but he was not a
passionate sportsman. What was a passion with him--- for he sacrificed
much to it--was rest in the place of his choice.

It was not a lonely habitation. He was no recluse, and when there he was
always surrounded by his friends. I do not know precisely how one could
constitute a list of them--but half a dozen men at least came and went
there as they chose. Mr. Mooney, Mr. Hayden, "Long John" O'Connor, Dr.
Kenny--these, and above all, Paddy O'Brien, the party's chief acting
whip--were constant there. Some came to shoot, and Willie Redmond used
to come over from his house at Delgany, where the Glen of the Downs
debouches seaward; walking generally, for he was the fastest and most
untiring of mountaineers: very few cared to keep beside him on the
hills. Others were content to share the daily bathes, morning and
afternoon, in a long deep pool where the little stream tumbling down a
series of cascades makes a place to dive and swim in. These were the
friends of Redmond's own generation, and they were also his son's
friends; but the two daughters had their allies, and one way or another
the party was apt to be a big one--very simply provided for. When I went
there first (in 1907) you climbed a narrow stone stair to the first
floor; on the left was a dining-room, beyond that a billiard-room; on
the right, Redmond's study, and beyond that his bedroom. Another flight
took you to the upper regions, where were two dormitories--the girls to
the right, the men to the left. Later, he made some alterations, and the
upstair rooms were subdivided off; the garden was developed; it became
more of a house and less of a barrack; but the character of the life did
not change. It was most simple, most hospitable, most unconventional and
most remote.

Certainly a great part of Aughavanagh's charm for him lay in its
remoteness. It was seven Irish miles up a hilly road from the nearest
railway station, post office or telegraph station. Aughrim was three
hours' train journey from Dublin, on a tiny branch line, and trains were
few. Until motors brought him (to his intense resentment) within reach,
he was as inaccessible as if he had lived in Clare or Mayo.

So it came to pass that though he knew to the very core one typical
district of Ireland, and was far more closely in touch with a few score
of Irish peasants through their daily life than any of his leading
associates, he was yet cut off by his own choice from much that is
Ire