E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) and
revised by Rita Bailey and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
CASTLE RICHMOND
by
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
With an Introduction by Algar Thorold
London & New York: MCMVI
INTRODUCTION
"Castle Richmond" was written in 1861, long after Trollope had left
Ireland. The characterization is weak, and the plot, although the
author himself thought well of it, mechanical.
The value of the story is rather documentary than literary. It
contains several graphic scenes descriptive of the great Irish
famine. Trollope observed carefully, and on the whole impartially,
though his powers of discrimination were not quite fine enough to
make him an ideal annalist.
Still, such as they were, he has used them here with no
inconsiderable effect. His desire to be fair has led him to lay
stress in an inverse ratio to his prepossessions, and his Priest is a
better man than his parson.
The best, indeed the only piece of real characterization in the book
is the delineation of Abe Mollett. This unscrupulous blackmailer
is put before us with real art, with something of the loving
preoccupation of the hunter for his quarry. Trollope loved a rogue,
and in his long portrait gallery there are several really charming
ones. He did not, indeed, perceive the aesthetic value of sin--he did
not perceive the esthetic value of anything,--and his analysis of
human nature was not profound enough to reach the conception of sin,
crime being to him the nadir of downward possibility--but he had a
professional, a sort of half Scotland Yard, half master of hounds
interest in a criminal. "See," he would muse, "how cunningly the
creature works, now back to his earth, anon stealing an unsuspected
run across country, the clever rascal;" and his ethical disapproval
ever, as usual, with English critics of life, in the foreground,
clearly enhanced a primitive predatory instinct not obscurely
akin, a cynic might say, to those dark impulses he holds up to
our reprobation. This self-realization in his fiction is one of
Trollope's principal charms. Never was there a more subjective
writer. Unlike Flaubert, who laid down the canon that the author
should exist in his work as God in creation, to be, here or there,
dimly divined but never recognized, though everywhere latent,
Trollope was never weary of writing himself large in every man,
woman, or child he described.
The illusion of objectivity which he so successfully achieves is
due to the fact that his mind was so perfectly contented with its
hereditary and circumstantial conditions, was itself so perfectly
the mental equivalent of those conditions. Thus the perfection of
his egotism, tight as a drum, saved him. Had it been a little less
complete, he would have faltered and bungled; as it was, he had the
naive certainty of a child, to whose innocent apprehension the world
and self are one, and who therefore cannot err.
ALGAR THOROLD.
CONTENTS
I. THE BARONY OF DESMOND.
II. OWEN FITZGERALD.
III. CLARA DESMOND.
IV. THE COUNTESS.
V. THE FITZGERALDS OF CASTLE RICHMOND.
VI. THE KANTURK HOTEL, SOUTH MAIN STREET, CORK.
VII. THE FAMINE YEAR.
VIII. GORTNACLOUGH AND BERRYHILL.
IX. FAMILY COUNCILS.
X. THE RECTOR OF DRUMBARROW AND HIS WIFE.
XI. SECOND LOVE.
XII. DOUBTS.
XIII. MR. MOLLETT RETURNS TO SOUTH MAIN STREET.
XIV. THE REJECTED SUITOR.
XV. DIPLOMACY.
XVI. THE PATH BENEATH THE ELMS.
XVII. FATHER BARNEY.
XVIII. THE RELIEF COMMITTEE.
XIX. THE FRIEND OF THE FAMILY.
XX. TWO WITNESSES.
XXI. FAIR ARGUMENTS.
XXII. THE TELLING OF THE TALE.
XXIII. BEFORE BREAKFAST AT HAP HOUSE.
XXIV. AFTER BREAKFAST AT HAP HOUSE.
XXV. A MUDDY WALK ON A WET MORNING.
XXVI. COMFORTLESS.
XXVII. COMFORTED.
XXVIII. FOR A' THAT AND A' THAT.
XXIX. ILL NEWS FLIES FAST.
XXX. PALLIDA MORS.
XXXI. THE FIRST MONTH.
XXXII. PREPARATIONS FOR GOING.
XXXIII. THE LAST STAGE.
XXXIV. FAREWELL.
XXXV. HERBERT FITZGERALD IN LONDON.
XXXVI. HOW THE EARL WAS WON.
XXXVII. A TALE OF A TURBOT.
XXXVIII. CONDEMNED.
XXXIX. FOX-HUNTING IN SPINNY LANE.
XL. THE FOX IN HIS EARTH.
XLI. THE LOBBY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
XLII. ANOTHER JOURNEY.
XLIII. PLAYING ROUNDERS.
XLIV. CONCLUSION.
CHAPTER I.
THE BARONY OF DESMOND.
I wonder whether the novel-reading world--that part of it, at least,
which may honour my pages--will be offended if I lay the plot of
this story in Ireland! That there is a strong feeling against things
Irish it is impossible to deny. Irish servants need not apply; Irish
acquaintances are treated with limited confidence; Irish cousins are
regarded as being decidedly dangerous; and Irish stories are not
popular with the booksellers.
For myself, I may say that if I ought to know anything about any
place, I ought to know something about Ireland; and I do strongly
protest against the injustice of the above conclusions. Irish cousins
I have none. Irish acquaintances I have by dozens; and Irish friends,
also, by twos and threes, whom I can love and cherish--almost as
well, perhaps, as though they had been born in Middlesex. Irish
servants I have had some in my house for years, and never had one
that was faithless, dishonest, or intemperate. I have travelled all
over Ireland, closely as few other men can have done, and have never
had my portmanteau robbed or my pocket picked. At hotels I have
seldom locked up my belongings, and my carelessness has never been
punished. I doubt whether as much can be said for English inns.
Irish novels were once popular enough. But there is a fashion in
novels, as there is in colours and petticoats; and now I fear they
are drugs in the market. It is hard to say why a good story should
not have a fair chance of success whatever may be its bent; why it
should not be reckoned to be good by its own intrinsic merits alone;
but such is by no means the case. I was waiting once, when I was
young at the work, in the back parlour of an eminent publisher,
hoping to see his eminence on a small matter of business touching
a three-volumed manuscript which I held in my hand. The eminent
publisher, having probably larger fish to fry, could not see me, but
sent his clerk or foreman to arrange the business.
"A novel, is it, sir?" said the foreman.
"Yes," I answered; "a novel."
"It depends very much on the subject," said the foreman, with
a thoughtful and judicious frown--"upon the name, sir, and the
subject;--daily life, sir; that's what suits us; daily English life.
Now your historical novel, sir, is not worth the paper it's written
on."
I fear that Irish character is in these days considered almost as
unattractive as historical incident; but, nevertheless, I will make
the attempt. I am now leaving the Green Isle and my old friends, and
would fain say a word of them as I do so. If I do not say that word
now it will never be said.
The readability of a story should depend, one would say, on its
intrinsic merit rather than on the site of its adventures. No
one will think that Hampshire is better for such a purpose than
Cumberland, or Essex than Leicestershire. What abstract objection can
there then be to the county Cork?
Perhaps the most interesting, and certainly the most beautiful part
of Ireland is that which lies down in the extreme south-west, with
fingers stretching far out into the Atlantic Ocean. This consists of
the counties Cork and Kerry, or a portion, rather, of those counties.
It contains Killarney, Glengarriffe, Bantry, and Inchigeela; and
is watered by the Lee, the Blackwater, and the Flesk. I know not
where is to be found a land more rich in all that constitutes the
loveliness of scenery.
Within this district, but hardly within that portion of it which is
most attractive to tourists, is situated the house and domain of
Castle Richmond. The river Blackwater rises in the county Kerry, and
running from west to east through the northern part of the county
Cork, enters the county Waterford beyond Fermoy. In its course it
passes near the little town of Kanturk, and through the town of
Mallow: Castle Richmond stands close upon its banks, within the
barony of Desmond, and in that Kanturk region through which the
Mallow and Killarney railway now passes, but which some thirteen
years since knew nothing of the navvy's spade, or even of the
engineer's theodolite.
Castle Richmond was at this period the abode of Sir Thomas
Fitzgerald, who resided there, ever and always, with his wife, Lady
Fitzgerald, his two daughters, Mary and Emmeline Fitzgerald, and,
as often as purposes of education and pleasure suited, with his son
Herbert Fitzgerald. Neither Sir Thomas nor Sir Thomas's house had
about them any of those interesting picturesque faults which are so
generally attributed to Irish landlords and Irish castles. He was
not out of elbows, nor was he an absentee. Castle Richmond had no
appearance of having been thrown out of its own windows. It was a
good, substantial, modern family residence, built not more than
thirty years since by the late baronet, with a lawn sloping down
to the river, with kitchen gardens and walls for fruit, with ample
stables, and a clock over the entrance to the stable yard. It stood
in a well-timbered park duly stocked with deer,--and with foxes also,
which are agricultural animals much more valuable in an Irish county
than deer. So that as regards its appearance Castle Richmond might
have been in Hampshire or Essex; and as regards his property, Sir
Thomas Fitzgerald might have been a Leicestershire baronet.
Here, at Castle Richmond, lived Sir Thomas with his wife and
daughters; and here, taking the period of our story as being exactly
thirteen years since, his son Herbert was staying also in those hard
winter months; his Oxford degree having been taken, and his English
pursuits admitting of a temporary sojourn in Ireland.
But Sir Thomas Fitzgerald was not the great man of that part of the
country--at least, not the greatest man; nor was Lady Fitzgerald by
any means the greatest lady. As this greatest lady, and the greatest
man also, will, with their belongings, be among the most prominent
of our dramatis personæ, it may be well that I should not even say a
word of them.
All the world must have heard of Desmond Court. It is the largest
inhabited residence known in that part of the world, where rumours
are afloat of how it covers ten acres of ground; how in hewing the
stones for it a whole mountain was cut away; how it should have cost
hundreds of thousands of pounds, only that the money was never paid
by the rapacious, wicked, bloodthirsty old earl who caused it to be
erected;--and how the cement was thickened with human blood. So goes
rumour with the more romantic of the Celtic tale-bearers.
It is a huge place--huge, ungainly, and uselessly extensive; built at
a time when, at any rate in Ireland, men considered neither beauty,
aptitude, nor economy. It is three stories high, and stands round a
quadrangle, in which there are two entrances opposite to each other.
Nothing can be well uglier than that great paved court, in which
there is not a spot of anything green, except where the damp has
produced an unwholesome growth upon the stones; nothing can well
be more desolate. And on the outside of the building matters are
not much better. There are no gardens close up to the house, no
flower-beds in the nooks and corners, no sweet shrubs peeping in at
the square windows. Gardens there are, but they are away, half a mile
off; and the great hall door opens out upon a flat, bleak park, with
hardly a scrap around it which courtesy can call a lawn.
Here, at this period of ours, lived Clara, Countess of Desmond, widow
of Patrick, once Earl of Desmond, and father of Patrick, now Earl of
Desmond. These Desmonds had once been mighty men in their country,
ruling the people around them as serfs, and ruling them with hot iron
rods. But those days were now long gone, and tradition told little of
them that was true. How it had truly fared either with the earl, or
with their serfs, men did not well know; but stories were ever being
told of walls built with human blood, and of the devil bearing off
upon his shoulder a certain earl who was in any other way quite
unbearable, and depositing some small unburnt portion of his remains
fathoms deep below the soil in an old burying-ground near Kanturk.
And there had been a good earl, as is always the case with such
families; but even his virtues, according to tradition, had been of a
useless namby-pamby sort. He had walked to the shrine of St. Finbar,
up in the little island of the Gougane Barra, with unboiled peas in
his shoes; had forgiven his tenants five years' rent all round, and
never drank wine or washed himself after the death of his lady wife.
At the present moment the Desmonds were not so potent either for
good or ill. The late earl had chosen to live in London all his life,
and had sunk down to be the toadying friend, or perhaps I should
more properly say the bullied flunky, of a sensual, wine-bibbing,
gluttonous--king. Late in life, when he was broken in means and
character, he had married. The lady of his choice had been chosen as
an heiress; but there had been some slip between that cup of fortune
and his lip; and she, proud and beautiful, for such she had been--had
neither relieved nor softened the poverty of her profligate old lord.
She was left at his death with two children, of whom the eldest,
Lady Clara Desmond, will be the heroine of this story. The youngest,
Patrick, now Earl of Desmond, was two years younger than his sister,
and will make our acquaintance as a lad fresh from Eton.
In these days money was not plentiful with the Desmonds. Not but
that their estates were as wide almost as their renown, and that the
Desmonds were still great people in the country's estimation. Desmond
Court stood in a bleak, unadorned region, almost among the mountains,
half way between Kanturk and Maccoom, and the family had some claim
to possession of the land for miles around. The earl of the day was
still the head landlord of a huge district extending over the whole
barony of Desmond, and half the adjacent baronies of Muskerry and
Duhallow; but the head landlord's rent in many cases hardly amounted
to sixpence an acre, and even those sixpences did not always find
their way into the earl's pocket. When the late earl had attained
his sceptre, he might probably have been entitled to spend some ten
thousand a year; but when he died, and during the years just previous
to that, he had hardly been entitled to spend anything.
But, nevertheless, the Desmonds were great people, and owned a great
name. They had been kings once over those wild mountains; and would
be still, some said, if every one had his own. Their grandeur was
shown by the prevalence of their name. The barony in which they lived
was the barony of Desmond. The river which gave water to their cattle
was the river Desmond. The wretched, ragged, poverty-stricken village
near their own dismantled gate was the town of Desmond. The earl was
Earl of Desmond--not Earl Desmond, mark you; and the family name was
Desmond. The grandfather of the present earl, who had repaired his
fortune by selling himself at the time of the Union, had been Desmond
Desmond, Earl of Desmond.
The late earl, the friend of the most illustrious person in the
kingdom, had not been utterly able to rob his heir of everything, or
he would undoubtedly have done so. At the age of twenty-one the young
earl would come into possession of the property, damaged certainly,
as far as an actively evil father could damage it by long leases, bad
management, lack of outlay, and rack-renting;--but still into the
possession of a considerable property. In the mean time it did not
fare very well, in a pecuniary way, with Clara, the widowed countess,
or with the Lady Clara, her daughter. The means at the widow's
disposal were only those which the family trustees would allow her
as the earl's mother: on his coming of age she would have almost no
means of her own; and for her daughter no provision whatever had been
made.
As this first chapter is devoted wholly to the locale of my story, I
will not stop to say a word as to the persons or characters of either
of these two ladies, leaving them, as I did the Castle Richmond
family, to come forth upon the canvas as opportunity may offer. But
there is another homestead in this same barony of Desmond, of which
and of its owner--as being its owner--I will say a word.
Hap House was also the property of a Fitzgerald. It had originally
been built by an old Sir Simon Fitzgerald, for the use and behoof
of a second son, and the present owner of it was the grandson of
that man for whom it had been built. And old Sir Simon had given
his offspring not only a house--he had endowed the house with
a comfortable little slice of land, either cut from the large
patrimonial loaf, or else, as was more probable, collected together
and separately baked for this younger branch of the family. Be that
as it may, Hap House had of late years been always regarded as
conferring some seven or eight hundred a year upon its possessor, and
when young Owen Fitzgerald succeeded to this property, on the death
of an uncle in the year 1843, he was regarded as a rich man to that
extent.
At that time he was some twenty-two years of age, and he came down
from Dublin, where his friends had intended that he should practise
as a barrister, to set up for himself as a country gentleman. Hap
House was distant from Castle Richmond about four miles, standing
also on the river Blackwater, but nearer to Mallow. It was a
pleasant, comfortable residence, too large no doubt for such a
property, as is so often the case in Ireland; surrounded by pleasant
grounds and pleasant gardens, with a gorse fox covert belonging to
the place within a mile of it, with a slated lodge, and a pretty
drive along the river. At the age of twenty-two, Owen Fitzgerald came
into all this; and as he at once resided upon the place, he came in
also for the good graces of all the mothers with unmarried daughters
in the county, and for the smiles also of many of the daughters
themselves.
Sir Thomas and Lady Fitzgerald were not his uncle and aunt, but
nevertheless they took kindly to him;--very kindly at first, though
that kindness after a while became less warm. He was the nearest
relation of the name; and should anything happen--as the fatal
death-foretelling phrase goes--to young Herbert Fitzgerald, he would
become the heir of the family title and of the family place.
When I hear of a young man sitting down by himself as the master of
a household, without a wife, or even without a mother or sister to
guide him, I always anticipate danger. If he does not go astray in
any other way, he will probably mismanage his money matters. And then
there are so many other ways. A house, if it be not made pleasant by
domestic pleasant things, must be made pleasant by pleasure. And a
bachelor's pleasures in his own house are always dangerous. There is
too much wine drunk at his dinner parties. His guests sit too long
over their cards. The servants know that they want a mistress; and,
in the absence of that mistress, the language of the household
becomes loud and harsh--and sometimes improper. Young men among us
seldom go quite straight in their course, unless they are, at any
rate occasionally, brought under the influence of tea and small talk.
There was no tea and small talk at Hap House, but there were
hunting-dinners. Owen Fitzgerald was soon known for his horses
and his riding. He lived in the very centre of the Duhallow hunt;
and before he had been six months owner of his property had built
additional stables, with half a dozen loose boxes for his friends'
nags. He had an eye, too, for a pretty girl--not always in the way
that is approved of by mothers with marriageable daughters; but in
the way of which they so decidedly disapprove.
And thus old ladies began to say bad things. Those pleasant
hunting-dinners were spoken of as the Hap House orgies. It was
declared that men slept there half the day, having played cards all
the night; and dreadful tales were told. Of these tales one-half was
doubtless false. But, alas, alas! what if one-half were also true?
It is undoubtedly a very dangerous thing for a young man of
twenty-two to keep house by himself, either in town or country.