In the afternoon we had a visit of more than 2 hours from Eamonn Ó Duibir, stouter than he was, & wearing a Volunteer uniform. He was very pleasant & talked a lot. He was forcibly fed 10 times in Mtjoy, & hunger struck again at Dundalk – I hope it hasn’t had a fattening effect on all of them.”
NLI Call Number: MS, 3582/32
NLI Catalogue Link can be found here
Date Range of Diary: Oct 1st 1917 – Dec 9th 1917
WEEK 10: 3rd-9th December 1917
Monday 3rd Dec. – Bitter cold frosty day. I went to Jennings early, & on to town & did various shopping. I was making some Xmas cards with ornamental capitals these days, & found it very hard to get a nice colour scheme.
Tuesday 4th Dec. – Wet day. Nothing doing. I read Woodstock over again & dreamed of a F.L.S evening on 4 Scott characters – Dalgetty, Dougal Mac Gregor, Wildrake & Louis Kerneguy. It would b delightful to prepare & read. I could not but amuse the audience.
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I don’t think Scott got Charles II quite right; there is a conventionality & stiffness about him occasionally that I think is more in Scott’s mind than in his.
Wednesday 5th Dec. – I started a new broach at the tech, like this ⊕ with twists of wire ℑ & got a good deal of it done.
Thursday 6th. – I went to town for tickets & on to the hotel to invite Kitty or Tash to Dorothea’s Clothes evening on Saturday. They said one of them would try & come, in the national costume. D. wants to have unusual costumes if possible. D. and T. came home in the evening and had tea with us on their arrival about 7.30. They had seen a lot of the Stephenses & seem to have enjoyed themselves greatly altogether. They also had intercourse with Frank Gallagher
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& Charlie Murphy, & heard Jaunty Flanagan speak at a F.o.R meeting. D. took a great liking to him; Tom says his religious ideas were like her own. They visited Uncle Herbert etc too, & seem to have been well received, & went to Bray on Sunday, including Aberley. They didn’t seem to think much of Bobby.
Friday 7th. – I got the brooch soldered in the morning – that is, I arranged it & Mr Shea did the soldering. In the afternoon we had a visit of more than 2 hours from Eamonn Ó Duibir, stouter than he was, & wearing a Volunteer uniform. He was very pleasant & talked a lot. He was forcibly fed 10 times in Mtjoy, & hunger struck again at Dundalk – I hope it hasn’t had a fattening effect on all of them. Mrs Kinsella admired
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his appearance greatly. He talked of Reading, & the inconstancy of Darrell Figgis at Irish classes; & the capture of soldier’s rifles by masked men in his neighbourhood, & the large quantity of ammunition etc handed out of Portobello barracks to the forces of disorder, for which he says some soldiers have been shot. He also said British navy men had been known to boast of German submarine prisoners being thrown into the furnaces of warships. He said it is impossible now to get iron girders across the channel for big buildings here. Dorothea came while he was here, & we discussed the Mac Neill problem. He went at 5.30. D. brought a letter from Tony to show us, with information about the behaviour of the Riches during his illness, of a very repellent nature. Sending Edward for
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his lessons when T. was hardly able to sit up in bed, & insisting on his getting full time etc. I daresay he is intolerable at home.
Saturday 7 8th Dec. – I went to the tech in the morning & we had a very hard time enamelling – everything went wrong. It takes a lot of practice. I went to see Mrs Coade a.d. and we talked about the Perfect Way – she says everyone is daunted by it at first. Mamma and I went to the Clothes discussion in the evening, & it was the same personnel as the first night, only Mrs Coade (with her hair in early Victorian style with a high comb, & an old-fashioned lace collar, looking very nice). Mr Mettrick besides ourselves. D. had on her Chinese coat, & it was both exquisite in itself & very becoming. She began, with a plea for freedom to
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dress in whatever style you like, with no fashions, so that clothes could be made to last forever and beautiful in themselves, like her Chinese coat. She & Mettrick downfaced me that men are just as subject to changing fashions, & that their fashions change as often, as women’s but I don’t believe it yet. D. has a great horror of old-fashioned clothes – either be in the fashion or wear something different from any possible fashion is her idea. We discussed what men would look nice in, & everyone but me said white flannels of course. I think they are trying to most men. Mettrick said he never wears anything for anything but comfort & utility – I wonder how he’d like it if women did the same. Maybe he wouldn’t mind. He & Dorothea have a great wish to go naked in summer &
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M. spoke of a woman near his home that sometimes in hot weather wears only a skirt.
Sunday 9th Dec. – I got a letter from Dr Lynn ordering me up to Át Cliat to mind a stall for them at the Aonad, & saying the shirts could pay my railway fare. Dorothea & Tom came to dinner. They broke out in a very scandalous way after dinner, advocating polygamy & andry, wanting freedom to increase their own husbands & wives, & scorning the idea that you shd only want one. D told us a lot about Johnty (Jonathan) Flanagan & his dealings with women who fall in love with him, which every woman he tries to reform or is friends with seems to do. The Stephenses approve of this sort of thing too, apparently. I went to a S.F. committee in the evening but nothing much happened there.