by Anne Doughty
We were told that there were at least thirty families in this little town who had nothing whatever to subsist upon. And knew not where to look for a meal for the morrow. A quantity of meal was ordered to be distributed amongst them, and a sum of money left for their support, and also for a little turf, without which in this severe weather many would be frozen to death. The cost of turf is a very serious item on these poor creatures: and it would require sixpence per week, with the most economical management, to keep up the smallest peat fire imaginable. No public works were open in this district, although in this small parish there were, in the opinion of the rate payers, not less than 2,300 persons who were “suffering from want of relief.”
Hannah put the letter down and stirred the fire, which had been recovering from being smoored for the night. Small flames rose where she had pushed in fragments of twig, gathered in summer and left to dry in the barn. Shortly the fire would be hot enough to hang the pot over it and measure out the oatmeal for porridge.
She shivered and held out her hands to the blaze. There must be more they could do up here in Ardtur. Dermot would soon be getting his call to go and collect the boat and start fishing, but more help was needed. No one here in the valley was as badly off as those poor souls referred to in the letter. She would have to give it more thought and ask Bridget and Daniel and John if they could do more. And Patrick would certainly help if he could.
Chapter 28
The last three days of school in that December of 1846 were all bitterly cold, the tracks and roofs still thick with snow. Only for a short time at mid-day did large, shining drops pockmark the drifts of snow lying against the cottage walls beneath the overhanging thatch. The icicles went on growing every day while the turf stacks diminished rapidly.
At the end of school on Monday the twenty-first, Hannah, Bridget, John and Daniel pulled their chairs up to the fire in the now empty schoolroom. The tables and benches were neatly stacked against the walls to leave the space available for Daniel’s regular evening visitors.
It had been a long term, made harder by the very cold weather and by the regular appearance of bad news, either coming from one of the children with illness in their family, or the Donegal or Derry newspapers.
Hannah was glad that at least she had something good to report.
Her three colleagues listened hard as she read the key passages in the Quakers’ letter. They agreed the news about fishing boats would be good for the whole community, but what really delighted them was that Dermot would soon be going to sea. He had worked so hard distributing food up and down the valley and now not only would he be going back to sea, but he would have some local young men whom he would be teaching to fish. More food and a few more families with some real income.
Hannah did say lightly that she’d welcome a miracle for those 2,300 people in need of relief, but they all agreed that even miracles might take longer than the two school days still available, or even the four days leading to Christmas itself, on the coming Friday.
‘The question then becomes,’ said Daniel, ‘short of a miracle, is there anything at all we can do to honour the so-called festive season?’
School would be closed for just over two weeks and they did all admit they were looking forward to the break.
‘Yes, I think we all need a break,’ said Daniel, ‘and will be the better for it, but I’m not sure if that same break will do our pupils much good. What does everyone else think?’
‘I think you’re right there, Daniel,’ said Bridget vigorously. ‘What I’m wonderin’ is how some of these families will manage for over two weeks with no pieces, and no bowls of meal for supper when their chile tells us it’s had no breakfast.’
‘Well,’ said Hannah thoughtfully, ‘we’ve had to accept we can’t do anything straight away for those further afield who we know are in need, but we could certainly do something to allow our school families to still have what normally we’d provide for them.’
‘I’ve no doubt, Hannah, you’ve done a calculation,’ said Daniel. ‘But can we really afford to give money, however little, if we have to multiply by fifteen?’ he asked uneasily.
‘Well, fortunately it only comes to eleven,’ said Hannah, much to Daniel’s amusement. ‘We have three families with two children who are pupils, so they would only need three family gifts, not six. And Rose and Sam don’t need any.’
‘Oh, but wouldn’t they feel left out?’ Bridget objected.
‘Yes, you’re right, Bridget,’ Hannah, said nodding, ‘but that might be taken care of by my other idea. I was going to suggest that every child had a small gift they could share with their families. Again, it may not be possible, but I wondered if between us, Bridget, you and I could bake enough “prize-day” biscuits tomorrow and Wednesday to make up a packet for each child. We could afford the oatmeal and it means they’d have something to share around at home. Perhaps, we might even suggest they could be saved up for Christmas Day itself. I wondered too if we might consider some pots of jam. If you thought that was a good idea I’d ask Dermot tonight to see if he can do a deal at Ramseys tomorrow.’
‘I think that’s a lovely idea,’ said John. ‘But it does leave you and Bridget doing all the work. What can Daniel and I do to help?’
‘Don’t worry we’ll think of something for you to do,’ said Bridget. ‘Biscuits need to be counted out and wrapped and packed. And we could do with some kind of entertainment for the last afternoon while we’re busy getting it all ready. You an’ Daniel will hafta see to that, aye, an’ maybe do some of our other jobs as well while Hannah and I are bakin’ and packin’.’
‘Well, that sounds like a good plan to me,’ said Daniel agreeably. ‘I just happen to have in mind a new Christmas story from Galway, thanks to my colleague here. I was also going to propose we might get the children to write some Christmas rhymes, or short poems tomorrow. If they were written tomorrow, we could select the best to be read at the entertainment on Wednesday afternoon, couldn’t we?’ he asked, turning from one colleague to another, as he always did when speaking to them.
‘What a splendid idea,’ said Hannah. ‘Perhaps if we get enough we could make some little folders, or paper books. We might even manage an illustration for the cover,’ she added tentatively.
‘And then perhaps in the New Year we could send them to the people who’ve sent us gifts, or messages of support when we sent out the pictures of the valley after holiday school,’ added John. ‘Can we afford all that paper and postage as well, Hannah? I remember it was rather a lot when Dermot and I took all the stuff to the post office back in the summer,’ he reminded her cautiously.
‘Aye, but sure, didn’t we have a couple of packets of dollars waitin’ for us when we came back in September?’ demanded Bridget.
‘Yes, you’re quite right, Bridget. The postage was expensive but we’d still have enough money, even if those dollars hadn’t come,’ Hannah assured them.
She still found it difficult to appear cautious when the sum in the school account was so high. But she’d promised, long ago it now seemed, not to give away the secret of last summer’s drunken harvesters. Thanks to them, there was still a considerable sum upon which she could draw. Large as it was to her, she knew perfectly well it could do little, or nothing, for those 2,300 people ‘in want of relief’. It was, however, more than enough to cover the plans they had just agreed, many times over.
*
The last two days did indeed fly by. Hannah and Bridget baked together in Bridget’s kitchen while Daniel and John planned the entertainment as well as encouraging the production of rhymes or poems. Some children, when given the option of words, or pictures, chose to paint. So illustrations appeared and folders were made with New Year messages in very best handwriting. They would be completed on Wednesday with a choice of the best poems or rhymes.
On Tuesday evening, Dermot arrived back, very pleased that he’d done ‘a good deal’ for the jam with the chief shopkeeper in Dunfanaghy. He’d made sure
to explain the pots of jam were gifts for the families of the schoolchildren up in Casheltown, and he was duly delighted when the merchant added two large bags of sweets as his own offering.
No pupil left school on Wednesday afternoon without a packet of biscuits, a handful of sweets, a pot of jam and an envelope, containing either money, or a collection of Christmas rhymes. There would certainly be a small treat to share on Christmas Day in every family.
As for Hannah and John there was no hurry on despatching the new batch of offerings from the valley. They would be safe in the drawer of the dresser where Hannah kept paintings at the request of Jonathan Hancock.
*
With the weather still so bad, John had decided not to attempt the journey to Galway.
Hannah did wonder if the weather was the real reason for his staying in Donegal for Christmas. It was months now since he had written to his father asking what it was he had done or not done, that he didn’t write and didn’t want to see him. He’d still had no reply to his letter.
His mother’s letters were loving, but not very informative and his sisters, when they did think of writing, merely filled him in on their own preoccupations. So, he planned to spend most of his holiday copying up his scribbled records of Daniel’s stories, so that he could study them more closely.
He also planned to visit the priest who had welcomed him to the valley and read the newspapers to Sophie. However bad the news was, she still seemed to thrive on knowing exactly what was going on in any part of Ireland. The Illustrated London News she considered a special bonus.
On their first ‘day off’ Hannah was touched when John arrived and asked her if he could take Sam and Rose to visit their Aunt Mary. He knew perfectly well it would help her to have an empty kitchen while she baked and prepared for Christmas Day when both John and Sophie would be coming to eat with them.
The meal itself would be little different from usual, but there would be a pudding and a jelly, a particular passion of Rose, for whom it would be a surprise. She was also hoping to bake both bread and cake in case there were any visitors.
*
After all the hard work of that week, both at school and at home, there was a true sense of celebration over their modest meal. Afterwards, as darkness fell mid-afternoon, John entertained them by telling them Daniel’s new Christmas story, which he’d been practising for weeks now.
That too was a great success, even if Hannah did confess to Patrick that she was so grateful that Christmas was all over. She had felt strangely apprehensive both preparing the gifts needed at school and then trying to make a small celebration at home on Christmas Day itself.
Patrick, as always, tried to comfort her. He reminded her how successful all her plans had been. In the end she decided she was being silly. It was as if she could not rest while she knew the plight of those 2,300 people in Dunfanaghy that the Quaker enquirers had recorded as ‘knowing not where they would find a meal for the morrow’.
As far as Hannah knew, Jonathan Hancock had hoped to appear either with, or just after, the two enquirers, but she’d been disappointed. There was no sign of him and not even a note. Probably, she thought, the weather had complicated his plans which, of course, would have included visiting Armagh as well. Then, to her surprise, what she did have just after Christmas was a letter from Sarah Hamilton.
Hannah had indeed written promptly and thanked her for making that splendid copy of the letter from the enquirers and posting it to her so promptly. But she had not expected such a warm and immediate reply.
Drumilly Hill,
Loughgall, Co. Armagh
26 December 1846
Dear Hannah,
I was so pleased to hear from you and to know that you have been able to give small gifts to the children at your school. My friend Mary-Anne and myself have been sorting through our stock to find items of clothing to give to a number of poor people in the city. In this bitter weather, they were so grateful. How I wish we could do more.
I was most interested to hear that your friend, Catriona, had got a sewing group together just as we now have. Do you also have knitters? We have found some who do baby clothes, but Jonathan tells me that heavy knitting wool would be available from one of the mills if you had some women who could make fishermen’s sweaters or those lovely Aran sweaters I’ve read about.
I’m hoping Jonathan and I might see each other after Christmas. If we manage it, I shall pass on to him your news from school and ask him if he did manage to get to Donegal as he had planned. Do please keep in touch. I think perhaps you and I need to encourage each other. There is so much help needed and this awful weather makes everything worse.
Yours sincerely,
Sarah
Hannah smiled as she reread the short letter again, thinking back to that day when Jonathan ‘thought he was being silly’ and managed to confess that he didn’t know what to do about his love for Sarah. How lovely it would be if they could marry and work together. She could imagine that given Jonathan’s business contacts and Sarah’s ability to organise, they could do great things and be happy themselves in the process.
*
The days often seemed long in that fortnight of holiday despite the very short hours of daylight. Patrick went off early to make use of the light and Sam and Rose, who had long since lost any enthusiasm for snow, liked nothing better than to play games at the kitchen table.
Hannah did encourage them to draw and paint, but she was so grateful when John arrived and proposed an outing, even if it was just to collect the young Friels and walk down with them to see if there was ice on the lake.
Sometimes, he took them to see Sophie and then he would read to them all. At least when she knew John was reading, Hannah could relax. He would avoid all the bad news that Sophie had come to expect and so Hannah would not have to follow the visit with explanations and reassurances for the anxieties that Rose and Sam brought back.
For her own anxieties, many of which she could hardly distinguish for herself, never mind share with either Patrick, or a friend, she had no recipe, except the comfort of the night when warmth and love dissolved the burdens of the day and made the future seem less challenging than she felt sure it was going to be.
Chapter 29
Pausing on the doorstep, a sharp breeze tugged at her warmest shawl as she closed the cottage door behind them. Hannah gazed across the unmarked white spaces that followed a fresh fall of snow in the night and tried to visualise a blue sky, with gleams of sunlight and opening buds on the hawthorns. She was unsuccessful.
However hard she’d already tried, she’d now decided there was little comfort to be had in this second full week of January, in general, and on this, their first day back at school, in particular!
She was grateful when John appeared promptly from next door, making a fresh track from Sophie’s house to their own. Ahead of them now, the only other marking on the gleaming snow was the track left by Neddy and his turf cart when Patrick set off earlier for Dunfanaghy to collect cash from Catriona, meal and flour from the most reliable merchant in the town, and post, if there was any, from the office in the main street.
‘Off we go then,’ said Hannah, trying to sound more cheerful than she felt, as Rose and Sam moved ahead together, knowing she and John would want to talk about school and what they’d already planned together for the morning ahead.
It was perfectly clear that both Rose and Sam were glad to get back to school. They’d been missing their friends from the further end of the valley, too far to walk at the moment in such deep snow, and at the same time they had exhausted all their books, and puzzles, and board games. To Hannah’s surprise, Sam confessed that what he missed most of all were Daniel’s stories, while Rose couldn’t wait to get back to the small school library, having long since exhausted the resources of her own.
‘How is Sophie today?’ Hannah asked, as Sam and Rose moved off quickly down the slope and John fell into step beside her.
‘A bit better,’ he said
cautiously. ‘She did sleep last night but she couldn’t manage her bowl of porridge this morning. She says it’s not the fever that’s going round, this is some sort of tummy upset she’s always had bother with.’
‘Perhaps that’s good news, John,’ she replied quickly, thinking first of the child she was now quite sure she was carrying, and of the threat to their pupils if either she, or John, or Patrick, were to become ill. ‘We might have to close the school if you or I picked up anything.’
‘That’s a sober thought,’ he said. ‘And there is a lot of illness going around. I read last night that there are now over 100,000 in the workhouses and they’re just full of sickness. They’re having to build temporary shelters in the grounds for those with fever. Some workhouses, apparently, have double the number they were designed for and are having to turn people away.’
‘To die by the roadside, I suppose,’ said Hannah sadly.
‘That’s seems to be the end of it,’ John replied. ‘Just about every English visitor who comes over to “see for themselves” comments on that.’
They fell silent as they tramped carefully across the broken ridges of ice and crushed snow where the downhill track met the wider one that connected Ardtur with all the neighbouring townlands. A fall here would not only leave clothes wet for the rest of the day, it would put one’s bones at risk.
Daniel was waiting for them and greeted them warmly.
‘Well then, did you divide up the work between you on the way?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘Which of you is going to do the session on New Year Resolutions? I haven’t made any. That’s my best effort towards not breaking them!’ he said.
Hannah smiled and gave thanks for Daniel’s good spirits. She had seen him at times look solemn and he was often deeply serious, but she couldn’t remember when she’d last seen him in what she would call low spirits. He, who would appear to have good reason for feeling low, or limited, by his disability, seldom appeared to suffer from such an affliction.