To borrow (and paraphrase) Edmund Burke's reminiscence of Queen Marie Antoinette of France, it is now much more than 16 or 17 years since Richard Roche last saw Lady Maurice FitzGerald of Johnstown Castle, Co Wexford.
It was, in fact, August 26th, 1940. It was also, admittedly, the first time I saw her and it was the day the Luftwaffe first dropped bombs on Irish soil - in my own neighbourhood of south Wexford.
The events, seemingly unconnected are, fused inextricably in my memory and have been recalled by the newly published report, A Future for Irish Historic Houses?, which highlights the threat to stately homes such as Johnstown.
The castle, one of the finest in Ireland, has figured in Irish history since the 15th century, when the first tower-house was built on the site and became the seat of the Anglo-Norman Esmondes. Confiscated by Cromwell and granted to one of his officers, a Colonel Overstreet, the castle and estate passed through several hands before being finally acquired, through marriage, by John Grogan (1653-1720), son of a carpenter from Enniskerry. Grogan was by no means an aristocrat but apparently possessed of cash since he was described as a "Wexford merchant".
At the time of the 1798 insurrection Johnstown was owned by Cornelius Grogan, a benevolent landlord and a liberal Protestant who, because of his standing, was appointed Commissioner-General of the army of the Wexford Republic, a title which he accepted reluctantly and which later led to his execution. The estate was restored in 1810 to his brother, John Knox Grogan, who, with his son Hamilton Knox Grogan-Morgan, built the castle as it is today.
The last private occupant was a grand-daughter of Hamilton K. Grogan-Morgan - Lady Maurice FitzGerald who, as Adelaide Forbes, had married Maurice, second son of the fourth Duke of Leinster, thus introducing an aristocratic strain to the gentry family. When she died in 1942 the estate passed to her grandson, Captain M.V. Lakin, who donated the castle and estate to the nation in 1945, with the stipulation that they be used for agricultural and horticultural research. Teagasc has occupied the place since then, though there have been moves afoot to transfer it to the Board of Works. The Taoiseach's announcement this week of a plan to establish a national trust for great houses opens up other possibilities.
But to return to my memory of Lady Maurice and the day the Luftwaffe bombed south Wexford - in error, as it turned out later. The German pilots had mistaken Campile Co-Operative and a railway bridge near Duncormick for targets in Wales.
Arising out of family connections, I was spending part of my summer holidays in 1940 with the Slevin family in the head steward's house on the Johnstown estate. The head steward was Richard Slevin, whose duties included a daily visit to the castle to meet Lady Maurice and receive her instructions about the running of the estate.
On the morning of August 26th he suggested that I might like to see the interior of the castle and we both cycled down the shady avenue and entered the main hall through the pillared vestibule. The magnificent central wooden staircase (later removed because of "dry rot" and due to be replaced soon) rose on our right. Down it slowly came a fragile woman in dark clothes, holding a stick and using the balustrade at the same time. It was Lady Maurice, who was 80 at the time, yet fully alert.
Richard Slevin went forward to meet her and I had to be content to watch and wait. That was the extent of my acquaintance As we left the castle later, Richard brought me round the east tower and showed me a slab in a shaded spot under some trees. This, he told me, marked the grave of Lady Maurice's favourite hunter, which my maternal grandfather, Richard Dillon, had sold to her ladyship. The slab, which bore the name of the hunter, "Active", is no longer there. Does anyone know where it now is?
That evening Richard Slevin brought the news that "Campile and Duncormick" had been bombed. The radio added details of the casualties at Campile and of the four bombs which narrowly missed a cottage near Duncormick railway station. I knew the area well and a group of lads from Murrintown, including Richard Slevin's son Eddie, asked me to guide them to the scene of the "Duncormick bombs". That involved a cycle-journey of about 12 miles. By the time we reached the place the road outside the cottage was packed with people - news travelled fast in those days despite the lack of telephones and cars.
The centre of attention was the occupant of the cottage, Jem Hawkins, who was regaling the crowd with colourful descriptions of the event. He had, he said, been whitewashing the front of his cottage when the four bombs fell, two on either side of the house. The whitewash brush was swept from his hand by the blast and was never found again. He himself had escaped without a scratch.
We had plenty to talk about as we returned to Murrintown and Johnstown later that evening. At the next fair day in Campile I saw the destruction at the creamery where three local girls were killed and weeks later my father and brothers found shards of the four small bombs in a field in Scurlogue, hundreds of yards from Jem Hawkins's cottage. No one else had thought of looking there.
I traded bits of those bombs on my return to college that September - I was the only one from the district with such sought-after souvenirs. My memories of that day in August 1940 are still with me, however, and cannot be exchanged or erased.