the most vivid remembrance of my first return to ireland is the sharp sensation of ugly sound conveyed in the flat dublin drawl. i have never since been able to surmount this unjust antipathy to the accent of my native town. the intolerable length of the syllables, the exaggerated roundness of the vowel sounds, the weight and roll of the eternal r's—it is all like the garlic of provence, more seizing than captivating.
and then the squalor, the mysterious ugliness of the north wall! the air of affronted leisure that greets you on all sides. a filthy porter slouches over to you, with an indulgent, quizzical look in his kindly eyes. "is it a porther ye'll be wanting?" he asks, in suppressed wonderment at any such unreasonable need on your part. when he has sufficiently recovered from the shock, he lounges in among the boxes, heroically resolved to make a joke of his martyrdom.[pg 189] he meets your irritated glance with a reassuring smile, nods, and drawls out cheerily: "aisy, now, aisy. sure an' 'twill be all the same in a hundred years." when at last your trunks are discovered in the disorderly heap, he volunteers, with the same suggestion of indifferent indulgence: "i suppose 'twill be a cab or a cyar you'll be wanting next." by implication you are made to understand that the cab or the cyar is another exorbitant demand on your part, and that properly speaking you should shoulder your trunk yourself and march off contentedly to your inn or lodging or palace. "if ye loike, i'll lift it on to the cab for you," he adds, good-naturedly.
there are travellers whom these odd ways of erin amuse; others there are who are exasperated to the verge of insanity by them. but they amply explain the lamentable condition of the island and the imperturbable good-humour of the least troubled and least ambitious of races. the porter's philosophy resumes the philosophy of the land: "aisy, now, aisy. sure an' 'twill be all the same in a hundred years."
with patience and good-humour on your side, and much voluble sympathy and information on that of your driver, you are sure to arrive[pg 190] somewhere, even from such remote latitudes as that of the north wall and the pigeon-house. you are jerked over two lock-bridges, and you thank your stars with reason that the discoloured and malodorous waters of the liffey have not closed over you and your luggage. the catastrophe would find your driver phlegmatic and philosophic, with a twinkle in his eye above the infamous depths of mire that suffocated you, assuring you that when a man is ass enough to travel he must take the consequences of his folly. for erin and iberia, moist shamrock and flaunting carnation, meet in their conviction that the sage sits at home and smokes his pipe or twangs his guitar in leisure while the fool alone courts the perils of foreign highways.
as soon as the hall-door opened, and i stood with my foot upon the first step of the familiar stairs, a chorus of young voices shouted my name in glee. "an—gel—a!"
how flat and strange and inharmonious sounded that first greeting of my name in ears attuned to accents shriller and more thin! the english angela was quick and clear; but the long-drawn dublin angela set all my teeth on an edge, and such was the shock that the ardour of my satisfaction in seeing them all again, and[pg 191] of appearing in their midst as a travelled personage, was damped.
"how odd you all talk," i remember remarking at tea, and being promptly crushed: "it's you with your horrid english accent that talks odd."
still, in spite of this slight skirmish, they were glad enough to see me. the quaint little booby of kildare, whom they had bullied to their liking, had grown into a lean, delicate, and resolute fiend, prepared to meet every blow by a buffet, every injustice by passionate revolt. i no longer needed mrs. clement's submissive protection. i had tasted the glory of independent fight, and henceforth my tormentors were entitled to some meed of pity, though justice bids me, in recording my iniquities, to remember that their misfortunes were merited and earned with exceeding rigour.
the first thrill of home-coming, that inexplicable vibration of memory's chord, which so early marks the development of the creature, and signifies the sharp division of past and present, ran like a flame through all my body when the noise of mrs. clement's big bunch of keys, rattling below stairs, reached me through the open drawing-room door.
"mrs. clement is down-stairs!" i shouted joyously, and instantly the band of blond-headed scamps carried me off in triumph.
into whose hands has that sombre town-house of my parents passed? heaven grant the children that play there are happier than ever i was; but if the old store-room, with the big linen-presses, and the long china-press with upper doors of wire-screen, the long table and square mahogany and leather armchairs and sofa, gives to the occupants to-day half the pleasure it always gave me, they are not to be pitied whatever their fate.
the wide window looked out upon a hideous little street, but in front there was a stone terrace, with two huge eagles, where mrs. clement kept pots of plants and flowers that, alas! never bloomed, watered she them never so sedulously; and above the terraces, if you ignored the sordid street, the sunset traced all its fairest and rarest effects upon the broad arch of heaven that spanned the street opening. those irish skies! you must go to italy and greece to find hues as heavenly. how many a sorrow unsuspected, that filled me with such intensity of despair as only childhood can feel, has been smoothed by that mysterious slip of sky between two dull[pg 193] rows of houses, against which in the liquid summer of blue dusk the eagles, with all the lovely significance of a romantic image, were sketched in sculptured stone. i dried my eyes to dream of lands where eagles flew as common as sparrows. i cannot now tell why, but i remember well that i grew to associate that distant glimpse of heaven from the old store-room with the isle of prospero and miranda. and when i learnt the sonnets—which i knew by heart, as well as "the tempest" and "the merchant of venice" before the holidays were over—i always found some strange connection between the abortive, sickly cowslips and primroses mrs. clement cultivated on her terrace in wooden boxes and those magic lines—
"from you have i been absent in the spring,
when proud-pied april, dressed in all his trim,
hath put a spirit of youth in everything."
what can it be that poetry says to children, since they can neither understand the rhythm, nor metre, nor beauty, nor sentiment of it? and the child who (as i was then) is susceptible to the charm of poetry that sweeps through the infinite, weeps with delicious emotion without the ghost of an idea why. i was but a child of nine, when my sister in response to my prayer, with[pg 194] my cheek still stinging from that blow along the warwick road, opened the fairyland of shakespeare to me. with a rapture i would i now could feel, i thrilled to the glamour of the moonlight scene of the "merchant." we never went to bed without rehearsing it, each in turn being jessica or lorenzo. i only remember one other sensation as passionate and vivid and absorbing, my first hearing of the moonlight sonata, also at an age when it was perfectly impossible that i should understand more than a mouse or a linnet a particle of its beauty or meaning. yet there they stand out in extraordinary relief from a confusion of childish impressions, two distinct moments of inexplicable ecstasy, the reveries of lorenzo and jessica and the impassioned utterance of the master's soul in the divinest of sound played, possibly not well, by my eldest sister's governess in a soft summer twilight so long ago.
meanwhile i have left mrs. clement, excited and pathetic, holding my thin little visage in the cup of her folded palms. she was just as faded and fair and melancholy as ever, and the same young man's head showed in the brooch frame on the unchanged black silk gown. she kissed me several times, and stroked my hair, and [pg 195]expressed amazement at the change in me. and while she, dear kindly soul, was only thinking of me, there was i, volatile little rascal, looking around me, delighted to see again the beautiful big red-and-white cups, and smell the spices of the cupboard. has tea, have bread-and-milk, ever tasted again as these modest luxuries tasted in those beautiful cups? the very remembrance of them brings the water of envy to the mouth of age. i forget the miseries of childhood only to recall the pleasure i took in that warm and rich pottery, and the brilliant effect of bowls and plates and cups upon the morning and evening damask.
and that first night at home, four little girls sleeping together in two large beds, three night-dressed forms perched on a single bed, while i, the stranger returned from abroad, mimicked mr. parker for their shrieking delight, and held my night-dress high up on either side to perform the famous curtsey of queen anne. and then a furious shout outside on the landing, and my mother's voice—
"what's the meaning of that noise? go to sleep instantly, or i'll come in and whip you all round."
a sudden scamper of white-robed limbs, and[pg 196] in a twinkling four heads are hidden under the sheets. silence down the corridors, silence throughout the high old house; only the breathing of night, and four little heads are again bobbing over the pillows.
"oh, i say, angela, we didn't tell you, there's a new baby up-stairs. susanna! did you ever hear of such a name? everybody has pretty names but us. birdie was so jealous when it came, because nurse said her nose would be out of joint, that she tried to smash its head with a poker one day. she was caught in time."
and so there was. another lamentable little girl born into this improvident dolorous vale of irish misery. elsewhere boys are born in plenty. in ireland,—the very wretchedest land on earth for woman, the one spot of the globe where no provision is made for her, and where parents consider themselves as exempt of all duty, of tenderness, of justice in her regard, where her lot as daughter, wife, and old maid bears no resemblance to the ideal of civilisation,—a dozen girls are born for one boy. the parents moan, and being fatalists as well as catholics, reflect that it is the will of god, as if they were not in the least responsible; and while they assure you that they have not wherewith to fill an extra[pg 197] mouth, which is inevitably true, they continue to produce their twelve, fifteen, or twenty infants with alarming and incredible indifference. this is irish virtue. the army of inefficient irish governesses and starving illiterate irish teachers cast upon the continent, forces one to lament a virtue whose results are so heartless and so deplorable. if my most sympathetic and most satisfactory race were only a little less virtuous in its own restricted sense of the word, and a tiny bit more rational! and not content, alas! with the iniquity of driving these poor maimed creatures upon foreign shores in the quest of daily bread, hopelessly ill-equipped for the task, without education, or knowledge of domestic or feminine lore, incapable of handling a needle or cooking an egg, without the most rudimentary instinct of order or personal tidiness, incompetent, and vague, and careless,—these same parents at home expect these martyrs abroad to replenish their coffers with miserably earned coin. i have never met an irish governess on the continent who had a sou to spend on her private pleasures, for the simple reason that she sent every odd farthing home. it's the iniquitous old story. irishmen go to america, marry, and make their fortunes; but the [pg 198]landlord and shopkeeper at home are paid by the savings of the peasant-girls, without a "thank you" from their parents. let jack or tom send them a five-pound note in the course of a prosperous career, "glory be to god, but 'tis the good son he is," piously ejaculate the old folk. let bessy or jane give them her heart's blood, deny herself every pleasure, not only the luxuries but the very necessaries of life, and the same old folk nod their sapient heads,—"'tis but her duty, to be sure."
needless to say, this inappropriate burst of indignation was not inspired in those days by the sight of my new little sister in her cradle, as white as milk, with eyes like big blue stars, the eyes of her irish father, soft and luminous and gay. she dwelt on earth just eighteen months, and then took flight to some region where it is to be hoped she found a warmer nest than fate would have offered her here below.
my grandmother was dead, but dennis and mary ann still lived with my uncle lionel. what a joy our meeting! so "thim english" hadn't made mince-meat of me! i was whole and sound, mary ann remarked, but mighty spare of flesh and colour. "just a rag of a creature," dennis commented, as he lifted my arm. "why didn't ye write and tell us ye were hungry, alannah?"
"i did so," i promptly retorted; "but sister esmeralda rubbed it out, and put in something else which wasn't a bit true."
"troth, and 'tis meself 'ud enjoy givin' that wan a piece of me moind."
the whiff of the brogue was strong enough to waft you to the clouds. but how good to be with these two honest souls again! uncle lionel gave me a crown-piece, when he had tortured my check with his chaven chin, and called me a little renegade because of my english accent, and then i went out to the garden, neglected ever since the death of my grandfather.
where was hamlet, and whither had vanished elsinore? where was the youth with the future revolutionary name, who used to come bounding over the hedge, cheerily humming "love among the roses"? there were no roses now, and the house next door was to let.
after the trim gardens of england, this desolate old slip of garden, where weeds and thick grasses grew along the uncared paths, seemed a cemetery of dead seasons. fruit-trees that bore neither blossom nor fruit; flower-beds where never leaf nor flower now bloomed; alleys where last year's autumn leaves still lay; broken pots that used to make such a gay parterre of geraniums of every hue when my grandfather lived; defoliaged rose-bushes, now mere summer urns of unfulfilled promise, and scarce a red bunch on the currant-boughs. and the pool, with the circle of watering-cans above, now rusty and untouched, where i used to watch for the first faint line of shadow cast by the gathering dusk, which stole across its clear face in keeping with the stealing flight of light above—how dead and sad all this seemed, despite its quaint familiarity. i was but a child, and yet as i stood once more in that neglected garden, i had some premonition of the immitigable sadness of remembrance, the feeling that there was already a past that had slipped through my fingers, as the waters run ceaselessly from the fountain of life to mingle with the still river of death.