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  Leaving the splendid rooms of the castle behind, we strolled out to the gardens where legend has it that the Tuatha de Danann, the original tribe of Ireland, had made it one of their hallowed sites. After stopping for David to take a photo of me in front of the castle, and I of him, we meandered across the lawns to the Yew Walk, canopied with ancient yew trees planted by the Esmondes in the early 17th century. From there we went to the Lime Tree walk overlooking the Esmonde fishing ponds. In the distance was the wonderful river Derry, the dividing line between counties Carlow and Wexford. Huntington Castle and its grounds are actually situated on what is called the Crow’s Foot, the coming together of the splendid Rivers Slaney and Derry. Looking back to the fortress, I could see the traditional trees of Ireland: alders, birches, and hawthorns casting refined shadows over the formal newly mowed lawns, while to the front of the castle hardy young workmen mixed cement to fix the centuries-old steps leading up to the entrance.

  Back in the house I met David’s charming auburn-haired wife, Moira, Scottish, like my mother, yet born and brought up in Italy, and his pretty daughter, Sarah, home from England for a study break. After signing the special visitors’ book, one that had to be fetched from the private rooms above, we wandered outside and stood on the porch. For some time we gazed over the gardens and across to the gently sloping fields where my ancestors would have ridden their battle-weary horses weighed down with heavy armour.

  Shortly, I bade David, Moira, and the wonderful Olivia farewell and got in my car. With a final wave I drove down the long avenue, turning right into Clonegal where I stopped at the post office to buy a couple of hand-painted postcards of Huntington Castle to send back to Australia. By the river’s edge I sat on a wooden bench and watched a family of ducks playing within the tall reeds, whilst all around me was the song of birds and the gentle tune of water lapping across the stones.

  After writing on the postcards, I dropped them into the green box by the post office before venturing home along the road winding through the thick hedgerows and fields to my mother waiting in the garden at Cloneen. She was to have come with me, but age and tired legs let her down. Besides, years before she’d taken this very same trip with my daughter, Charlotte, and my father. She assures me that David’s mother, dressed to the nines, was wheeled out on a rickety wooden trolley to meet them. Having had a stroke sometime before, this was her only mode of transport. Unable to move a limb, she chatted away happily, although Charlotte, only fairly young at the time, was somewhat alarmed at the proceedings.

  A few days after my visit to the castle, my mother felt up to a drive. After lunch at the picturesque gardens and restaurant at Rathwood near Tallow, a favourite haunt of both of ours, we wound our way through the narrow lanes back to Huntington. As my mother was unable to get out of the car, David came and talked to her through the window and pointed out the original Irish flag flying from the turrets of the castle.

  A flag with an Irish harp in the centre. A flag long in retirement in modern day Ireland, but a flag my mother remembered well. A flag that made that long trip to Australia with us all those years ago, and back again to Ireland.

  Ballynastragh Castle, the Esmondes’ family’s home in County Wexford, was tragically burned down in the Irish Civil War in 1922. With the burning of this magnificent turreted castle many treasures accumulated over the centuries were sadly lost. A new house was built on the site and the children of my father’s half-brother, Sir Anthony, the 16th Baronet, and his wife, his cousin, Ethne Moira Grattan, a descendant of the Rt Hon. Oliver Henry Grattan, the great Irish orator, still live there today.

  On my last visit to Ballynastragh, my cousin Alice brought out a tender roast, or joint as it is still called in Ireland, and carved it into huge portions, serving it up with piping hot potatoes and greens, as we chatted around the very same table Oliver Cromwell had sat at centuries ago. His initials and those of his soldiers carved into the ancient wood are still highly visible.

  Sir Thomas Gratten Esmonde wrote a wonderful book, Gentleman the Queen, a supposedly fictional account of the Esmondes at Ballynastragh (in a fantasy style) describing the tragic burning of the old house in the Civil War. I’m lucky enough to have a rare copy in my possession. It is a remarkable account, if not slightly controversial in today’s times.

  Thankfully Ballynastragh was rebuilt, the smaller house far less imposing than the original castle. As only my cousin, Barty, not farm hands and labourers, keeps the magnificent grounds and picturesque lake in order, there is some overgrowth and a sunken wooden rowboat at the partly submerged jetty. Luckily, a number of family portraits stored elsewhere at the time of the fire, gaze down haughtily from lofty walls. A large portrait of Queen Christina of Sweden, the inspiration for Sir Thomas Gratten Esmonde’s novel, hangs regally besides the French windows. Bird life nests in the ancient trees next to Barty’s busy farm machinery business.

  Chapter 4

  Drominagh

  Drominagh, a three-storey early Georgian house where my father spent much of his youth and where I was born, is in a wonderful piece of Ireland nestled into the shores of Lough Derg and reached by a tree-lined avenue with timber fences encasing over a hundred acres of richly fertile fields. It was built in 1721 and was called Castle Biggs until my great-grandfather bought it in 1866. Finding this a ‘dreadful name’ he renamed it Drominagh, which means a place where ivy grows and which was the original name of the area.

  At its most impressive when the ivy-clad walls are in leaf, this grandly proportioned residence is now richly panelled inside with antique English timbers. (My parents had preferred lighter pastel painted interior walls in their day.) It boasts fireplaces in all of the rooms and a central regal staircase. Upstairs are the bedrooms and sitting rooms and on the ground level are the reception and dining rooms and an immense stone-flagged kitchen. The scullery and gun room open to the cobble-stoned courtyard with the stables and work rooms adjoining.

  My father’s family were lucky to be raised in this paradise brimming with bird and animal life and to be taught by the steward and his son Old Danny and Young Danny how to ride and shoot with the best of them. By the shore of the glorious Lough Derg, were the ruins of the old O’Kennedy’s Castle, where my father and his siblings played imaginative games about past marauders crossing the lake from the distant purple Tipperary Mountains.

  My father told us that his earliest memories of Drominagh were of a large and somewhat disorderly family returning to live there after his father moved from London when he was four years old. On one occasion, when they were entertaining their English neighbour, Lady Austin, at high tea conversation was interrupted by a procession of a drake and six ducks arriving unheralded, quacking loudly, touring the room and eventually retiring, satisfied that everything was in order and that formal greetings had been bestowed on the honoured guests. My father was sure Lady Austin would have ‘dined out’ on this story for some time, reporting to her friends back in England that the peculiar standards attributed to Irish country gentry, were in fact, as painted.

  I understand now how my father would have died a broken man if he had not been given that opportunity to realise his dreams and see Drominagh by Lough Derg again, despite being happy ‘in exile’ in Australia.

  My grandfather, Dr John Esmonde, sired two broods, one in the late eighteen-hundreds to Rose McGuiness, and a second in the early nineteen-hundreds to Eily O’Sullivan, of whom my father was the eldest.

  There were also three daughters by my grandfather’s first marriage. Rose died at the turn of the twentieth century and a few years later my grandfather married my grandmother, Eily, (whom we called Gargy), who bore him a girl and six boys of which my father was the oldest. My grandmother was a descendant of O’Sullivan Prince of Bere and Bantry, famous in Irish history for his leadership of the arduous ‘long march’. Photographs from earlier days show her as a beautiful woman, slim with lustrous dark hair and deeply set Irish eyes, which many of her children inherited, as did some of her
grandchildren.

  On her husband’s death, my grandmother, Eily, was forced to buy Drominagh from her step children, due to a provision put in my great-grandmother’s will that Drominagh and its lands should go to the first half of the family. Fortunately for all, Eily had a small income from a family trust fund, enabling her to hold on to Drominagh. Even so, things were more than tight for a widow with seven small offspring to raise and educate. She was also providing a home to most of the first family as well. My father Owen, was not yet ten, his brother Donal, eight, Witham, seven, and the twins, Eugene and Jimmy, just five years old. The only girl, Carmel, and the youngest, Paddy, were barely walking.

  My father went to school at Downside Abbey run by the Dominican Order, just twelve miles south of Bath in England where he and his brothers enjoyed a life with pets. One such animal was a mischievous cygnet my father and his brothers had reared at Drominagh and took back to Downside, not an easy feat considering the trip took a couple of days with a crossing of the Irish Sea. It was housed in a large box and fed and watered regularly and arrived at Downside in fine fettle, whereupon the understanding headmaster built him a concrete tank with a wooden ramp and there it remained, apart from sojourns on the lawns, eventually becoming the school mascot, surviving for many years after my father and his brothers had left.

  Initially, my father undertook this arduous trip to Downside on his own. In later years his brothers joined him in the pony and trap from Drominagh to the railway station at Cloughjordon ten miles away, then by train to Dublin. Thereafter it was across the sea by steamer and another long train trip to Downside. It was a daunting trip for a seasoned traveller in the middle of the Great War, let alone a small boy on his own, and later accompanying his smaller brothers.

  One cold winter’s evening, with smoke spiralling from his pipe as we sat by Cloneen’s small drawing-room fire my father said, sighing, ‘It would have been far more appropriate if I’d been sent to an Irish school, followed by agricultural college in Ireland, which of course would have made me better equipped for the running of Drominagh later on.’

  His education did not equip him for the land, yet he gained a great love of history, geography and literature, which became his lifetime pursuits and pleasures.

  Most of this travelling to and from Downside was carried out during the turbulent years of the 1st World War. The old city of Dublin Steam Packet Company’s vessels, Munster and Leinster, made these crossings from what was then Kingstown (and is now known as Dun Laoghaire) to Holyhead.

  As Ireland was also in the throes of the War of Independence, these ships were used by the British government as troop transporters, carrying whatever passengers could fit in.

  ‘Schoolboys were given priority as they could be squeezed in almost anywhere,’ my father said. ‘One long night I stood terrified on the after deck, clinging on for dear life in a howling storm, with monstrous freezing waves crashing all around me. Under no circumstances was I allowed downstairs.’

  The Leinster was later sunk by the Germans, just ten miles from Dun Laoghaire, with great loss of life, including a cousin of my father’s, Thomas Esmonde. At this time there were about 20 Irish boys at Downside, travelling back and forth across the waters between Ireland and England.

  The Esmonde brothers spent their years at Downside learning (although they did not excel in this, particularly Latin), and playing rugby and cricket (which my father didn’t excel at either).

  ‘However,’ he told me, chuckling, ‘I once caught a ball in my cupped hands when sleeping in the outer field and woke up suddenly to thunderous applause. But this was against Lord Dunalley’s eleven at Nenagh in Tipperary, not at Downside.’

  Their travelling companions comprised, amongst others, Dermot, the son of the unforgettable poet, novelist, playwright, great wit, and world-renowned drinker, Oliver St John Gogarty. Many an hour was spent having breakfast at the Gogartys’ huge house in Dublin, filling in time before the train left for Tipperary. This is when my father’s sister, Carmel first met Dermot, whom she later married. The wedding, a grand affair, was held in a marquee set up in the manicured lawns of Drominagh.

  ‘The only hitch,’ my mother told me with a laugh, ‘being that the Bishop refused to allow another Dermot, Dermot Magillicuddy, son of the lovable and titled ‘The Magillicuddy of the Reeks’ to be best man as he was not a Catholic. At the last minute, Carmel’s brother Paddy was roped in and Donal officiated.’

  Oliver St John Gogarty described the wedding in one of his poems he wrote about my Uncle Eugene VC, DSO.

  Of all the feasts that are jovial

  A wedding feast is the best of all.

  And now I am fondly recalling one

  When your only sister married my son.

  And the tents were set and the tables spread

  On lawns with branches overhead

  And the bright air lingered, with music plied

  On fields by the Shannon’s broad-margined side

  The wide still river too smooth for foam

  As wide as the meadows around your home

  The lake-like river that shone full brimmed

  And half the day with its shining rimmed

  To lend some rays of immortal mirth

  To your ancient home on the dreaming earth.

  Oliver St John Gogarty.

  Back in his schooldays my father’s mother had acquired a Model T Ford; however, this was taken over by the Republican forces for use in the guerrilla war being fought against the British occupation forces. She was pleased when it was returned in good order – with a brand new engine!

  In their later school years, my grandmother bought a modest villa in Wimbledon Park, London, where the younger children were enrolled at Wimbledon College as day boarders.

  My father and the elder boys visited for long weekends and holidays.

  ‘Drominagh was left in the very capable hands of Old Danny,’ my father told us, ‘with my mother in remote control in London until she returned to Drominagh in 1923. This is when she requested I return with her to run the farming lands, a request I could not refuse.’

  During this period in London, my father and his brothers spent time with their school friend, Cyril McCormack, son of the famous Irish Tenor, Count John McCormack. My father said he was one of the few people, apart from the famous tenor’s family, who could claim to have had the honour of hearing John McCormack sing to guests after tea in his own house.

  At that time in history, ninety years ago, not one of the Irish gentry was supposed to speak with an Irish brogue. Hence all these elaborate schooling arrangements ensured that the brothers spoke with the most educated of English accents. Even now, I’m often asked why I don’t speak with a brogue and I have to go into long explanations as to my parents’ education. An Irish brogue is one of the loveliest in the world. Fortunately it is much encouraged nowadays and is a joy to listen to, both in speech and song.

  Back then England was again at peace regarding the Great War, yet she was still at war with Ireland. Hence travel was often liable to be disrupted at any time by military operations. This of course was the bitter, tragic and bloody Civil War, which shook Ireland in 1922 and 1923 until the forces of the new Free State gained the upper hand and were able to establish law and order once again throughout the land. The bitterness of this Civil War, setting brother against brother, (and when Ballynastragh Castle was burned down), continued to bedevil Irish politics for generations. It has not subsided, even to this very day.

  After spending some time working in the National Bank at the London Grosvenor Branch, and living in Wimbledon, where he commuted to work on a very smart BSA motor cycle with side car, my father managed to get a transfer to the Bank at Nenagh in Tipperary when his mother returned to Drominagh from her extended stay in London in 1923. With my father running the farming side of Drominagh, as well as working in the bank, and with the help of Young Danny, many of the younger Esmondes, including the half-brothers and -sisters, happily gathered here
for part of the summer where long twilights were spent sitting languidly under one of the fir or lime trees, gazing out to the shimmering lake.

  My father fell in love with my mother, Eira Margaret Antonia Mackenzie (Toni) in the summer of 1936 when she came to stay with her Aunt Winnie, at her stately home, Clonmoylan, on the other side of Lough Derg from Drominagh.

  Alec Hingston, an old friend of the family, (the one I sent to collect my mother when I thought my father was about to depart this world), says of my mother as he knew her in 1936, ‘Toni was a rare beauty. We were all a little in love with her, yet it was your father who won her heart.’

  He told me this after he picked me up at Dublin Airport that May, when my father was dying and I’d flown in from Tasmania. Alec, too, knew the magic of Drominagh, having spent many of his school holidays as part of the Esmonde clan – for at the time his parents were living abroad in Kenya, not regarded as a healthy environment for a young boy. Hence he was dispatched to his grandparents back home in Ireland, who farmed the poor boy out to various friends and relations around England and Ireland (a normal occurrence at the time for many children, including my mother, whose parents were living in India during her school days). He, unlike all the Esmonde boys, who were educated in England, attended Blackrock College in Dublin where my brother Eugene went for a time before we moved to Australia. Alec’s other grandmother was the noted writer, Katherine Tynan, whose daughter, Pamela Hinkson, wrote one of her many books while living at Drominagh.

  ‘She stayed with us for quite a few months in 1939,’ my mother told me, ‘during which time she co-wrote, Seventy Years Young, Memories of Elizabeth, Countess of Fingal, (Daisy), a fascinating liberated woman who married the 11th Earl of Fingal in 1883 when she was just seventeen. I remember Pamela was rather demanding, but as she was a PG (Paying Guest), and we needed the money desperately, we could do little but put up with her demands. And in fact a lot of the time she was great fun and very interesting.’