A compelling double act possessed of self-awareness and a keen eye for the human condition ... of whatever class or creed
Edith Somerville and Violet Martin first met on a Sunday morning in January 1886 at St Barrahane’s church in west Cork. Looking back at this encounter with her cousin and collaborator, Edith Somerville described it as “the hinge of my life – the place where my fate and hers turned over”.
In A Misdeal, a poor farmer named McCarthy has ‘three fine lumps of daughters in America paying his rent for him’ A cousin of Edith Somerville’s recently returned from the South African war told her that, when a copy of The Irish RM was found on the body of a dead Boer, the British troops concluded that “he died of laughter” and adopted the stories as “the camp bible”. The later stories have Flurry Knox going to fight in that same conflict and, on his return, the dense social ironies of Skebawn life begin to run on darker lines.
In 1901, Edith Somerville wrote to Martin Ross to say that she had heard of “a very smart lady going to Ireland for the first time” who thought that the book provided a guide as to “how one should talk to the Irish”. They thought the idea hilarious because for them the point was not to talk but rather to pay attention. Somerville and Ross had, as the Irish nationalist critic BG McCarthy said “a genius for listening”.
The results of such scrutiny are brilliantly realised in The Real Charlotte , a terse, tough novel that tells the story of clever, greedy Charlotte and her pretty first cousin once removed, Francie. Charlotte, the daughter of the former agent for the Dysart estates, has a long-standing crush on the current agent, handsome and married Roderick Lambert. But Roderick desires Francie who in her turn falls headlong for a heedless army officer, Captain Hawkins.
Men as well as money were among the scarce resources of the place, as the landlord class looked to the military or went to serve as imperial bureaucrats. Edith Somerville wrote to Martin Ross how, at a dance in west Cork, there were no men who could dance and also, there were no men. “I never knew the country so bereft of men or so peopled with girls!” moans Lady Dysart at a tennis party.
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