messages, some cryptic and coded, some just a hopeful call for a reply, to be sealed into bottles and re-addressed to the waves. There is never any want of things to do on the beach.
And when he tires of games, a boy can always beachcomb along the tideline for whatever treasures the ocean chooses to release. Glass fishing floats, rusty chunks of metal that might once have been ship’s fittings, bottles (always empty) worn opaque by tumbling sand, lengths of rope, oddly shaped pieces of driftwood, sea-purses holding a fortune in grit, pieces of crumbled cork, feathers and bones …
The sea casts up some funny things: you never know what a boy might find if he searches long enough.
KING OF MORNING, QUEEN OF DAY
DR. EDWARD GARRET DESMOND’S PERSONAL DIARY: APRIL 12, 1909.
LAST NIGHT, UPON the occasion of my daughter Emily’s sixteenth birthday, I took the liberty of drawing Lord Fitzgerald, a keen amateur astronomer and fellow of the Society, aside from the celebrations (such girlish things doubtless holding little appeal for the Marquis of Claremorris) and showed him through my telescope the object referred to by my philistine colleagues in the Royal Irish Astronomical Society as “Bell’s Comet.” Lord Fitzgerald I know to be a highly educated and intelligent man (a rare commodity in these days of inbred gentry and fossilised aristocracy) and a close friend who would receive openly and without prejudice my speculations upon the nature of “Bell’s Comet.”
Whilst at the telescope the Marquis observed one of the object’s periodic flarings (which I have calculated to occur once every twenty-eight minutes) when, for a second or so, “Bell’s Comet” becomes as bright as a major planet. Lord Fitzgerald expressed a great and open curiosity in the phenomenon, and as he had previously intimated to me that he would be unable to attend the meeting of the Society which I am to address four days hence (due to a commitment in that great cauldron of muddy thought and confusion, the House of Lords in London), I explained my hypothesis briefly to Lord Fitzgerald, partly as a preparation for my lecture to my peers, partly, I must confess, to win a favorable ear. Here I must add that it is more than the Marquis of Claremorris’s ear I mean to win; I have need of his considerable fortune if “Project Pharos” is to be brought to fruition.
On a personal note, how good it was to have Emily about the house again! She is like a beam of spring sunshine, flitting through the house like a faery brightening whatever she touches. Why, I had not realised what a dark and gloomy place Craigdarragh is without her until she arrived from Dublin and the Cross and Passion School this morning. I rather fear that I have grown engrossed in my work to the exclusion of all else, even my dearest daughter!
Domestic memo: I must remind Mrs. O’Carolan to have a man up from the town to look at the electricals: last night’s current failure caused great distress to the young ladies at the party. Voltage fluctuations apart, the birthday tea was most successful; Emily was clearly delighted. Young girls are so easily pleased!
* * * *
EMILY’S DIARY: APRIL 13, 1909.
HOW WONDERFUL IT is to be home again! All the dreary hours I spent in Sister Immaculata’s Latin 5th dreaming of home have not dulled Craigdarragh’s wonderfulness: for three days I have gone round hugging every wall, window, and door in the place! I almost hugged Mrs. O’Carolan when she met me off the train in Sligo town; oh, the look there would have been on her face! How good it is to see people who are round and plump and happy after the pinched black and white nuns. They are like magpies, the nuns, always miserable, always cackling and rubbing their black wings together. I hate them and I hate Cross and Passion, it is like a prison, old and grey, and it is always raining.
I had forgotten the colors of Craigdarragh in the spring, the new greens of the hills and the woods,
And when he tires of games, a boy can always beachcomb along the tideline for whatever treasures the ocean chooses to release. Glass fishing floats, rusty chunks of metal that might once have been ship’s fittings, bottles (always empty) worn opaque by tumbling sand, lengths of rope, oddly shaped pieces of driftwood, sea-purses holding a fortune in grit, pieces of crumbled cork, feathers and bones …
The sea casts up some funny things: you never know what a boy might find if he searches long enough.
KING OF MORNING, QUEEN OF DAY
DR. EDWARD GARRET DESMOND’S PERSONAL DIARY: APRIL 12, 1909.
LAST NIGHT, UPON the occasion of my daughter Emily’s sixteenth birthday, I took the liberty of drawing Lord Fitzgerald, a keen amateur astronomer and fellow of the Society, aside from the celebrations (such girlish things doubtless holding little appeal for the Marquis of Claremorris) and showed him through my telescope the object referred to by my philistine colleagues in the Royal Irish Astronomical Society as “Bell’s Comet.” Lord Fitzgerald I know to be a highly educated and intelligent man (a rare commodity in these days of inbred gentry and fossilised aristocracy) and a close friend who would receive openly and without prejudice my speculations upon the nature of “Bell’s Comet.”
Whilst at the telescope the Marquis observed one of the object’s periodic flarings (which I have calculated to occur once every twenty-eight minutes) when, for a second or so, “Bell’s Comet” becomes as bright as a major planet. Lord Fitzgerald expressed a great and open curiosity in the phenomenon, and as he had previously intimated to me that he would be unable to attend the meeting of the Society which I am to address four days hence (due to a commitment in that great cauldron of muddy thought and confusion, the House of Lords in London), I explained my hypothesis briefly to Lord Fitzgerald, partly as a preparation for my lecture to my peers, partly, I must confess, to win a favorable ear. Here I must add that it is more than the Marquis of Claremorris’s ear I mean to win; I have need of his considerable fortune if “Project Pharos” is to be brought to fruition.
On a personal note, how good it was to have Emily about the house again! She is like a beam of spring sunshine, flitting through the house like a faery brightening whatever she touches. Why, I had not realised what a dark and gloomy place Craigdarragh is without her until she arrived from Dublin and the Cross and Passion School this morning. I rather fear that I have grown engrossed in my work to the exclusion of all else, even my dearest daughter!
Domestic memo: I must remind Mrs. O’Carolan to have a man up from the town to look at the electricals: last night’s current failure caused great distress to the young ladies at the party. Voltage fluctuations apart, the birthday tea was most successful; Emily was clearly delighted. Young girls are so easily pleased!
* * * *
EMILY’S DIARY: APRIL 13, 1909.
HOW WONDERFUL IT is to be home again! All the dreary hours I spent in Sister Immaculata’s Latin 5th dreaming of home have not dulled Craigdarragh’s wonderfulness: for three days I have gone round hugging every wall, window, and door in the place! I almost hugged Mrs. O’Carolan when she met me off the train in Sligo town; oh, the look there would have been on her face! How good it is to see people who are round and plump and happy after the pinched black and white nuns. They are like magpies, the nuns, always miserable, always cackling and rubbing their black wings together. I hate them and I hate Cross and Passion, it is like a prison, old and grey, and it is always raining.
I had forgotten the colors of Craigdarragh in the spring, the new greens of the hills and the woods,
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