As the bishop said to his giddy brat
Victoria Glendinning
THE SYNGE LETTERS: BISHOP EDWARD SYNGE TO HIS DAUGHTER ALICIA, ROSCOMMON TO DUBLIN 1746-1752 edited by Marie-Louise Legg Lilliput, .f35, pp. 530 C Take a whole sheet, and fill it with Girl's prattle as I do mine with Old Dad's.' The 'Girl's prattle' has not survived. But this one-sided correspondence, miraculous- ly preserved in the family, is a major publishing event. The Synge Letters are an unprecedented new source of information for mid-18th-century social history gardening, decorating, domestic economy, doctoring, clothes, diet, manners, attitudes
to inferiors and to Roman Catholics — and on the mentality of one 18th-century prince of the Church, an immoderately privileged and moderately liberal Irish Protestant.
The Bishop of Elphin's wife had died when Alicia, their youngest child, was four. Alicia is the only survivor of six children, so she is very precious. We do not have a portrait of her, though her father mentions reassuringly that 'You are tall, strait, and of no ungraceful figure'. According to editor Marie-Louise Legg, Mrs Delany, who knew the family, said Alicia was 'brought up like a princess'. During the five years covered by the letters to 'My Dear Girl', 'My Dear Giddy Brat', the bishop turns 60, and his daughter grows from a 13-year-old into a young woman.
The bishop writes to her twice a week during the summers, when he is in his dio- cese in Co Roscommon, performing his annual Visitation and entertaining local clerics, gentry and officials. Alicia remains in their large and comfortable house on Kevin Street, near St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, with her cousin Jane and a French governess as companions.
The bishop is rich. He is building and equipping a fine new residence at Elphin. Everything has to come from Dublin, packed and crated and sent up on 'cars', i.e. carts. Alicia has continually to instruct architect, agents and tradesmen as to what is needed next. We see the new house (with its 17 servants — 'my family') coming alive as the list grows: spare parts for harnesses and carriages, timber for floors, 'half a hundred of ridge tiles', hearth-stones, chimney-pieces, 'a Lanthorn or Lustre or some such fine thing that might hang pret- tily from the Center of the cieling of the great stairs', 'a Keg of Coarse Colours fit for painting field-Gates and such things', screws, hinges, latches, brass knobs, shoe- scrapers, shovels, bell-rope, cloth for liver- ies and for curtains (the choice of pattern to be left to the supplier: 'I would have it rich and bold'), sieves, milk pans and crocks, looms, bell-rope, soop-dishes' (the diameter indicated by a length of thread enclosed in the letter), white chamber-pots, and some pewter ones for the servants' rooms. We infer that Alicia's governess dis- putes the suitability of pewter for this purpose. The order is changed to brown earthenware.
The Kevin Street house too comes alive. The management of his wine-cellar is a preoccupation, and the laying-in of ale `such as you know I like, pale, smooth, and not too bitter'. Or he needs a certain book sent on: 'Some Books are lying on the Floor, or on Chairs in the Outer Study. Look for it there.' He needs writing-paper: `In the Study just behind the Door lyes a good deal of Paper in heaps.' There is a two-acre garden at Kevin Street, and in late summer he gives Alicia instructions for bulb-planting in the border: 'A row of Cro- cus's as usual, next the Box on one side . . . Let all the rest be stuffed, chiefly with Tulips. Some narcissus, single and double, more of the latter, than of the former.' He wants anemones, irises and wild daffodils too, not planted in rows 'but mix'd in a lit- tle kind of confusion'.
He gives Alicia lists of groceries to be sent up: 'Powder Sugar, half a stone of Currans, half a stone of Raisins, two bottles of Oyl, and a small cask of vinegar.' Ser- vants' idiosyncrasies, and his own clothes — frequently 'in raggs' — are constant top- ics. The bread at Kevin Street is never so good as that made at Elphin, so had a conference this morning with Jane about Bread etc. She says, the main thing is the Barm (yeast), and Her doctrine and prac- tice about Barm is thus.' There follows a single dense paragraph as long as this review. Reading it, you hear Jane's confident country voice, you see her 'Clean Vessels' and `Glaz'd Pans and Crocks', and her attentive employer beside her in the scullery taking notes. The letters are frequently tutorial in tone. The bishop chides Alicia about her tendency to find social difficulties where none exist. 'A decent reserve without prudc ery is the Top behaviour for a young lady. He ticks her off for 'Brogue-English' and makes carping criticisms of her hand- writing, spelling, punctuation and capitali- sation. This should, in theory, be useful to 20th-century students of 18th-century usage. Capital letters, he says, are only for nouns, and even then only for 'Words of Dignity'. The trouble is that he doesn't observe his own rule, sprinkling what he calls 'Big letters' pretty indiscriminately.
'I have had a loss, my dear Girl . . . and what do you think it is? Of the remaining tooth in mine upper Jaw. I was right glad to be rid of it.' His health and hers are closely monitored. Death having claimed the rest of the family, they are all in all to one another. In relation to drinking copi- ous amounts of spa water, he refers to her needing to 'spend a penny' on the road an idiom previously supposed to be 19th- century in origin. The most intimate letter of all from this elderly bishop to the moth- erless teenager is about her periods. 'My Dear Dear Girl. Consider. You are a Female. I won't say Woman. Everything therefore that belongs to Females, belongs to you.'
I should like to quote the whole of that letter. But then, I should like to quote the whole of this wonderful book.
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