5, Brunswick Gardens
London W. 8.
July 12th 1963
Dearest Machi,
I could and I should write a long account of our trip, but I don’t know whether I will. I didn’t write a word while we were away. It really was rather hard work in a way and I for one came back exhausted. I certainly am an old home body. I can’t sleep and my tummy goes to pot as soon as I get away. Of course it was great fun and we giggled a lot and enjoyed all the discomforts as well as the rest. It was the bleakest beginning, as we had to have the car on board by three, yet we didn’t sail until ten that night and Liverpool seemed to have less to offer than any town I’ve ever been in. The buildings were as black as this typewriter, it was quite icy in the streets, we went into a pub in the docks – and Phil hates pubs – and there were only sandwiches and I was the only woman in three floors of bars. It seems women don’t go into pubs as they do in the south. We found a double feature movie – one for me with Liz Taylor as a prostitute and one for Phil with a village in England giving birth to Martians – not bad each in their way and we were glad to get off the streets. I do dislike these crossings on small ships with stuffy cabins, but other people seemed to be treating it like a real voyage, with friends in the bar to see them off and people walking the decks.
Hugo met us at 7:00 in the morning and we had rather a long wait to get the car unloaded (with a crane) – being the first on we were the last off, and were the last on and the first off coming the other way. We almost scared ourselves after dumping Sheena – we were hurried after a lunch that was rather wild, as the car had developed an electrical fault, I’d packed her address and we wasted time finding her and then Hugo had to find a hotel that he had been vaguely told was off the main road from Dublin to so and so, and all Irish are vague and three men misdirected us and finally a small boy told us carefully and exactly. It was a super place and very extravagant which is just what Sheena likes though she probably needed anything in the world more.
But that was the last day, not the first. Hugo drove us to a hotel near his room – a most remarkable place. I was intrigued. It was neat as a pin – a large room with a stove and a sink, pots and pans neatly in a cupboard, my old mixmaster (from China) arranged in some curious way onto the wall. Mayonnaise is the chief ingredient in Hugo’s diet. The loudspeakers were somewhere – a large dining table, bed and two large windows on the same side of the wall looking onto very interesting roof tops and chimneys, far away to give plenty of light and sunshine. He pays two pounds a week, there’s no bath of any sort and the johnny is outdoors. A Roman Catholic school plays in a court beneath and he says it is noisy at recess. Seagulls fly all around outside looking very picturesque. It is a slum part of town, corresponding to Covent Garden here and during the day all the wholesale food is being carried back and forth across the street so you can hardly move around.
We never drove in town. It’s the very worst traffic I ever saw, and Hugo used streets so narrow you were on the pavement half the time. People go backwards down one way streets, park anywhere.
We broke down – or rather a warning light came on saying something was wrong with the electrical side – just 20 miles outside of Dublin. It was certainly all very lucky, as we had been miles from nowhere and on top of mountain passes. An A.A. man decided we were safe to keep on to a garage in Dublin, and though we could buy the parts – a new dynamo and a regulator – no mechanic does any work on Sunday. Hugo thought maybe he could exchange the parts but was stopped by a screw he couldn’t reach and when I begged of a man wasn’t there a single place in town who would work on Sunday he said no, but what was the matter. He then opened the doors of the garage, got us in there and raised the car on one of those things and worked steadily for forty-five minutes. Then he flatly refused to accept a single thing for it. Because he wouldn’t take anything – and being wiped out of much cash by buying the parts – we had enough to buy some Irish whiskey and Hugo took us to a place where the manager of the restaurant let us pay by cheque. We were supposed to be giving two girls a snooty supper so it was going to be a bit awkward. They are very casual in Ireland, and when our money gave out in another place, a strange bank let Phil take away £25 without any trouble at all. The very snooty hotel where we landed up exhausted for the last three nights before returning to Dublin wouldn’t give us any credit at all.
Our first day was just a matter of getting across to the West of Ireland – flat and nothing special and rather discouraged because it was wet and overcast. Hugo provided equipment for eating picnic lunches and his mayonnaise lasted for six lunches, by which time we were in the hotel where we stayed put. Every meal but one was a real English picnic, often in a slight drizzle and all but once in cold so bitter that we jumped in the car with heat full on in great relief. We all three sat in the front to keep warm too.
Ireland must be perfectly gorgeous when it is clear. We were very unfortunate. Our first night was in a hotel right on the edge of a bay that should have had mountains on each side going out to sea. The whole of that side of the island is a string of peninsulas and in County Kerry we circled around two of them but never were the mountains on the other side really clear. We stayed two nights at that first hotel and so had to go over high mountain passes four different times. It was different every time and lovely nevertheless but never what it could have been. I suppose it seldom is. The very famous lakes of Killarney were pretty enough, with lots of islands in them but the great mountains all around three sides we just couldn’t see.
The first day Hugo took us to see a ruined Franciscan Friary that he had seen before and loved, and we spent a long time climbing all over it, up and down partial staircases, trying to visualize what it had been. I was terribly shocked by the history of Ireland. Obviously hadn’t had a clue before. The automobile association has marvellous guides with references to places of interest in every single little town in the country. Almost without exception it would start "There is nothing of interest to the antiquarian except the ruins of so and so and so and so", it having been destroyed in this or that war, rebuilt, destroyed and in the end ruined by Cromwell. We saw four of these Franciscan monasteries, beautiful ruins, covered in ivy, but it soon became apparent that they were to be had by the dozens and it got to be rather a joke. The towers and ruined castles everywhere were simply remarkable. It seemed as if Ireland was more heavily populated a thousand years ago than it is now.
We also saw lots of prehistoric remains – one place there were 514 stone huts just about tall enough for a man. One very interesting round tower was 18 feet high, practically intact. The inside was a mass of steps going up to the top where evidently you ran up and down throwing stones or something on the enemy. All these on the very tip of the peninsula and no one knows a thing about why they had to fortify themselves so well – nor could we think why in the whole of the island people would go and build a settlement on a barren rocky tip when there was so much fertile land inland. You have never seen so much stone and rock in your life, nor so many different kinds of stone walls. One very barren and bleak part seemed to be nothing but stone, yet these walls went for miles and miles right up and over the mountains- rock walls on top of rock (these aren’t prehistoric) with sheep and cows munching things in the crevices. My the people are poor.
I wish I could describe well. One incident was really amazing in that extremely barren part. We passed a large empty bus with its conductor standing in the road gazing at nothing and were much puzzled. Then suddenly we looked down towards the sea and there were dozens and dozens of black figures racing here and there, and above us more black figures were racing down the side of the mountain as though they were coming to descend on us. They were young priests in identical flowing black robes on a day’s outing – looking for all the world like a pack of crows, but with this weird landscape and nothing but rock everywhere it was almost frightening.
In the glens and valleys it was exactly the opposite and lush with vegetation. The woods around our first monastery were full of rocks so covered with gorse, and the trees so hanging with moss, it was also frightening. We walked a long way in a misty rain having heard there was a garden connected with a fine Elizabethan house. A mile or more of wide avenue that had been planted out with exotic trees and shrubs and they’d taken over. That ground cover that has a bright yellow flower had really run riot and was all over the place. In another deserted woodland garden attached to our hotel the perrywinkle was dense in the woods. Great fun. I wish I could remember now what else was there. It was our first day and everything has got mixed up but I remember I just couldn’t believe the yards and yards I saw of shrubs that one generally sees one of in a garden. And the trees looking hundreds of years old and every branch covered in moss.
We finally reached the house in beautiful condition, and in a wonderful setting – a wide paving down the side, below that a smooth sloping lawn down to a marsh that edged Lake Killarney and behind the house a steeply rising hill covered with pines, reminding me of the hills behind the ginkakuji in Kyoto. The lawn went back toward the hill with groups of wonderful pine and as you walked toward them you came upon the most remarkable garden we’ve ever seen. There was a stream – obviously all man made as it would go underground in places leaving great sweeps of wonderful lawn – bordered with all the moisture-loving things – but everything on such an enormous scale. Not a square yard of iris and another of primulas, but groups – a dozen square yards – great sweeps of hostas, great beds of hydrangeas, leading onto a wood garden with lovely paths and walks. Behind the house was the nicest rock garden I ever saw, because the natural outcrop was so grand and large. It all added up to the most impressive place we’ve been to – and not one soul was about. When we first spotted the house, an old man like a gardener was headed to us and he said yes there was a garden, and never another soul was about, in the walled garden, the vegetable garden, the tennis court – anywhere – yet it was beautifully kept up. Hugo was heart-broken that no one lived there, and finally we found out that the garden belonged to the state, but I can’t see why it isn’t advertised or visited.
They are just very different from Japanese gardens of course, but in their own way some of the big English gardens are certainly remarkable. This house was given to someone by Queen Elizabeth the first because of something the man had done. One does wonder whether it is worth living in such damp and mist, though, to get the effects: I vote not. I’m depressed to see in the paper today that the English climate, according to some expert will continue to get colder for the next few centuries. Luckily London is three or four degrees warmer than the rest of the place. I’ve certainly felt it so since being back.
One afternoon we walked three miles down a beach called Inch that just sticks out three and a half miles into a bay, a perfect beach with hardly a shell, let alone a stone, and behind it weird sand dunes that would have made just the place to film landing on the moon – great rounded out craters of pure sand, the peaks being covered with the usual grass you get on dunes. There we found smooth green rocks and I filled my raincoat pockets, then Phil got a largish one, then Hugo one weighing about ten pounds or more, and we foolishly struggled back the two miles with them. By the time we got to the car they had dried and weren’t green at all! However they are home now, piled under the garden tap where they can be kept wet.
We went to the point that is further west than any land in Europe and to a village where Columbus took on some of his crew. These prehistoric things interested me the most. On this most westerly promontory, so near the sea that time has washed some of it away and we were scared to go too near the edge, there is one of the circular enclosures that is the inner fort, with three more walls and trenches facing landwards, laced with underground passages, all of this abundant stone, but nobody can imagine why people were defending themselves on the very last few yards of the land. It wouldn’t be mysterious if they were defending the land from people trying to come ashore.
Well I reckon you’ve had enough of all this. After six days of meandering about we settled ourselves in a posh hotel recommended by the Robinsons and relieved we were to have real comfort. It is a famous place called Ashford Castle, much frequented by Americans who must be amazed at what they get for 56/- a day. Superb meals, the most palatial public rooms – I counted fifty Japanese and Chinese plates on the walls, some excellent I should say. We hadn’t booked ahead so our bedroom was normal size, being actually in the only original tower of an Elizabethan castle, so we had gun slits for windows, but John and Ruth Mary once had a room of vast size with a double and a single bed with windows opening on the lake. Most rooms have private baths, but we had forty-eight stairs, split by ninety-odd walking steps to our bath and a different direction to the johnny! Jennifer had a wee room, but a bath, and no door between the bedroom and bath which seems queer. No johnny and they didn’t charge for her bath. We thought it would be nice to ask Jennifer for two nights to amuse Hugo, but the lines were down between there and Dublin so he drove to Galway twenty-seven miles away. J. wasn’t there so he telegraphed her. He didn’t tell us, but he didn’t trust the Irish telegraph system and after we’d gone to bed he drove there again, having not even the money to phone. He found a packet of cigarettes in the car and offered them at half price in a pub. Apparently every man in the place dashed to buy them! He had to drive again the next morning to fetch her. He thought we’d be mad at the extra drive but Phil was pleased at his enterprise and the telegram hadn’t arrived!
The hotel faces the biggest lake in Ireland, dotted with cute little islands, looking very much like the inland sea. The castle is just about as ugly as you could think it up – built in the middle 1800’s to represent a fort, with towers and drawbridges and more towers all around the gardens – the private home of a Guinness. Only the immediate grounds are kept up. There is rowing, speed boating (but they wouldn’t take us out – said it was too wet), swimming (can’t think who) but mainly very fine fishing, which we didn’t do, and walks &c. I don’t think I’ve emphasized how gorgeous the mountains all over the place are. Maybe more so because I never see any. I doubt if we saw any place at anything like its best, but once we could see all the peaks with mist around the bases, looking very like a print.
Sheena is very remarkable. She looks about like me, is fifty-six, and was cheerful and must have one hell of a life. She is at a school where she is on duty from 7:00 to 9:30, rushes home on a bicycle to feed her son who lunches with a friend and then dashes back to get the two of them supper. I had two long letters from her today. She was changing her job, but today has changed again and this one means she won’t have to give up her flat which she loves and pays two pounds a week for, but she will have to pay that, plus food and clothes for the two of them from £7/7/0 a week. Just think – less than twenty dollars a week. The second letter was asking me to buy her nursing caps and overcoats as she calls them. Her new job will be nursing a woman of ninety next door. The little boy was nice. He’s nearly twelve.
We spent two nights in an Irish fishing village where we tried to watch the fish being landed, but it turned out such a fine evening that the boats didn’t come in till too late, but it was fun talking to the villagers and the children who were crabbing, and we got to be great friends with the grocer buying our supplies for lunch and got lettuces from his garden. The Irish are extremely friendly. We gave several people lifts – Irish who were fun to hear talk and English student hikers. Hugo says he has to pick up everyone to repay the many who have given him lifts. One hotel was near a wide river that fell down steps and made a nice noise all the time, though the rooms felt damp. Our room faced this hill on which the village rose, and right at the top, silhouetted on the sky line, was the usual ruined church, and grave stones sticking up at all angles. I decided it didn’t improve the view. The straight rows of tiny wee cottages are attractive (to look at) mostly dirty grey, but with a startling bright one every now and then. One of the things we noticed most was the amazing colours they painted their houses and shops. I am sure if Phil did a picture, everyone would think he was exaggerating. Of course they are tiny but they were glossy bright colours, trimmed with appalling combinations of colours, like ridiculous toys. By no means are all of them painted so the inevitable grey dirty plaster or cement made the painted one even more outstanding. Sometimes it was just the doors and windows and a favourite was lavender, so awful with cement colour.
Once we asked for a bottle of Gordon’s gin and the woman had never sold it by the bottle. She knew the price by the glass – spent minutes looking through her accounts, first mentioned 28/- (we pay 38/6 here) and finally when we said are you sure, she settled for 30/-. Hers was a shop, but every shop is allowed to sell drink by the glass and most have a chair or two to sit in. I had wondered why. She had a tiny bar – about a yard long and circular. Two could hardly stand by it. Another time Hugo was trying to buy cider and had to go to a wholesaler who had never sold retail and the man was so puzzled he took Hugo from his shop into his house while he worked the price out (which Hugo told him in the end). We thought we’d lost him. It’s funny how different it can be from England. Rather like going to a foreign country.
I forgot to mention what would have interested you and Claudia more than anything I reckon. The wild flowers and shrubs. One part is well known for its fuchsia hedges. Just all the hedges are fuchsia, with masses of bloom – which I can’t understand as mine is cut down to the ground every winter. There were two other shrubs as hedges that I don’t know by name and have always seen as special things in grand gardens. Apparently some of the rockiest places are visited by naturalists for their unusual alpines, etc. All the stories about the animals on the road are true. Even in Dublin you meet cows being driven down the street. Anywhere at all you come upon them unattended and also sheep and donkeys, and the dogs are a perfect menace. Hugo used to say we saw more dogs than people. And we couldn’t get over the number of derelict houses. They are stone, and there they stood except for roofs, all over the place, as many as there were not derelict ones. We wondered if it happened when they all died of starvation.
We arrived back late one evening to find Uncle Earnest Sampson, the woman who looks after him, and Anna Sampson had to be invited to lunch. It was very meant that within an hour a five-pound salmon arrived, caught by Quita Bates. It was really good. John and Ruth Mary came in the next night and had some. Tomorrow night we have the Platts coming. Hope has been with her mother day and night for over a month. She died at last and Hope is spending some days away from Jersey and Jimmy said she was very low – something I have never seen her. Monday Barny O’Rea, with wife as yet unseen, plus daughter of twenty-two (very attractive we hear) are here for supper. Manila couple on Thursday, and Emily Timberlake is in town from Wednesday so I must ask her. She wrote me a nice letter about Nichie.
I expected Ellen to phone before this. I reckon she is expecting the same of me. Seem not to have stopped for a second. Today being Saturday – I began this yesterday – we have weeded and pruned all day – the greatest job for me being to try to get rid of the prunings. I have made seven large bundles in newspapers tied with string. The garbage man won’t take garden refuse.
Your long letter and a note from Den were waiting for us and also a very long letter from Martha Patten. You do seem to keep busy for a hospital patient. How long are your three walks a day? I mean how long a time? It must be a bore for you. Hugo just heard that his job starts on the 28th of October and he has already had a £50 raise! Lee is stopping this job on the 26th. When would you rather have Phil and me come to see you? Christmas or sooner? Phil now says he will probably work through September. If I came as early as I could would it mean you could get home sooner or do you hope to be back in Dunbarton much before that anyway? I suppose you don’t know, poor thing. You will have to promise to let me do a great deal of the work or we can’t come.
Sunday 3:45.
This morning we went to have drinks with a Mrs Shaw who has a delightful town garden with a mirror behind a wrought-iron gate which you see as you open the front door of the house, and it looks as if you are seeing right through to another garden. Below this and outside the dining area there is a patio – all very expensive to have built undoubtedly as originally that back dining room looked on to a near wall of earth. She has done wonders and everything is growing away as if it weren’t in London at all. Admittedly, being Hampstead, there are no high buildings to cut off the sun anywhere. She gives very good parties, always with several nationalities, and we were specially asked today to meet a woman who photographs, as I thought, houses but in fact gardens. Betty Shaw had told her we had a Japanese garden! I asked Betty what she thought was Japanese about it and she said the whole thing, tho’ admittedly she had never seen a Japanese garden. Anyway when the woman comes to photograph it I’m sure she will be disappointed, particularly now when it is so wild that you really can’t see the shape and the walls.
Another thing in Ireland was the abundance of wild honey suckle – climbing all over everywhere. There are palm trees and all sorts of sub-tropical plants but where is the warmth?
You see the time and we have just finished lunch. Just about in time for me to start supper for the Platts! My new summer outfit is a sleeveless dress and matching long coat in pink and white check – heavy winter coating. It’s most suitable!
Much love
Do thank John for his letter. I had forgotten that clause in Nich’s gift from Mr Gratz.
I hope it’s worth reading.
Marijane