Somerville and Ross: the writing collaboration from ‘beyond the grave’
The authors of The Irish RM were a lucrative literary brand, so when Violet Martin died, Edith Somerville took unusual steps to keep the writing partnership alive. Martina Devlin on the remarkable figure behind her new novel
A century ago, one of Ireland’s most successful writers was engaged in something extraordinary. Edith Somerville convinced herself, and managed to persuade others, that she was collaborating beyond the grave with her dead writing partner to continue producing their popular Somerville and Ross novels.
Around her, Ireland was in a state of upheaval. The War of Independence was about to give way to a civil war played out with particular animosity in the area surrounding her West Cork home. Edith occupied a vulnerable position as a member of the Ascendancy, her beloved Drishane House in Castletownshend — into which she poured the earnings from her pen — at risk of being set ablaze by IRA flying columns.
During those years, the gentry was either selling up, or being burned or forced out. Indeed, Drishane was raided by the IRA, with horses stolen and ‘contributions’ to the cause demanded at gunpoint. Edith stayed in the house, hoping by her presence to protect it, even as friends and neighbours took flight.
The woods belonging to the castle at the bottom of the hill from Drishane, home to the Somervilles’ Townshend cousins, had been set on fire, while her brother-in-law Sir Egerton Coghill, who also lived in the village’s ‘big house’ enclave, had received a threatening letter. It was courageous of Edith to stay put: all her brothers had served as army or navy officers and while the family was well-liked, its members were potential targets.
Even as Black and Tan and IRA hostilities raged, with shots heard at night, Edith continued to write — intriguingly, under the Somerville and Ross dual signature. It was a valuable commodity, having delivered the wildly popular Irish RM series of short stories, as well as acclaimed and bestselling novels, essay collections and travel memoirs such as Through Connemara in a Governess Cart. But her writing partner, her second cousin and close friend Violet Martin, who used the pen name Martin Ross, had been dead since 1915.
Edith was possessed by the notion of their ongoing collaboration: it mattered deeply emotionally but also creatively and professionally — that double signature was a lucrative brand. She was reliant on her authorship for continuity, but also to stabilise a precarious financial position during the troubled years leading to the formation of the Irish Free State at the end of 1922.
Her story proved to be a fascinating prism through which to view Ireland’s shifting status, from Britain’s first colony to breakaway. I decided to make it the setting for my new novel, Edith, during the volatile years of 1921-22. I had often visited scenic Castletownshend, conscious it was the inspiration for the Irish RM stories. (These were adapted for television in the 1980s. With Peter Bowles in the starring role, they proved a hit all over again.)
Edith reached adulthood during the Victorian era — she lived from 1858 to 1949 — and there was a wealth of diaries, letters and archive material to consult. In addition, I examined the family’s private archive at Drishane House, thanks to the generosity of the Somervilles who continue to live there, as well as the archive in Trinity College Dublin and an extensive collection of materials in Queen’s University Belfast.
For more than quarter of a century, Somerville and Ross operated one of the most dynamic literary partnerships in Ireland.
Their work was serialised in magazines and repackaged in book format, and they were forerunners in employing one of the first literary agents, JB (James Brand) Pinker, who represented a literary who’s who, including Henry James and Joseph Conrad.
The pair described their collaboration as two minds and two hands, but only one pen. They set out to avoid both pitiable, sentimental Ireland and dazzlingly Celtic Ireland; they preferred popular writing to high art.
Somerville and Ross were not just talented authors but also business-minded, quick to understand an income could be generated from writing: their output gave them financial autonomy at a time when such independence was beyond the reach of most women.
They were feminists who campaigned for women to have the vote, and Edith became the first female Master of Foxhounds in Ireland in 1903. A talented, Paris-trained artist, she co-designed two of her book covers and exhibited in London and New York. Edith said once she was an artist by choice and a writer by chance.
Chance seemed to intervene again following the premature death, aged 53, of her collaborator. Edith believed her writing career was at an end. Together, they had co-authored 14 books over a period of almost 30 years, and were lionised for their wit and social observation. One critic said they built up “a minor culture industry”.
It looked as though the literary firm of Somerville and Ross would have to fold. Weighed down by loneliness, oppressed by loss and at a crossroads professionally, Edith cast round for something hopeful to latch on to.
Inspiration struck: Ross might have been dead but she wasn’t gone. Nothing, not even the grave, could part them. She could be kept alive by willpower and stubborn faith. Fuelled by her belief in spiritualism, Edith devised a plan to maintain their writing partnership: spirit communication would allow the Somerville and Ross to continue working together.
In 1916, she took part in an automatic or trance writing session, in which she was convinced Ross was speaking to her and encouraging her to continue writing. “You and I have not finished our work. Dear, we shall, be comforted. VM.” And so the first of eight further books was begun.
To present-day readers, this sounds like self-deception at best and fraud at worst, but the period in question was an age of spiritualism. The avalanche of deaths during World War I meant many people were searching for ways to maintain contact with their lost loved ones. Within the creative milieu, such experimentation had legitimacy, with writers such as WB Yeats using automatic writing to help inspire them.
Somerville was aware that others did not share her belief but she remained undetered. Her agent and publisher noted, with approval, that her new arrangements smacked of mystery, and mystery was beneficial for business.
The graves of Edith Somerville (right) and Violet Martin lie side by side in the idyllic St Barrahane's, Castletownshend
She persuaded herself she was in close and often daily contact with Ross by means of automatic writing, ouija boards and séances, during which she unpicked tangles in plot and considered how to develop characters. Ross was guiding her pen.
As Ross’s literary heir, she had a treasure trove of letters, diaries, annotated manuscripts and notes on novel ideas at her disposal, using them to continue their work. It was an imaginative — indeed, audacious — leap that allowed her to retain the symbolic dual signature. As far as Edith was concerned, however, creative work was produced by both of them. In addition, her stance helped her circumvent any barriers to publication — at that time, although women writers were plentiful, publishing was controlled by men.
In a 1919 letter to her agent, she wrote: “I am very glad you can realise that ‘Martin Ross’ is still working with me. I haven’t time now to tell you more but I will just say that without her help and companionship I could not have taken up life and work again.”
She developed the habit of doing automatic writing sessions almost every evening between 7 and 8pm, when she entered a light trance and words, apparently from Ross, flowed from her pencil to the page — as if she were simply taking down dictation.
Taboo subject
The endurance of the Somerville and Ross brand, along with her own work ethic, gave her longevity. Edith’s career spanned a 60-year period, encompassing not just their greatest achievement in the novel format, the classic The Real Charlotte, but also her best and most ambitious solo novel, The Big House of Inver, published in 1925, in which — daringly — the protagonist is an illegitimate woman, a taboo subject then.
She kept on painting, even while she continued writing, and had a studio at Drishane House, which is used today as a charming museum showcasing artefacts from her life.
Dogs and horses were her great love, and often feature in her art. Edith also illustrated her own work, so that images of Flurry Knox, the roguish “half-sir”, and his hapless stooge Major Yeates are represented exactly as she envisaged them.
The Irish RM series was a career highpoint, and the duo’s reputation largely rests on it, as Edith recognised. Their ear for dialogue and gift for humour set the writing apart, but the work is also of interest because it captured a moment in history. They were mapping the demise of the Ascendancy caste to which they belonged.
Yet Edith managed the transition from one dispensation to another, carving out a place for herself in the new Irish State. As early as 1916, she showed sympathy for the nationalist cause with an unsigned letter sent to the Times of London begging for clemency for the Easter Rising participants.
The Decade of Centenaries is designed to advance historic openness, and Edith, with her dual Irish and British allegiances, staked a claim on hybrid identity long before the Good Friday Agreement of 1998; her co-existing British and Irish loyalties broadened to encompass post-independence Ireland. “We owe Ireland nearly 300 good years and must try and ‘stick it’ and hope for luck,” she wrote to her sister Hildegarde, Lady Coghill, in 1922.
She worked to the end, her final book the essay collection Maria and Some Other Dogs appearing in 1949, the year of her death, aged 91. Edith is buried in Castletownshend, in a plot next to Martin Ross in the graveyard of St Barrahane’s Church, where she played the organ for most of her life. And Drishane House survives, in the hands of her Somerville relatives, largely because of her determination that it should.
