Castle Richmond

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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 I 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 personae, 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, halfway 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 out 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. Thre 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.

CHAPTER II

OWEN FITZGERALD

I have tied myself down to thirteen years ago as the time of my
story; but I must go back a little beyond this for its first scenes,
and work my way up as quickly as may be to the period indicated. I
have spoken of a winter in which Herbert Fitzgerald was at home at
Castle Richmond, having then completed his Oxford doings; but I must
say something of two years previous to that, of a time when Herbert
was not so well known in the country as was his cousin of Hap House.

It was a thousand pities that a bad word should ever have been
spoken of Owen Fitzgerald; ten thousand pities that he should ever
have given occasion for such bad word. He was a fine, high-spirited,
handsome fellow, with a loving heart within his breast, and bright
thoughts within his brain. It was utterly wrong that a man
constituted as he was should commence life by living alone in a
large country-house. But those who spoke ill of him should have
remembered that this was his misfortune rather than his fault. Some
greater endeavour might perhaps have been made to rescue him from
evil ways. Very little such endeavour was made at all. Sir Thomas
once or twice spoke to him; but Sir Thomas was not an energetic man;
and as for Lady Fitzgerald, though she was in many things all that
was excellent, she was far too diffident to attempt the reformation
of a headstrong young man, who after all was only distantly
connected with her.

And thus there was no such attempt, and poor Owen became the subject
of ill report without any substantial effort having been made to
save him. He was a very handsome man--tall, being somewhat over six
feet in height--athletic, almost more than in proportion--with
short, light chestnut-tinted hair, blue eyes, and a mouth perfect as
that of Phoebus. He was clever, too, though perhaps not educated as
carefully as might have been: his speech was usually rapid, hearty,
and short, and not seldom caustic and pointed. Had he fallen among
good hands, he might have done very well in the world's fight; but
with such a character, and lacking such advantages, it was quite as
open to him to do ill. Alas! the latter chance seemed to have fallen
to him.

For the first year of his residence at Hap House, he was popular
enough among his neighbours. The Hap House orgies were not commenced
at once, nor when commenced did they immediately become a subject of
scandal; and even during the second year he was
tolerated;--tolerated by all, and still flattered by some.

Among the different houses in the country at which he had become
intimate was that of the Countess of Desmond. The Countess of
Desmond did not receive much company at Desmond Court. She had not
the means, nor perhaps the will, to fill the huge old house with
parties of her Irish neighbours--for she herself was English to the
backbone. Ladies of course made morning calls, and gentlemen too,
occasionally; but society at Desmond Court was for some years pretty
much confined to this cold formal mode of visiting. Owen Fitzgerald,
however, did obtain admittance into the precincts of the Desmond
barracks.

He went there first with the young earl, who, then quite a boy, had
had an ugly tumble from his pony in the hunting-field. The countess
had expressed herself as very grateful for young Fitzgerald's care,
and thus an intimacy had sprung up. Owen had gone there once or
twice to see the lad, and on those occasions had dined there; and on
one occasion, at the young earl's urgent request, had stayed and
slept.

And then the good-natured people of Muskerry, Duhallow, and Desmond
began, of course, to say that the widow was going to marry the young
man. And why not? she was still a beautiful woman; not yet forty by
a good deal, said the few who took her part; or at any rate, not
much over, as was admitted by the many who condemned her. We, who
have been admitted to her secrets, know that she was then in truth
only thirty-eight. She was beautiful, proud, and clever; and if it
would suit her to marry a handsome young fellow with a good house
and an unembarrassed income of eight hundred a-year, why should she
not do so? As for him, would it not be a great thing for him to have
a countess for his wife, and an earl for his stepson?

What ideas the countess had on this subject we will not just now
trouble ourselves to inquire. But as to young Owen Fitzgerald, we
may declare at once that no thought of such a wretched alliance ever
entered his head. He was sinful in many things, and foolish in many
things. But he had not that vile sin, that unmanly folly, which
would have made a marriage with a widowed countess eligible in his
eyes, merely because she was a countess, and not more than fifteen
years his senior. In a matter of love he would as soon have thought
of paying his devotions to his far-away cousin, old Miss Barbara
Beamish, of Ballyclahassan, of whom it was said that she had set her
cap at every unmarried man that had come into the west riding of the
county for the last forty years. No; it may at any rate be said of
Owen Fitzgerald, that he was not the man to make up to a widowed
countess for the sake of the reflected glitter which might fall on
him from her coronet.