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.
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