A Jane Austen-style social diary capturing the essence of rural Ireland is re-published this month, writes Eileen Battersby.
From the sanctuary of a happy childhood and the amusement of a rural society's music and gossip, to the excitement of a possible love that turns desperately sour. One young woman's account of her life and times offers a vividly described insight into aspects of Ireland's social history.
Dorothea Herbert, eldest daughter of a rector, was a bright and clearly not ill-favoured girl, who had sharp powers of observation and a well-honed wit. She could read, write, draw, paint, sing, play the harpsichord, ride a horse and had every reason to hope for, indeed expect, the ultimate goal for a girl of her class - a good marriage.
But before thoughts of romance, every young person's story begins with family. Particularly if that person is recalling a story begun in the 18th century. Passion, candour, a sense of immense personal injustice and betrayals gradually emerge to set the tone of Dorothea's remarkable autobiography, The Retrospections of Dorothea Herbert 1770-1806 , written within the year 1805-6, presented chronologically and drawing on specific events beginning in 1770; yet she is also alert to her immediate world, sharing the astuteness of Maria Edgeworth.
Predating Jane Austen's fictional re-creations of Hampshire and Bath society, the first of which, Sense and Sensibility, appeared in 1811, Herbert was not writing stories - she was telling her own, and noting in passing those of the many people with whom she was acquainted. It's a world in which matches are made, women die in childbirth, infants expire, men are killed in the hunting field and the family decides a young person's future.
In common with Austen, she never married. Yet, whereas the great English novelist certainly experienced romance on some level, it remained private. Alas for Dorothea, not only was her abortive, tantalising love unfulfilled, it staggered along in undignified full view of all present, ensuring her humiliation was all the more bitter, her rejection all the more complete.
That she chose to write it all down, including the tears, sighs and rage, has not only proved fascinating for readers since its initial publication by a descendant, Geoffrey Mandeville, in 1929, exactly a century after her death, it also suggests that keeping a journal as both record and therapy is not as recent a practice as we may think. Also important to note is that three editions to date, including this new one (the second by TownHouse) all defer to Dorothea's original spelling and punctuation, which is true to the usage of her day, and her idiosyncratic use of upper and lower case.
Born into the lesser Irish gentry, Dorothea was no doubt aware that although her immediate family was not wealthy - her clergyman father being the eighth of nine children and her mother the youngest of seven surviving siblings, including three daughters, of an impoverished peer who would have been only too grateful for the arrival of even one rich son-in-law - her family could claim good social connections. Her branch of the Herbert family may not have had much money but was sufficiently close to it to enjoy access to lavish social outings and house parties.
After all, Dorothea's father Nicholas was one of the Herberts of Muckross, Co Kerry, while her mother, Martha, was a daughter of John Cuffe, first Lord Desart of Co Kilkenny. One of Nicholas's sisters had also married a Cuffe. Long before Dorothea introduces the capricious individual who will ruin her life, she has already secured her reader by opening her narrative with a flourish worthy of one writing for posterity:
"About the year 1739, famous for being the Year of the great Frost when Brandy froze before the fire, and a fair was held on the Ice of the Thames - My Grandfather Edward Herbert Esqr resided at Muckrus in the County Kerry, Ireland, with a large family, of whom my father was the Youngest but one - Mr Herbert when Young, married the daughter of Lord Kenmare, a Roman Catholic lady, who exemplified the force of Love by going off with him privately, and Marrying him against her religious Prejudices, and Against the injunctions of her only Brother, Lord Kenmare whom otherwise she so dearly loved, that she lost her senses at his Lordships Death some years after, and never retrieved them to her own Death."
Love, she appears to be saying from her opening paragraph, is a serious business indeed. Not that the early passages are dominated by romantic love. When writing of her mother, she notes how she had lost her first-born, a son, only to then "lament the Death of her eldest Brother John Cuffe Lord Desart - a Man universally beloved and deplored he died of a violent Fever caught by sitting for his Picture, and what is more remarkable two Dogs and a fine Horse that were drawn in the Picture caught the Disorder - the Dogs died - the Horse was never any good after and the painter lost his sight - supposed from some poisonous paint."
Detail is very important to Dorothea; she appears to have missed very little and is not, particularly in the earlier sequences, without humour. As was common to girls of her class, she had received most of her education at home. So had her brothers, in preparation for despatch to a formal school.
"They had then an old Latin Master one Jackson who attended them every Evening, and whenever my Mother asked, Well Mr Jackson how do you like the Boys, the regular answer was b-a-d enough - b-a-d enough shaking his head - Nor could any Assiduousness draw from him a more good humoured Reply."
Having recalled that exchange, she then turns to her own experience: "The first Rudiments of my Education and the Girls [her sisters\] were also laid under Mrs Charles an Anglo French Governess - Seignor Tassoni an intinerant \ Dancing Master, and Monsieur Dabeard a blind drunken French Music Master - I had an old Spinnet with about half a dozen tuneful Keys - and thus prepared we had we thought nothing to do but receive the last Polish to our Educations."
This is the magic of the book - Dorothea is no goody-goody. A natural good companion from a time when people were used to making polite conversations and penning entertaining letters, there is always an edge to her writing, although the comic is supplanted once love, with its multiple torments, possesses her. But before that, she is buoyant when describing the collective "Convulsive Woe" that takes over as she, her brothers, sisters and cousin separate and set off in the pursuit of education.
It is her first time away from home; her destination is her aunt's house in Dublin. On arrival there, this relatively accomplished child of a polite rector's home in Carrick-on-Suir, Co Tipperary is identified as "a Mere rustic" who had "transgressed all the Rules of good breeding - the first thing Mrs Fleming did was to give me a compleat scrubbing from top to toe as a Quarentine from the Land of Potatoes".
If her hygiene falls short of Dublin standards, her "Carrick finery of which I was not a little proud" is dismissed outright as "vulgar and unwearable" and urgent replacements are ordered. Obviously enjoying her version of arrival in Dublin she then describes the reactions of her new Dublin dancing master, drawing master and music master as they assessed her competency: "Here I underwent fresh Mortification as they declared I was quite spoiled by my Country Teachers, and Must quite unlearn all that I had learn'd from the Carrick Brogueneers as proud Mr Barnes the Musician call'd them."
In an excellent essay included in this new edition of Retrospections, originally written for the 1988 edition, historian Louis Cullen places Dorothea and her immediate society within a historical context. He is aware that she is writing a personal account, and not a history, yet contained in what appears a passing observation recalled by the older self, but made by the young girl excited by the Dublin of 1780, is history as lived. "It wasa very Gay Winter - The Parliament met, and the Town as full as Possible - The Franchises that Year were remarkably beautiful - The Dublin Volunteers newly dress'd and accoutred continually paraded the Streets."
Elsewhere, when recalling an elderly French woman down on her luck who arrives at the family home in Carrick hoping for bread, and stays on to pass on the benefits of her Parisian accent, Dorothea writes: "She was an Enthusiast for her Pauvre Roi as she termed the French King and gave us such an Account of the Attachment of the French for their Sovereign that none could suppose they would Murder him and all his family shortly after as happen'd in the French Revolution."
The entry for the year 1784 opens with a close call for her father who, after officiating at Church, had been standing "opposite the Bellfry when some one observed the Steeple Shake and pull'd him away, which was scarcely done when the Whole Gothic fabrick with its Bells and appendages fell to the ground and a large fragment tumbled at my Father's feet - The Steeple was of the Most Massive Stone two or three hundred years old." In the next paragraph she notes "the long American War was terminated after lasting ten years and Peace was also signed with France and Holland who aided the Americans."
Dorothea Herbert chose to describe herself as "Dorothea Roe" taking the name of the man who rejected her. The good-looking eldest son of an estranged gentleman farmer living in Rockwell House, now Rockwell College, within a mile of the Herberts' Knockgrafton (the rectory called Parsonage built by Dorothea's father), destroyed her life. John Roe's entry into her circle, when, as she writes herself, "I was not without the flutter of Hope and Expectation", was unfortunate.
She puts it more strongly: "However the time was to come when a Passion so strong and violent seized Me that I lost both Society and my few Accomplishments together - A Passion so forcible that it shook every sense and Shatterd every Nerve - And so lasting that it wore away all the prime of My Life in Embitterment and Disappointment."
Nothing sexual occurred. She would have recorded it. Instead there is a meticulous detailing of glances, gestures, allusions. The reader, ever on Dorothea's side, is left regarding Roe at best as a petulant brat with no regard for others, at worst an irresponsible cad who, although his own parents were living apart, was insensitive to the damage he was doing to an impressionable young girl.
Roe's mood shifts are described with precision by the woman who suffered the full impact of them. Her hero proves unworthy of the force of her love. And love Dorothea certainly does: witness her heartbreak after the death of her beloved brother Otway and later the passing of her father, both of whom she laments in verse.
Throughout her Retrospections, Dorothea is open to people and alert to beauty, but above all gives the impression of having absorbed immense hurt from which, for a time, ever hopeful that John Roe would act honourably, she repeatedly rebounded.
Ultimately, there dawns the day she hears he has wed another. Worse follows. One morning he arrives unexpectedly with "doughty spouse", a visit Dorothea speculates must have been intended as "an Insulting Triumph." Writing in hindsight, she remarks "How Wanton - How barbarous was this affront." In addition to the grief caused her by Roe, there is also the paranoid loss of trust with her mother and immediate family, all of whom she begins to see as the enemy, while they in turn, no doubt, must have considered her deranged.
Although she lived until 1829, she concludes her history in 1806, hinting that she may return to it. It appears she didn't. Even from the distance of 200 years, her grief and pain remain palpable - as does her spirit.
