Usher's Island

Usher's Island is the Dublin setting of the Morkan sisters’ annual dance, held in the upper part of a dark, gaunt house where a family’s decades-long household life meets the sociability of their guests. The house gives the gathering its physical setting and anchors its history: the sisters and their niece have lived there for roughly thirty years, turning a rented residence into the center of a recurring family occasion.

The House and Its Household

After the death of their brother Pat, Kate and Julia left their former house in Stoney Batter and brought their niece Mary Jane to live with them in the upper part of the house on Usher's Island. The ground floor was rented to Mr Fulham, a corn-factor. The arrangement places the sisters’ domestic world above a separate commercial tenancy, while the home itself remains modest and somewhat austere.

Mary Jane, once a little girl in short clothes, has become the household’s main support through her work as an organist in Haddington Road. Kate supplements the household income by teaching beginners on an old square piano in the back room; though frail and unable to go about much, she continues to give lessons. Julia, grey-haired but still active as the leading soprano in Adam and Eve's, also contributes through her musical work. The household’s daily life is therefore closely bound to teaching, performance, and church music.

The Annual Dance

The Morkan sisters’ dance has been held on Usher's Island for about thirty years and is described as an established success that has never fallen flat. Its regular guests include family members, old family friends, members of Julia’s choir, and pupils of Kate and Mary Jane who are old enough to attend. The gathering extends the household’s musical and personal connections into a wider Dublin social circle.

The dance is carefully prepared within the house. Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, works as a housemaid and is kept busy receiving gentlemen in the pantry behind the ground-floor office and helping them remove their overcoats. The sisters have arranged for the bathroom upstairs to serve as a ladies’ dressing-room, from which they peer down over the banisters and call to Lily to identify arriving guests. These practical details make the house’s stairs, rooms, and thresholds part of the event’s choreography.

Domestic Character and Narrative Significance

The Morkans’ life is modest, but they take pride in serving generous food and drink, including sirloin, good tea, and bottled stout. Their fussiness is presented as part of the care they invest in their annual gathering; Lily generally manages the household orders well, though the sisters will not tolerate back answers. The contrast between limited means and their insistence on hospitality gives the home a distinctive domestic character.

On the night of the dance, the house’s order is shadowed by anxious waiting. It is past ten, and Gabriel and his wife have not arrived; the sisters are also apprehensive that Freddy Malins may appear drunk, particularly because Mary Jane’s pupils might see him under the influence. Their repeated trips to the banisters turn the house into a vantage point for expectation and worry. Usher's Island thus serves not merely as an address but as the setting where family continuity, musical work, hospitality, and social unease gather under one roof.