Biography: The only time I visited Castletownsend I was lost. We were cycling and had got confused in the undulating ground east of Skibbereen. Castletownsend was a haven, identifiable on the map, but still somehow disconnected from the outside world.
We walked down the steep, uniquely picturesque, main street that stretches from Drishane to Castle Townsend, and the sense of having arrived in a place apart grew. Now, reading the biography of Edith Somerville, I realise the extent to which the extended Somerville family set its stamp on this isolated enclave on the deeply indented West Cork coast.
The conjuring up of the life of this Anglo-Irish clan in all its serendipitous detail is one of the strengths of this biography. Edith Somerville - the Somerville of Somerville and Ross, the authors of 30 books, mostly entertaining novels - who lived to the age of 91, spent all her life, apart from extended visits studying in Paris, here. Further, despite the persistent desire to escape what she described as the "pecuniary rat cage", she would become an important, financially viable member of the family. In not significantly resisting familial constraints - patriarchal control, the demands of a failing estate, provincialism - Edith Somerville did not lead a life which conformed to the modern myth of an artist. In some ways her story is more interesting.
From her late teens she had a vivid idea of the family's precarious finances and accepted that any money would go to the sons, but she made an independent assessment of the situation and acted according to her own standards, collaborating at every turn with family members from her own generation. A flirtatious, "rackety" young woman, she lost her heart to two men who were unacceptable to her family. She decided against marriage, sealed up her experience (Gifford Lewis reveals this using recently rediscovered manuscripts) and opted for a professional life to reduce her dependency. Helped by her cousin Egerton Coghill she studied art in Paris and sold cartoons and illustrations. In 1889, three years after meeting her cousin Violet Martin (known as Martin Ross), she began to make money and a reputation writing novels. After the death of her parents and faced with her brother's lack of financial acumen, she took on the responsibilities of Drishane, later saving the estate with injections of capital and by running the farm with her sister, Hildegarde.
Her independent attitude stretched well beyond her family. She was involved in the suffrage campaign, and, after 1916, gave increasing support to the idea of Irish self government, though she never really stepped outside an Anglo-Irish frame of reference.
Edith described her meeting with Martin as "a hinge, the place where my life and hers, turned over". A reserved, solitary woman, from a more patrician branch of the family, who was trying to write serious political journalism when she met Edith, Martin possessed a background and character that was in subtle contrast to Edith's. Differences of style show in their letters; Edith's were flippant and slangy, Martin could be quite powerfully and touchingly sincere. But their needs and aims were identical: their joint ambition to "take Carbery and grind its bones to make our bread". They could dip into the same Irish provincial pot for the subjects and plots, and employ the humour that expressed their detachment. The consequent tensions were summarised neatly by Martin when she said that their "sense of humour and gratitude for hospitality [ were] frequently in conflict".
In selecting Somerville alone as her subject Gifford Lewis asserts the primacy of the life over the work not, as many literary biographers do, justifying the investigation into the life as a way back to the work. Yet, although Somerville's life is interesting, the reader picks up the biography because of the novels. Martin is, arguably, equally interesting, though she died 34 years before her cousin. Lewis may have dealt with this by devoting a clear section to their collaboration and life together. But her book is severely chronological, so that although Martin is generously covered in the time she interacted with Somerville, and aspects of their collaboration are scattered about the book, the theme of their collaboration - how exactly did they achieve that fused style? - is not directly addressed. The lack of discussion and obliviousness to the implicit plots of the life are the great drawbacks of the chronological method. This biography is comprehensive, working like a jigsaw with each piece carefully placed, but the characters ultimately lack definition and the stories still need releasing.
Judith Hill is an architectural historian and a writer. Her biography of Lady Gregory, Lady Gregory: An Irish Life, was published by Sutton Publishing last autumn
Edith Somerville: A Biography By Gifford Lewis Four Courts Press, 518pp. €45