 
 
 The abbey ruins and cross of Arboe are out- 
 side the village, and because of that, perhaps, 
 
 139 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 and perhaps because of the charge the Rappa- 
 rees made, the cross was not injured by Crom- 
 well. The broken arm is not the work of time, 
 or of Cromwelllan soldiers, but of nineteenth- 
 century vandalism. 
 
 Then we may look over to Ram's Island in 
 Lough Neagh. 
 
 It's pretty to he in Balinderry, 
 
 It's pretty to be in Aghaler, 
 
 It's pretty to be in bonny Ram's Island 
 
 Sitting under an ivy tree — 
 
 Och hone, Och hone. 
 Oh, that I was in Little Ram's Island, 
 Oh, that I was with Phelim my diamond. 
 He would whistle and I would sing 
 Till we would make the whole island ring. 
 " I'm going," he said, " from Balinderry, 
 
 Out and across the stormy sea, 
 And if in your heart you love me, Mary, 
 
 Open your arms at last to me." 
 And there in the gloom of the groaning 
 
 mast. 
 He kissed me first and he kissed me last. 
 'Twas happy to be in Little Ram's Island, 
 
 But now it's as sad as sad can be. 
 For the ship that sailed with Phelimy Hy- 
 land, 
 
 Is sank forever beneath the sea. 
 
 140 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 It's pretty to be in Balinderry, 
 
 It's pretty to he in Magharalin. 
 
 'Tis pretty to he in Balinderry 
 
 'Tis pretty to he at the Cash of Toome. 
 
 But a variation in locale and sentiment is the 
 Church Island version. Church Island is a beau- 
 tiful little island in Lough Beg, an arm of 
 Lough Neagh. It was the site of an early re- 
 ligious foundation, and the ruins are in a state 
 of unusual preservation. 
 
 Oh, it's pretty to he in honny Church Island, 
 Nobody there but Phelitn my diamond, 
 Phelim would whistle and I would sing 
 Until we would make the Church Island 
 ring. 
 
 Phelime, Phelime, why did you leave me? 
 Sure I could wash, I could bake, I could 
 
 spin, 
 Phelime, Phelime, why did you leave mef 
 I'll tell the priest on you, Phelime, Phil. 
 
 Randalstown was in the region where I was 
 led to expect that I might find the song, and 
 dodging into shops, buying a few biscuits, I 
 Inquired, but no one knew It in Randalstown. 
 I found it, however. In Cushendall, where I 
 found much else, things lovely and of good 
 report. 
 
 J41 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 The ruins of Shane's Castle are on the shores 
 of Lough Neagh, and very picturesque they are. 
 Shane's Castle was one of my objects in Ireland. 
 This domain was for long the seat of that fam- 
 ily of O'Neills that ruled Ireland before the 
 coming of St. Patrick. Now the name and in- 
 signia of the O'Neills are preserved, but the 
 present family are usurpers, Chichesters of Eliz- 
 abethan favor, and they have no lineal claim to 
 the glories of the historic O'Neills. The flag of 
 the O'Neills was flying from the bastion on the 
 glorious June day when I visited Shane's Cas- 
 tle. The emblem of the O'Neill's is the Red 
 Hand. Many hundred years ago, when a vi- 
 king invader was nearing Ireland, he prom- 
 ised vast possessions to the first man who 
 touched land. An O'Neill, the progenitor 
 of the great race, cut off his left hand and 
 flung it ashore, thus touching land before 
 any of his fellow adventurers. This story is 
 not the sole property of the O'Neills. Other 
 families claim it under somewhat modified 
 circumstances, but the fact is that the O'Neills 
 have always used the Red Hand for their 
 emblem. 
 
 The O'Neills have a banshee, and she was 
 142 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 distinctly seen by many in 1 8 1 6, when the Cas- 
 tle was burned, for it is not time, but fire, that 
 has made these ruins. The flames lighted up 
 Lough Neagh for miles and miles around, the 
 people gathered on the heights around to see 
 the sight, there were no means for extinguishing 
 it, and many saw a figure, white-robed, move 
 from window to window wringing her hands, 
 the banshee of the house. 
 
 The demesne is the finest in Ireland, except- 
 ing the Marquis of Waterford's at Curragh- 
 more, but because it Is in the North, it is less 
 well known. It was very early that I rang the 
 bell at the lodge gate — so early that the portress 
 was inclined to deny me entrance. She thought 
 sinister business and not pleasure must be my 
 motive, but I convinced her that I was a harm- 
 less tourist and had no business beyond the see- 
 ing the estate and Shane's Castle. She became 
 hospitable, and upon my telling her that my 
 early arrival meant that I had left breakfastless, 
 she gave me bread and tea and egg, and we chat- 
 ted. The breakfast cost me whatever I pleased 
 to give in money, although the portress de- 
 murred about accepting anything; but the heavi- 
 est payment exacted was the looking at the fam- 
 
 143 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 ily photographs and commenting upon the re- 
 semblances and qualities. 
 
 The O'Neill was justified to lose his hand if 
 'twere to gain territory as beautiful as is the 
 estate. From the gate I entered to the Castle 
 is three long miles, as I was told again and 
 again. And anyone that thinks a mile is abso- 
 lute is uncertain; there are miles and miles. 
 There's the Irish mile, which is much longer, 
 longer by more than twelve hundred feet, than 
 the English mile. But one did not care for num- 
 ber or length of miles when the scene was so 
 delightful, the morning so rare. The Main 
 winds in and about the place; several bridges 
 cross it. Trees of infinite variety and varied 
 growth shade the way, the most beautiful ferns 
 and rhododendrons border it. Sometimes the 
 road skirts Lough Neagh; always it is beautiful. 
 The rockery, a natural formation of rock like 
 Giant's Causeway, has been made very attrac- 
 tive with a most luxurious growth of ferns. One 
 may spend what time she will on the way to the 
 Castle, there are seats beneath the trees, or in 
 the hawthorn hedges. Then the ivy-grown tow- 
 ers and fragments of the Castle come in view. 
 
 More than a hundred years ago Mrs. Sid- 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 dons, the great actress, was entertained here, 
 and in her diary has left some description of the 
 passage of time. The luxury of the establish- 
 ment " almost inspired the recollection of the 
 Arabian Nights' entertainment. Six or eight 
 carriages with a numerous throng of lords and 
 ladies on horseback began the day by making 
 excursions around the celestial Paradise, return- 
 ing home just in time for dinner. The table was 
 served with an elegance and profusion to which 
 I have seldom seen anything comparable. Im- 
 mense silver flagons held claret. A fine orches- 
 tra plaj^ed during the entire repast, the musi- 
 cians being stationed in corridors which led into 
 a conservatory, where the guests plucked dessert 
 from trees of most exquisite fruits. The foot of 
 the conservatory was washed by the waves of 
 a superb lake, from which the cool and pleas- 
 ant winds came to murmur in concert with the 
 harmony from the corridors." At this time of 
 which Mrs. Siddons writes, " the beauty, talent, 
 and rank of Ireland used to assemble here," and 
 as she lacks " words to describe the beauty and 
 splendor of this enchanting place," I may be ex- 
 cused if I utterly fail to give you any notion of 
 its claims. 
 
 H5 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 The place to visit Shane's Castle is Randals- 
 town, and a few miles beyond Randalstown is 
 Antrim, where one finds one of the most perfect 
 Round Towers in Ireland. It is ninety-three feet 
 high, fifty feet in circumference, and high up in 
 it are four slits. North, South, East, West. It 
 is so easy to ask for what were these Round 
 Towers built? Were it easy to answer, perhaps 
 they would not have the interest for me that 
 they have, but the mystery of the origin, and 
 their defiance of time, together with the beau- 
 tiful surroundings of many of them, give a 
 magnified interest. It is not exaggeration to say 
 volumes have been written upon these Round 
 Towers; many ponderous tomes have been de- 
 voted to the subject, one proving what the other 
 disproves. There are antiquarians confident that 
 they were pre-Christian in origin, others that 
 they were built by the early Christians, while 
 still others defend the theory of their pagan ori- 
 gin, but believe they were subsequently adapted 
 to Christian uses. 
 
 Briefly, to sum up some of the uses that have 
 
 been ascribed to these Round Towers. Among 
 
 their pagan uses: i. Fire temples. 2. Places 
 
 to proclaim Druidical festivals. 3. Gnomons, 
 
 146 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 or astronomical observatories. 4. That they 
 were Buddhist temples. 5. Sepulture. 
 
 Among their Christian uses: i. Anchorite 
 towers. 2. Penitential prisons. 3. Belfries. 
 4. Keeps, or monastic watch towers, treasure 
 houses, beacons. 
 
 Petrie's conclusions are that, first, they were 
 intended to serve as belfries; second, as keeps, 
 or places of strength in which sacred utensils, 
 books, relics, and other valuables were deposited, 
 and into which the ecclesiastics to whom they 
 belonged could retire for security in cases of 
 sudden predatory attack. 
 
 If I must declare for anyone as architect of 
 these curious Round Towers, it would be for 
 Gobhan Saer. I have no reason except my own 
 pleasure in associating this half-mythical archi- 
 tect of the sixth century with these mysterious 
 structures. I would rather Gobhan Saer had the 
 honor than St. Fechin. 
 
 One of Ireland's poets, D. F. McCarthy, 
 sings : 
 
 The pillar towers of Ireland, how wondrously 
 
 they stand, 
 By the lakes and rushing rivers, through the 
 
 valleys of our land, 
 
 H7 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 In mystic file, through the isle, they lift their 
 
 heads sublime. 
 These gray old pillar temples — these conquerors 
 
 of Time. 
 
 Two favorites hath Time — the pyramids of Nile, 
 And the old mystic temples of our own dear isle. 
 
 And this is what he tells us of " The Gobhan 
 Saer": 
 
 He stept a man out of the ways of men, 
 
 And no one knew his sept or rank or name, — 
 Like a strong stream far issuing from a glen. 
 
 From some source unexplored, the Master 
 came; 
 Gossips there were, who, wondrous keen of ken, 
 
 Surmised that he should be a child of shame; 
 Others declared him of the Druids; then 
 
 Through Patrick's labors fallen from power 
 and fame. 
 
 He lived apart, wrapt up in many plans; 
 
 He wooed not women, tasted not of wine; 
 He shunned the sports and councils of the clans, 
 
 Nor ever knelt at a frequented shrine. 
 His orisons were old poetic ranns, 
 
 Which the new Ollaves deemed an evil sign; 
 To most he seemed one of those pagan Khans, 
 
 Whose mystic vigor knows no cold decline. 
 148 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 He was the builder of the wondrous Towers, 
 
 JVhich, tall and straight and exquisitely round, 
 Rise monumental round the isle once ours; 
 
 Index-like, markirtg spots of holy ground. 
 In gloaming glens, in leafy lowland bowers, 
 
 On rivers' banks, these Cloiteachs old abound; 
 Where Art, enraptured, meditates long hours. 
 
 And Science flutters like a bird spellbound. 
 
 ho! wheresoe'er these pillar-towers aspire. 
 
 Heroes and holy men repose below, — 
 The bones of some gleaned from the pagan pyre. 
 
 Others on armor lie, as for a foe: 
 It was the mighty Master's life desire 
 
 To chronicle his great ancestors so; 
 What holier duty, what achievement higher. 
 
 Remains to us, than this he thus doth show? 
 
 Yet he, the builder, died an unknown death : 
 His labor done, no man beheld him more; 
 
 'Twas thought his body faded like a breath, 
 Or, like a sea mist, floated of Life's shore. 
 
 His works alone attest his life and lore, — 
 They are the only witnesses he hath. 
 
 All else Egyptian darkness covers o'er. 
 
 Men called him Gobhan Saer, and many a tale 
 Yet lingers in the byways of the land. 
 
 Of how he cleft the rock, and down the vale 
 Led the bright river, childlike, in his hand; 
 
 !49 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 Of how on giant ships he spread great sail, 
 And many marvels else by him first planned: 
 
 But though these legends fade, in Innisfail 
 His name and towers for centuries shall stand. 
 
 In the sixth century he lived. If I must as- 
 sociate them with some definite builder I like 
 it to be this man that " stept a man out of the 
 ways of men, and no one knew his sept or rank 
 or name." And I like to think that centuries 
 before Giotto's campanile was begun this man 
 had reared many campanilia, " tall and straight 
 and exquisitely round." 
 
 There is the Round Tower Antrim on pri- 
 vate estate Streples, Round Tower of Monaster- 
 boice, Round Tower of Glendalough. This 
 Tower of Glendalough, its divine beauty and 
 tradition make a creation indescribable — ^but 
 Glendalough is not irt Ulster. 
 
 Near this Round Tower in Antrim is a flat 
 Druidical stone which some would have us 
 believe was actually used for human sacrifices, 
 but I like better to believe that 'twas a witch's 
 stone, as it's now described, and a very ener- 
 getic witch she was, too, for she jumped from 
 the top of the Round Tower and struck knee 
 and elbow, making the indentations — ^which 
 150 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 were partly full of innocent rain water when I 
 saw it. 
 
 There are many interesting places between 
 Antrim and the coast, but so many more on the 
 coast that one cannot linger. Carrickfergus is 
 interesting because it is identified with Turu's 
 Castle and Ossian, the warrior-poet. 
 
 Glenoe, a glen village before one reaches 
 Larne, is a delightful little village, but few 
 enough tourists will go out of the way to it. 
 They will hurry on to Lame for the coast tour, 
 and hurry out of Larne for the coast tour, al- 
 though Larne has in itself much that's interest- 
 ing, and to many that dislike the sea Larne has 
 interest because of the short sea passage over to 
 Scotland, less than two hours at this point. 
 
 At Larne, or near Larne, was Rathmore at 
 Moyllnney, the home of Mongan, a person it is 
 difficult to disentangle from the network of his- 
 tory and fairy lore. 
 
 He was King of Ulster in the seventh cen- 
 tury. The annals of Clennacnoise under date 
 of A.D. 624 tell us gravely that Mongan, a 
 very well-spoken man, and much given to the 
 wooing of women, was killed by one Arthur, a 
 Welshman, with a stone. 
 
A Book of Hour 
 
 Mongan was in Rathmore of Moylinney in 
 his kingship. Every night his poet would recite 
 him a story. So great was his lore that this went 
 on from Hallowe'en to May day. One day the 
 king asked him respecting the death of a certain 
 Fenian hero, and the poet said he was slain at 
 Duffy in Leinster. Mongan said it was false. 
 The poet said he would satirize him with lam- 
 poons, his father, and his mother, and his grand- 
 mother, and he would sing spells upon their wa- 
 ters so that no fish could be caught in their 
 river mouths. He would sing spells upon their 
 woods so that they would not give fruit, upon 
 their plains so that they would be barren of 
 produce forever. 
 
 Mongan promised him precious things, doub- 
 ling them, tripling them, then one third, one 
 half, or his whole land, then his wife unless he 
 were redeemed before three days. Thereat the 
 woman was sorrowful. Mongan told her not to 
 be sorrowful. The tear was not taken from her 
 cheek. Help would certainly come to them. 
 
 When it came to the third day, and the poet 
 would have his bond, Mongan said, " Be not 
 sorrowful, woman, I hear even now his feet 
 who is coming to our help. I hear his feet in 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 Kerry, then over the great lake of Killarney, 
 then on loughs, rivers, bays — ^now in the Lame 
 water — " The person came, disproved the say- 
 ing of the poet, and all was well. 
 
 Given fair skies, the coach and car drive from 
 Lame to the Causeway is a delight unspeak- 
 able; the road is fine, a great engineering feat; 
 on one side for the most of the way is the 
 Moyle, the name given to the Northern Chan- 
 nel between Ireland and Scotland. Its blueness 
 in the summer is the essence of cerulean. I never 
 saw such blue seas. On the left there is vary- 
 ing scenery of cliff, awful in height, and sea- 
 washed caves, castles, villages, inns; a very 
 modern castle is that built this century by the 
 Marchioness of Londonderry, filled with curi- 
 osities of her collecting and recently opened 
 for a hotel. It's one of the things on the 
 Antrim Coast Road for which I don't particu- 
 larly care. 
 
 The stmcture here, white limestone and ba- 
 salt resting on thin Jurassic clays, causes contin- 
 ual landslips, and there is one village called 
 Sliding Village, as it is continually sliding to 
 low elevation, where the peasants patiently re- 
 establish themselves. 
 
 153 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 Red Bay is interesting for its arch and caves, 
 in one of which Old Nanine dispensed poteen 
 for over thirty years, and the cave bears the 
 name of Nanine's Cave. Another cave adjacent 
 to Nanine's is yet known as Forge Cave; here 
 for years a blacksmith wrought at his trade. 
 The blacksmith has gone now, and none of the 
 caves are inhabited, but a traveler of years ago 
 says : " The blacksmith was in perfect keeping 
 with the scene. One might have fancied that his 
 life had been spent in shoeing horses for brig- 
 ands and rapparees. His continual fires kept 
 the cave tolerably dry, in which respect 'twas 
 better than Nannie's, where there was a constant 
 deposit of moisture, but a drop of the rale stuf 
 made it all safe enough." 
 
 But my favorite village on the Antrim coast 
 is Cushendall. For long I had had the strong- 
 est wish to visit Cushendall; words of its beauty 
 had come to me now and again; I knew 'twas 
 a good hunting ground for my particular game 
 of legends and stories. Had Cushendall disap- 
 pointed me, 'twould have been a colossal disap- 
 pointment, but the little village at the foot of 
 the'Dall, embowered in roses and fuchsias and 
 ferns, fulfilled every promise. Even the inn with 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 its good situation and hospitable attention had 
 not been unduly praised. 
 
 If ever you should visit Cushendall, go to my 
 hostelry, the Glens of Antrim, and have a room 
 that looks down upon the rose garden. Take 
 jaunting-car rides, and be content to stay there 
 — a year. We have one instance of a novelist 
 that gratefully dedicates his books, or a book, 
 to his tailor, another that makes his dedicatory 
 tribute to his doctors, but when I dedicate my 
 book it shall be to the Irish landladies, four in 
 number, that smoothed the way of a solitary in 
 a strange country. The quartet will be made 
 up — I'll tell you so that you'll recognize the 
 dedication — of my Dublin hostess, a pretty 
 Quakeress who would have prevented my seeing 
 Coquelin if she could, but in every other way 
 she furthered my pleasure in Dublin; of Mrs. 
 Millar, the proprietress of Glens of Antrim, 
 herself a Dublin woman, gracious and so kind 
 to the unattended traveler; of Mrs. Hunter 
 of Ballycastle — the Antrim Arms — I'll tell you 
 later some of her special kindnesses; and last, 
 but far from least, dear little Mrs. McMahon 
 on the East Wall of Londonderry. If I had a 
 mine of sovereigns, I would fill all Mrs. Mc- 
 
 155 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 Mahon's rooms, and the dwellers in them would 
 eat her grilled salmon, her grilled chop, drink 
 her brewing of tea, and bless her and me. If 
 you ever find yourself at Port Rush, the most 
 fashionable watering place in North Ireland, do 
 take the couple of hours by train to London- 
 derry, cross the ferry, and at Shipquay Street 
 ask to be directed to the East Wall, McMa- 
 hon's Private Hotel. It's near Ferryquay gate, 
 the very gate the Prentice Boys shut so uncere- 
 moniously in the face of James II. Mrs. Mc- 
 Mahon will wish a sponsor, " use my name ; " 
 you don't know how many times that's quoted 
 from kind Irish gentlemen and ladies that were 
 my sponsors, up and down and round the 
 country. 
 
 But to return to Cushendall. In the matter 
 of scenery, you'll be difficult to please if you 
 ask for greater variety than Cushendall offers; 
 there is Red Bay, for sea, Cushendall River, 
 wood, mountains, and glens. Seven glens are 
 in this vicinity, although they are not all easily 
 accessible from this point; this is the glen coun- 
 try, before we enter the country known historic- 
 ally as the Route. But Glen Airff is one of the 
 seven easily reached: a car to the fort, a walk 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 through the glen with its numberless waterfalls 
 of all shapes and heights, its hazel and larches 
 and ferns, and when one reaches the tea house 
 at the mouth of the glen, one's jaunting car will 
 have come round by the road, too. 
 
 The Old Church at Layde is very picturesque 
 with its mantel of ivy and rose and fuchsia. The 
 sea washes its lower edge, the speedwell makes 
 a dense blue carpet under many of the horizon- 
 tal stones, and here and there is a fine Celtic 
 cross. The most noticeable thing is the large 
 plane tree growing in a roofless church. Long 
 years ago, when it was the custom to carry the 
 coffin on poles, a man who had helped bear the 
 coffin stuck his pole in the ground to save the 
 trouble of carrying it home. It took root and 
 grew to this size. Since, the church has been 
 roofless; at least one marriage has been solem- 
 nized under the tree. 
 
 Go up to Glendun to see the old altar, in the 
 cleft root of an oak tree it is builded, its in- 
 scription cannot be deciphered. Glendun holds 
 tradition of Fin McCool of the third century, 
 the seventh king of Ireland, who continued to 
 be the great popular hero even to the seventh 
 century, and about whom is grouped the Fe- 
 
 157 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 nian cycle of saga. " Warrior better than Fin," 
 says an old vellum manuscript in the British 
 Museum, " never struck his hand into chiefs, 
 inasmuch as for service he was a soldier, a hos- 
 pitaller for hospitality, in heroism a hero, and 
 in strength a champion worthy of a king, so 
 that ever since, and from that until this, it is 
 with Fin that every such is coordinated." 
 
 Fin McCool lived on one of the mountains 
 — " I don't know where Fin lived, but do know 
 where his son is supposed to be buried." " Don't 
 say supposed to be," I entreated. " Well, where 
 he is buried, if ye like that better," said the 
 obliging carman. But Ossian, the son of Fin 
 McCool, is buried all over Ireland, and all over 
 Scotland as well. Robert Burns in one of his 
 peregrinations in Scotland falls into an ecstasy 
 of enthusiasm, exclaiming, " I have seen Ossi- 
 an's grave, think of that ! " 
 
 Of course Cushendall would not be perfect 
 without a rath, and upon that rath, " once upon 
 a time," was Court McMartin, where dwelt the 
 Lord of the seven glens, and let me tell you how 
 he came to be Lord of the seven glens. He was 
 but a poor fisherman when one day he saw just 
 off the shore of Cushendall a beautiful ship, its 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 poop of gold and sails of purple, while on the 
 deck was a man reading in a wondrous book. 
 McMartin did not know it, but the man was 
 a magician. McMartin was standing on a rock, 
 and the man called to him. The portion of the 
 rock upon which McMartin stood detached 
 itself from the main rock, and was turned 
 into a silver boat which sailed over the 
 waves to the astrologer. " McMartin," said 
 he, " it's written that I must take a wife from 
 this place; go you to the village and bring her 
 to me." 
 
 Then McMartin hastened to his inn house 
 and took his own wife, a very pretty young 
 woman, but a vixen most pronounced. His con- 
 science troubled him a little, but he soothed it 
 by saying, " She'd be much better off than he, 
 a poor fisherman, could ever make her," and off 
 he went with her to the magician, but when he 
 saw him coming he called out, " McMartin, I 
 don't want her, we've shrews enough in our 
 country without her," and off he sailed, but first 
 threw into the boat a big bag of gold. When 
 the little silver boat reached the rock, it became 
 a part of the rock again, and McMartin feared 
 for the gold, but it remained, and with it he 
 
 159 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 purchased the seven glens, and became Lord 
 over them. 
 
 Cushendun is the sister village of Cushendall. 
 It lacks the beautiful green trees, but has more 
 of the open sea, and some very interesting caves 
 which the sea has worn into conglomerate. The 
 longest of these caves is fifty feet, and forms 
 the only approach to a house known as Cave 
 House. This solitary house is everywhere sur- 
 rounded by perpendicular walls of rock, except 
 at the front where it looks upon the sea. " Is 
 this the only approach to the house ? " we 
 asked of some children near. " Yes, unless the 
 wee pad over the precipice," and the cave en- 
 trance looked, and was preferable, to the " wee 
 pad." A most delightfully situated place for 
 suggestion of smugglers. 
 
 All along the coast walk one sees seaweed 
 sea wrack, as it is called, hung to dry, or ex- 
 posed in various ways for drying. The gather- 
 ing the seaweed was one of the industries of the 
 peasants. It was burned for iodine, and a beg- 
 garly pittance was obtained from it. That in- 
 dustry has lessened, still one sees the wrack, 
 and a little song I know, " Sea Wrack," by 
 Moira O'Neill, gives a bit of life around it. 
 i6o 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 The wrack was dark an' shiny where it floated 
 
 in the sea, 
 There was no one in the brown boat but only 
 
 him an' me; 
 Him to cut the sea wrack, me to mind the boat, 
 An' not a word between us the hours we were 
 afloat. 
 
 The wet wrack, 
 The sea wrack, 
 The wrack was strong to cut. 
 
 We laid it on the gray rocks to wither in the sun. 
 An' what should call my lad then, to sail from 
 
 Cushendun? 
 With a low moon, a full tide, a swell upon the 
 
 deep. 
 Him to sail the old boat, me to fall asleep. 
 The dry wrack. 
 The sea wrack. 
 The wrack was dead so soon. 
 
 There' a fire low upon the rocks to burn the 
 
 wrack to kelp. 
 There' a boat gone down upon the Moyle, an' 
 
 sorra one to help! 
 Him beneath the salt sea, me upon the shore. 
 By sunlight or moonlight we'll lift the wrack 
 no more. 
 
 The dark wrack. 
 
 The sea wrack, 
 
 The wrack may drift ashore. 
 
 i6i 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 I shall not desire a more appreciative audi- 
 ence than the small one that frequently listened 
 to these recitals of mine. The first time that I 
 recited this little poem, 'twas to an audience of 
 two, mother and daughter; another daughter 
 entered just as I ended the lines, and looked 
 inquiringly at the others to know why they 
 were so moved, and the mother explained as 
 though recounting the misadventure of some 
 friends, " A pair went gathering sea wrack, and 
 he went down." 
 
 " Och, God save us ! " cried the newcomer. 
 
 " He was drowned, and she was left." 
 
 These little cabin audiences are not sated with 
 entertainment, and appreciation of familiar life 
 told in story or verse is keen. 
 
 When one begins the drive from Cushendall 
 to Ballycastle, she goes for a few miles through 
 the smiling country of the glens, but leaves that 
 after awhile for mountain moorlands, and con- 
 siderable of the way is through rather bare hill 
 country. However, the hills are blushing with 
 heather, here and there is the turf-cutting, pro- 
 vided you're in turf-cutting season. As I had 
 visited the turf-cutting of my own villages, I 
 was quite sophisticated and could smile supe- 
 162 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 riorly when the Manchester man in the car 
 asked the driver if they were draining the moun- 
 tain. 
 
 Before one reaches Ballycastle town, there's 
 the Margy River to cross, and near it is the 
 Franciscan Friary founded by Sorley Boy in 
 the sixteenth century; one sees Fair Head, too; 
 but all these points are for special excursion 
 later on. The legend is that the children of Lir, 
 while doomed for centuries to dwell upon the 
 seas, spent nine centuries upon the waters, until 
 the sound of Christian bells should be heard in 
 Ireland. This is an Ulster story, and one of the 
 " Three Sorrows of Story." For three hundred 
 years they floated on the Moyle. 
 
 Moore's verse of it is — 
 
 Silent, O Moyle, be the roar of thy waters, 
 Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose, 
 
 While murmuring mournfully, Lir's only daugh- 
 ter 
 Tells to the night-star her tale of woes. 
 
 Fair Head — and the promontory is fair in- 
 deed — is seen for miles, as one walks, sails, or 
 drives about the coast. Beautiful as it is in the 
 matter of scenery, and remarkable as it is geo- 
 logically, there attaches to Fair Head another 
 
 163 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 interest. On the north side is a sloping rock, and 
 it is on this rock, according to tradition, that the 
 three sons of Usnach landed with Deirdre, when 
 they returned from Scotland, The greatest of 
 Ireland's " Three Sorrows of Story " is the 
 " Fate of the Sons of Usnach," a story that has 
 been told by bards of Ireland and Scotland for 
 many ages. This, too, is an Ulster story, and 
 more classic than many of the Celtic legends. 
 
 The time of the story was in the reign of 
 Conor, King of Ulster, in the time of the Red 
 Branch Knights, the cycle of Fin McCool and 
 his fellow giants. Conor MacNessa, King of 
 Ulster, feasted at the house of his story-teller, 
 Phelim. While they feasted, word came to 
 Phelim that his wife had borne him a daughter. 
 Caffa, the Druid, was of the company, and he 
 rose up and said, " Let her be called Deirdra 
 (Dread), for by reason of her beauty many 
 sorrows shall fall on Ulster." 
 
 "Woe to thee, Deirdre! Deirdra, daughter 
 of Phelim." 
 
 The nobles were for slaying the child, and 
 swords flashed in the air, but Conor MacNessa 
 said, " Give her to me for wife." And the 
 Druid again warned: 
 164. 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 King Conor, therms woe for thy pity, this worn,' 
 
 an child born, 
 This hud of sweet promise will wound herself 
 
 red with her thorn. 
 
 king, in the future I prophesy evil before thee. 
 With the life of this child. Wilt thou listen, 
 
 and heed to my story? 
 
 The breath of a babe? or Connaught and Ul- 
 ster in sorrow? 
 
 A dozen swords spring from their scabbards and 
 flash fierce and bright. 
 
 The child for the fair steel, stretched out her 
 small hands in delight. 
 
 Conor laughed; Let her live, and if beauty 
 should grant her a dower, 
 
 1 will wed. Toast your queen, ere I hide her 
 
 from fate in a tower. 
 
 Conor put her in a lonely tower with her 
 conversation dame, Lavarcum, to watch over 
 her, 
 
 Deirdra was beautiful as a dream; her nurse 
 fed her romantic young brain with many sweet 
 tales, and the girl was lonely for love. One day 
 
 She leaned from the casement and cried: 
 " Look, nurse, they have slain a young deer in 
 
 the courtyard below. 
 And the raven awaits them. 
 My prince shall have skin like yon snow, 
 
 165 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 As red as the blood be his Up, and his hair like 
 
 the raven's dark wing." 
 " Hush, dearest! " the woman replied. 
 " Hush, dearest, and think on the king." 
 
 But Deirdra begs to know if there Is a youth 
 so pure-skinned, with raven dark hair, and with 
 lips blood red. 
 
 " Darling, in Conor's court I've heard of as fair 
 a young knight." 
 
 Deirdra saw and was loved by Naisi, the son 
 of Usnach. Naisi and his two brothers rescued 
 Deirdra from her prison, and bore her over sea 
 to Scotland, but there her beauty was her undo- 
 ing, because Scotia's king saw and loved her, 
 and Naisi and his brothers and followers made 
 war upon him, and defeated him. They then 
 fled to Loch Eathaigh, where they lived hap- 
 pily by the chase. But Conor, in Ulster, sought 
 means to win the brothers back; he offered the 
 quest to his most valiant men in the Red Branch, 
 and Fergus went to bring them back under his 
 warranty. Deirdra begged that they should not 
 return, knowing that treachery awaited them, 
 but they did not listen. 
 
 The story is full of poetic description of their 
 i66 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 life, how they hunted the stag, fished, slept with 
 swaying ferns for pillows, and how the cuckoo 
 called to them. Deirdra's farewell to Alba is 
 very full of beauty. They returned to Ireland, 
 landed under Fair Head at Rock Usnach — and 
 from there they went on to Conor's palace in 
 Armagh. All the time there are entreaties from 
 Deirdra that they will heed her, but they heed 
 not her dreams, nor warnings. " I have a sign 
 for you, O sons of Usnach, if Conor designs to 
 commit treachery on you, or no." 
 " What sign is that? " said Naisi. • 
 " If Conor summon you into the hall where 
 are the nobles of Ulster with him, he has no 
 mind of treachery; but if you be sent to the 
 mansion of the Red Branch there is treachery." 
 When they came to the gate, they struck a 
 loud stroke with the wooden knocker. The 
 doorkeeper asked, "Who is there?" "The 
 three sons of Usnach with Deirdra." Conor 
 said, " Be lodged in Mansion of Red Branch." 
 Deirdra still pressed them to fly, but they would 
 not. They had never been guilty of cowardice 
 or unmanliness, so they would not fly. They 
 were playing chess in the mansion of the . Red 
 Branch, when Conor sent a messenger to' report 
 
 167 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 if Deirdra were as beautiful as formerly. Lav- 
 arcum, Deirdra's old nurse, volunteered to go. 
 She kissed them all lovingly, but reproved them 
 for playing on chessboard while Conor grieves 
 after the loss of Deirdra. " Make fast doors 
 and windows, for an evil deed is to be done this 
 night," she warns. 
 
 " What news have you ? " asked Conor, when 
 Lavarcum returned. " Good and bad. Good 
 that the sons of Usnach are returned to you. 
 Bad — that Deirdra has lost her color and 
 shape." But Conor sent another messenger to 
 go spy upon the beauty of Deirdra. None were 
 willing, but finally Trendom went. He dared 
 not look through the door, so pried until he 
 found an open window. Deirdra saw him, and 
 told Naisi, who threw a chessman at him, put- 
 ting out his eye. But Trendom had seen Deir- 
 dra, and reported her the fairest woman in the 
 world. 
 
 Then Conor called his troops together and 
 surrounded the house of the Red Branch, and 
 set fire to it. "Who are there? Who are ye 
 about us? " called the sons of Usnach, and they 
 shouted back, " Conor and Ulster! " 
 . "Will you break the warranty of Fergus? " 
 i68 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 " The sons of Usnach shall rue the day when 
 they took my wife." 
 
 The sons of Usnach did battle, valiantly 
 killing hundreds; they returned to the house, 
 locked their shields around Deirdra, then sal- 
 lied forth, killing as they went. 
 
 Conor said to his Druid: "Look, if these 
 men escape, they will destroy the Ulster men 
 forever. Play enchantment upon them, and I 
 give you my word, no danger shall be theirs." 
 The Druid believed him and laid a spell upon 
 the sons of Usnach, a clogging sea of invisible 
 waves, so that they were as swimming though 
 they walked. 
 
 No man dared to approach till their arms 
 fell from their hands. 
 
 Then they were taken and Conor commanded 
 them to be put to death. No Ulsterman would 
 do his bidding, but at last a Norse captain slew 
 them. Thei brothers contended as to the time 
 of death, each one desiring to die first that he 
 might not see his brothers slain. But Naisi gave 
 to the Norseman his magic sword, which could 
 cleave all before it, and they knelt down to- 
 gether, and with one blow the Norseman struck 
 off the three heads. 
 
 i6g 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 Deirdra chanted a lament over them, then 
 threw herself on Naisi, and died. 
 
 Woe to thee, daughter of Phelim, woe to thee, 
 Deirdra. 
 
 Down below Fair Head there's one of the 
 prettiest bits on the coast, Murlough Bay, and 
 at the cottage Miss Clarke will give you a cup 
 of tea, to rest you. 
 
 There's very much that's pleasant in jour- 
 neying alone, but I remember Bonamargy Fri- 
 ary as one of the places where Cowper's lines 
 came forcibly to mind: 
 
 How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude, 
 
 But give me still in my retreat some one whom I 
 
 may whisper, 
 " Solitude is sweet! " 
 
 Sorley Boy, the great MacDonnell chieftain, 
 founded the friary, and he lies buried here. He 
 was the " Yellow Charley " that for many years 
 stoutly resisted Elizabeth, and with a following 
 of red shanks made some brave stands against 
 the Tudors. Sorley Boy had to contend with 
 the English, and with the great shane O'Neill, 
 himself, who wished to be Lord Paramount in 
 /70 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 the North. I always like to read that when Eliz- 
 abeth finally sent Sorley Boy his patent as Lord 
 of the Route, he burned the document before 
 his retainers, in Dunluce Castle, swearing that 
 what had been won by the sword should never 
 be kept by the sheepskin ; and I always read with 
 sorrow of the day when Sorley Boy, an old man 
 of eighty, did allegiance in Dublin to Queen 
 Elizabeth's portrait. 
 
 About two miles from Ballycastle in Glen- 
 shesk is a relic of the past, known as Goban 
 Saer's castle and caves. Rath Goban has a long 
 legend attached to it about Goban, but it is less 
 interesting to me than the island opposite Bally- 
 castle. Rathlin, or Rachray, as it is called by 
 the natives, is just the size and shape of Glen- 
 shesk, and naturally enough it's believed that 
 'twas removed from the Glen and put into the 
 sea. It has a rocky shore, in some places four 
 hundred and fifty feet above the sea level; al- 
 though the nearest point from Fair Head is but 
 three miles, it is not safe to enter any point 
 except Church Bay, which is seven and one half 
 miles from Ballycastle, and you mustn't attempt 
 the journey if the sea be rough; you may have 
 to stay for days in Rachray Island, an cxperir 
 
 171 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 ence you would not court. 'Twas here, tradition 
 says, that Robert Bruce learned his lesson of 
 industry from the spider, the seventh trial. 
 Bruce resolved once again to renew his efforts 
 to gain the Scottish crown, and the great victory 
 of Bannockburn followed. 
 
 The men on Rachray Island are very hand- 
 some, finely developed men physically, but their 
 manners have not softened by contact with civ- 
 ilization. 
 
 There's a custom still in vogue in Rachray 
 which may interest you. On the last day of the 
 year, about seven o'clock in the evening, two 
 parties of young men, twenty to thirty in each, 
 set out to pay a visit to every house (except 
 those of the poor, whom they intend to assist) , 
 one party taking the upper, the other the lower 
 end of the island. Their approach is indicated 
 by the blowing of a horn, that the inmates may 
 be prepared with whatever offering they choose 
 to give. The first who enters the house has a 
 dried sheepskin fastened onto his shoulders, 
 which is struck with a stick by the one imme- 
 diately following, keeping time to a rhyme in 
 Irish, which they all repeat, walking around a 
 chair placed in the center of the kitchen. A 
 772 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 translation of the words is: " Get up, good wo- 
 man, and give us a scon; and let it be well but- 
 tered, and if you refuse, there will come crows 
 from the back of Knocklayd that will do much 
 harm to your poultry." 
 
 After they receive their offering, money, 
 wool, or meal, which they afterwards distribute 
 to the poor, they cut a small piece off the sheep- 
 skin, which they give to the mistress of the 
 house as an acknowledgment of her bounty, and 
 as an earnest of good luck for the ensuing year; 
 and they invoke a blessing on the house and its 
 inmates. Coullin is the name given to the above 
 ceremony. 
 
 Rachray Island has, too, the Fata Morgana. 
 Many have seen on the shore a corps of yeo- 
 men drilling, and there have been seen numer- 
 ous ships of French fleet, and when others were 
 called to witness, they had gone, but, perhaps, 
 what has been seen by the most, is the green 
 island which rises every seventh year between 
 Rachray and Bengore. Many have distinctly 
 seen it, adorned with wood, and crowded with 
 people selling yarn, and' engaged in occupations 
 of a fair. 
 
 They say: 
 
 173 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 If earth or stone 
 
 From verdant Erin's hallowed land 
 Were on this magic island thrown, 
 
 Forever fixed it then would stand. 
 But when for this some little boat 
 
 In silence ventures from the shore, 
 The mermaid sinks, hushed is the note. 
 
 The fairy isle is seen no more. 
 
 This refers to a legend that the enchanted 
 isle comes up upon the playing of music by a 
 mermaid. 
 
 There's a little poem about Rachray, by 
 Moira O'Neill, that I like, and many like it in 
 Ireland, too. I've referred to the roughness and 
 strength of the sons of Rachray, and it is quite 
 possible that a girl suddenly won by one of these 
 sons of Rachray might soliloquize thus: 
 
 Och, what was it got me at all that time 
 To promise I'd marry a Rachray man? 
 An' now he'll not listen to rason or rhyme, 
 H^s strivin' to hurry me all that he can. 
 
 " Come on, an' ye he to come on! " says he, 
 " Ye're hound for the Island, to live wi' me." 
 
 See Rachray Island heyont in the bay. 
 
 An' the dear knows what they be doin' out there 
 
 But fishin' an' fightin' an' tearin' away, 
 
 An' who's to hindher, an' what do they caref 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 The goodness can tell what 'ud happen to me 
 When Rachray 'ud have me, anee, anee ! 
 
 / might have took Pether from over the hill, 
 A dacent poacher, the kind poor boy: 
 Could I keep the ould places about me still, 
 I'd never set foot out o' sweet Ballyvoy. 
 My sorra on Rachray, the could sea-caves, 
 An' blackneck divers, an' weary ould waves! 
 
 I'll never win back now, whatever may fall. 
 So give me good luck, for ye'll see me no more; 
 Sure an Island Man is the mischief an' all — 
 An' me that never was married before! 
 
 Oh, think o' my fate when ye dance at a fair. 
 In Rachray there's no Christianity there. 
 
 This never failed to please my Irish friends. 
 When I said it over to a girl at Ballycastle, I 
 said, "Where do you suppose she met him?" 
 " At the Lammas Fair, at Ballywoy," came the 
 answer very promptly. 
 
 Carrick-a-rede is a name familiar to many. 
 It is a swinging rope bridge eighty feet above 
 the chasm between rock and mainland. Mrs. 
 Hunter sent her daughter and guest in mail car 
 with me, while the son and his guest followed in 
 private jaunting car. I never saw bluer sea than 
 on this fourth day of July that found me by the 
 
 175 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 Moyle. The young people accompanied me to 
 a place from which I was to walk to overtake 
 my coach. On the way, I met a local incident 
 of a sight place. One, two, three, until there 
 were at least a dozen small boys running after 
 me, and most lugubriously calling, droning, 
 " Scramble for a penny, if you want to see 
 some fun. Scramble for a penny, if you want to 
 see some fun." But I had rounded several cor- 
 ners and my car wasn't in sight, I was very 
 warm, cross, and in no way disposed to encour- 
 age scrambling for pennies. Then I got the car 
 on to the Causeway — the grand sight. 
 
 Now a scientific person could tell you all 
 about the greenstone, basalt, red ochre, feldspar, 
 amygdaloids, and all things other here — ^but I 
 can't. It's very wonderful and impressive. I'd 
 wished all my life to see the Causeway because 
 it's made up of the stepping-stones that Fin 
 McCool caused to be placed between Ireland 
 and Scotland that his adversary in Scotland 
 might come over and be whipped. 
 
 And we come to Dunluce Castle, one of the 
 
 finest ruins in Europe. There is a Banshee here. 
 
 A maid who loved contrary to her father's wish, 
 
 tried to escape on a rope. Both she and lover 
 
 1^6 
 
From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 
 
 were drowned. On stormy nights she's heard 
 weeping and wailing in the tiny room known 
 as Banshee's Chamber. We pass Portrush, the 
 fashionable watering place. Near by is Cole- 
 ralne, famed for lovely Kitty, and 'twas Ly- 
 saght's song and the River Bann that allured 
 me here. Then, 
 
 To the edge of Lough Foyle itself — 
 A Lough hospitable, 
 
 we have come. 
 
 i77 
 
SOME IRISH VILLAGES THAT 
 I KNOJV 
 
 THERE are four villages that I shall try 
 to bring to your eyes this hour, villages 
 contrasting very sharply one with the 
 other. One, a Connaught village, poor, almost 
 beyond your imagining, where " squalor, con- 
 fused misery and want " abound. Another is a 
 region in Wiclclow, perhaps I ought not to style 
 it village, but it is a group of buildings about 
 which is the very atmosphere of old-time ro- 
 mance and mystery, Glendalough, beloved, I am 
 sure, by every one that has seen the spot, sacred 
 to the memory of St. Kevin. Thirdly, there is 
 the village of Cushendall, on Red Bay, in 
 County Antrim, embowered in flowers, the pret- 
 tiest of villages and rich in folklore, and, lastly, 
 my own homely village in Derry, with hardly 
 a claim to your kind notice. It is not beautiful, 
 it has had no celebration by poets, but it is 
 kindly, and I have an affection for it. 
 
 In the getting from one village to another, I 
 J78 
 
Some Irish Villages That I Know 
 
 may tell of things extraneous to the village life, 
 but they will all be things Irish, and will, I 
 hope, help to make a background for the Irish 
 villages. 
 
 I am sure that no one will challenge my right 
 to talk on Irish villages when I say that the vil- 
 lage I know best of all is one that I don't know 
 at all. It is the village of Lisconnel, in Conne- 
 mara, which Miss Barlow has made us know so 
 intimately through her " Irish Idylls." Had 
 fortune, with all her fickleness, thrown over me 
 the mantle of story-teller, and had she granted 
 me the further grace to choose what stories I 
 would tell, I should elect to tell stories of the 
 Irish peasant, full of the truth and sympathy 
 that mark Miss Barlow's stories. These stories 
 of the everyday life in the wild bog lands of 
 Connemara, when I first read them, ten years 
 and more ago, strongly impressed me with their 
 truthful picturing of a life in which I am deeply 
 interested, and there has been no reason why I 
 should change my opinion during the years. Lis- 
 connel is a cluster of, perhaps, half a score of 
 huts, cabins in which you would not house brute 
 animals, seven Irish miles from Duffclune, the 
 nearest place that resembles a town. The road 
 
 179 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 winds over the brown, dreary bog land, once in 
 a while brightened by a bit of bog cotton, but 
 it is one of the earth's waste places. 
 
 But here in these mud cabins is lived a life 
 which has many of the elements of the greater 
 life outside. Looking at the village, as a whole, 
 it looks like a cluster of hives. The houses are 
 builded of stone and mud, and with no plaster. 
 They can afford very little mud either from the 
 scanty soil, so there is a great deal of unscien- 
 tific ventilation. Because there is so little tillable 
 soil, they usually select for the house the place 
 most unpromising for a crop. For instance, the 
 Sheridan's house is builded on a ledge, and the 
 elevation in the middle acts as a watershed 
 during a wet season. The cabins are not 
 thatched with straw — that is beyond the means 
 of the dweller in Lisconnel — but with rushes, 
 tied on and weighted down with stones to pre- 
 vent its blowing off. The largest window in Lis- 
 connel is nine inches square. 
 
 Imagine Lisconnel, the dreary waste of 
 brown bog land on every side, a very badly kept 
 road, with depressions full of water in a wet 
 season; as we face Duffclune, the Pat Ryans, the 
 Sheridans, and the Kilfoyles live in cabins on 
 iBo 
 
Some Irish Villages That I Know 
 
 the left, and nearly opposite them are the Qulg- 
 leys, and next beyond, Mad Belle and Big Anne 
 share a hut; on the left, farther up on the bog, 
 are the homes of Oldy Rafferty and Widow 
 McGurk; there's the roofless house where the 
 O'DriscoUs used to live, and these, with the 
 homes of the Mich Ryans and the Doynes, name 
 all the houses in Lisconnel. 
 
 But here, as I said, you find many of the ele- 
 tnents that are found in bigger communities. 
 Here is the Widow McGurk, poor, even rela- 
 tively poorer than some of the others. But it 
 requires much finesse to get her to accept as- 
 sistance. It wouldn't do, for example, to come 
 bouncing in as Judy Ryan did one evening, with 
 a pailful of potatoes culled cautiously, though 
 in no grudging mood, from a slender store (if 
 Judy threw back a handful at the last moment, 
 it was not her will that consented) , and saying, 
 " Och, sure, Mrs. McGurk, I've heard you're 
 run out o' pertates ; why it's starved you must be, 
 woman alive, cliver and clane. Here's an odd 
 few I've brought you in the ould bucket, and 
 there'd be more only we're getting shortish our- 
 selves." 
 
 Judy was immediately informed, with a la- 
 
 i8i 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 mentable disregard of truth, that Mrs, McGurk 
 had more pitatis than she could use in a month 
 of Sundays, and at the same time given to un- 
 derstand, with an impolite absence of circumlo- 
 cution, that the sooner she removed herself and 
 her ould bucket, the better 'twould be. 
 
 Mrs. Kilfoyle, a dear old woman, I think I 
 love her better than anyone else in Lisconnel, 
 had that inestimable quality of tact. In Liscon- 
 nel they say, " She had a way wit her." She 
 would go up the rush-tussocked slope to Mrs. 
 McGurk's. She was a light weight, but she was 
 less nimble of foot than of wit, and she would 
 ask to borrow a jug or a mug. Then after a call 
 she would say : " Well, I must be shankin' off 
 wid oneself, Mrs. McGurk, and thank you 
 kindly, ma'am, sure it's troublln' you I am too 
 often." 
 
 " Not at all, not at all," and Mrs. McGurk's 
 head rose two inches higher with the conscious- 
 ness of conferring a favor, " Don't think to 
 mention it, Mrs. Kilfoyle, you're welcome as 
 daylight to any sticks of things I've got." 
 
 Then Mrs. Kilfoyle would say: " I suppose 
 now, ma'am, you couldn't be takin' a couple o' 
 stones o' praties off of us? Ours do be keeping 
 182 
 
Some Irish Villages That I Know 
 
 that badly, we can't use them quick enough, and 
 you could be paying us back when the new 
 ones came in, accordin' as was convenient. If 
 you could, I'd sent one of the childer up with 
 them as soon as I git home. Sorra the trouble 
 in it at all, at all, and thank you kindly, Mrs. 
 McGurk, and good evenin' to you, ma'am." 
 Then trotting down the hill : " I'll bid the lads 
 to be stirring themselves. Niver a bit the cra- 
 tur's after getting this day." 
 
 Or it might be: " Good evenin', then, Mrs. 
 McGurk, and I'll be careful with your jug. I 
 was thinking by the way, you maybe wouldn't 
 object to the lads lavin' you up a few creels of 
 turf now our stack's finished buildin', just to 
 keep them quiet, for it's beyond themselves they 
 git entirely, if they're not at some job. They 
 do have their mother distracted with their divil- 
 ments, the little spalpeens." 
 
 But one day the Widow McGurk was raised 
 above these mortifications by a wave of afflu- 
 ence. An unknown kinsman in the United States 
 died, and left a legacy of fifteen shilling. The 
 sensation in Lisconnel cannot be described; they 
 discussed the legacy early and late. It was an 
 almost unanimous sentiment that the money was 
 
 183 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 well come by. Mrs. Quigley indulged in a few 
 discouraging remarks about the difficulty there'd 
 be in getting the money order paid. There was 
 much conflicting advice as to what might be 
 done with it. Mrs. McGurk planned a shop- 
 ping expedition to the town next day, and it 
 was arranged that the Widow Doyne's Stacy 
 was to accompany her, and help her home with 
 her load, which people understood would con- 
 sist mainly of a heavy meal bag. 
 
 Before Mrs. McGurk could start, " she had 
 to make a round of calls upon her acquaintance 
 to inquire whether she could do e'er a thing for 
 them down beyant." This is a long-established 
 social observance, which to omit would have 
 been a great breach of etiquette. There were 
 very few commissions; old Mich Ryan fumbled 
 in his pocket, where there sometimes used to be 
 pennies, but where there were never any now. 
 " Ah, now, fathern, what would you be want- 
 In'," said his daughter-in-law. 
 
 " Tobaccy." But nobody found the pennies 
 for the tobaccy. 
 
 All that November day the neighbors, when 
 they met, talked about Mrs. McGurk and her 
 expedition, wondering how much Corr would 
 184 
 
Some Irish Villages That I Know 
 
 charge her a stone for the meal, and when dark 
 came down over the hamlet, all sorts of con- 
 jectures were rife as to what could be detaining 
 them, perhaps this, perhaps that, all fraught 
 with more or less danger to the adventurous 
 shoppers, but at last Mrs. McGurk appeared. 
 Her shopping had been done on liberal lines^ 
 to judge by the basket, which she set down on 
 the first dyke sufficiently flat-topped. The first 
 parcel that came out was the cause of the ex- 
 pedition's late return. Mrs, McGurk had ac- 
 cidentally left the tobaccy for Mich Ryan on 
 a counter, and had not missed it till she was a 
 long mile and a half on her way home, so she. 
 trudged the dreary way back that the old man 
 might not be disappointed, and happy it was 
 for old Mich that she had been so kind. H& 
 had been waiting expectant all day. When 
 his daughter Biddy offered to fetch him down 
 his little old black pipe, he said, " No, I'll just 
 be keeping the feel of it in my hand to-night." 
 There were other delights in the basket, 
 sugar-sticks for the children; and it was on this 
 occasion that a reconciliation was cemented be- 
 tween Mrs. McGurk and Judy Ryan, cemented 
 by the sugar-sticks bestowed on the youthful Pat 
 
 185 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 Ryan. There was a large blue bottle with a red- 
 and-yellow label, which contained a liniment 
 warranted to cure the very worst of rheumatics. 
 This was to be divided between Mrs. Quigley 
 and Peter Sheridan. There was a coarse, warm 
 woolen skirt for Stacy, knitting yarn for Peg 
 Sheridan, who was lame and lost " widout a 
 bit of work in her hand." But what gave the 
 greatest pleasure was a pound of tea and four 
 of sugar which she bestowed on dear old Mrs. 
 Kilfoyle, who sat with the parcels in her lap, 
 exclaiming, " Musha, then, well to goodness, 
 sure, woman, dear, oh, now begruah, why, what 
 at, why what at all ? " 
 
 For herself, Mrs. McGurk had bought a pen- 
 'orth of salt. She decided that " meal was mere 
 brash, and a hot pitati's a dale tastier any day." 
 But I've not done half justice in this poor tell- 
 ing to the generosity of Mrs. McGurk and the 
 gratitude of her beneficiaries. 
 
 I should like to tell you of old Mrs. Kilfoyle, 
 something about her when she was pretty Bessie 
 Joyce, and her family came as strangers to Lis- 
 connel from a tidy little farm in County Clare. 
 Her father, Andy Joyce, had a predilection for 
 seeing things decent and in order, and he so 
 i86 
 
Some Irish Villages That I Know 
 improved his little farm that the landlord 
 turned him out, and appropriated the improve- 
 ments to his own use. 
 
 And were there time, I should like to give 
 you a glimpse of Lisconnel on a wet day in July, 
 when all the potatoes are done, and the village 
 is fasting except for the coarse yellow Indian 
 meal, " brash." What wonder that their tem- 
 pers are a bit worn, and that Mrs. Quigley and 
 Mrs. Brian Kilfoyle, the daughter-in-law of my 
 old friend, were at crisscross. 
 
 " Mrs. Brian, Mrs. Brian, Mrs. Brian, 
 ma'am," Mrs. Quigley called out, very audibly 
 exasperated, " I'll trouble you, ma'am, to speak 
 to your Tim there. He's just after slapping a 
 big sod o' turf over the dyke into the middle 
 of me chickens, that went as nare doing slaugh- 
 ter on the half of them as ever I saw. The cra- 
 turs were that terrified, I give you me word, they 
 lep up ten feet standin' off of the ground." 
 
 "Tim," called Mrs. Kilfoyle, "you'll sup 
 sorrow wid a spoon of grief if I hear of your 
 doin' anythin' agin to Mrs. Quigley's chuckens." 
 There the incident would have ended amicably, 
 had not Mrs. Quigley remarked, to nobody in 
 particular, " Begob, it's a quare way some peo- 
 
 187 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 pie have of bringing up their childer to mis- 
 chievous little pests." 
 
 Then the quarrel began in full force. Mrs. 
 Quigley had to stand out in the wet, so she had 
 really the worst of it, as Mrs. Brian could fling 
 her shots from her own house. The sharpness 
 of the contention may be inferred from the fact 
 that when routed by a heavier downpour, she 
 scuddered off toward her own dwelling, the last 
 utterance which she gave the wet winds was, 
 " May the divil sail away wid the half of yous," 
 and the next blast bore the antiphonal response, 
 " And may he sail away wid you, too, ma'am." 
 
 I could talk to you an entire hour of the joys 
 and sorrows, the tragedies that come to the peo- 
 ple of Lisconnel, but Glendalough, the " garden 
 of Ireland," calls. 
 
 It was from Dublin that I took the journey 
 to Glendalough, partly by train and partly by 
 jaunting car. A very pretty journey was this to 
 Rathdrum, skirting the coast for many miles; 
 we had fine views of Dublin Bay. 
 
 O Bay of Dublin, my heart you're troublin'. 
 
 Arrived at Rathdrum, a long, long jaunting- 
 car ride takes one to Glendalough, to me a place 
 j88 
 
Some Irish Villages That I Know 
 
 of absolute enchantment. When I returned 
 from my first visit to Ireland, I was asked many 
 times, "What did you like best?" I answered 
 truly when I said, " I would sooner give over 
 all memories rather than forget Glendalough." 
 
 Thackeray, who went laughing through Ire- 
 land, saw many things with the humorist's eye, 
 but he was serious enough at Glendalough. 
 This is what he says : " I think the Irish scenery 
 just like the Irish melodies — sweet, mild, and 
 sad, even in sunshine. You can neither repre- 
 sent one nor the other by words " — and that I 
 know too sadly well of Glendalough. Glenda- 
 lough is made up of little churches, seven in all, 
 of a Round Tower and a very ancient old cross. 
 This combination is one of the many delightful 
 bits in Glendalough, it has two lakes — " valley 
 of the two lakes '' is what the name means — and 
 it has mountains and streams ; the tiny churches 
 are beautifully softened by time, and ivy-grown ; 
 romance and antiquity abide here. " Multitu- 
 dinous Glendalough, the Rome of the western 
 world," are the terms used by one who described 
 it in the year 800. 
 
 St. Kevin, the founder of the seven churches 
 of Glendalough, was descended from royal fam- 
 
 189 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 ily patrimony, not far away from Rathdrum. 
 The date of his birth is not known; he died in 
 6 1 8. Shortly after his ordination as a priest he 
 withdrew to Glendalough; here he dwelt seven 
 years as a hermit. " On the northern shore of 
 the lake, he dwelt in a hollow tree, on the south- 
 ern shore in a very narrow cave, to which there 
 was no access but by boat; a perpendicular rock 
 overhangs it from above." A shepherd discov- 
 ered his retreat here, and soon thousands came 
 to visit him. They built him an oratory which 
 soon became too small; then at the bidding of 
 the angel, erected the monastery of the valley 
 of the two lakes. There is an endless legend re- 
 garding St. Kevin. The one most constantly 
 connected with him is that when he fled from 
 the world he was followed by a beautiful maid, 
 Kathleen. Her love for him must have been 
 most unselfish. She loved him so devotedly that 
 she begged to be permitted not even to live in 
 sight of him, but " to look upon his shadow, 
 to hear not even his voice, but its echo, promis- 
 ing at the same time that she would lie like a 
 dog at his feet, take penance for his sins, as well 
 as her own, and even in prayer forget her own 
 soul for the good of his." An account found in 
 igo 
 
Some Irish Villages That I Know 
 
 the authentic life of the saint says that he 
 scourged the forward young person with nettles, 
 Kathleen really seems the most admirable of the 
 two; you all know that when she followed St. 
 Kevin across the lake to the cell, he pushed her 
 off the rock into the water. 
 
 A prettier legend is that once when St. Kevin 
 put his hand through the opening of the cell, 
 a blackbird dropped her eggs into it, and St. 
 Kevin never stirred hand or arm till the eggs 
 were hatched. There is another story that once 
 when King Branduff was hunting the boar, he 
 found the saint praying, while a crowd of tame 
 birds sang on his shoulders and hands. Legends 
 like these are of interest, because they explain 
 the bird's, which, in religious symbolism, give 
 one of his attributes. 
 
 Moore's poem which tells the legend begins: 
 
 By that lake whose gloomy shore 
 Skylark never warbles o'er; 
 
 and it has been accepted as a reason that the 
 tragedy of Kathleen's death was followed by a 
 larkless condition, but larks are always more 
 wont to carol over meadows and fields than a 
 lake in a rocky dell. But here is another reason 
 
 191 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 why, it is said, the skylark does not warble over 
 Glendalough. When the seven churches were 
 building, the skylarks used to call the men to 
 their work every morning; the song of the lark 
 was a signal for them to begin labor. When 
 work was at an end St. Kevin declared that no 
 other lark was worthy to succeed those pious 
 birds who had helped in the building of the 
 churches. 
 
 So leave legends, for a little, but one can't 
 leave legends for long in Glendalough; let us 
 see what's to be seen. An ancient gateway leads 
 one to the cluster of churches, crosses, and 
 Round Tower. This Round Tower is presum- 
 ably of the tenth century. Backed by the green 
 hills, its position is striking. St. Kevin's kitchen 
 is so called because the pepole believed for a 
 long time that the belfry was a chimney. Petrie, 
 the learned antiquarian and archaeologist, says 
 there is no reason to doubt that this served St. 
 Kevin for house and oratory, and that his suc- 
 cessors added the belfry ; that would fix the date 
 of the building in the early seventh century. 
 
 I had succeeded in getting to St. Kevin's 
 kitchen without a guide, though there were 
 plenty enough who had offered their services. 
 igz 
 
Some Irish Villages That I Know 
 
 But an old man opened it to my friends and me, 
 and told us the most delightfully extravagant 
 tales. At last he said, " Where do you live, 
 when you're at home? " " In America." " Oh, 
 God bless ye I Come in here." So he let us into 
 the sacristy, and lifting up a slab, he gave us 
 some bits of shale. " There now, ye'U never be 
 shipwrecked and ye'U never have the tooth- 
 ache." I bestowed my pieces upon an Irish 
 friend, who will, I trust, enjoy, in consequence, 
 immunity from those widely divergent evils. 
 The old fellow told such delightful yarns that 
 I gave him a fee entirely disproportionate to 
 the service he had rendered us, and as each of 
 my friends gave him something, he saw that it 
 wasn't an empty purse, or unwillingness to pay, 
 that had kept us from having a guide, and his 
 curiosity was excited. He called me back as we 
 left the little oratory and asked, " Why didn't 
 yes take a guide? " But if ever you go to Glen- 
 dalough, and want a guide, let me entreat you 
 to ask for Jack Barrett. Thackeray says that 
 although his guide wore a ragged coat he had 
 the manners of a gentleman. Jack Barrett 
 couldn't have guided Thackeray in 1842, but 
 he has the manners of a gentleman. Later in 
 
 193 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 the day we were trying to find St. Rhefert's and 
 had taken the wrong path. A voice called, " La- 
 dies, that's the wrong path; ye might wander 
 about all night; come back this way to the stile." 
 He helped us over the stile, then proffered his 
 services as guide, spoke of his qualifications, and 
 the eminent men he had shown about. " But," 
 I said, " we don't question your great acquaint- 
 ance with all these things, but we thought we'd 
 enjoy going alone." " Then I'll not afflict my- 
 self upon you further," he said, and with a very 
 courtly wave of the hat he was gone, after giv- 
 ing us direction how to find St. Rhefert's Church, 
 and, subsequently, the lake. 
 
 St. Rhefert's Church, the burial place of the 
 O'Toole's and, according to tradition, of St. 
 Kevin himself, is charming. We came at last 
 to the lake and employed a boatman to take us 
 over to St. Kevin's bed. Our boatman told us 
 that no lady can be drowned on the lake, for so 
 St. Kevin prayed after the death of Kathleen. 
 
 But to leave Glendalough without mention- 
 ing King O'Toole would be to leave it most 
 incomplete. He was not a contemporary of St. 
 Kevin, although legend associated them to- 
 gether. When King O'Toole had become an 
 
Some Irish Villages That I Know 
 
 old man, one of his chief amusements was to 
 watch his geese swim, and he had one old gan- 
 der that used to dive down into the lake on 
 Friday and bring him up a fish for his dinner. 
 'Twas a great grief when the bird became too 
 old to fly. He met St. Kevin one day, and told 
 him of his sorrow. The saint asked, " What 
 will you give me if I make him fly for you 
 again? " " Why, all the land he flies over, even 
 supposing he flies over the whole glen." With 
 great exactness, he did fly over the entire glen, 
 and King O'Toole put a handsome face on it, 
 made over the entire valley forever and a day 
 to the saint. All this nonsense is put into a very 
 rollicking song, which I dare say you may have 
 heard sung. But I wish you might hear it sung 
 in the rich, pleasant voice of one of my Irish 
 friends. The saintly and royal dialogists are 
 made to talk in a very free and easy way, and 
 more than once the merry song has beguiled the 
 way when I've been questing for folklore, not 
 in Leinster, but in Ulster. 
 
 And having given you a glimpse of a village 
 in Connaught, and a peep at a nook in Leinster, 
 I shall now while you away to a region in Ul- 
 ster, and I am fancying that we have the magic 
 
 195 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 steed, Bohalaun, who can convey us in a minute 
 from the glen in County Wicklow to the region 
 of glens in County Antrim. 
 
 Bohalaun will take us first to Glenoe, an out- 
 of-the-way little place where few enough tour- 
 ists go, but here's where they used to say, " the 
 grace for light," then from Glenoe he will take 
 us to Larne, and along the Antrim Coast Road. 
 Over this fine road he will fly, and his silver 
 hoofs will leave scarcely a shining mark. As 
 we fly on, we shall catch glimpses of the bluest 
 of seas on our right; it is the Moyle, the name 
 given to the Northern Channel between Ireland 
 and Scotland; its blueness is something that we 
 cannot fail to remark, although Bohalaun is go- 
 ing at such a tremendous pace, outpacing the 
 very wind. 
 
 The village to which we are hastening is 
 Cushendall, which name means " foot of the 
 Dall," and it is at the foot of the Dall River; 
 it is also on the Red Bay, and is guarded by the 
 mountains, Lurigethan and Trostan. A branch 
 of the Gulf Stream enters Red Bay and sensibly 
 tempers the climate, so that roses and fuchsias 
 grow luxuriously; then this is the entrance to 
 the Glen Region, the Seven Glens of Antrim, 
 ig6 
 
Some Irish Villages That I Know 
 
 and it was at Cushendall where dwelt McMar- 
 tin, the Lord of the Seven Glens, and I shall 
 like to tell you how he came to be Lord of the 
 Seven Glens. His court used to be on a fairy 
 rath, to which we will go, and as we go I will 
 tell you about McMartin. He was but a poor 
 fisherman, when one day he saw, just off the 
 shore from Cushendall, a beautiful ship, its 
 prow of gold, and its sails of purple, while on 
 the deck was a man reading a wondrous book. 
 McMartin did not know it, but the man was a 
 magician. McMartin was standing on a rock, 
 and the man called to him. The portion of 
 rock on which McMartin stood detached itself 
 from the main rock, and was turned into a 
 silver boat which sailed over the waves to the 
 astrologer. 
 
 " McMartin," said he, " it's written that I 
 must take a wife from this place ; go you to the 
 village and bring her to me." 
 
 Then McMartin hasteiied to his own home, 
 and took his own wife, a very pretty young wom- 
 an, but a vixen most pronounced. His conscience 
 troubled him a little, but he soothed it by saying 
 that she'd be much better off than he a poor 
 fisherman could ever make her, and off he went 
 
 197 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 with her to the magician; but when the magician 
 saw him coming, he called out, " McMartin, I 
 don't want her, we've shrews enough in our 
 country without her," and off he sailed, but first 
 threw into the boat a big bag of gold. When 
 the little silver boat reached the rock, it became 
 a part of the rock again, and McMartin feared 
 for the gold, but it remained, and with it he 
 purchased the Seven Glens and became Lord 
 over them. 
 
 Now you know how the Seven Glens came 
 into McMartin's possession, perhaps you would 
 like to go to one or two of them, as they are 
 among the chasms of Cushendall, and the one 
 most frequently visited is Glen a-uff, beautiful 
 with its waterfalls of various shapes and heights, 
 and hazels, and larches, and ferns. 
 
 Another glen, not so picturesque, nor so much 
 visited, I love better, and that is Glen Dun. 
 " Lone Glen Dun and the wild glen flowers " 
 is very sweet to me. 
 
 Up in Glen Dun, in the cleft root of an oak 
 is an old altar; it is an old runic stone; the 
 inscription is indecipherable. Here for years 
 was the worshiping place of the Roman Cath- 
 olics of this region, until a benevolent gentle- 
 1.98. 
 
Some Irish Villages That I Know 
 
 man gave them a chapel. But they still come 
 here for missions, and when I was there several 
 years ago, the place had not the bare look that 
 its picture shows; the trees and shrubs were in 
 leaf and blossom and there were garlands hung 
 about, and the way to the altar was strewn with 
 moss. 
 
 It does not seem inappropriate that in Glen 
 Dun I should say to you a song of Glen Dun, 
 written by the sweet songstress of this glen re- 
 gion, Moira O'Neill. Her Irish home is not 
 three miles away ; she has made this region hap- 
 pier for me by her singing, and I am deeply in 
 her debt for the songs which interpret so truth- 
 fully the life and scenes of this part of Ireland. 
 She has with her poetry done for the Glens of 
 Antrim what Jane Barlow's tales have done for 
 Connemara. 
 
 Sure this is blessed Erin an' this the same glen, 
 
 The gold is on the whin-bush, 
 
 The watcher sings again, 
 
 The Fairy Thorn's in flower — an' what ails my 
 
 heart then? 
 Flower o' the May, 
 Flower o' the May, 
 
 What about the Maytime, an' he far away! 
 
 jgg 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 Summer loves the green glen, 
 The white bird loves the sea, 
 An' the wind must kiss the heather top, an' the 
 
 red hell hides a bee; 
 As the bee is dear to the honey-flower, so one is 
 
 dear to me. 
 Flowers o' the rose. 
 Flowers o' the rose, 
 A thorn pricked me one day, but nobody knows. 
 
 The bracken up the braeside has rusted in the 
 air, 
 
 Three birches lean together, so silver-limbed an' 
 fair. 
 
 Och, golden leaves are flying fast, but the scar- 
 let wan is rare. 
 
 Berry o' the roan. 
 
 Berry o' the roan, 
 
 The wind sighs among the trees, but I sigh alone. 
 
 I knit beside the turf fire, I spin upon the wheel, 
 
 Winter nights for thinkin' long. 
 
 Round runs the reel. 
 
 But he never knew, he never knew that here for 
 
 him I kneel. 
 Sparkle o' the fire. 
 Sparkle o' the fire. 
 Mother Mary, keep my love, an' send me my 
 
 desire. 
 
 200 
 
Some Irish Villages That I Know 
 
 Moira O'Neill's Irish home used to be at 
 the Cushendun, the sister village of Cushendall, 
 but at the time that I was exploring the glens 
 and singing her songs, and saying them in cab- 
 ins to the peasants, she was far, far away in the 
 Northwest, in the Canadian Rockies. She mar- 
 ried a young man who wished to try ranching 
 in the far West. 
 
 Och, what's this is deeper than the sea? 
 An' what's this is stronger nor the seaf 
 Where the call is " all or none " 
 An' the answer " all for one " 
 Then we be to sail away across the sea. 
 Lone Glen Dun an' the wild glen flowers, 
 Little ye know if the prairie is sweet. 
 Roses for miles and redder than ours, 
 Spring here undher the horses' feet; 
 Ay, an' the black-eyed gold sun-flowers, 
 Not as the glen flowers, small an' sweet. 
 Wathers o' Moyle, I hear ye callin' 
 Clearer for half o' the world between, 
 Antrim hills an' the wet rain fallin' 
 Whiles ye are nearer than snow-tops here: 
 Dreams o' the night an' a night wind callin' — 
 What is the half o' the world between? 
 
 Years ago, when I was first under the spell 
 of her charming verses, I wrote to Moira 
 
 201 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 O'Neill expressing my delight in her glen 
 poems, and I spoke of myself apologetically as 
 an obtrusive stranger. After much traveling of 
 our letters, for we were half the world away 
 from each other, there came a reply from Moira 
 O'Neill which began delightfully, " My dear 
 obtrusive stranger, I wish there were more of 
 you." 
 
 With its flowers, its glens, its mountain and 
 sea, and its stories and songs, Cushendall is an 
 ideal place for a prolonged tarry, and I am al- 
 ways looking forward to the time when I may 
 tarry here for a season at least. But if I wait 
 too long before I take you to my own home, you 
 will put it down to inhospitality and a lack of 
 desire to entertain you, and I shall bid you come 
 at once. 
 
 I shall not take Bohalaun as the medium for 
 traveling; he goes too swiftly, and we should 
 miss much that is interesting, as Bohalaun would 
 prance from Cushendall to my village ; it is not 
 more than fifty or sixty miles, but I shall take 
 you around the Antrim Coast, past Bally-castle 
 and Glenshesh, the famous swinging bridge at 
 Carrich-a-rede, by the Giant's Causeway with 
 its remarkable basaltic columns, to Portrush, 
 
 202 
 
Some Irish Villages That I Know 
 
 thence to Coleraine, and then to our market 
 town, Magherafret. In all probability, we shall 
 have missed one of the two trains that go daily 
 to niy village, so we shall go over by jaunting 
 car, and as we drive, I will tell you of the irreg- 
 ularity of our railway service — I have yet to 
 know why they call the afternoon train " the 
 quarter past four train " — it leaves at ten min- 
 utes to five. The station master has, as you may 
 imagine, little enough to do in this out-of-the- 
 way place, but he holds his office in high esteem. 
 One day last spring, a vain hope to find a gen- 
 eral time-table took me over to the little station,, 
 and I greeted Mr. Bell cordially, " How are 
 you, Mr. Bell?" "How do you do?" Mr. 
 Bell returned, " your tongue I know, but your 
 face and name are strange." "I am Miss 
 Thompson. I was here a long time some years 
 ago." " Not Miss Thompson out of Amer- 
 Tca?" "Yes." "Shake hands again." Then to 
 make talk, I said, " I am very sorry you didn't 
 remember me, Mr. Bell, you were one of the 
 first persons for whom I inquired." Then in- 
 deed did I feel my inconsequence, when Mr. 
 Bell said grandly, " Although we were fast 
 friends, we didn't get speaking much together, 
 
 203 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 and what with this public life and all the bus- 
 tle and stir, I can't be remembering every- 
 body." 
 
 Now here, in this village, I am at home in 
 every corner, and almost by every fire. When 
 I come in from a round, and am asked where 
 I've been, it is very likely I'll say, " I climbed 
 to Mitchell's forth, then went by M'Kevoon's 
 loaming, crossed Sally's fort stick over the burn, 
 and came home by Barclay's meadow." " And 
 did you get seeing anyone?" " I met the Mc- 
 Geehan's ones and had a ' crack ' with Mary 
 Hagan." 
 
 It is in a house like this, a two-cornered 
 thatched-roofed house, that I live with Mary- 
 anne and Rose, in whom some of my friends 
 are most kindly interested. Here we sit by the 
 peat fire, here the neighbors come on their kail- 
 yee — ^which is an evening visit. 
 
 After the friends are gone. Rose will inquire, 
 " Had you good crack the night? " And I usu- 
 ally answer, " Och, the best." Any captious re- 
 marks are not encouraged, because I remember 
 once when I said, referring to a man who usu- 
 ally talks well, " Francis was very bad crack the 
 night," Rose remarked, " You're not always 
 204 
 
Some Irish Villages That I Know 
 
 good crack yourself." The justice of the rebuke 
 I was not slow to grant. 
 
 As I stand in the half-door, and look across 
 to County Antrim, Slemish Mountain is conspic- 
 uous, and it is simply in following the rigid eti- 
 quette of the village that I remark on Slemish, 
 " Slemish is clear to-day," or " Slemish has a 
 cap on to-day." We have a mountain of our 
 own, Slieve Gallion, but we cannot see it from 
 either of our two windows. 
 
 To the casual comer to Curr, it seems a pro- 
 saic enough village, but I know where the fairy 
 raths are, and where Reuben's Glen is. Reuben 
 was the man that could lay devils, and he lived 
 in a beautiful glen; I know where Callan Mor's 
 grave is on the side of Slieve Gallion, and I can 
 show you the place where the giant queen over 
 in Antrim had her workmen begin digging 
 among the mountain so that she could see across 
 to her grand friend in County Donegal ; but the 
 workmen all took a sore in their fingers, and the 
 work stopped. I can show you where Betsey 
 Stewart used to live. She was a woman that 
 could blink, she could charm the cows so that 
 they wouldn't give milk, and she could turn her- 
 self into a hare, and once when she had the hare 
 
 20S 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 shape on her, James Woodhouse shot her, and 
 we know he shot her that night, because when 
 she went into the house with the woman shape 
 on her, she limped, and she limped ever after. 
 
 There is much wisdom that may be learned 
 before a peat fire. Here's the cutting of peat, 
 and may I tell you while we sit before the pleas- 
 ant turf fire which is so bright and warm, how 
 it came about that the peasants burn peat? It 
 must be remembered that one of the theories to 
 account for fairies is that they are fallen angels. 
 Before the days of St. Patrick, the only fuel the 
 Irish had was wood. St. Patrick's servant was 
 one day returning home, and he met a little man 
 in red. " If you will ask St. Patrick something, 
 I will tell you something in return," said the 
 little man. Next morning at Mass, at the Ele- 
 vation, for the celebrant must answer any ques- 
 tion put to him at that time, the servant called 
 out that he had something to ask. " What 
 wretched man called out? " The servant put the 
 question that the little man in red had asked: 
 " Had fallen angels any chance of salvation?" 
 " You must go dig your grave," said St. Pat- 
 rick, " because when he hears the answer, he 
 will kill you. Don't forget to lay log and shovel 
 
 206 
 
Some Irish Villager That I Know 
 
 crosswise over the grave when you're done 
 There is no hope for fallen angels! " 
 
 The servant dug his grave, and lay the log 
 and shovel crosswise, as directed, and then the 
 little man in red appeared. When he heard the 
 answer, he tried to get at the servant, who was 
 protected by the cross, and then the fairy said: 
 " Well, I must keep my word. Go to your bog, 
 throw up some turf. Let it dry in the sun, it 
 will make good fire for you." The little red 
 man disappeared. The servant got out of the 
 grave and told to St. Patrick what the fairy 
 said. They tried the turf and have been using 
 it ever since. It is pleasant as one enjoys the 
 warmth and cheer of the turf fire to think we 
 are indebted to a fairy for the comfort. 
 
 The talk of my friends in Curr is on all kinds 
 of subjects. I like to hear Dan, a handsome boy 
 of twenty, talk of flowers and birds, both of 
 which he loves from the very gentleness of his 
 nature. " All the birds in the world come round 
 my house," he says. " Last night I dreamed 
 that my room was full of birds, and the dream 
 was true, for when I waked they were all sing- 
 ing about my house." 
 
 I can give you some, indeed, I can give you 
 
 207 
 
A Book oj Hours 
 
 many instances of poetic idiom among my 
 friends, but they do not all talk poetically. 
 When Sarah McWilliams came to invite me to 
 dine with her, this was the form which her in- 
 vitation took: "I cut the head off a hen last 
 night, and I hope you'll come over to-morrow " 
 — which I rightly interpreted as an invitation 
 to dinner. Meg Barclay's speech is extremely 
 racy of the soil, Meg is most unpoetic. I re- 
 member once when ever so many of us were sit- 
 ting on the ditch, which I have always to remind 
 my hearers is a bank, one glorious June evening 
 when the mountains were beautiful, that Meg, 
 entirely oblivious of all the beauty, began to 
 tell us what fine " crack " a man was whom 
 chance had brought to her father's house the 
 night before. " He was telling us about the cut- 
 tin'-up of ould Mis' Palmer." Now it must 
 not for a moment be supposed that old Mis' 
 Palmer had been guilty of any indiscretion 
 which Meg denominated " a cuttin'-up." It 
 was, rather, an autopsy, the harrowing details 
 of which I will spare you, but my medical 
 friends beg me again and again to tell them of 
 the cuttin'-up of ould Mis' Palmer. 
 
 Now that it is all over, and happily over, I 
 208 
 
Some Irish Villages That I Know 
 
 can tell you of a slight misadventure that came 
 to me in the days of last spring. I was so care- 
 less as to lose my rings. After vain searching 
 for them, my peasant friends were incredulous. 
 I couldn't have lost them all — one might go, 
 but all! I had put them away and searching 
 would not reveal them, I looked, and so did 
 they, but no amount of searching discovered the 
 rings. While I tried to act as usual, I was de- 
 pressed. I forbade my entertainers mentioning 
 the loss. After the first anxious search, and their 
 uttering of, "How lamentable!" and sundry 
 exclamations, they had appeared to put it from 
 their minds, and obeyed to the letter my com- 
 mand that the subject was never to be named. 
 One evening I said, " Maryanne, will you still, 
 when you're sweeping, think about my rings ? " 
 And Maryanne turned about swiftly, with the 
 tears flashing in her eyes : " There's never a mo- 
 ment when I'm not thinking of them. How my 
 heart aches ! It was the other night that I sent a 
 request to St. Anthony, and if he doesn't restore 
 them I don't know what else to do." My own 
 belief was that they had somehow fallen on to 
 the earth floor of my room, been swept into the 
 kitchen, and that the ducks, chickens, and other 
 
 2og 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 birds had swallowed my diamonds and pearls. 
 It is now extremely funny as I recall how bit- 
 terly I quoted over and over again, " Irks care 
 the full-cropped bird? " as I looked at the fowl. 
 
 One day, just a week after their loss, I found 
 them, exactly where I had put them. With 
 them, I rushed to Maryanne in the kitchen. 
 " See I " I exclaimed. " It's never your rings I " 
 she cried out, and then she rushed out to tell the 
 others. " She's found the rings I She's found 
 her rings I " Such prayerfulness I've never 
 heard as the old mother's, " Thanks be to God; 
 praise the Father ! " and Rose's exclaiming, 
 " St. Anthony is good. It's miraculous 1 " 
 
 For a week my poor friends were miserable 
 through my own carelessness, but never a word 
 was said, and many might have been said about 
 reproving me. When I had left them Rose 
 wrote about the matter: " Indeed you did more 
 than well, you had good patience and was pleas- 
 ant with us, and it was hard on you, for we were 
 everyone black at the heart about them. And 
 beside the loss it was I always thought you'd 
 look back to Ireland with a frown, now I know 
 you'll look back with a smile." 
 
 The leaving these dear friends of mine is 
 
 210 
 
Some Irish Villages That I Know 
 
 always sad. Rose was weeping copiously, and I 
 could only comfort her by saying: " Remember, 
 I'm coming back to have a donkey car and ride 
 all over Ireland in it." Hugh Patrick McNally 
 Is a little boy of five whose ambition is to grow 
 big enough to be my donkey boy. He bestowed 
 on me a lock of his very fair hair; the shop- 
 keeper, Mary Higgins, gave me oranges and 
 biscuits. The Dummy — did I know her name 
 I would not so designate the deaf and dumb 
 woman that came to the station bringing me a 
 shamrock. Poor woman, poorer than you can 
 conceive, " livin' her lone " in a cabin not far 
 from mine, she brought me a poetic gift at 
 parting. Everybody brought me something; 
 very humbly they presented the things, proffer- 
 ing them through Rose, asking her first if she 
 thought I'd take offense. 
 
 Now I will close with " Back to Ireland," by 
 Moira O'Neill, a song which my Irish friends 
 liked best of all I read to them. 
 
 Oh, tell me, will I ever win to Ireland again, 
 Astore ! from the far North-West? 
 
 Have we given all the rainbows, an' green woods 
 an' rain. 
 For the suns an' the snows o' the West? 
 
 211 
 
A Book of Hours 
 
 " Them that goes to Ireland must thravel night 
 
 an' day, 
 An' them that goes to Ireland must sail across 
 
 the say, 
 For the len'th of here to Ireland is half the 
 
 world away — 
 An' you'll lave your heart behind you in the 
 West. 
 Set your face for Ireland, 
 Kiss your friends in Ireland, 
 But lave your heart behind you in the West." 
 
 On a dim an' shiny mornin' the ship she comes 
 to land. 
 Early, oh, early in the mornin' , 
 The silver wathers o' the Foyle go slidin' to the 
 strand, 
 Whisperin', " Ye're welcome in the mornin'." 
 There's darkness on the holy hills I know are 
 
 close aroun', 
 But the stars are shinin' up the sky, the stars are 
 
 shinin' down, 
 They make a golden cross above, they make a 
 
 golden crown. 
 An' meself could tell ye why — in the mornin'. 
 Sure an' this is Ireland, 
 Thank God for Ireland! 
 I'm comin' back to Ireland the mornin'. 
 
 212 
 
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