“Kitty & Tash paid a visit in the afternoon and gave a terrible account of life in the hotel on the last day & night of the election. It was something between a barrack & a fortress, Volunteers everywhere, especially in the yard, to guard against attack, and wounded men constantly […] being brought in.”
NLI Call Number: MS, 3582/33
NLI Catalogue Link can be found here
Date Range of Diary: December 10th 1917 – August 4th 1918
WEEK 27: 1st – 7th April 1918
Aibreán April 1918
Easter Monday 1st April. – I was in bed all day, reading Mrs Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Bronte. I wish some of the magazines they used to write had been published but maybe Charlotte destroyed them all, like Emily’s letters.
Thursday 4th April. – Kitty & Tash paid a visit in the afternoon and gave a terrible account of life in the hotel on the last day & night of the election. It was something between a barrack & a fortress, Volunteers everywhere, especially in the yard, to guard
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against attack, and wounded men constantly either coming in or being brought in. There seemed at one time to be a bloody man being attended to in every corner of the house, and one in the yard. Its wonderful that Tash’s health didn’t seem to suffer from it all, but Kitty is the worse of it. In the evening Mamma & I went over to St Declan’s to a discussion evening. Nancy showed me the brooch Lucy Garrett made for Dorothea for her, it is nice enough but I wish I knew what the opaque red stones in it are. They look more like coral than anything else. Mrs Hayden, blazing with jewellery, opened the discussion on organized charity, objecting to every form of it. Janie & Charlotte Bell & we were the only other visitors; Mr Coade had had a bad bicycle accident & was very ill, and Mettrick was off on his Easter holiday. It seems impossible to find men who
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want to discuss abstract subjects, though maybe it mightn’t be if Tom really wanted to do it. Mrs H. seemed to prefer private to organized charity. We talked a great deal about servant girls, their rights and faults & education etc. Mrs H. has a great idea of the self righteousness bred by organized charity, but I don’t see why private charity wouldn’t breed it too.
Sunday 7th April. – I went over to St Declan’s in the morning to be photographed, and found Nancy stencilling cushion covers for Stephen & Maude, it looked very pleasant work. I took 2 photos of me, one from behind, one of Nancy & 2 of D. He tried to take one of D. & Nancy together, but the light wasn’t at its best, and they had both got photographic faces by that time. D’s blue & brown shot silk dress is cracking here and there, and she’s going to cut it up & turn it into something else.
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We came home to dinner then. D. & I calling to inquire for Mrs Coade, who wasn’t much better. D. is greatly worried about the conscription menace, expecting to have to go down & help Edwin at the office when Tom and Joseph are seized by the military. Stephen and Ben are also on her mind of course – she says they will both resist. Mrs Power telephoned for me in the evening & I went down & found she wanted me to talk to the club committee about raising money for the election fund [superscript: Kitty was ill in bed. They wanted to send her away somewhere when she was better, I had been meaning to go to Tramore for a week but she doesn’t like Tramore, & they said would I go to Melleray with her] by whist drives etc. I asked them about the house to house collection, & they scorned the idea & said any likely person was being asked, and then I said Mrs P. had some ideas to put before them about it & they said they wd ask her to the next committee meeting. May New & some others were getting up a ceilidh for the following Sunday.
Featured Image: View of Cappoquin, Co. Waterford (Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington LOT 13406, no. 104)