"Fishing was one of the occupations of the men, and their wives would bring the fish to the door in a big basket. They always seemed to wear a black cloak over a black skirt down to the ankles. Herrings usually were brought towards evening, and I remember my Father packing a few up and posting them to Aunt Kate in Glendalough, to whom they were a treat.
"Sometimes the 'fish women' would ask if we had any cast-off clothes for their children to cover their 'poor little naked bodies.'
For other food and necessities one had to go either to a shop - and Emily remembered many of the Wicklow shops by name - or to a private house, like that of Mrs Quinsey.
"An old Mrs. Quinsey lived in a one-roomed cottage at one end of which were bars for her hens to roost at night. She smeared butter on the eggs to keep them fresh, and they were thought very choice.
"The Haskins brothers had several businesses in the town. Nicholas was a keen Methodist and had a grocer's shop. Biscuits were weighed out in a paper bag. There were hardware items at the back of the shop.
"For bacon and ham my Mother went to Mr. Fitzsimmons and he would show and recommend different brands - much more interesting than the modern methods. There was also Hopkins grocery.
"There were two drapers shops- indeed three at one time as Miss Haskins had one. My Mother asked her if she could suggest a helpful paper for the maids and she said The Christian Herald. So that was how our almost life-long connexion with it began.
"Passants I thought a very delightful place to visit. One could buy material, wool, etc., and in a small apartment off the main store were hats and ribbons and laces and embroidery.
"Next door was P.J. Byrnes which went in more for men's outfitting and at Christmas time they stocked toys and games."
There was a strong social life in Wicklow town. "The Assembly Hall was used for concerts and meetings and a badminton club." Emily remembered the annual visit of Percy French, who entertained with a one-man show including his own songs and recitations. Emily believed that Percy French had to continue with his travelling show in order to support the extravagance of his wife, and she learned by heart one of his verses, "Ach, I dunno." It was her party piece almost to the last year of her life. Percy French was such an important part of the Wicklow calendar that Evelyn noted his death in her diary for January 1920.
"On August Bank Holiday a Regatta was held. There were a few yacht races but far the most popular events were on the Murrough (a stretch of grass near the sea). There was a merry-go-round and accompanying sideshows and in the evening a good firework display. They were set off on the bank of the river opposite the Murrough and were reflected in the water. We looked forward to this very much and it was the one occasion when I remember that my Father took his stick. When we were coming home after it was over there were a good many the worse for drink and they would be leaning over the sides of the wooden bridge we had to cross."
Visits to the Regatta Day fireworks began when the children were very young. When Emily was just three her mother noted:
E. and I took the darling children to see the fireworks which were very good. They enjoyed it very much.Edward took many photographs of Wicklow, including the Murrough, one or two showing the regatta and one of the Murrough covered with army tents. On a recent visit to Wicklow I took several of the old photographs and tried to find exactly where they were taken. I was able to take new photos which showed the changes, but also how much is unchanged.
Emily wrote, of one regatta day: "Canon Johnson, our Rector, decided to run a light lunch in the Assembly Hall that day to provide a place for people to come instead of the pubs. His daughter Honor and I helped to serve and enjoyed it enormously. She got a tip - I didn't!"
On the road between Wicklow to Newcastle, where Emily's grandparents, and now her parents also, lie buried, is an old-fashioned establishment called Hunter's Hotel. Emily wrote: "Some Wynne ancestor spent their honeymoon there. A very early memory of mine is of going there when there was a clay pigeon shooting club in a field at the back, and Uncle Charlie and I used to pick up the unbroken clay pigeons afterwards. And then we would have a delicious tea in the garden with scones and bramble jelly."
She adds: "The last time Dad and I were over we had coffee there and chatted to the proprietor and weren't charged for the coffee."
Photographs can add to our picture of that Wicklow childhood. Two, from about 1908, are of brother and sister using a doll's china tea set on a garden table, and of the two of them with a large model train on the lawn. One might imagine that the tea set appealed more to Emily and the train to Charlie, but Emily inherited her father's practical bent, and probably enjoyed both occupations. Another shows Emily and Charlie in about 1911, with their mother, who has a small dog on her lap; the same dog appears in Emily's arms in a slightly later picture. At around the same time we can see Emily, with Charlie and a young friend, posing on tricycles outside Wentworth House. These were no miniature affairs; one was like a penny-farthing - perhaps it should be called a tuppence-farthing! Later, they had more normal bicycles.
In April 1910 the arrival of Halley's Comet was announced. Edward, waiting to see whether the sky would be clear, did not rouse Emily's expectations by telling her that they would be able to see the comet late at night. The sky was indeed clear, and the comet was particularly bright, being unusually near the earth. Edward came quietly to Emily's room. Emily was awake, but felt that she, not yet eight years old, should have been asleep at that late hour, and so lay doggo. Her father did not want to wake her, and she did not know until next morning what she had missed.
She stayed up the next night, and saw the famous comet, but not at its very brightest.
The extended family was very important to Irish Protestants. Hugely outnumbered as they were by Catholics, they tended to stick together and to intermarry. Among Emily's ancestors were a large number of marriages between cousins, which make the drawing of a family tree a complicated business. We have already mentioned her mother Evelyn's family, the Actons, and their seat at Kilmacurragh. This house, not many miles from Wicklow, was originally called Westaston, and was built by Thomas Acton in 1697. It remained in the Acton family until 1944, when Charles Acton, the music critic, had to sell it. Emily never lived there, but she used to stay there with a rather eccentric uncle.
On Emily's father's side, the Wynnes had a large house in County Sligo called Hazlewood. The head of the family always tended to be called Owen Wynne, and was a large landowner with many tenant farmers, but, unlike many landlords of English descent in Ireland, the Wynnes were on the whole good to their tenants. Hazlewood was sold in 1937 and is now owned by Korean manufacturers of cassettes. The comic novelist George Birmingham, whose real name was Hannay, had a Wynne as mother, and married a Wynne, and was dismissive of the Wynnes, thus:
"An old though scarcely distinguished Anglo-Irish family. As country gentlemen of importance they had sat in the Irish parliament for a century and had produced soldiers and divines for the service of their country. They had, I think, only two claims to real distinction. They were a subject for Swift's satire. He wrote of the Irish parliament of his day that in it "humdrum Wynne sat surrounded by his kin." And the Owen Wynne of 1800 remained uncorrupted and through the whole period of the passing of the Union, voted steadily for the independenceof the Irish Parliament and thereby missed a chance of getting a peerage for the family." (Pleasant Places, Kingswood, Surrey 1934 p.6)Among the large family of Wynnes in Ireland was John Brian, known as Jack, who married his first cousin as Wynnes tended to do, and lived in Glendalough, where his daughter-in-law still lives. Jack, an engineer, was the son of Albert, the mining engineer in West Prussia, and brought a revival of mining to the Glendalough area; he also provided electricty to the whole valley with his private hydro-electric scheme. He was Emily's cousin, and she writes:
"Two or three times we went to Glendalough for holidays. The Albert Wynnes had a nice house up on the right side of the road called The Cottage, and Wyndham Wynne owned The Lodge on the other side of the road. They would lend (rent?) us one or the other and it was a lovely holiday."A photograph shows Charlie and Emily riding a pony outside The Cottage. Emily continues:
"It was quite an undertaking, as we had to take quite a lot of things - sheets etc. Mr. Dunne would bring his wagonette to the yard and it was there for quite a while to be stocked up. Then we all got in and Mary and Rachel too. If the weather looked uncertain Mr. D. spread a yellow waterproof cover over our knees which my brother and I called Mr. Dunne's tablecloth.Her mother's brother Reginald was sent to South America to keep him from making a marriage to Isabel Richmond that his family disapproved of. Evelyn, it appears, was not the only one to suffer in this way. Reginald wrote to Emily:
"Once we went in the winter time and the horses slipped on the little steep bridge in Annamoe and we were taken into a cottage and my "little cold feet" were kindly rubbed to make them warm."
El Correntino
29 December 1910
My dear Baby,
The letters from Wentworth House were the only ones I got before Xmas, and not much after. I felt quite heavy with the millions of lbs. of love you sent me. It does me a lot of good and you too without doubt. Hope the BRITISH Domins are going on all right. In reply to your P. S. do not worry, you sent me enough love to keep me going till your next letter. Great fun ragging, no? This [a blot of ink] is a dead fly that was hoiked out of pot on the pen, and all sorts of creatures flutter over it and make it worse.
Baby sent, Gave, not lent, Millions of libs of love for me. Do not you Wish you too Had such presents from over the sea?
Pasa buena noche y que Dios le guarde.
Your affectionate uncle
Reginald.
Reginald returned to marry his Isabel and to father a son, that music critic Charles Acton, just before enlisting for the First World War. He wrote from the trenches in 1914:
"If [Edward] Wynne will visit me in my trench I can promise him opportunities for accurate shooting and scope for his eyesight in locating their snipers. They beat me."
Reggie's brother Charles was killed in 1915. Reggie himself was killed on 22nd May 1916. The third of Emily's mother's brothers had lost his life in the Boer War before she was born.
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