The Stay-At-Homes

The Stay-At-Homes by Jane Barlow

"The Stay-At-Homes" by Jane Barlow is a short story set in the small Irish village of Letterowen, centered on the excitement and complications surrounding a cheap excursion train to Dublin on St. Patrick's Day. The story opens when a notice is posted at the local railway station advertising a return trip to Dublin for two shillings, timed for St. Patrick's Day. For the inhabitants of Letterowen, a poor and largely immobile community where bare feet frequently leave their mark on the station platform, Dublin has always seemed an almost mythical destination. The advertisement causes great stir, drawing crowds of curious villagers who come simply to read it. Reactions are mixed: some view the price as an impossible extravagance, others are frightened by rumours of Dublin's fogs, unreliable excursion trains, and dangerous streets. The older residents largely resign themselves to staying home, comparing themselves to trees unlikely to go running up the road. One notable exception is the elderly Mrs. Rea, a vigorous and independent widow estimated to be somewhere between seventy and ninety years old, who announces her intention to take the trip. Despite widespread disapproval from neighbours warning she will lose herself, break her bones on high carriage steps, or be run over in the streets like a small chicken, Mrs. Rea deflects all objections with cheerful practicality, arguing that the elderly ought to travel occasionally so as not to become entirely bewildered by strangeness when they must make their final journey. Her closest friend, Julia Carroll, who spends her last years as a tolerated but unwanted presence in a grand-nephew's household, disagrees entirely, preferring to stay peacefully at home, and casting a wistful eye over Mrs. Rea's comfortable little house. A secondary plot involves Denis Fitzpatrick, a capable but quick-tempered young man who had long been courting Norah M'Grehan before a quarrel drove them apart. Norah has since taken a position as a servant in Dublin. Mrs. Rea correctly suspects that Dinny's real motive for joining the excursion is to seek Norah out and make amends. His plans are briefly derailed when he loses his money betting on a horse that breaks its neck at the first jump, but Mrs. Rea contrives to send him to Dublin on her own fare, asking him to deliver a message to a Dublin acquaintance named Biddy Loughlin as a pretext. The scheme unravels pleasantly. Mrs. Rea's cold, which was never terribly convincing, disappears as soon as Dinny departs. That afternoon, Norah herself arrives unexpectedly at Mrs. Rea's cottage, having obtained leave from her employers after all. It emerges that Norah's sister Maggie had deliberately misled Dinny the previous evening, telling him Norah could get no leave, apparently to keep them apart. Norah is annoyed and intends to catch the night train back to Dublin before Dinny can return. However, Dinny has already discovered in Dublin that Norah was expected home, and, suspicious of Maggie's account, persuades a sympathetic guard to let him travel back on the early mail train. He arrives at Mrs. Rea's door that same evening, and is promptly ushered inside to find Norah. The reconciliation is brisk and warm, and Dinny escorts Norah home to visit her bedridden father before she catches her return train. As he leaves, Dinny confesses he entirely forgot to deliver Mrs. Rea's message to Biddy Loughlin, and also forgot to inquire after her terrible cold. Mrs. Rea dismisses both failures serenely, admitting that there was never any real friendship between her and Biddy Loughlin, and laughing off the cold. Dinny half-accuses her of having engineered the whole arrangement, which she does not deny. She consoles herself that she may well make the Dublin trip herself the following St. Patrick's Day, cheerfully declaring there is still time enough. Throughout, Julia Carroll offers a counterpoint, arguing that all the trouble could have been avoided if everyone had simply stayed peaceably at home. Mrs. Rea's gentle rebuttal, that if Norah too had stayed where she was the two young people would never have met that evening, is left as the story's quiet final word in favour of movement, chance, and the occasional willingness to venture beyond one's own doorstep.

By Jane Barlow · First published 1897 · Genre: Domestic Fiction, Regional Fiction, Social Realism · 6,669 words

First lines

On the 1st of March, last year, it might have been noticed that people were continually going in and out of Letterowen Railway Station; yet the number of passengers who arrived and departed by train was certainly no larger than usual. The station is rather a new feature in the village, children of smallish growth remembering a time when its fine pink-washed gables, and brilliant flower-borders, and curious turnstile did not exist; still it had been there long enough for the charm of novelty to have been worn off, and that was not the _comether_ which on this dusty-grey, east-windy March Sunday drew thither so many visitors, who had no tickets to buy, nor other official business to transact. What they dropped in to look at was placarded upon the walls of the bare little waiting-rooms, where Jim Neligan, the porter, had been busy with a paste brush the evening before-so excessively so, indeed, being new to his post and zealous, that the station-master had inquired sarcastically whether he intended to paper the whole place over entirely, and if he didn't think he might as well stick on another layer atop of the first. But the result of Jim's lavishness was that wherever you turned there were the thick black letters announcing a special cheap excursion to Dublin on next Tuesday fortnight, which, as everybody well knew, would be St Patrick's Day. Peter Carroll, who helped to clean lamps at the station, and his mother, who scrubbed floors there, had spread the report of the advertisement overnight, and it sounded so very remarkable that more people than not twirled the turnstile in the course of the morning and came down the zig-zag path to see for themselves.

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The Stay-At-Homes is listed on Textopian as a short story by Jane Barlow, dated 1897 CE.

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Tags

Irish literature · 19th century fiction · domestic life · family dynamics · rural setting · character study · social commentary · women's lives · coming of age · provincial town · interpersonal relationships · emotional depth

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