Literary CriticismSomerville and Ross subverted romantic ideology and provided "alternative visions of a picturesque Ireland".
Their images of a feckless, factious populace, while hugely entertaining and containing more than a grain of truth, promoted the view that Irish Catholics were unfit for self- government. This perception permeated Tory and unionist circles.
Their literary collaboration coincided with a stream of anti-Home Rule publications from the Irish Unionist Alliance. Martin Ross contributed to the debate during 1912 and, unlike Edith Somerville, never modified her unionist position. Somerville let her mask slip in 1899 when she exclaimed: "I wonder if the English will ever believe that Irish self-government simply means strengthening the power of the Priests".
This book is a luminous study of the Victorian twilight in which the Anglo-Irish cousins wrote as one. Julie Anne Stevens argues that the historical realities of the period must be considered within an imaginative framework. To regard the work of Somerville and Ross solely as a commentary on the demise of the southern Protestant ascendancy is to overlook their treatment of form. Their dedication to the "high art of comedy" included an appreciation of its saturnine aspect. When Somerville published "doggerel" to subsidise her foxhunting costs, Ross feared it would mar their reputation as comic writers.
Lacking Synge's sensibility, they presented "a grotesquely realistic view" of the Irish peasant. Ross in turn described the playwright's use of dialect in The Well of the Saints as unauthentic. While Synge and his friends in the literary revival went on to forge a new Irish identity, Somerville and Ross channelled their energies into comic short stories.
According to Stevens, their concentration on satire may have been influenced by the Local Government Act of 1898. It marked a decisive shift in power away from the landlord class and towards farmers, shopkeepers and publicans.
The year Lady Gregory published Ireland, Real and Ideal in The Nineteenth Century, the Irish RM stories appear in Badminton Magazine. Somerville and Ross ridicule "the po-faced collectors of Irish folklore" and associate the Gaelic League with divisive nationalist politics. Gregory's request to write a play for the Irish Literary Theatre is seen as a desire "to drop politics and rope in the upper classes".
Instead, Somerville and Ross focus on the theatre of the countryside. They reacted to the land struggle by caricaturing peasant proprietors, gombeen entrepreneurs and the odd simianised Fenian. There is amnesia regarding the biggest land-grab in Irish history - the Williamite settlement - which established Anglo-Irish ascendancy for two centuries.
Stevens writes: "The first dozen Irish RM stories respond to nationalist discourse and work to expose its shibboleths as vainglorious posturing while attempting to establish a truer and yet ultimately saleable picture of the land and its people". Whatever about historical truth, their parodies met the market needs of British magazines. Tracing a kinship between the truly comic squireen, Flurry Knox, and the Young Ireland poet Denis Florence McCarthy, strains credulity. Incidentally, the Gaelic phrase spelt phonetically on page 26 means the opposite to invoking the devil. It is a prayer: "M'anam ón diabhal/ My soul from the devil".
What matters now is the literary legacy (and not the politics) of Somerville and Ross. Their best novel, The Real Charlotte, and stories such as Lisheen Races, Second-Hand will be read for as long as people appreciate the art of storytelling.
Dr Stevens, who lectures in English at TCD, comes from a literary family. Her siblings write and her father, Chris Stevens, late of The Irish Times and University College Galway, was an author.
Dr Brendan Ó Cathaoir is a historian and former Irish Times journalist
The Irish Scene in Somerville and Ross By Julie Anne Stevens Irish Academic Press, 287pp. €27.50