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IRISH MEMORIES

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VIOLET FLORENCE MARTIN.

IRISH MEMORIES

BY
E. Œ. SOMERVILLE AND MARTIN ROSS

AUTHORS OF “SOME EXPERIENCES OF AN IRISH R.M.,”
“THE REAL CHARLOTTE,” ETC.

WITH 23 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS BY
E. Œ. SOMERVILLE AND FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

THIRD IMPRESSION

NEW YORK:
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
FOURTH AVENUE AND 30TH STREET
1918

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PREFACE

I have many people to thank, for many things, and I have an explanationto make, but the thanks must come first.

I offer my most sincere gratitude to Mrs. Butler and to ProfessorEdgeworth, for their kindness in permitting me to print Miss Edgeworth’sletters to Mrs. Bushe; to Lord Dunsany, for the extract from “Plays ofGods and Men,” which has said for me what I could not say for myself; tothe Editors of the Spectator and of Punch, for their permission touse Martin Ross’s letter and the quatrain to her memory; to the Hon.Mrs. Campbell, the Right Hon. Sir Horace Plunkett, P.C., Captain StephenGwynn, M.P., Lady Coghill, Colonel Dawson, and other of Martin Ross’sfriends, for lending me the letters that she wrote to them; even whenthese are not quoted verbatim, they have been of great service to me,and I am very grateful for having been allowed to see them.

I have to explain what may strike some as singular, viz., the omission,as far as was practicable, from the letters of Martin Ross, and fromthis book in general, of the names of her and my friends and relativeswho are still living. I have been guided by a consensus of the opinionof those whom I have consulted, and also by my remembrance of MartinRoss’s views on the subject, which she often expressed{vi} to me inconnection with sundry and various volumes of Recollections, that havedealt with living contemporaries with a frankness that would have seemedexcessive in the case of a memoir of the life of Queen Anne. If I havegone to the opposite extreme, I hope it may be found a fault on theright side.

E. Œ. SOMERVILLE.

September 20th, 1917....