THE SKETCHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2057, 27 July 1893, Page 41

THE SKETCHER.

WHAT A WOMAN HAS DONE FOE DONEGAL. /

Mrs Ernest Hart, who has been a veritable angel of deliverance to distressed Donegal, was in New York in!/ April, en route for Chicago, wh6re her " Irish Village " with its industries bids fair to be one of the centres of interest. The following account of a meeting at which Mrs Hart was present during her stay, in order to plead the cause of the poor Western peasantry with their American kinsfolk, is abridged from a most interesting article in Harper's Bazaar :—

11 Who is she ? " We all asked the question when we saw her coming into the room. She was dressed simply in black velvet, with no distraction in the way of trimming on either waist or skirt. She wore a black bonnet. Her hair was light, her face lovely. She moved about near the door a littla more than the test of us, and bowed graciously to several people. She was a woman you would have noticed anywhere. She was graceful, with an easy dignity of bearing. You recognised at once she was accustomed to many people, and from the way she now and then glanced over the room you perceived that while nothing escaped her, nothing distracted her. There was spmething in her face as you looked at her that drew you to her. You felb a power without comprehending it, were conscious of both sympathy in her and what is alwayß rare with sympathy— poise. When we asked the question we were sitting in a house fronting on Gramercy Park We had gone there to hear Mrs Ernest Hart talk about the Irish industries of Donegal A large white sheet in one of the folding doorways prepared us for illustrations. The rooms filled rapidly. Many ladie3 came, some Roman Catholic priests, and well-known men. Mr Robert Underwood Johnson, of the Century, introduced the speaker. We then understood at once why it had' been that the graceful woman moving about near the door had attracted u9. She was no 'other than Mrs Ernest Hart herself. ' ' In the course of the lecture, " I have worked," she said, "in the face of many difficulties. That I have succeeded at all may be because of what my husband so of ten says of me, that I am 'afflicted with an incurable hopefulness.'" Mrs Hart's husband is editor of the British Medical Journal. It was in 1883 that Mrs Hart, accompanying her husband, made her first visit into* what are called the congested districts of Donegal Oonnty, Mr Hart^having gone there to inquire into the causes' of the recurrent famines. There was nothing for anyone to do in Donegal County— nobody to buy and nowhere to sell. More than enough potatoes necessary for the consumption oE a man's family must remain on his* hands. Every spring and summer nearly the whole population of certain districts, including the children, always migrate. Out of 8000 inhabitants' in given places, over 7000 at one time would often go away to England or Scotland for work on farms, returning in the autumn with the money to meet their rent. Then would follow winter with its enforced idleness, and spring with its distresses and its privations, the summer coming again with its necessary migrations. It was among these people, shut away among their bogs, that Mrs Hait, with her "incurable hopefulness," began her labours. No peasant in Donegal ever asked her for a penny; ■■ Every peasant begged her for work. At every step leading to progress she was met by ignorance ; ' but her wisdom lay in making use of the material in Donegal itself. All the women"knowing how to kbit, small experimental knitting agencies were established, the old oottage industries in knitting, spinning, and weavidg being all revived, intact, The socks and stockings gained great popularity in' England, where they were taken to be sold, many people, however, being unwilling to believe that things so well made could be other than machine-made. The homespuns when Mrs Hart began were made only in short length?, and were undyed, uneven,, unusable except by the peasants, and altogether unsaleable anywhere. Itinerant teachers, however, instructed the people in weaving, spinning, and dyeing. No dyes were imported. The materials for colours were taken from the lichens, heather, and bracken of the bogs in the neighbourhoods, and' the potato pots boiling over fires built between stones in the open air served as dyeing vats. The results ar6 not crude specimens, to be encouraged only out of charity, but materials in colour and texture having now a commercial-lvalue of their own, and never placed before the public except as all other wares manufactured and sold on a purely commercial basis are placed. In gaining this knowledge as todyes Mrs Hart obtained certain crude hints from Scottish spinners, testified this information scientifically, consulted old German and French manuals of vegetable dyeing of a century ago, 'combined the old and new knowledge in manuals for the peasants' rise, and an itinerant teacher gave the instructions in Celtic language to the cottagers. The result is a revival of the Irish woollen industry, the popularity of the homespuns, and the consequent increased prosperity oEtbe people. The poor gentlewomen in other parts of Ireland, reduced to extremities by revolutions and upheavals, appealed to Mrs Hart, arid for them an embroidery since known as the ".Kells embroidery" was invented, the aim being to devise something purely Irish in character. Polished flax threads not used in embroidery before were worked on linen of various colours' , specially woven for the purpose, on hand looms, the designs being taken from Celtic MSS. of the seventh and eighth 'centuries; and adapted to this particular work. Peasant girls were afterwards instructed in the simpler forms of this new art. The fact that the Queen has used these embroideries largely as decoration at Windsor Castle has added to the success of their sales. . „. In London there is now a permanent depot for all the productions of these Irish peasants and gentlewomen. They include laces and wood-carving among the products.