Over the coming weeks, RTÉ Culture presents a series of five early short stories written by Lady Augusta Gregory (1852-1932) - these tales, Lady Gregory's only known efforts at short fiction, offer a remarkable insight into one of Ireland's most important literary figures.

Below, editor James Pethica introduces Lady Gregory's story A Gentleman, taken from his colllection Lady Gregory's Early Irish Writings 1883-1893 (Colin Smythe publications).

A Gentleman offers a plot that moves in the opposite direction, by portraying an outsider whose anti-Irish prejudices are gradually broken down, such that she comes to a more tolerant, appreciative and - in theory - enlightened view of the cultural practices she finds in her new home. Again significantly autobiographical in content, the story centres on Lady Norreys, the new young wife of a Galway landlord, who is determined to reform her "raw Irish home." Of greatest annoyance to her "orderly English mind" are the idiosyncrasies of Myles O'Loughlin, who has served as a gardener to the Norreys family for sixty years. At first, she is determined to sack him, but his fundamental decency and his loyalty to the family gradually soften her resolve, and then earn her affection. It is only after his death that she learns, by chance, that he had come of a noble lineage.

But the story’s smooth progress towards conciliation between "lady" and servant involves more self-congratulation and sentimentality than real insight on her part. In discovering that O’Loughlin is truly a "gentleman", Lady Norreys merely confirms her own perspicacity and discrimination. And more importantly, her affection and tolerance, although sincere, do little to challenge the structural differences of power between them. As a romanticized figure of noble ruin, and apparently the last male of his line, O’Loughlin offers no real practical or ideological threat to Lady Norreys’s superiority, and instead merely serves as the focus for a sentimental meditation on and aestheticization of a native heritage which is already safely in the past as a real force, and now about to come to a permanent end.

Yet if the main plot of A Gentleman embodies a degree of wish-fulfillment on Gregory’s part in its apparent overcoming of Lady Norreys’s prejudices, its narrative methods complicate and undercut that sentimental fantasy. Its representation of O’Loughlin veers revealingly between conforming to literary convention and deliberately resisting it. On the one hand he is drawn as the quintessential stage Irishman of mid nineteenth-century literary tradition, combining impracticality and general resistance to discipline with the good humour and lovable wryness of the loyal retainer. Yet he proves rather less malleable than expected, constantly calling attention to their real differences in social status by referring to her as "the lady" and "the English lady’. His parting words to her flirt with open sarcasm, and again highlight her very limited capacity for interpreting him or his culture, when he reminds her that she is "strange to the ways of the country".

Even as it nominally appears to applaud Lady Norreys’s increasing cultural sensitivity, then, A Gentleman questions the extent of her self-knowledge, and, much like "A Philanthropist", thereby casts doubt on the level of real intimacy possible between classes, let alone between cultures. As such, it embodies both Gregory’s increasing investment in identifying herself as fully "Irish" and her recognition of the degrees of self-deception, convenient self-affirmation and residual condescension lurking in her wish to connect more intimately and fully with her own tenants and the country people of Galway.

A Gentleman was published under the pseudonym "Angus Grey" in The Argosy in July 1894.

A GENTLEMAN

"Once for all, there can be no order in this house till O'Loughlin is banished. (1) Disreputable, idle old creature! I hear he was drunk again last Sunday, and he has been feeding ducks in the kitchen this morning. I have no patience with such an old reprobate!"

Sir Gerald listened with his usual placidity to the dictum of his young wife, my lady Norreys, whose wealth (derived from silver mines) she had dedicated to the repair of his house’s fortunes.

"Well, O’Loughlin has lived here all his life," he said doubtfully. "He taught me to fish and to shear a sheep when I was a little chap. I don’t think the place would look itself without him."

"I certainly don’t want it to look itself if that condition implies its being in a constant state of dirt and disorder," returned my lady icily. "That man respects nothing. I find he has used the strings of the old guitar that hangs in the music-room to make snares for rabbits! I believe he would take the best gilt four-post bed for a chicken perch if he had not already accommodated them with the yellow chariot in the coach-house."

"Well, we must see about it when winter comes," said Sir Gerald, taking refuge as usual in a policy of delay. "But his daughter Katy is a good girl, and the old fellow kept things going somehow or other all the time I was away."

Lady Norreys sailed out of the room with a dissatisfied toss of the head. She had an orderly English mind, intensified perhaps, according to the doctrine of heredity, by the years spent by her late father in sorting his specimens of quartz from the silver mines. And she was in a hurry to get her raw Irish home arranged on the model of her late villa residence at Putney. But so far the indigenous domestics at Connoughmore had proved a barrier in her path of reform.

She went out, making ready for battle, to the walled-in three-acred garden. Its beds were bright with carnations, and snapdragons, and valerien, its plots well stacked with vegetables and fruit trees, though groundsel flourished cheerfully everywhere.

At last, in the somewhat dilapidated range of vineries, she found the culprit O'Loughlin, whose nominal post was that of gardener, though during the past years of leanness he had become a pluralist in the matter of offices. (2) He was at this moment occupied in thinning the grapes with considerable skill. A red handkerchief was picturesquely bound about his head, and he was lilting to himself the words of a popular song:—

"Now all good boys, of hunting

And shooting, boys, beware.

If ever you go poaching

Take your gun, your dog, your mare;

For hares on lofty mountains

You’ll have at your command;

And you never’ll see that lonesome place

That’s called Van Dieman’s Land." (3)

"I beg your honour’s pardon. I didn’t feel your ladyship coming," the old man exclaimed, clambering down from the inverted box which had served him as ladder. "I just thought I might as well be sorting the grapes, or they’ll be no bigger than peas, and we’ll be disgraced when the English quality do be coming to see your ladyship. Sure Connoughmore used to be considered the capital of the county; an’ will be so again, the Lord be praised, where we have a new missis here now."

"I am told, O’Loughlin, that you were found drunk on the roadside last Sunday," said the determined little lady, unmoved by his blandishments. "That was a disgrace to the house, and I cannot allow such things to happen."

"Well, indeed, your ladyship, it won’t happen again," said the culprit, looking pathetic. "No fear of such a thing happening again. It was on the head of my grief for my father’s brother, an’ the Lord be praised that’s what can’t be again, for he’s the last o’ the stock. And indeed, my lady, it’s very little was drank at the funeral, considering how respectable a man he was. An’ there was no music at all for the boys to dance to, only whistling, out of respect for old Mrs. Noon, an’ she given over an’ anointed in the next house but one.(4) But as for drink! His honour, Sir Gerald, may analyse me any day, from this to the New Year, an’ he won’t find e’er a drop o’ whisky inside me, only an odd glass of porter to give me courage for the work. Sure it’s hard for an old man like me to reach to everything, an’ it’s more help in the garden I’ll be wanting e’er I’ll be able to sow the small seeds."

Just at this moment Sir Gerald came along the strawberry-edged walk looking rather perturbed. "I have been speaking to O’Loughlin about his disgraceful conduct on Sunday," said my lady when he was within hearing. "Just look at the bruise over his eye! He is not fit to be seen in a civilised garden."

"You had better not ask him the history of that black eye," said Sir Gerald with rather a bitter smile. "Do you know that that precious scamp of a nephew of mine was at the wake, leading the rebels, and got into a row with the police. He is to be had up before the Bench next Thursday, and the chief charge against him is that of having assaulted Myles O’Loughlin. You’ll have to bear witness against him, Myles."

"That, your honour, is what I’ll never do agin one of your honour’s family," said Myles decisively.

"But you’ll have to, my good man; you’ll be on your oath and in danger of being committed for perjury," cried Sir Gerald irritably.

"I was thinking of that myself, your honour, an’ I took the road to Cloon last night, there I’d ask the opinion of a friend o’ mine that has a great knowledge of the law. An’ I have my mind made up now to what’s the best way to save Master Albert," returned Myles. "Sure it’s not for the like of me to be giving evidence agin the like of him."

"But how can you help it? What do you intend to do?"

"It’s my intention," said Myles mysteriously, looking round as if afraid the chaffinches in the gooseberry bushes would carry tales; "it’s my intention, Sir Gerald, when I’m brought into the Court, that I won’t understand the nature of an oath."

A hearty peal of laughter from Sir Gerald at the unexpected solution rather discomposed my lady, who had been listening with a dissatisfied air of half comprehension.

Some days passed before she had another encounter with the old man. It was close on midnight and all in the house were supposed to be asleep. But my lady was wakeful, sat up writing a letter for early post next day, and then bethought her of an almost finished novel which she might as well return to Mudie’s (5) at the same time. She took a candle and went downstairs. After some trouble she found the volume in the gun-room where her careless husband had thrown it down. Her smooth brow contracted as she noted the disorder of the room, shooting-boots lying muddy as they had been thrown there, and the shutters unclosed. "Such an invitation to burglars," she muttered, beginning to shut and bar them in proper English fashion.

But a gleam of light in the yard caught her eye. It proceeded from O'Loughlin’s window, and she could see figures moving within.

Fear was unknown to Lady Norreys, and a hesitation to attack never crossed her mind. She went directly to the back door, unbolted it and walked across the yard to the lighted room. The window was uncurtained, and she had no difficulty in distinguishing the forms of James Moylan the under-keeper, one or two of the stablemen, and her own specially imported English footman. They were sitting round a table on which was displayed a bottle, some glasses, and a pack of cards. Near the hearth old O’Loughlin was kneeling at a chair. His back was turned to the company, but just at the moment when his intrepid little mistress had raised her hand to tap sharply and disperse the unlawful assembly, he looked over his shoulder and exclaimed—

"Boys, let ye go on dealin’ out the cards while I say a few prayers!" (6)

But that deal was never accomplished, and if the aves and pater-nosters were afterwards resumed it was by a more truly penitent man. The Connoughmore retainers had in getting a mistress found their master.

"O’Loughlin," said my lady one day when they were on speaking terms again, "I have determined that the breed of fowl here must be improved. The chickens are perfectly disgraceful. Their backs are like skates and their muscles like whipcord. I believe they are mismanaged from their birth. There is no reason why they should not be as well looked after here as in France, and become a mine of wealth to the peasantry. Why should they not be properly fattened and supply the London market?"

"Why not indeed," acquiesced Mr. O’Loughlin cheerfully.

"I have been studying a book on the subject," continued Lady Norreys, "and nothing can be simpler. I should like to begin at once, and have the chickens brought up under my own eye, on sweetened rice and sunflower seeds. Now how should I set about having a brood hatched with success?"

O’Loughlin scratched his corduroys meditatively. "You must borrow a hin," was his ultimatum.

"Nonsense! have we not plenty of hens of our own?" said my lady.

"There is flocks o’ them. But they wouldn’t have the same luck as one you’d be after borrowing?"

"Well, and what next?" asked my lady, deferring the loan question.

"You must steal some eggs," said O’Loughlin firmly.

But his mistress indignantly returned to her theoretical studies, and gave up for the moment the hope of carrying out a scheme which required such a felonious foundation.

Sir Gerald, and the ne’er-do-weel Master Albert, were walking up and down one of the garden paths, from which they could see the wooded hills beyond. Their cigar smoke invaded the atmosphere of lavender, and carnation, and mignonette. The subject was distasteful to both. Sir Gerald, impeiled by my lady’s energy, found it a duty, against which his easy nature rebelled, to speak seriously to his nephew on the necessity of choosing a profession. Master Albert having no particular ambition to work while food and sport were within his daily reach, responded by asking pertinently enough what opening there was for a fellow without brains to pass a competitive examination, money to start farming with (the one idea in West Ireland for the investment of capital), or interest to secure a sinecure appointment. For the Nationalist members for the county could hardly be approached, as were the landlord nominees of old, with a request for "Government situations" for a majority of their supporters.

Both uncle and nephew were relieved by the approach of O’Loughlin, holding up in triumph a "ruffian of a rat" suspended from a steel trap.

"Well, we’ll consult Myles; perhaps he can give us some new ideas," said Sir Gerald. "What would you say now, Myles, would be the best profession for a young fellow to take to in these days?"

"Profession is it?" answered Myles laying down his trophy and rubbing at his usual seat of inspiration, the leg of his corduroy breeches.

"Well, there’s some says one, and some says another; but I have in my mind what my grandfather used to be saying. There’s three professions, says he, that you can't go wrong in. The one is to be a lawyer, for win or lose he must be paid. Or to be a doctor, for kill or cure he must be paid. An’ the third is to be a priest, because heaven or hell, he must be paid too!"

And the old man, taking up the carcase of his slain foe, walked on, looking with paternal satisfaction on the fruit trees he had trained, and the vegetables he had raised this year as for sixty years past. His tall form, now a little bent, was clad in a frieze tail-coat, corduroy breeches and grey woollen stockings. A high hat, brown and fluffy, completed his costume. (7) The red pocket-handkerchief, peeping from one of his coat-tails, occasionally did duty as head-gear, but was never put to the use for which it was manufactured.

But in his own province, the kitchen-garden, Myles O'Loughlin could challenge criticism. The frosts of spring and the blights of summer were baffled by his skill, and no peaches or pears in the county were to be compared with his.

He found my lady looking in the long vinery for some decorative plants for her drawing-room. These were not O’Loughlin's strong point, but a new innovation. He had lately indeed been in disgrace for having brought into the kitchen some samples of a collection of begonia tubers, just arrived, to be experimentally cooked. (8)

"What are you growing this common ivy in a pot for?" she called out to him. "Goodness knows there is enough of it outside loosening the slates, and displacing the window frames of every shed in the yard."

The old man looked uneasily at the pot which had been dragged to light from a dusky corner.

"Well, I’ll tell your honour no lie about it," he said apologetically. "It’s Mike Cloran’s sister that’s goin’ to her aunt in New York, an’ she asked would I have any message to send to my little girl out there. An’ I planted this little root in the pot three weeks ago, to let it get a grip o' the clay before it ’ud take the voyage. An’ when she gets it I’ll know that in whatever place she may be she won’t be without a green leaf from Ireland an’ a bit of Irish earth!" (9)

His children had all left him, save one daughter, for America, the Land of Promise, but some had come back from the hard work and hard weather there, with minds more at rest for having made the "grand tour."

He had married—as is not uncommon—in his teens. But it had not been a marriage arranged in the usual way by priests and parents. A grey-eyed girl, one of the Joyce tribe, had come from her own country beyond Lough Corrib to help in the Connoughmore kitchen when the century was young. She was needed at home after a time, and went back there. But after she had left, whispering tongues set a report going that it was by reason of young O’Loughlin she had been obliged to leave, and that she and the handsome garden lad had been too much together.

When Myles O’Loughlin first heard the slanderous rumour he struck the sneering bearer of it across the mouth. Then he took his week's wages, and next morning put on his Holyday clothes and walked straight off towards the blue hills of the Joyce country. Within a fortnight he had returned, and on Sunday he proudly brought the grey-eyed Connemara girl to mass and presented her as his bride. She made him a good wife and bore him sons and daughters; yet to the day of her death the neighbours never quite warmed to her; not looking on her as one of their own race, and she had pined a little for her own mountains.

Lady Norreys was told one morning that news had come to old O’Loughlin from America that his son was dead. Her kindliness awoke and she went to look for him.

She found him sitting over the turf fire in his room smoking "a blast o’ tobacco." He would have been happier doing his usual work, but respect for the distant dead made him lay down his tools for the day. He handed her the large thin sheets written by his lost son’s wife telling of the end.

"Your ladyship might be so kind as to sound it out for me," he said. "I’m not rightly sure did I grip the sense of it."

She read the blurred pages aloud, and tears trickled down the lines in his hollow cheeks as he heard details of the fatal illness. "God bless her, it’s well she earned him," he said at the end.

My lady offered to write an answer from his dictation. Having discovered that the "boy" had left no children and had been well-to-do, having kept a store, and also been in receipt of a pension as an ex-Federal soldier, she suggested asking the widow if there was anything to be spared for the struggling sisters at home. But the old man shook his head thoughtfully. "’Twould be well to ask her that another time," he decided. "Sure what the boy left he’d surely like his sisters to have a share of. But she cared him well, and it’s fretting after him she is now, an’ in this letter I b’lieve we’d better say nothing at all, only praising her."

It was some time after this that my lady, on the war-path one morning, descended by the back stairs, and from a window which looked out on the yard beheld her special hate of hates, a professional beggar with tattered garments, mysterious pack, and unshaven face. One foot was bare, the other shod with a heavy brogue. Myles O’Loughlin was in the forbidden act of dispensing hospitality to him, putting a lump of bread and of cold bacon into his receptive hands. "Mebbe I could find an old pair of brogues for you," she heard him say. "Sure the roads do be hard for a man to walk barefoot."

"My blessing an’ the blessing of God be on you, an’ may you be dividing it in your own house this day ten year," cried the tramp as he pushed the food away in his sack. "But as for boots, the Lord be praised, I haven’t worn but the one this twenty year. Sure it was in the famine time, an’ I had great hardship, an’ I did be starving many a time, an’ I thought to go to the Protestant clergy where they might relieve me. An’ one Sunday I watched till they wor all gone into the church in Oughtamara, an’ I went up the steps for to go in, an’ I put my right foot across the threshold. (10) An’ then the thought o’ the priest an’ of Purgatory came before me, an’ that the blessed saints ’ud intercede for me no more. So out I came again, no richer than I went in. But the foot that was so forward to go in among the jumpers, I gave it cruelty ever since, and sorra boot or shoe will I put on it till the day I die."

O’Loughlin listened approvingly and stood his ground when my lady’s sudden descent put the itinerant martyr to flight.

"O’Loughlin," she said severely, "I have already told you that giving to beggars is against the rules of this establishment. The public rates provide for their exemption from starvation, and once for all, those who encourage them on the premises may look forward within measurable time of themselves joining their ranks."

Old Myles listened deferentially.

"Your ladyship knows best," he said. "An’ it’s not for the likes of me to set up an opinion against the likes of yourself. It’s little profit they are, them tramps, walking the country, an’ no benefit of them wherever they go. But there’s a thing in my mind makes me be charitable in spite of all. One time when I was but a little gossoon (11) I was in Galway at a fair along with my father. An’ I went into a shop where he gave me a penny for myself for to buy a few crackers. An’ while I was eating them within, for the day was soft an’ I thought to keep myself in shelter while I could, in came a red-haired woman an’ rattled her stick on the counter an’, 'Gimme a copper, ma’am,’ says she, 'for the honour o’ God.’ With that the decent woman that kept the shop handed her a penny an’ a bit o’ sweet cake, and away with her with sorra much thanks. ‘I wonder at you, ma’am, to be so ready,’ says a farming man that was just after buying a loaf o’ white bread. ‘Sure, that’s none of our own people, but a stranger from the South. It’s best to keep our charity for them that wants it at home.’ ‘That’s so,’ says she, ‘an’ I don't like the looks o’ that one much, but what can I do? Sure,’ says she, her eyes shining like the stars, ‘I dare not refuse any, lest wan might be the Christ.’ An’ she made the sign of the Cross, an’ the farming man, he says no more." (12)

O’Loughlin had taken his hat off and looked upwards. Neither did my lady say any more, but opportunely retreated at the sound of the breakfast bell.

With autumn days came a cloud on the Connoughmore estate; a girl, a widow’s daughter with the face of Burne Jones’s "Beggar Maid," had got into trouble and a child was born. (13) The stain on the morality of the parish was felt to be a deep one, so unusual is such a scandal. The little roadside cabin of the widow might have belonged to the family of a land-grabber, or of a policeman killed on duty, so completely was it avoided and its inmates shunned.

Lady Norreys heard pityingly of this, and sent, by the doctor, food and money. He came to tell her of the gratitude her help had called forth, and how sorely it had been needed. The old mother was too infirm to go out, and during the unhappy girl’s illness they would have been quite destitute but for the merciful succour of one neighbour. Old O’Loughlin had every evening faced public opinion and a tiring walk after his day’s work, and had carried them milk and other comforts.

Lady Norreys was touched and pleased, and mentally forgave the old man his latest crime, that of having stuck a candle in the buttonhole of the new coachman’s livery coat, which hung conveniently on the harness-room door at a time when he wanted a light, and his candlestick had "gone astray."

When she met him she said, in a gentler tone than he had yet heard her use—

"I am glad to hear, O’Loughlin, that you showed some pity to that poor girl when everyone else had deserted her."

"Well, your ladyship," said the old man with quiet solemnity, "she brought disgrace on the property sure enough, an’ you couldn’t blame the neighbours to be angry. But I had a feel within me that if our Lord Jesus was back on earth, it’s what He would have done Himself, to go and help her."

But the autumn leaves were still falling, and the dahlias flaunting their purple and gold in defiance of coming frosts, when the old gardener had to give up his daily round of so many years. He caught a chill and had to stay indoors. It seemed as if his lately-lost son was beckoning him to the unseen country, for his hold on life appeared suddenly to be loosened.

My lady, half surprised at her own anxiety, visited and brought the doctor to him constantly, but she saw that his strength was ebbing away. She was looking through a book on invalid cookery one afternoon, when a message came, asking if she would come and see the old man. A little surprised, for she had spent much of the morning with him, she hastened downstairs.

"Not that way, my lady, he’s out in the yard," said one of the servants who was watching for her.

"In the yard! nonsense," she exclaimed.

But she was quite unprepared for the sight that met her eyes outside. A common cart with rough unpainted shafts stood there. A feather bed had been laid upon it, with a few bundles and some hay. On the bed, his head supported on his daughter’s knee, lay Myles O’Loughlin. His frieze coat was half covered by a blanket, and the old red handkerchief crowned his pallid face. His wasted bony hands lay on the coverlet, grasping at it as if for support.

Lady Norreys was shocked at the apparition of the dying man in the cold daylight.

"What does this mean?" she asked Katy, indignantly. "How could you allow your father to leave his bed?"

"Sure, ’twas himself that done it," answered the girl weeping, "and all Connaught wouldn’t have held him. It’s afraid he was of being trouble to the family."

"That’s so," said the old man huskily, trying to raise his head. "Saving your ladyship’s presence, the doctor said, ‘O’Loughlin,’ says he, ‘I’m afeared you’re swept.’ ‘If that’s so, doctor,’ says I, ‘tell me how much time have I before me.’ ‘Well, I’ll hardly promise you to see Sunday next,’ says he, ‘but don’t fret yourself, you’ll die fair an’ aisy, and you’ll have a good burial, for there’s not a man in the four parishes that’s more respected than yourself.’ ‘Sorra fret, doctor,’ says I, ‘God is good, an’ my little girl that died is praying for me in heaven this ten year.’ An’ when he was gone out the door I called to Katy an’ bid her get the cart ready an’ put the clothes on me, for, says I, I never’ll stop to be a trouble to the English lady; I’ll go die in the house of my first cousin John O'Hagan, where they won’t mind me being in the house at all."

His voice had sunk to a whisper. Lady Norreys, tears in her eyes, came closer and took his worn hand.

"You must not go away, Myles," she said. "Stay here, and we will all do our best to cure you."

He shook his head feebly. "God bless you, my lady; if care could cure me, it’s well you earned me; but no man or woman can do that for me now. An’ I’d be loath to be troublesome at the last, for your ladyship is strange to the ways of the country; an’ there’ll be the wake, an’ after that the burial, an’ maybe some of the boys might be taking a drop too much, an’ rising too much noise or the like! No, ma’am; I’m better away, an’ sure it’s all on the road to the Abbey, where the best man o’ my family is buried."

With feeble stateliness he signed for the cart to move on, and shut his eyes resolutely that they might betray no sign of suffering, as his rough and jolting chariot bore him away to the unknown.

* * * * *

A month later, on one of the mild and spring-like days which November brings to the West, Lady Norreys and the "English quality," her guests, set out on an expedition.

They drove through many miles of the wind-swept and rock-strewn country that lies between Connoughmore and the Atlantic. A long and desolate drive, but at last they reached their goal, an old abbey in the Barren Hills. Its ruined walls and grey pillars looked as if hewn out of the stony mountain that surrounds it. Exquisitely carved capitals reproduce the form of the harebells, which in summer-time add a touch of blue to the universal grey. One of the visitors had wished to see these, and to study the architecture of a ruin "so lightly, delicately built" in the midst of such a wild and savage scene. (14)

Lady Norreys, however, had another reason for making the long pilgrimage. There was now a very soft spot in her heart for the old man who had gone away to die that his death might be "no trouble to the English lady." She was anxious that a slab should mark his resting-place and tell of his long and faithful service. She wished to see if the place where he was laid could lend any suggestion as to its design.

With the help of her nephew Albert, still one of the unemployed, she found the newly-made grave. She stood by it, a touch of remorse sharpening her regret as she thought of the promise she had extorted that this winter should end his service in her husband's house. Close by, in a recess of the lichened wall, she noticed a recumbent figure carved roughly in the grey limestone. The features were almost worn away, but there was something of dignity in the stone pillowed head and tunic-clad figure lying undisturbed in that silent rock-bound wilderness. The words underneath were legible, "O’Loughlin, King of Barren." (15) She stood and mused for a time beside it, an irritating flash of memory bringing before her a richly decorated monument at Putney to a late eminent owner of silver mines.

"So this is ‘the best man of his family,’" she murmured to herself. "I had found out long ago that he was one of Nature’s gentlemen, but I think they might have told me that he was descended from a king." (16)

NOTES

(1) AG apparently combined two or more sources for the figure of O'Loughlin, including the gardener at her childhood home, Roxborough. In Coole she recalled that this "old, old gardener, had like Adam in his days of innocence, dressed and kept the garden rather than tilled it. He was said or fabled to have raised from seed that tall bastion of yew that guards the vineries from Northern snow and storm." John O'Loughlin, the head gardener at Coole, had died in 1874, six years before her marriage to Sir William Gregory. She likely also had in mind the ancient Clare family of that name, long the most powerful sept of the Burren region, and proverbially known as "the Kings of Burren."

(2) Like Thady Quirke, the hereditary steward and servant in Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent (1800), O’Loughlin has "kept things going" on the estate; and is likewise portrayed as a figure whose degree of artfulness, or innocence, is difficult to determine. The original Rackrent family name—"O’Shaughlin"—may also have been in Gregory's mind as a pleasing echo.

(3) "Van Diemen’s Land" was the initial European name for Tasmania, with this older usage being widely retained to allude to the British penal colony established there in 1803. Numerous versions of this ballad circulated, with Van Diemen’s Land, like Botany Bay, becoming a proverbial destination for convicts. Gregory consistently misspelled "Diemen’s" as above.

(4) In a letter in 1889, Gregory had reported that at a farewell party for an emigrating Coole tenant, dancing had taken place to whistling, in discreet deference to a dying neighbour.

(5) Mudie's Lending Library, established in London 1852, was a principal source of new publications (especially novels) for city readers who did not want to purchase them outright. Mudie’s exerted immense influence over both publishers and authors, and was largely responsible for the rise of the three-volume novel.

(6) In her 1883 memoir "An Emigrant's Note Book" Gregory recounts this incident, attributing it to the "old butler" at her childhood home at Roxborough..

(7) A tail-coat made of frieze (a heavy, napped wool), knee-length corduroy trousers, grey wool stockings, and a tall hat, had been the traditional garb for male tenants and labourers in Ireland throughout the nineteenth century, but was starting to become les common in the 1880s.

(8) Begonia tubers are sour to the taste, and toxic if eaten in quantity, due to the high levels of oxalic acid they contain. 9 After Parnell's death in October 1891, ivy was adopted as his emblem. Gregory almost certainly completed a full draft of "A Gentleman" prior to this date, but may have revised the story prior to its publication in 1894. Whether she deliberately intended O’Loughlin’s growing of the ivy to suggest Parnellite sympathies on his part is unclear.

(9) She recorded the original source of this exchange in her 1883 memoir "An Emigrant's Note Book."

(10) Based on Oughtmama, about eight miles north-west of Coole. AG often visited the three ruined churches in this townland, all dedicated to St. Colman. Two nearby castles had belonged to the O'Loughlin family.

(11) Irish: a lad.

(12) Grgeory cited this adage often, such as in her chapter "The Wandering Tribe" in Poets and Dreamers (1903), and it was a foundational principle for plays such as The Travelling Man, and The Marriage (written collaboratively with Douglas Hyde).

(13) The oil painting "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid" by pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne Jones (1833-1898) was widely acclaimed as the most important artwork of the year when first exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in London in 1884. In the source tale, Penelophon marries the King and is raised to fortune and happiness.

(14) This is based on the ruined Cistercian monastery at Corcomroe, in the Burren region, about eight miles north-west of Coole. Gregory visited the site many times in the 1880s, often taking guests such as Lady Layard and Sir Alfred Lyall there. She made several sketches there, including of the harebell capitals.

(15) Gregory also made a sketch of this tomb of King Conor na Suidane Ua Briain (d.1267), topped by a recumbent stone effigy of him, which survives in the north wall of the Abbey building.

(16) O'Loughlin’s final transformation from aged servant to descendant of "a king" anticipates the old woman’s metamorphosis in Yeats’s and Gregory’s Cathleen ni Houlihan to a young woman "with the walk of a queen".