As the legendary Colonel Richard Martin neared the end of his life in Boulogne, where he had fled to escape his numerous creditors, a large four-horse carriage, on which two postilions, in jackets of dark-blue frieze, guided the coach on horse-back, arrived at the front door of Ballynahinch. It was dark, and its occupants were in a state of near exhaustion.
Maria Edgeworth, who during the first 20 years of the 19th century, was the most successful and celebrated living English novelist, had travelled in some style with her friends Sir Culling Smith and his lady wife from Edgeworthstown, Co Longford, to Galway, and from there they planned a leisurely holiday in Connemara. It was the tour they had been promising themselves for years. It was March 1833 and it was dry and sunny.
As well as writing for both adults and children, Miss Edgeworth was interested in economics, politics, education, and history. She assisted her father in running their large estate, while educating her younger siblings. She had a very practical mind, and described exactly what she saw, often with a sense of irony.
Galway was their first disappointment. She described it as ‘the dirtiest town’ she ever saw; ‘and the most desolate and idle-looking’. Passing through the fishmarket, she found it ‘rather disagreeable to have ‘fish’ bawled into one’s ears, and a ‘fine flat fish’ flapped in one’s face. She was, however, persuaded to buy a John Dory for eighteen pence ‘as a John Dory could not be had for guineas in London’.
In Oughterard they had difficulty finding lodgings. Eventually a very condescending Mrs O’Flaherty was persuaded to take them in, having to turn out her two sons to make a room available. They were served the John Dory for supper but despite all the fuss Maria was disappointed. Just before bed she was treated to her first ‘tumbler of anti-Parliament whiskey’, or poitín, which after a careful sip, the tumbler was put down. Maria vowed never to touch the stuff again.
The next day they set off to stay at Corrib Lodge built by their friend Alexander Nimmo at Maam Bridge (now Keane’s bar ). They were delighted with the home-made fresh bread, and hare soup. Things were looking up.
But the following day all hope of an enjoyable holiday appeared to be lost, as they struggled on the unfinished road to Clifden followed by a ‘long tail’ of men and boys who ‘dragged, pushed, carried, and screamed’ the carriage over rocks, and streams, mud holes and banks of shingle. The road was barely a bridle-path, and certainly unfit for a large carriage.
Unable to find the energy to proceed, a note was sent to Ballynahinch requesting hospitality. With relief and cries of joy they received a reply welcoming them, and insisting they stay as long as they wished. Maria was intrigued to have entered the legendary lands and home of the famous ‘Humanity Dick’.
Dilapidated mansion
Their welcome was prodigious. Tom Barnewall Martin, the eldest child from his father’s first marriage to Elizabeth Vesey, was now the master of Ballynahinch, and the MP for Galway. ‘A tall, heavy-looking Connemara gentleman, with a stoop forward in his neck’, from a shot he received in the Peninsular War where he fought with the Connaught Rangers against the French. He came forward to meet his guests, with a shy and reserved manner. He was married to Julia (Kirwan ), and they had one child, Mary, whom Tom obviously adored.
The dinner that first evening was superb: venison such as Sir Culling declared could not be found in England except from one or two immense parks of noblemen favoured above their peers’. Salmon, lobsters, oysters, French wines and champagne were also served. Martin’s hospitality was inexhaustible to a degree that it sped the estate to its eventual ruin.
And judging by Maria’s description of the house it was practically a ruin anyway. It was difficult to equate the magnificence of that dinner with the rambling, damp and dilapidated mansion which gave Maria and her companions the impression of the makeshift and the temporary.
The massive mahogany doors of the dining room admitted icy winds, and would not shut except with a slam that shook the house. The windows held ‘broken panes, wood panes, slate panes; there were no curtains, no wallpaper, and no bookcases.
In the morning Maria went out to view the surroundings: a magnificent but desolate prospect of an immense lake and bare mountain in one direction, and in the other ‘a boundless sort of common with showers of stones - no avenue or regular approach but a half-mile road - no human habitation in view’.
As for the castle itself, it was sadly ‘a whitewashed dilapidated mansion with nothing of a castle about it excepting four pepperbox-looking towers stuck on each corner… altogether the house is very low and ruinous-looking, not a ruin of antiquity but with cow-house and pig-stye and dungheap adjoining.’
The family chieftain
We know of course that the house and estate was hopelessly in debt, and judging by the description of the house it was obviously falling apart due to lack of maintenance. There was the added threat that the debts, believed to be in the region of £100,000., which had been taken over by the Law Life Assurance Society, could pounce at any time.
Although Colonel Martin was in his 80th year, and would shortly pass away, he still tried to rule his family as if he was still among them, and its chieftain. He did not get on with his son Thomas. The origins of the quarrel was a question of social standing. Thomas had fallen in love with the daughter of a wealthy chandler, whose father was so pleased with the prospective alliance with the great Martin family, that he offered to pay off the depts of the estate. Richard was furious at the effrontery, and would not stomach being bailed out by someone in the merchant class. He succeeded in having the match broken off, which prompted Thomas to leave home and join Wellington’s army.
Col Martin then insisted that Thomas’s successor must be the colonel’s son Richard born to his second wife Harriet. He established by deed that this must be so. However, an act of 1833, the year before the colonel died, greatly simplified the breaking of the entail, and enabled Thomas to make a will in favour of his only, and much loved child, Mary. The colonel was further distressed at this as he felt it was unjust to his son Richard,* and that Mary would marry outside the family, thus losing the family name Martin and all its associations with Connemara.
Interest and concern
Mary was 17 years old when Maria met her that first evening at Ballynahinch. She sat at the far end of the sofa with her legs on it, and her head back. Maria described her as if she was taking notes for a character in a coming novel. Mary had very fair hair and complexion, ‘a perfect head’, which reminded Maria of a Leonardo Da Vinci painting. ‘She spoke fluent French, which she had learned from a French officer’, but had, Maria observed, a barrack-room accent.**
Mary had clearly read prodigiously: ‘She had read all the poetry of Sir Walter Scott, and ‘all of Byron that was fit for a young lady to read’. She had been carefully sheltered from the fact ‘that the poet was not a perfectly moral man’. She recited reams of poetry she had by heart ‘so fast and oddly in such a Connemara accent, and words so fluid running one into the other, that at first I could not guess what language it was.’
She understood Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and had studied engineering with Alexander Nimmo, who stayed with the Martins during his road-building from Galway through Oughterard, and from Ballynahinch to the coast at Clifden. He shared the physical challenges of the project with her.
Maria found her both excessively proud and shy, and rather humourless; ‘but she had grown up with all the Martin concern for their tenants. She did not want to live anywhere else but at Ballinahinch, and was something of a paragon, being beautiful, elegant, intelligent and benevolent’.
Maria Edgeworth found her to be ‘one of the most extraordinary persons’ she had ever met. They became close friends, and corresponded with each other. Maria followed her career with interest and concern.***
Mary’s inheritance, however, which would come sooner that she ever imagined, was to prove to be disastrous for the legendary Martins of Ballynahinch.
Next week: Mary ‘comes out’ in London, she is pursued by two Polish nobles; and the start of the Great Famine.
NOTES: * Obviously disappointed by the breaking of the entail, young Richard Martin emigrated to Canada, where he built a house by the Grand River, Ontario, named after Derryclare Lough, with its beautiful Pine Island. The numerous descendants of the Derryclare Martins are the present keepers of the Martin flame.
** Perhaps typical of the liberality of the Martin household that although Thomas Martin had fought with Wellington in Spain against the French, it had given shelter to an exiled Bonapartist officer who taught Mary both his language and his adulation of the Emperor.
*** Maria Edgeworth and her companions were forced to remain at Ballinahinch for three weeks owing to the illness of Lady Culling Smith, during which a doctor was sent for ‘over the bogs’ to Oughterard. Maria was overwhelmed by the kindness and hospitality of the Martins. Once Lady Culling Smith was well enough to continue the holiday, they visited Kylemore and stayed with the Blakes at Renvyle, then back to Killary, Leenane, Delphi and Westport, and finally home.
Maria was a prolific letter writer and her observations of the Martin household and their holiday are contained in her letter to the youngest of her seven brothers Michael Pakenham Edgeworth.
The Martin interlude was published separately by Constable and Co. 1950, edited by Harold Edgeworth Butler. Other sources this week include Connemara - Listening to the Wind, by Tim Robinson, published by Penguin Ireland 2006.
