She reached to the table beside the chair and hauled a large volume into her lap-it was a whopper. ‘Being the private journals of Cor-mac Padraigin Fintan O’Donnell, MD, Lough Arrow, County Sligo,’ she read from the fly-leaf. ‘And be warned-the dust of the ages is gathered here.’
She had a pretty volatile allergy to the dust of old books. ‘Should you be doing this?’ he asked.
‘I have to do this,’ she said.
She put on her glasses, opened the leather-bound book, and read to him.
14 March 1860
Freezing winds off the Lough
A late Spring of blistering cold yet Caitlin & I are besotted with comfort in our rude Cabin near the Lough-Thick walls, an agreeable hearth & a dirt Floor warmed by Uncle’s Turkey rugs have made it more than hospitable.
No draft can seek us out in our alcove bed-my Books line the walls on racks I joined myself & are a fine insulation into the bargain. For a Surgery, God in his mercy has given us a Turf Shed attached to the Cabin, a scantling of a room-it serves well enough though difficult to heat in frigid weather.
We have been spoiled these many years by the comfort of Uncle’s grand Residence in Philadelphia to which we repaired at his urging from our wedding sojurn in Italy. He spent such little time in his well-furnished Home that we had it nearly to ourselves & four servants into the bargain. C eventually assumed the running of his Household for which he esteemed her very highly. Uncle did not discuss where he often lodged-we assumed it was with someone rumoured to be his mistress, of whom he never spoke-at least to myself. We did not learn the surprising truth until his death.
C & I wonder yet why he declined to marry-surely it would have been socially beneficial to his many Enterprises. As well, we wondered at his refusal to attend Mass though we exhorted him on many occasions to come with us to Old St. Joseph’s. I confess that we never fully understood Uncle but had a profound affection for him as did countless others. For all the resentment of Irish in that city, he was admired & respected by Catholic & Protestant alike.
Working by Lantern to complete the Drawings-careful to restrain any impulse to vainglory though this in no way owing to Balfour’s summon to modesty. Such a consuming task could not be carried forth without Uncle’s rare & valuable books on architecture-Palladio and Inigo Jones being the masters who inspired the design of his fine house in the township of Philadelphia. Thanks to God for many felicitous hours spent with him as he labored over the drawings-often seeking my opinions and observations though they issued from rude instinct only.
Must amputate Danny Moore’s gangrenous leg on the morrow-he is but eighteen & the provider for his Mother, Grandmother, & four Sisters. Caitlin and I will travel horseback to their cabin for the surgery taking a basket of food, chloroform & a flask of Whiskey-what thin comfort can be offered at such a grievous time.
A desperate Circumstance-Heaven help this decent son of Ireland.
‘Here’s the backstory,’ she said. ‘Fintan O’Donnell was the bright, devout son of a poor tenant family who lived near Lough Arrow.’
‘Liam gave me a quick bit on O’Donnell. But keep going.’
‘Turns out he had what we’ve all dreamed of at one time or another-a rich uncle. So the uncle, who lived in Philadelphia and was busy making a fortune in shipping, said he would sponsor the brightest boy of his sister’s four. The family proposed Fintan, and off he went at age seventeen, frightened out of his wits. I was sorry for the brothers, how it must feel to be the unchosen, but they absolutely didn’t want any part of it and practically shoved him onto the boat.
‘He trained as a physician, had a very successful practice, and married a nurse whose family had immigrated from Roscommon. But he mourned the hunger years in Ireland and the evictions and the fevers and all the rest-he said he could sometimes audibly hear the tolling of the death bell and the lamentations of his people.
‘He wrote this in the frontispiece:
I hereby stand with the venerable William Stokes who said when elected President of the College of Physicians: Loving my unhappy Country with a Love so intense as to be a Pain, its miseries & downward Progress have lacerated my very heart.
‘When he was fifty years old, he came home to Lough Arrow with his wife, Caitlin, to devote himself to the poor. His uncle had died some time before and the estate passed to Dr. O’Donnell. In light of that and the money he’d earned in his practice, he had deep pockets to fund a free clinic.
‘Timothy? Are you all right or shall I stop?’
‘Don’t stop; I’m with you.’ He moved to the wing chair; he would just rest his eyes…
‘The doctor and his wife were looking for land in these parts and made the acquaintance of Lord Balfour, an Englishman who’d built a big pile up the road from Broughadoon. Good timing, or maybe not, Fintan saved the life of the lord’s ten-year-old daughter, and made some headway with the old boy’s dysentery. So Balfour gave the doctor roughly two hundred acres of his own immense property, but with the caveat-get this-that O’Donnell wouldn’t put on airs in the architecture of his house. O’Donnell thought it would be grand to accept the land.’ She sneezed. ‘Want me to stop?’
‘No, no. Go on.’
17 May
S. O’Connor came with his wife last night at a late hour-having no pony, S. walked the four miles in the traces of his cart, pulling her along-her abdomen swollen & tender, much vomiting.
Attempted to remove Appendix but too late-expired ten minutes past midnight, S. distraught, keening, alarming the dogs-Caitlin managed to hold the poor man down as I dosed him with Laudanum-he slept warm in Surgery beneath one of the Turkey rugs.
S. returns the corpse home after noon this day-the putrid smell from the rupture pervades the Surgery & cannot be kept from the Cabin though the windows be thrown open.
A cruel cold rain at seven this morning-we pray heaven would stanch it for the cart to pass home dry.
Moira O’Connor, mother of four living & two deceased. May God rest her Soul.
She turned pages, searching passages.
20 September 1860
The people of these Parts take great pride in the building of the House. Caitlin & I recently met a lad down the shore who held his hat over his heart as we passed-twas not ourselves he saluted, but the Irish house that rises in his view.
As we went by Canoe yesterday to O’Leary the Shoemaker, Keegan & I looked up and saw the bold silhouette against the mackerel sky-as Months have passed since I viewed it from such a vantage point I was surprised to find the new Garden walls giving the look of a Fortification. Even in its yet skeletal form, the house appears defensible & mighty on its high prominence & gives the People a sense of being protected by their own. I admit that seeing it thus has warmed me with pleasure.
Though the worst years of Famine have recently passed, we are Haunted yet by the devastation which appears to have no end. Mark this. It is not merely a well-made house by the Lough, but a Proclamation to the Irish people that it is an Irish house built by Irish resolve-on Irish soil sanctified by Irish blood.
May it proclaim that day when our Bonds be thrown off & our people free to govern our Destinies.
‘You’re fading, sweetheart. Get in bed; we’ll do this later.’
He hauled himself up and undressed and did as he was told, eager for the consolation of the pillow. ‘Get in with me,’ he said, patting the blanket.
‘I’m right behind you.’
She sneezed, blew her nose, pulled off her sweater.
‘Very sad to think of those times, though heaven knows, what had passed and what was coming was fearful in the extreme. Anna says Liam read a few pages when Paddy’s work crew found it; it was stashed behind a wall.’
‘It belongs to Catharmore, then?’