from
'Antrim and Belfast':
"When
I walked into the hotel in Cushendall on a bright, cold Wednesday
afternoon, the first Wednesday in March, I was puzzled to find
on each open, welcoming brow that turned towards, me a central
smudge of black. Schooldays, Mother Philomena, Sister Bernard
-I remembered. Ah yes - Ash Wednesday! But this is Antrim! I
am in the north! And so I learnt to my surprise that the population
of the Glens of Antrim is almost ninety per cent Roman Catholic.
A point of no relevance, save that it was dramatically, amusingly,
presented to me by the admonition, "Remember man that thou art
dust", written on every forehead in a remote, lovely village
to which I came a stranger with misconceptions.
I can hardly have had misconceptions about the look of this
region, however, for the coast and glens of Antrim are renowned,
as Kerry is. Placed diagonally to each other, north and south,
the two counties have long been clichés for scenic beauty
in Ireland. And undeniably they are superb; endearing also,
their lovers tell us. But in neither case am I in that secret,
but only an acquaintance standing about in admiration, presuming
nothing and keeping the word love under cover.
I had what old-fashioned people call 'great crack' in Cushendall.
I wonder does Mrs Stone remember
me? She has a pleasant, low- ceilinged shop - stationery, postcards,
rosary beads - and she lives alone in a deep old house behind
it.
She is old herself; she says she is over ninety, and her memories
justify her claim, but she suggests an ascetic and very handsome
seventy. Her eyes shine starrily in a pale, aristocratic face
and grey-white hair sweeps off her temples poet-fashion; she
is lean and moves quickly, and she looks at and listens to everything
alive with an open interest which is at once benevolent and
critical. She was born into poverty and hard work in Belfast;
and, without any hyperbole, she must have been one of the most
beautiful and thoroughbred-looking girls that ever stepped anywhere
in Ireland. Marriage brought her at twenty years of age to Cushendall
and the little shop. And ever since she has watched and loved
the Glens, their glamour, their legends, their people and their
history. She has read all her life, eclectically and impatiently;
and she has kept informed of the world and events. She has talked
with high and low, loves to talk with all sorts. She was born
an intellectual, every experience and observation filters through
her analytic brain. She is, indeed, an original - one does not
meet her like. And that not merely because now, over ninety,
she is so handsome, so gracious and witty and, unwillingly,
so clear a reproach to us all - but always she must have stood
alone, I think.
Mrs Stone is a woman who speaks of the past lightly, and with
no pause or drag for sentiment. She remembers neatly - and if
she does not she tosses the attempt behind her. So, nothing
of a bore!
Our first conversation settled it that we were to get acquainted.
I was in her dark shop looking at postcards - and a poor selection
they were. I had just come up the Antrim West Road and entered
the Glens for the first time in my life; I was under the impression
of the noble sights of the day, and I babbled, I suppose, and
asked ignorant questions. These were answered with humour and
charm so I dawdled about the shop. There were old Penguins*
and Magazines; turning them over I talked of some writer or
other who had known the Glens, and we went on a bit about books.
It came out that I wrote, and I was amused at the care and light
courtesy with which that fact was received. None of your "Oh,
indeed! Isn't that wonderful? Imagine it!" technique. In fact,
Mrs Stone was almost too calm in getting past the dangerous
boredom of 'writer' talk. But, a few sentences later, Limerick
and surnames coming up she suddenly paused and smiled very accentedly.
"Ah! I see! Ah - You do really write."
She had got my name, and it happened that she had read and liked
my novels, or some of them. So now, since I truly was a published
professional, and in her opinion a good one, she could talk
about books and writers without discomfort.
It was refreshing - this non-conformity.
"Why were you so cool at first when I said I was a writer?"
"Ah - it's often difficult! So many ladies, and gentlemen, tell
you that they write, you know - and then, there's nothing more
to be said!"
But we found between us much to say. Mrs Stone, though at case
with local legends, ghosts and 'tall' stories, and with the
passions of history and event - all crowded and pressed up and
down the Glens - preferred to talk of living people, or of events
and people within her ninety years. Good and true enough Finn
MacCool's palatial caverns up along Glenariff, and Ossian's
grave too, and tales of history and invention all about, but
Mrs Stone referred one to Professor De Largy for all such. And
was he not the best reference, being child and son of this very
Cushendall? Herself however liked in our evening talks to argue
about the art of writing and about modern writers-poets and
novelists her chief targets. She is a severe critic, sometimes
severe, as I thought and said, irrelevantly to literature. I
had to fight hard for some twentieth-century novelists whom
I know to be good, whatever Mrs Stone may say. But pleasure
of our talk lay in its being more accurate than its kind often
is, because we confined it to works we really knew. And she
had much to tell me of writers and others of Irish fame who
in her time had lived in or frequented the Glens and who had
known her shop and her fireside.
She remembered Standish O'Grady, for instance, and laughed softly,
sixty-five or more years beyond it, over some exaggerated impatience
of his one day about a bicycle. She re-created the kind of angry
charm he may have had -and we agreed as to our happy past delight
in The Bog of Stars. She had known Alice Milligan, and
'Eithne Carbery'; and the poet of Songs of the Glens of Antrim
had been a life-neighbour of Cushendall. Mrs Stone knew many
younger poets and folklorists too, and some of the uncompromising
Ulster patriots of before 1916 - Bulmer Hobson, for instance,
and Denis McCullough, and Roger Casement.
Of the last she spoke with some poignancy. "When he was only
a lad I used to argue with him, here in this shop. He was a
beautiful young boy, God bless him. Do you think they'll ever
let us bring him home? His place is ready for him, you know,
just on the shore up there, under Tor Head. He should be at
home in Antrim - instead of where he is, the child!" She looked
at me shrewdly. "There was nothing bad in Roger Casement," she
said. "I'd have known, I think, if he was bad. Oh, he was foolish.
He had wild ideas, and often I told him they were impossible
- nonsensical. The way he'd laugh at that! I can see him now,
sitting up there on that counter, swinging his legs, and talking
nonsense!"
The last night I was in Cushendall I talked over Mrs Stone's
fire until half-past one in the morning. And then she insisted
on walking the length of the street with me to my hotel. It
was a clear, cold night, very still; we could bear the gentle
voice of the sea off to the left. At the hotel door I wanted
to walk her home again - after all, she is over ninety. But
she wouldn't hear of it. She thrust a great roll of paper into
my hands. "It's foolscap," she said, "hard to get now. Do you
write on it?"
I told her that indeed I always did, when I could get it, but
that I could not take that great roll from her.
"You must," she said. "It's a present. Cover it with good words."
And off she turned, over the bridge and down the moonlit street
as quick as a boy, in her grey tweed coat.
