Another Page From The Diary Of A Well Lived Life

My stony heart is gone. I feel a great wish to help the poor people round about, especially the children and the old.

There is plenty to do. There are my lunatic friends at the asylum. I go and see them on days when I am in Cork for organ lessons.

Last week I had a picnic lunch for forty women women lunatics. I arrived with Con and there the poor things were, ready. Two or three nurses were of the party and we all shuffled off as far as we were allowed to go and sat on a bank under trees in the asylum grounds, out of sight of any buildings that reminded them of their sad lot.

The lunatics had made themselves very smart for the occasion; their hats were wonderful in colour and shape; each wore a clean pinafore or apron with an assortment of coloured bows. and a large bunch of purple phlox pinned in the middle. They were very good and Oh! so happy. 

Thompson had sent up a wonderful tea. sugar cakes with mice on them, and plum cakes and barmbrack and bread and butter. They all had one idea which was that I should not be allowed to get sunstroke. One or another mounted guard over me with an open parasol, even when I sat in the shade. If I protested they all patted their heads, signed first to me and then to themselves. Do they think that they are in the asylum because of sunstroke? 

Mrs Leary, from Castle Freke, was there. She calls herself Lady Carberry as a rule, but when others are there she tells the others t call her Lady Glandore. 

Jane Tyner came too. the girl with whom I play duets. She was engaged to marry a curate. When he heard that her mother had died in an asylum he broke off the engagement Jane, heartbroken, went off her head. 

Here is the old dear who jabs one with a knitting needle, if one does not look out, and then is so sorry.! Her beliefs are complicated, she believes a picture of her is being made in Heaven. If she on earth she is cross and jabs people with knitting needles, then the picture will be ugly; if she is good and patient and, doesn't jab it will be lovely. When she dies she will go to Heaven and she and her picture will be one.

There is a priest's sister, a very beloved woman, dark, beautiful, who knows she is "queer" and takes it as her cross and tries to show love to rest.

One woman, the nurse told me, they dared not bring, tho' she cried and promised to be good, because on my last visit on my last visit she had followed me about (I didn't know it) threatening to "send that lady west". Two nurses shadowed me all the time that day.

We talked at the picnic exactly as if it was a garden party at Castle Freke, and if one of us gave a sudden shriek or laughed at nothing. or even rolled over on the grass, no one took any notice. It was a lovely day, and no one enjoyed it more than I did; except for the kissing at the end. Lunatics, like nuns, are fond of kissing people they fancy, whether they know them well enough or not. And with lunatics one can never be sure they won't bite.

Dr Woods gave leave for them to be photographed and Herr Kraft, the photographer, arrived looking quite pale. The nurse had to pose us, for when Herr Kraft approached the patients shrieked or else wanted to kiss him. So he entrenched himself behind the camera, but it was ages before they would all sit still, several of them wanting to know why he had put his head in a black bag, before they consented to settle down.