Group read: Castle Richmond by Anthony Trollope

    

Castle Richmond by Anthony Trollope (1860)

Latterly, since this dreary famine-time had come upon them, an intimacy had sprung up between Clara and the Castle Richmond girls, and in a measure, too, between Clara and Herbert Fitzgerald. Lady Desmond had seen this with great pleasure. Though she had objected to Owen Fitzgerald for her daughter, she had no objection to the Fitzgerald name. Herbert was his father's only son, and heir to the finest property in the county---at any rate, to the property which at present was the best circumstanced. Owen Fitzgerald could never be more than a little squire, but Herbert would be a baronet. Owen's utmost ambition would be to live at Hap House all his life, and die the oracle of the Duhallow hunt; but Herbert would be a member of Parliament, with a house in London. A daughter of the house of Desmond might marry the heir of Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, and be thought to have done well; whereas, she would disgrace herself by becoming the mistress of Hap House...


(I don't really like any of the more recent covers for this, so that's the Chapman & Hall first edition from 1860 on the left, and the Ward, Lock & Co. edition from 1880 on the right.)

Hello, and welcome to the group read of Anthony Trollope's Castle Richmond!

For the benefit of any newcomers, in this project we are working through Trollope's standalone, and generally less well-known, novels. Castle Richmond was his tenth novel, and the third to be set in Ireland, where Trollope lived and worked from 1841 - 1851. He was then sent back to England on a different job for the Post Office, but returned to Ireland in 1853 and stayed there until he left permanently in 1859.

Trollope began writing Castle Richmond after the publication of The Bertrams (group read thread here), but was interrupted by perhaps the the single-most important incident of his writing career: an invitation to contribute a novel for serialisation in the Cornhill Magazine.

This led to the writing of Framley Parsonage, which was wildly popular and established Trollope's reputation as one of England's leading novelists. (It was also the first and only novel he actually wrote piecemeal for serialisation: he disliked the experience so much, in future he essentially completed his manuscripts before he submitted the sections for magazine publication.)

Upon completion of Framley Parsonage, Trollope turned back to Castle Richmond---which met a very different reception when it was published in three volumes by Chapman and Hall in 1860; at least, it did in England: the novel was popular across Europe and translated into a number of different languages. The English critics, however, generally disliked it (or parts of it), while the reading public rejected it and clamoured for more Barchester books.

We will consider the reasons for this reception going forward.

Castle Richmond is not one of those novels to gain a reputation after the event; even Trollope scholars tend to ignore it, if not dislike it. However, while it is certainly a problematic work, like all of Trollope's novels it has much to offer, and captures a portrait of Ireland as the country trembled on the brink of the devastating potato famine of 1846 - 1847.

I will not write anything more about the subject matter now, but will include some background information as we go forward.

Like The Bertrams, this a often a rather bleak novel; but hopefully our participants will still find this group read a rewarding venture!

Before we begin, I understand that under the circumstances, some people may be having difficulty in obtaining a copy of the novel. If so, please let us know.

Fortunately, though some editions of Castle Richmond have been issued in one, two or three volumes, and though (I believe) the volume breaks differ between some of the three-volume versions, I have found no indication that the *text* has actually been altered; so it shouldn't matter which edition you access. We will just have to be careful to note any variant chapter numbers in our posts.

For those who cannot obtain a paper copy, the novel is available in a variety of ebook formats, and in scan format at the Internet Archive and the Hathi Trust.

In its original format, Castle Richmond was arranged as follows:

Volume I: Chapters 1 - 15
Volume II: Chapters 16 - 30
Volume III: Chapters 31 - 44

If we therefore aim for two chapters per day, we should complete this project in about three weeks, or more or less by the end of July.

However, is some participants need more time, that is certainly no problem.

Please indicate on this thread which edition you will be reading, and if you do have variant volumes / chapters.

During this group read, please adhere to the following guidelines:

1. Whenever commenting, please start by listing the chapter to which you are referring in bold.

2. Be mindful of others: use spoiler tags if you have read the book before, or get ahead of other readers.

3. If you have not read this novel, DO NOT READ YOUR COPY'S INTRODUCTION BEFOREHAND; keep it for afterwards, so it can't spoil anything.

4. I also discourage reading foot- or endnotes if you have them, for they are not always spoiler-free.

Above all, however, please speak up! Group reads are always more rewarding when there is discussion.

Don't hesitate to comment or ask a question, even if you think your point is trivial. Trust me, if *you* are thinking, so will others be. :)

Cast of characters:

Sir Thomas Fitzgerald
Lady (Mary) Fitzgerald - his wife
Herbert Fitzgerald - his son and heir
Mary Fitzgerald - his elder daughter
Emmeline Fitzgerald - his younger daughter
Miss Letty Fitzgerald - his older sister

Mr Prendergast - Sir Thomas's London-based solicitor
Mr Somers - the agent for Castle Richmond

Mrs Jones - housekeeper and personal servant to Lady Fitzgerald
Richard - general servant

Castle Richmond - their estate

Clara, Countess of Desmond
Patrick, Earl of Desmond - her teenage son
Lady Clara Desmond - her daughter

Desmond Court - their estate

Owen Fitzgerald - second cousin to the Fitzgeralds of Castle Richmond

Hap House - his house

The Reverend Mr Æneas Townsend - the Protestant minister
Mrs Townsend - his wife
Father Bernard M'Carthy (Father Barney) - the Catholic priest

Matthew Mollet - a middle-aged Englishman, of questionable character
Abraham Mollet - his son

The Kanturk Hotel - a lowly public-house in Cork
Mr O'Dwyer - the proprietor
Fanny O'Dwyer - his barmaid daughter; niece to Father Bernard

Okay!

Sorry I'm a little late setting up this thread: I ended up having to take my cat to the vet yesterday, and it all went a bit pear-shaped from there. (It's okay, he's fine!)

If you will be joining in, or are hoping to, please check in and let us know! Also, please note which edition you have.

I'll be following along; I read Castle Richmond back in February. I do plan to re-read select sections as we go along. I have a particular interest in this area of Cork: my paternal ancestors, who arrived in the U.S. in 1852, came from a small village about 25 miles south-east of Mallow.

I have the Oxford "World's Classics" paperback edition from 1989, with an introduction by Mary Hamer. It is organized by Chapters 1-44 (no volumes) and is based on the 1873 Chapman & Hall text.

>2 lyzard: Castle Richmond is not one of those novels to gain a reputation after the event; even Trollope scholars tend to ignore it, if not dislike it.

No argument from me, but at some point, I'm hoping we can address why this work is on the "1001 books to read before you die" list. Not that this list is the be-all and end-all, but just curious why.

I'm here and ready to jump in! I downloaded an edition for my kindle that has 44 chapters, no volume breaks.

I like to join all of these Trollope group reads simply because I always enjoy both the books and the discussion, but I've also been waiting for this one because Castle Richmond is on the 1001 books list and I'm eager to check it off!

Trollope's other books on "the list" are The Last Chronicle of Barset, Phineas Finn, and He Knew He Was Right, all of which I've read. Quite an odd assortment, in my mind!

Here I am. I have the same edition as >7 kac522: above. I’ve not read this before, and so far I’m enjoying it. Still early days, though.

Looking forward to discussions.

I shall certainly be following this thread and I have an ebook copy but I don't think I shall actually do the reading.

I have downloaded a copy from the Internet Archive and I am ready to start.

>6 lyzard: 'I ended up having to take my cat to the vet yesterday, and it all went a bit pear-shaped from there' Yikes - glad kitty is ok!

I'm in (hopefully my distracted brain can manage a couple of chapters a day) and have the Oxford World's Classics edition which has 44 chapters.

>7 kac522:, >8 japaul22:, >9 Matke:, >10 CDVicarage:, >11 MissWatson:, >12 souloftherose:

Welcome, everyone! Thank you for joining in. :)

I think we can just use chapter numbers to stay oriented; I will just note when we reach the end of the original volumes.

>7 kac522:, >8 japaul22:

That's fascinating in context, Kathy.

It looks to me as if they've tried to indicate the scope of Trollope's novels: one Barchester book, one Palliser book, and a couple of (very different) standalones; how they chose those particular books, however, is a very good question!

With regard to Castle Richmond itself, the point may be that it is pretty much the only contemporary novel to deal at all with the Irish famine. It's become a rich topic for historical fiction since, but at the time British novelists rarely even acknowledged it. This of course was part of a broader ignoring of Ireland---which is a pretty good jumping off point for Chapter 1... :D

>12 souloftherose:

He's a rescue and has medical issues. He was due for a checkup during lockdown but I let it slide, but then they wouldn't / couldn't renew his prescription without seeing him first, which was inconvenient to say the least. :)

Not too many books open by apologising for their existence, but Castle Richmond is one of the exceptions:

Chapter 1:

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...

So, the answer was 'yes': word got out, and readers stayed away in droves.

It is intriguing that Trollope just couldn't stay away from Ireland as subject matter, even though he clearly knew what the consequences were going to be.

From this distance we can admire his pertinacity in both pushing back against English prejudice and expressing his own affection for the despised country.

However, these things only make his handling of the Irish background material in this particular novel even stranger and more disturbing.

Trollope is very specific in his geography in Castle Richmond: I thought the following might be helpful (though I'm not sure how the second one will come up):

I am in! I will start this evening.

Trollope is also ominously specific about the dating of his novel, "some thirteen years" before the time of its publication: it other words, in 1847. His readers would certainly have understood that reference.

The dating is important in another way, as it pre-dates the coming of the railroads to Ireland. The characters are therefore quite isolated in their corner of the country, and road journeys are difficult, uncomfortable, and time-consuming. As was the case with The Kellys And The O'Kellys, there are many references in Castle Richmond to "Irish miles" (much longer than ordinary ones!).

>16 cbl_tn:

Welcome, Carrie!

Trollope spends the first few chapters of Castle Richmond setting up his geography and introducing his characters.

He also begins a quite serious and lengthy effort to dispel some unflattering Irish stereotypes:

Chapter 1:

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...

(I wonder who that was a shot at?)

The dire consequences of absentee landlordism is a recurrent theme in Irish literature, and understandably so; but here Trollope gives us the other face of Irish landlords in the caring and diligent Sir Thomas 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.

(If you think we're going to escape this novel without a hunting scene, you're dreaming!)

Heh!---

Chapter 1:

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.

That of course is George IV, the former Prince Regent.

>19 lyzard: Need help with two phrases in that paragraph:

"he was not out of elbows" ??? I'm clueless...

"Castle Richmond had no appearance of having been thrown out of its own windows." I have a hunch what this means, but not sure.

>20 lyzard: That was my guess--thanks for confirming.

>21 kac522:

"Out of elbows" describes a threadbare coat, and was a general expression for poverty. "Thrown out of its own windows" was a way of describing careless (to say the least) upkeep of a property.

Both are negative situations or habits commonly ascribed to Irish property-owners, who were generally held to be too poor to maintain their homes properly, and too lazy to do it if they could afford to; neither one applies to Sir Thomas.

You've answered all my questions about Chapter 1, including the "out of elbows" phrase. And I enjoyed seeing the maps of Ireland as well.

At the end of Chapter 2, I don't really understand the following:

But a feeling that Lord Desmond was only a boy, restrained him. It would not be well to induce one so young to agree to an arrangement of which in after and more mature years he would so probably disapprove.

I'm not sure what's going on there - I assume he's talking about proposing to Clara, but why would this be something that would be disapproved of later. It seems he has a decent fortune and property whereas she has just about nothing?

Thanks for setting this up Liz.

I went to quite extraordinary lengths for me to join in. I downloaded Epub Reader onto my phone as well as listening to it at the same time on librivox read by Simon Evers.

First two chapters done and I enjoyed the second of these immensely.

I have spent plenty of time in County Kerry and Cork and Trollope's words are still true that the South-West of Ireland is a place of great beauty and charm above all in Ireland.

>23 japaul22: I think I’ve answered my own question by starting Chapter 3 - their difference in rank?

>23 japaul22:, >24 PaulCranswick:

Chapter 2, Chapter 3:

That point is addressed at length going forward, but yes, basically it's a matter of rank---and even more so, of Lady Desmond's pride. Clara has literally nothing but her title, but she is still an earl's daughter and sister, and therefore "above" Owen---even though he could give her a comfortable home and is willing to take her penniless.

The underlying point here - well, there are two, but we'll get to the other separately - is that when she was very young, Lady Desmond sold herself for a title. Her life subsequently turned out to be one of (relative) poverty and isolation, but her title is all she has to cling to and she won't suffer her daughter stepping down from it.

As for the bit you quote in >23 japaul22:, Owen thinks that the young Lord Desmond might approve of him as a brother-in-law because of his own feelings of friendship, rather than approve him as a man might and a brother should, in terms of what's best for Clara (or at least, most fitting for her). He thinks he might be taking advantage of Desmond's youth and inexperience by asking for his consent to their engagement, even if he is technically the head of the family. (Though as it turns out, Owen is wrong about all this.)

>24 PaulCranswick:

Welcome, Paul! - a rare male intruder in these parts! It's great to have you here. I hope you feel all your effort was worth it!

One other point that we need to understand at the outset:

At the root of much of the schism in Ireland is that while the vast majority of the population was Catholic, most of the major landowners (and therefore landlords) were Protestant.

This was a significant factor in the English prejudice against Ireland, and it is a major point in Trollope's favour that he never had any truck with it in his Irish novels. He had seen for himself how much good the Catholic priests did amongst what was a very poor and generally uneducated people, and his novels reflect this. (And this would have been another factor in their unpopularity.)

Here, both the Fitzgeralds and the Desmonds are Protestant, while their tenants are Catholic.

Note, too, that both Herbert Fitzgerald and the young Earl of Desmond have been sent to England for the usual "Eton and Oxford" young gentleman's education.

Furthermore, Lady Fitzgerald is English; as indeed is Lady Desmond.

These details form the weave of the relationships between the characters.

>27 lyzard: I have Irish antecedents, Liz, some of whom suffered and/or perished in the 1840s and its aftermath. Not my part of the country (except as a visitor) as my family hails from Donegal Town and Letterkenny in County Donegal in the wild North West of the island.

One half of my maternal line was Protestant and the other Catholic and the twining of the two was the reason they finished up very late in the nineteenth century in the South Yorkshire coalfields - James Walsh decided that if he and his bride Blanche were to be safe from their respective families Glasgow and Liverpool in particular were to be avoided.

Of course the romance of their history helps make Ireland a particular fascination for me and Trollope as he makes clear in Chapter One a novel on Ireland was hardly in fashion at the time.

>24 PaulCranswick: Great to have you, Paul. Thanks for mentioning the audiobook...I think I'll do that for my re-read. Is the reader tolerable? (for me, a bad reader can ruin the book)

>28 lyzard: I know in Ch 2 Trollope makes a point of Lady Desmond being English; I particulatly noticed that statement this time round. I don't think it registered with me on the first reading, but it's important to keep in mind.

I didn't realize Lady Fitzgerald was English, too.

>30 kac522: He has quite a neutral voice, Kathy. I am not so familiar with Audio book readers as I have never listened to one before (believe it or not) but he seems ok.

>31 PaulCranswick: I listened to a few minutes, and he sounds OK. At least he sounds British. Nothing like listening to Trollope with an American Midwestern twang (like if I read it!). And there ARE many books on Librivox like that.

>19 lyzard: If you think we're going to escape this novel without a hunting scene, you're dreaming! Ha!

>21 kac522:, >22 lyzard: Thank you, I was a bit puzzled by 'out of elbows' too.

>29 PaulCranswick:

My paternal grandfather was Irish Catholic, and my paternal grandmother was Scotch Presbyterian: you can imagine how well that went down. (Which may or may not be why they ended up in Tasmania...)

I know a lot more about my Scotch ancestry than my Irish.

>32 kac522:

I am flashing back to when I was trying to work out what had been edited out of The Macdermots Of Ballycloran! I could only do it via a Librivox recording and the accents nearly drove me insane---particularly one American lady who kept trying to sound Irish but came out sounding like Apu on The Simpsons! :D

>33 souloftherose:

Basically "out of elbows" means "too poor to afford a new coat". It's sometimes phrased "out at elbows", which probably makes more sense.

>30 kac522:

The implication is that when she was a young girl, Lady Desmond grabbed at a chance to marry a title, without understanding the gap between the English aristocracy and the Irish aristocracy.

This decision has left her in a position of great difficulty, without the money to uphold her position and really nothing but her title to cling to. This helps explain at least part of her fixation on Clara's marriage, although she has another motivation here as we shall see...

I think it can be fairly said that Castle Richmond is a story of triangles, and Chapter 2 is very much about the development of one of them:

    For many months of that year Clara Desmond had hardly spoken to him. Then, in the summer evening, as he and her brother would lie sprawling together on the banks of the little Desmond river, while the lad was talking of his fish, and his school, and his cricket club, she would stand by and listen, and so gradually she learned to speak.
    And the mother also would sometimes be there; or else she would welcome Fitzgerald in to tea, and let him stay there talking as though they were all at home, till he would have to make a midnight ride of it before he reached Hap House. It seemed that no fear as to her daughter had ever crossed the mother's mind; that no idea had ever come upon her that her favoured visitor might learn to love the young girl with whom he was allowed to associate on so intimate a footing. Once or twice he had caught himself calling her Clara, and had done so even before her mother; but no notice had been taken of it. In truth, Lady Desmond did not know her daughter, for the mother took her absolutely to be a child, when in fact she was a child no longer...

The relationship that develops between Owen and Clara is important to the narrative, but I have to say I don't find it particularly convincing the way it is presented---though I understand (for reasons that unfold later, and that I'll say more about then) that it was necessary for Trollope to present it this way.

I'm actually more interested in the third point of this triangle, which is Lady Desmond's secret passion for Owen. This, on the other hand, is handled in an unusual way for this sort of subplot:

    By that feeling,---and perhaps unconsciously by another, that it would be well that Owen Fitzgerald should be relieved from his attendance on the child, and enabled to give it to the mother. Whether Lady Desmond had at that time realized any ideas as to her own interest in this young man, it was at any rate true that she loved to have him near her. She had refused to dance a second time with Herbert Fitzgerald; she had refused to stand up with any other person who had asked her; but with Owen she would either have danced again, or have kept him by her side, while she explained to him with flattering frankness that she could not do so lest others should be offended.
    And Owen was with her frequently through the evening. She was taken to and from supper by Sir Thomas, but any other takings that were incurred were done by him. He led her from one drawing-room to another; he took her empty coffee-cup; he stood behind her chair, and talked to her; and he brought her the scarf which she had left elsewhere; and finally, he put a shawl round her neck while old Sir Thomas was waiting to hand her to her carriage. Reader, good-natured, middle-aged reader, remember that she was only thirty-eight, and that hitherto she had known nothing of the delights of love...

However, at first we see mostly the ugly side of this situation, with Lady Desmond recognising her own daughter as a rival---and allowing this to become tangled up with her rejection of Owen as unfit to marry the daughter of an earl.

Her manipulation of poor Clara is masterly:

Chapter 4:

    "But, Clara, you must tell me. It is absolutely necessary that I should know whether you have given him any hope, and if so, how much. Of course the whole thing must be stopped at once. Young as you are, you cannot think that a marriage with Mr. Owen Fitzgerald would be a proper match for you to make. Of course the whole thing must cease at once---at once." Here there was another piteous sigh. "But before I take any steps, I must know what you have said to him. Surely you have not told him that you have any feeling for him warmer than ordinary regard?"
    Lady Desmond knew what she was doing very well. She was perfectly sure that her daughter had pledged her troth to Owen Fitzgerald. Indeed, if she made any mistake in the matter, it was in thinking that Clara had given a more absolute assurance of love than had in truth been extracted from her. But she calculated, and calculated wisely, that the surest way of talking her daughter out of all hope, was to express herself as unable to believe that a child of hers would own to love for one so much beneath her, and to speak of such a marriage as a thing absolutely impossible. Her method of acting in this manner had the effect which she desired. The poor girl was utterly frightened, and began to fear that she had disgraced herself, though she knew that she dearly loved the man of whom her mother spoke so slightingly...

I have arrived in Chapter 5 and am puzzled by this expression:

"...those who knew most of Sir Thomas saw that there was a peacock on the wall." A bad omen? Why a peacock?

>38 MissWatson:

Yes, that's an odd one! Peacocks are usually good omens, generally. However, hearing a peacock as you left the house was supposed to be bad luck, and so was having peacock feathers in the house. So perhaps having a peacock on your wall meant that your bad luck was closing in on you?

After the rapid making and breaking of the engagement between Owen and Clara, and the consequent break between Owen and the Desmonds, Trollope's focus switches to the Fitzgeralds of Castle Richmond.

We are introduced to Herbert Fitzgerald, the only son of the house, who has just returned home from Oxford.

We are reminded again that this story is set back in the mid-1840s, this time by a reference to the Oxford Movement:

Chapter 5:

He was a great favourite too with his aunt, whose heart, however, was daily sinking into her shoes through the effect of one great terror which harassed her respecting him. She feared that he had become a Puseyite. Now that means much with some ladies in England; but with most ladies of the Protestant religion in Ireland, it means, one may almost say, the very Father of Mischief himself. In their minds, the pope, with his lady of Babylon, his college of cardinals, and all his community of pinchbeck saints, holds a sort of second head-quarters of his own at Oxford. And there his high priest is supposed to be one wicked infamous Pusey, and his worshippers are wicked infamous Puseyites...

We addressed this situation - including the use of "Puseyite" as a derogatory term - in our discussion of The Bertrams.

Later in the chapter, Trollope veers back to a full description of Miss Letty, in which we discover her leading characteristic:

She was not illnatured; but so strongly prejudiced on many points as to be equally disagreeable as though she were so. With her, as with the world in general, religion was the point on which those prejudices were the strongest; and the peculiar bent they took was horror and hatred of popery. As she lived in a country in which the Roman Catholic was the religion of all the poorer classes, and of very many persons who were not poor, there was ample scope in which her horror and hatred could work. She was charitable to a fault, and would exercise that charity for the good of Papists as willingly as for the good of Protestants; but in doing so she always remembered the good cause. She always clogged the flannel petticoat with some Protestant teaching, or burdened the little coat and trousers with the pains and penalties of idolatry...

This is interesting inasmuch as "visiting" generally often meant a dose of religion, no matter where it was being done, and what the specific strain of religion. Trollope's suggestion that such a dose could undo all the good intentions of the actual charity is fairly daring.

Another point here that crosses over with other Trollope material, and also reminds us that this is an earlier time, is this passing political comment:

He had, one may say, all that a kind fortune could give him. He had a wife who was devoted to him; he had a son on whom he doted, and of whom all men said all good things; he had two sweet, happy daughters; he had a pleasant house, a fine estate, position and rank in the world. Had it so pleased him, he might have sat in Parliament without any of the trouble, and with very little of the expense, which usually attends aspirants for that honour. And, as it was, he might hope to see his son in Parliament within a year or two. For among other possessions of the Fitzgerald family was the land on which stands the borough of Kilcommon, a borough to which the old Reform Bill was merciful, as it was to so many others in the south of Ireland...

The First Reform Bill of 1832 began to address the endemic political corruption of the British system, which included "rotten" and "pocket" boroughs; but as we saw via our readings of the Palliser novels, the business was still ongoing in the 1860s and 1870s.

However, the main purpose of Chapter 5 is its ominous description of Sir Thomas's state of melancholy, in spite of his possession of what Trollope would call "the good things" of the world.

Here we learn too of the passage that blighted the early life of Lady Fitzgerald, then Miss Mary Wainwright of Dorsetshire:

He had not been there a month before he was intimate in the parson's house. Before two months had passed he was engaged to the parson's daughter. Before the full quarter had flown by, he and the parson's daughter were man and wife; and in five months from the time of his first appearance in the Dorsetshire parish, he had flown from his creditors, leaving behind him his three horses, his two grooms, his gig, his wife, and his little boy...

******

    And then Mr Talbot bolted; and it became known to the Dorsetshire world that he had not paid a shilling for rent, or for butcher's meat for his human family, or for oats for his equine family, during the whole period of his sojourn at Chevy-chase Lodge. Grand references had been made to a London banker, which had been answered by assurances that Mr Talbot was as good as the Bank of England. But it turned out that the assurances were forged, and that the letter of inquiry addressed to the London banker had been intercepted. In short, it was all ruin, roguery, and wretchedness.
    And very wretched they all were, the old father, the young bride, and all that parsonage household. After much inquiry something at last was discovered. The man had a sister whose whereabouts was made out; and she consented to receive the child---on condition that the bairn should not come to her empty-handed. In order to get rid of this burden, Mr Wainwright with great difficulty made up thirty pounds...

In Chapter 6, the story of Lady Fitzgerald's early tragedy and Sir Thomas's state of unhappiness is juxtaposed with the introduction of the Mollets, father and son:

    "I was a d----- fool, Aby, ever to let you into the affair at all. It's been going on quiet enough for the last ten years, till I let you into the secret."
    "Well, never mind about that. That mischief's done. But I think you'll find I'll pull you through a deal better than hever you'd have pulled through yourself. You're already making twice more out of it than you did before I knew it. As I was saying, I went down there; and in my quiet way I did just venture on a few hinquiries."
    "I'll be bound you did. You'll blow it all in about another month, and then it'll be up with the lot of us."
    "It's a beautiful place: a lovely spot; and hall in prime horder. They say it's fifteen thousand a year, and that there's not a shilling howing on the whole property. Even in these times the tenants are paying the rent, when no one else, far and near, is getting a penny out of them. I went by another place on the road---Castle Desmond they call it, and I wish you'd seen the difference. The old boy must be rolling in money."
    "I don't believe it. There's one as I can trust has told me he's hard up enough sometimes. Why, we've had twelve hundred in the last eight months..."

(For overall narrative purposes, note the comparison between Castle Richmond and Desmond Court, even to an outsider eye: for all that the Desmonds are of the aristocracy, clearly they are "out at elbows" and their house has been "thrown out of its own windows".)

We soon gather that for all the cause Sir Thomas has already for his melancholy, things are about to get exponentially worse:

    "Do you go down, and just tell him this, quite coolly, remember---"
    "Oh, I shall be cool enough."
    "That, considering hall things, you think he and you ought to---"
    "Well?"
    "Just divide it between you; share and share alike. Say it's fourteen thousand---and it's more than that---that would be seven for him and seven for you. Tell him you'll agree to that, but you won't take one farthing less."
    "Aby!" said the father, almost overcome by the grandeur of his son's ideas.
    "Well; and what of Haby? What's the matter now?"
    "Expect him to shell out seven thousand pounds a year!"
    "And why not? He'll do a deal more than that, I expect, if he were quite sure that it would make all things serene..."

******

    "But I'll tell you what, governor, the best way is to make all that safe. We'll make him another hoffer---for a regular substantial family harrangement---"
    "A family arrangement, eh?"
    "Yes; that's the way they always manage things when great family hinterests is at stake. Let him give us a cool seven thousand a year between us while he's alive; let him put you down for twenty thousand when he's dead---that'd come out of the young gentleman's share of the property, of course---and then let him give me his daughter Hemmeline, with another twenty thousand tacked on to her skirt-tail. I should be mum then for hever for the honour of the family..."

This passage also contains the first mention of a Mr Prendergast, a London solicitor who will appear in person later on.

>42 lyzard: The Molletts remind me very much of Dickens' scoundrels!

>43 MissWatson:

They're more realistic, I think: prosaic, and therefore nastier.

>43 MissWatson: and >44 lyzard: Yes to both these ideas. When they’re first talking, with the “haitches” it is like Dickens, so we can laugh for a second. But they (especially Aby) quickly become ugly almost right away.

I’ve not read this one before, so I’m making mental predictions all over the place. I can’t wait to find out how close I am to Trollope’s plot line.

>45 Matke:

Yes, the mixing of what is usually done for comedy with the outright criminality of the rest, in particular the cool appropriation of poor Emmeline, is very unnerving.

I'll be very interested to hear! :)

Chapter 7 marks a very important moment in the book, as it is here that Trollope begins to deal overtly with what contemporary readers would have recognised from the outset as the historical backdrop of Castle Richmond, the Irish famine of 1847.

Put simplistically, this was the result of crop failure (particularly the potato) and disease, in combination with failing agricultural practices and short-sighted land management.

Conditions had been worsening in Ireland since the Act of Union of 1801 put most of the country's governance in the hands of an absent parliament and absentee landlords. Countless "commissions" and "inquiries" into conditions were established, by while there was agreement about the problem, no solutions were forthcoming; and the situation continued to decline across the first four decades of the 19th century.

One of the results was a rolling series of famines; but that which struck in 1847 exceeded all the all the rest to such an extent, it is now generally the known simply as "the Great Famine".

The impact of this particular famine on Ireland is almost incalculable: it literally changed everything. Over a million people died of starvation; another million or more emigrated to America; about the same number progressively left for England, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The management, or rather lack of management, of the situation by the British government was highly controversial. It can be argued that no intervention could have helped with a disaster of this magnitude, but the government's willingness to just let events play out, its reluctance to violate its own economic policies by altering its trade and pricing practices in order to provide some assistance, horrified many and was disturbing even to those on the same side of the political fence.

Reaction generally to the tragedy varied from a literally revolutionary backlash, to a stern acceptance of it as "an Act of God".

We shall see going forward where Trollope - who, we must always keep in mind, was in Ireland at the time and witnessed the famine first-hand - sits on that spectrum...

I confess that I have only a vague notion of the Famine and can see myself reading up on this in more depth in the future. What surprised me about the first efforts of the Fitzgeralds in their soup kitchen was the use of maize meal, a foodstuff that must have been entirely strange and weird to everyone in Ireland then. Whoever thought of this?

I did read a little about the Famine, and one of the surprising things I learned is that of the million who died, it's estimated that for approximately two-thirds (about 660,000) of the victims, the primary cause of death was disease (diphtheria, cholera, typhus fever, relapsing fever, dysentery, etc.), with starvation being the "co-morbidity", to put it in current terms.

>38 MissWatson: >39 lyzard: More on the connotations of peacock feathers. I found the following in the 1893 Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities:

"Peacock feathers. These in England and locally in America are looked upon as unlucky. Their mere possession is reputed to be a harbinger of misfortune to the owner. Every kind of loss will have to be sustained by the occupiers of the house they adorn, including illness and death, and many country-people, even now, would be horrified if any one were unwittingly to bring under a roof one or more of these feathers. It is further said that children will never be healthy in rooms adorned with these iridescent plumes, and that it is the unluckiest thing in the world to give them as playthings to the youngsters."

You can read more about peacock feathers here: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t1sf2p016?urlappend=%3Bseq=884

(Yes, hello, I have been lurking, although not reading along as I have read this one before.)

>48 MissWatson:

That's a very good question; thank you, Dorothy Dix. :D

This whole subject is so important, I think a proper overview is worthwhile.

When the 1847 famine began it was perceived as "just" another famine; it was some time before people realised that this one was different and it wasn't going away. The root cause of it was potato blight, a fungus accidentally transported from America on ships: it did some damage there, but nothing to compare with what it did in the almost perpetually damp conditions in Ireland, where it rapidly destroyed the crop that was the country's basic foodstuff.

However, it was as early as 1845 when the situation first began to make itself felt. The British government, under Robert Peel, instituted various commissions of inquiry, and finally accepted the extent of the problem. What to do about it was another matter.

Now---in other of Trollope's novels, we've dealt briefly with the Corn Laws, usually in the context of the eventual downfall of the Peel ministry and/or the 180 degree backflip performed by its successor, the Disraeli ministry (one of those cases of someone fighting something tooth and nail, then stealing that policy once they're in government).

During the first decades of the 19th century, England had a high tariff on imported grain, in order to keep local prices high and make important of Eurpean corn (which was otherwise cheap and plentiful) prohibitively expensive.

We need to be clear about that "cheap and plentiful" detail.

In order to help the Irish situation, Robert Peel advocated repealing the Corn Laws, to allow cheap European grain into Ireland---but he was howled down not just by his own party, but by the English landowners who were the main direct beneficiaries of those laws.

The political brawl went on through 1846---and really, everyone at this time was still expecting the famine to stop of its own accord. In Ireland, however, the severity of the situation had been accepted and the landowners and other authorities there began to set up relief committees and to try and find ways of distributing what they had; although most of them had precious little to give. Trollope deals with this side of the situation in Castle Richmond.

In some remote districts, the makeup of the committees meant that factional in-fighting led to nothing being done (Trollope touches on that, too); while where there were absentee landlords, literally nothing was done.

A civil servant named Charles Trevelyan was eventually appointed to oversee British relief efforts---such as they were. Trevelyan was a control freak who wouldn't delegate; he also anti-Irish. He visited Ireland just once during his tenure, and went no further than Dublin, arguing that distance from the worst of the situation, which was unfolding in the west and the south, gave him "perspective".

Meanwhile, to get around the Corn Laws blockade, Robert Peel came up with the idea of importing maize into Ireland: maize was not a European crop and didn't carry the same restrictions (or political baggage). He acted on this without informing his own party, secretly buying and shipping to Ireland two shipments of maize.

Subsequently, imported maize became the official British relief effort. To prevent profiteering, the maize was sold at cost to the relief committees, who in turn sold it to the people at a penny per pound.

But these good intentions met the usual fate of them: no-one in Ireland knew how to handle maize. They didn't know it had to be ground twice - and when they figured it out, they're weren't enough mills that could handle the grinding anyway - and they didn't know how (or how long) to cook it. In place of huge meals of potatoes, the Irish were reduced to small, harsh servings of a food substance that, improperly prepared, lacked most nutritional value---including vitamin C, which potatoes do have, resulting in widespread scurvy. The badly cooked maize also induced diahhroea, which accelerated the effects of malnutrition, especially in children.

But eventually the British government decided that even these meagre efforts were too much: to do any more would damage their own economy and disadvantage English business; so in keeping with their own laissez-faire economic policies, they basically stood back and let the Irish situation play itself out without trying to help any more.

>49 kac522:

Not really surprising. When the potato crop failed, there was a large migration to the cities by those who could go, looking for either work or relief; while in the country areas, people were increasingly crammed into workhouses. These were pre-modern sanitation times, and the massing of people like that led to savage outbreaks of disease, particularly cholera and typhus, which killed countless thousands of people before they could die of starvation.

This allowed the English to fiddle the figures and argue that far fewer people died of starvation than it appeared---which was of course technically true.

>50 NinieB:

Hi, Ninie!

Yes, I found plenty of references to peacock feathers, but no specific reference to peacocks on walls. Perhaps an uncommon Irishism?

>50 NinieB: >53 lyzard: Trollope also used the phrase the "peacock on the wall" in Can You Forgive Her? regarding the Duke of Bungay:

But even he was not without his peacock on the wall, his skeleton in the closet, his thorn in his side; though the peacock did not scream loud, the skeleton was not very terrible in his anatomical arrangement, nor was the thorn likely to fester to a gangrene. The duke was always in awe about his wife.

I also found a poem called The Peacock on the Wall in Werner's Readings and Recitations. It's in the public domain, and I think this URL will take you directly to the poem. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101063583759&view=1up&seq=1...

>50 NinieB: >53 lyzard: Fascinating. Thank you!

>51 lyzard: So that explains the maize. The way to hell is paved with good intentions.

>54 cbl_tn:

Great detective work, Carrie! :)

>56 lyzard: :-)

I am partway through Chapter 11 and I think I have an idea where things are heading...

The descriptions of the famine in Castle Richmond are disturbing, but so to is Trollope's attitude towards it.

Viewing the Irish famine as "God's will" was common enough at the time---in England. More to the point, it was viewed as God's punishment of Ireland; although there was no consensus on what the Irish were being punished for: for being Catholic; for being anti-England; and perhaps above all (as it was considered), for being lazy.

There was great resentment in England over the potato-based economy, which was seen as allowing the Irish to get away with doing as little work as possible. At the same time, there was rarely any acknowledgement of the disastrous land-management practices which actively discouraged the Irish from doing more than was needed for bare survival. (Briefly, any Irish tenant who did anything to improve either his house or is land, or produce crops to a profit level rather than a self-sustaining level, would immediately have his rent increased.)

The ease of potato cultivation, and the capacity of the Irish to live on almost nothing else, was viewed as the root of Irish "laziness". This, the English argued, offended God, and therefore God took away the potato as punishment.

That was one half of it; the other half was the British government's lack of response: "masterly inactivity" we might say, if we were inclined to joke about it.

Trollope's own response is deeply weird: he deprecates the "God's punishment" view of the famine, but substitutes a no less disturbing argument of "God's mercy", in which the inactive government is doing God's work:

Chapter 7:

    I do not believe that our God stalks darkly along the clouds, laying thousands low with the arrows of death, and those thousands the most ignorant, because men who are not ignorant have displeased Him. Nor, if in his wisdom He did do so, can I think that men's prayers would hinder that which his wisdom had seen to be good and right.
    But though I do not believe in exhibitions of God's anger, I do believe in exhibitions of his mercy. When men by their folly and by the shortness of their vision have brought upon themselves penalties which seem to be overwhelming, to which no end can be seen, which would be overwhelming were no aid coming to us but our own, then God raises his hand, not in anger, but in mercy, and by his wisdom does for us that for which our own wisdom has been insufficient.
    But on no Christian basis can I understand the justice or acknowledge the propriety of asking our Lord to abate his wrath in detail, or to alter his settled purpose. If He be wise, would we change his wisdom? If He be merciful, would we limit his mercy? There comes upon us some strange disease, and we bid Him to stay his hand. But the disease, when it has passed by, has taught us lessons of cleanliness, which no master less stern would have made acceptable. A famine strikes us, and we again beg that that hand may be stayed;---beg as the Greeks were said to beg when they thought that the anger of Phoebus was hot against them because his priest had been dishonoured. We so beg, thinking that God's anger is hot also against us. But, lo! the famine passes by, and a land that had been brought to the dust by man's folly is once more prosperous and happy...

******

Such having been the state of the country, such its wretchedness, a merciful God sent the remedy which might avail to arrest it; and we---we deprecated his wrath. But all this will soon be known and acknowledged; acknowledged as it is acknowledged that new cities rise up in splendour from the ashes into which old cities have been consumed by fire. If this beneficent agency did not from time to time disencumber our crowded places, we should ever be living in narrow alleys with stinking gutters, and supply of water at the minimum.

******

Much abuse at the time was thrown upon the government; and they who took upon themselves the management of the relief of the poor in the south-west were taken most severely to task. I was in the country, travelling always through it, during the whole period, and I have to say---as I did say at the time with a voice that was not very audible---that in my opinion the measures of the government were prompt, wise, and beneficent...

Curiously, although as I say there was no shortage of English people advancing the "God's punishment" view, this was seen as unacceptably cold-blooded even in religious circles, and very much contributed to the unpopularity of Castle Richmond.

Still, you have to wonder whether people really objected to these things being said---or just to them being said out loud...

>58 lyzard:
Yeah. Weird. I had a hard time with that whole passage. It’s really the first time I’ve been deeply upset with Trollope. And partly because his argument is so convoluted as to make little sense, at least to a person in today’s world.

But yes, “just them being said out loud...” uh-huh.

I’ll be starting Chapter 13 this morning.

Thanks for the informative postings about the famine, Liz. One of the reasons for my lifelong opposition of economic liberalism (in a British sense of the word) is its incapacity to help those most in need.

Trollope's views of the situation are a little inconsistent as an argument - he clearly feels an intense human sympathy for what he observed but his Liberal politics (he later tried to win Beverley for the party) rather told against him and made it difficult to criticise their "efforts". Often though with the irony of expression in his writing it is not entirely clear whether he is saying one thing and meaning quite another!

>59 Matke:, >60 PaulCranswick:

Honestly, at the outset I found myself wondering if he was "protesting too much" precisely to let those people know how their arguments sounded when they were said out loud.

Perhaps I hoped so. But unfortunately the stance never shifts over the rest of the book, as you'd think it would if he was being ironic or deliberately piling on.

So now I can only assume that the "God's mercy" argument was the only one that allowed him to cope with and make sense of the horrors he'd witnessed.

>58 lyzard:, >61 lyzard: I had to pause on Chapter 7 and leave it to the weekend to read because I wanted to make sure Trollope was saying what I thought he was saying (unfortunately, yes). I guess it's better than saying the Irish must have done something to deserve this as punishment but the idea of a famine being a sign of a merciful God is one I struggle with.

And I'm not going to get into how worryingly relevant the idea of government inaction leading to a catastrophic situation seems to be at the moment......

Anyway...

What we also see in Chapter 7 and onwards is the Fitzgeralds and Clara doing their best to help: Herbert sitting on relief committees and ordering the rapid construction of a new mill, the girls helping out with the distribution of the maize.

All this, sadly, captures both the good intentions of the landowners and the ineffectiveness of their measures.

But there is another detail in Chapter 7 that I want to draw attention to for a couple of reasons, one of them being that this is one of those blind spots in Trollope that drive me crazy:

    It was a hard time this for the poor countess. I have endeavoured to explain that the position in which she had been left with regard to money was not at any time a very easy one. She possessed high rank and the name of a countess, but very little of that wealth which usually constitutes the chief advantage of such rank and name. But now such means as had been at her disposal were terribly crippled...
    And then the tenants in such districts began to decline to pay any rent at all---in very many cases could pay no rent at all. They, too, depended on the potatoes which were gone; they, too, had been subject to those dreadful demands for poor rates; and thus a landlord whose property was in any way embarrassed had but a bad time of it. The property from which Lady Desmond drew her income had been very much embarrassed; and for her the times were very bad.
    In such periods of misfortune, a woman has always some friend. Let her be who she may, some pair of broad shoulders is forthcoming on which may be laid so much of the burden as is by herself unbearable. It is the great privilege of womanhood, that which compensates them for the want of those other privileges which belong exclusively to manhood---sitting in Parliament, for instance, preaching sermons, and going on 'Change.

At this point I was wondering if he meant ANYTHING he said in this chapter, and sincerely hoping not.

The stubborn insistence that there is "always a man" and therefore women don't have to have the capacity to do anything to support themselves - don't need an education, don't need training, don't need to work - is one of the cruelest fallacies of the Victorian era.

The bizarre thing is, we will see how this dogma plays out in terms of the famine later in the book.

But even in what we might call Trollope's own society, there were countless "genteel" women who also died of the effects of poverty because they had an insufficient income, no way of earning money, and no man who could - or WOULD - do anything to help.

One of the main criticisms of Castle Richmond when it was published was its mashing together of incompatible elements.

The critics at the time were inclined to say, "Why did Trollope shoe-horn the Irish famine into a story about a love triangle?"

Whereas we are probably inclined to say, "Why did he shoe-horn a love-triangle into a novel about the Irish famine?"

Be all that as it may---

Chapter 7 also hints at which way the domestic plot of the novel is likely to unfold: the countess has succeeded in forcing Clara to give up Owen Fitzgerald in spite of her muttered promise to him; and circumstances are throwing her together with Herbert Fitzgerald, who despite his technically lower birth is certainly the marital catch of the neighbourhood.

But while it all seems perfectly straightforward to the countess, it is not at all so to Clara:

    But the cautious mother had known how easy it would be to frighten her timid fawn-like child. It was no time, no time as yet, to question her heart about this second lover---if lover he might be. The countess was much too subtle in her way to frighten her child's heart back to its old passion. That passion doubtless would die from want of food. Let it be starved and die; and then this other new passion might spring up.
    The Countess of Desmond had no idea that her daughter, with severe self-questioning, had taken her own heart to task about this former lover; had argued with herself that the man who could so sin, could live such a life, and so live in these fearful times, was unworthy of her love, and must be torn out of her heart, let the cost be what it might. Of such high resolves on her daughter's part, nay, on the part of any young girl, Lady Desmond had no knowledge...

And now I think we've heard quite enough out of Chapter 7! :D

I'm sort of flying along and am up to Chapter 21! So as you might imagine I have some big questions/topics, but I will wait til the discussion gets a little further along. Most of my comments and questions start up around chapter 12 and later.

>67 japaul22:

I'll be doing my best to accelerate now we're over that speed-bump!

Chapter 8 rather weirdly blends famine-talk with Clara's growing intimacy with the Fitzgeralds.

While we don't doubt the good intentions of the young people, again I find Trollope's handling of this material strange.

Perhaps I'm being unrealistic myself - perhaps I'd know better if I went through something like this - but to me his characters compartmentalise a little too easily. They're not disturbed enough by what's going on almost literally at their front door.

I suppose inasmuch as he's not "really" writing a novel about the famine this is necessary. I suppose too that it is in keeping with his "God's mercy" attitude: a tacit acknowledgement that the characters are doing their duty but it's really all futile:

Though this had not come as yet, the complaints of the women with their throngs of children were bitter enough; and it was heart-breaking too to hear the men declare that they had worked like horses, and that it was hard upon them now to see their children starve like dogs. For in this earlier part of the famine the people did not seem to realize the fact that this scarcity and want had come from God.

How very stupid of them, the ungrateful---well, no, not ungrateful...

The hardest burden which had to be borne by those who exerted themselves at this period was the ingratitude of the poor for whom they worked;---or rather I should say thanklessness. To call them ungrateful would imply too deep a reproach, for their convictions were that they were being ill used by the upper classes. When they received bad meal which they could not cook, and even in their extreme hunger could hardly eat half-cooked; when they were desired to leave their cabins and gardens, and flock into the wretched barracks which were prepared for them; when they saw their children wasting away under a suddenly altered system of diet, it would have been unreasonable to expect that they should have been grateful.

Ya think, Anthony??

But thankfully, Chapter 8 also kick-starts the domestic side of the novel, after an unusual amount of background, when Sir Thomas Fitzgerald gets a visitor:

    "I wish to see Sir Thomas," said a man's voice as soon as the door was opened; and the man entered the hall, and then seeing that it was full of ladies, retreated again into the doorway. He was an elderly man, dressed almost more than well, for there was about him a slight affectation of dandyism; and though he had for the moment been abashed, there was about him also a slight swagger. "Good morning, ladies," he said, re-entering again, and bowing to young Herbert, who stood looking at him; "I believe Sir Thomas is at home; would you send your servant in to say that a gentleman wants to see him for a minute or so, on very particular business? I am a little in a hurry like."
    The door of the drawing-room was ajar, so that Lady Fitzgerald, who was sitting there tranquilly in her own seat, could hear the voice. And she did hear it, and knew that some stranger had come to trouble her husband. But she did not come forth; why should she? was not Herbert there---if, indeed, even Herbert could be of any service?
    "Shall I take your card in to Sir Thomas, sir?" said one of the servants, coming forward.
    "Card!" said Mollett senior out loud; "well, if it is necessary, I believe I have a card..."

Meanwhile, a carriage-accident enforces a longer stay at Castle Richmond by Clara, whose arm has been injured.

But when the young people and Miss Letty finish their walk home, they find that something of an even more serious nature has been happening in their absence:

    "And we had to walk home from the turn to Ballyclough," said Emmeline. "But, oh mamma, what's the matter?" They all now looked up at Lady Fitzgerald, and it was evident enough that something was the matter; something to be thought of infinitely more than that accident on the road.
    "Oh, Mary, Mary, what is it?" said Aunt Letty, coming forward and taking hold of her sister-in-law's hand. "Is my brother ill?"
    "Sir Thomas is not very well, and I've been waiting for you so long. Where's Herbert? I must speak to Herbert." And then the mother and son left the hall together...

The devastation wrought upon Sir Thomas by his visitor is made plain in Chapter 9; though as yet, his family has no inkling of the root cause of his misery:

    "But you never saw him looking as he looked this morning, Herbert. When I went in he was speechless, and he remained so, I should say, for some minutes."
    "Was he senseless?"
    "No; he knew me well enough, and grasped me by the hand; and when I would have gone to the bell to ring for assistance, he would not let me. I thought he would have gone into a fit when I attempted it."
    "And what did you do?"
    "I sat there by him, with his hand in mine, quite quietly. And then he uttered a long, deep sigh, and---oh, Herbert!"
    "Well, mother?"
    "At last, he burst into a flood of tears, and sobbed and cried like a child."
    "Mother!"
    "He did, so that it was piteous to see him. But it did him good, for he was better after it. And all the time he never let go my hand, but held it and kissed it. And then he took me by the waist, and kissed me, oh, so often. And all the while his tears were running like the tears of a girl." And Lady Fitzgerald, as she told the story, could not herself refrain from weeping...

There is also a tiny, crushing detail offered here: poor Sir Thomas!---

    "And you don't think that this man was ever here before?" he asked.
    "Well, I rather think he was here once before; many years ago---soon after you went to school."

Remember, this is "school" in the British, not the American sense: she means when he went away to Eton; and he has just finished up at Oxford...

Worse still:

This truth came home to him as he sat there that day, thinking what he should do, endeavouring to think in what way he might best turn himself. But there was this that was especially grievous to him, that he had no friend whom he might consult in this matter. It was a sorrow, the cause of which he could not explain to his own family, and in all other troubles he had sought assistance and looked for counsel there and there only. He had had one best, steadiest, dearest, truest counsellor, and now it had come to pass that things were so placed that in this great trouble he could not go to her...

Am I the only one who feels - what should I call it? - a sincerity gap, between Trollope's handling of the famine, and his handling of his domestic material? This feels like the real man, not the rest.

>70 lyzard: Maybe Trollope couldn’t figure out the best way (or even a good way) to handle a situation as enormous and horrifying as the famine? I mean, he’s clearly out of his depth and sort of floundering for a foothold. I think he was torn between the devastation that he couldn’t avoid seeing, and his essentially English outlook and belief that the government, however flawed, was the best available.

And I might think that because I like him so much.

>64 lyzard: Oh yes. I was really angry at the passage about a good man to lean on, especially since he’s given that the lie in so many of his other books.

This is a difficult read for me, only because AT looks like such an ass as the author.

>71 Matke:

I agree with that: it is the attitude(s), not the material or even the strange blending.

I suppose you have to commend him for even trying to deal with the famine, but maybe the reason no-one else did at the time is not just because they didn't care, or thought the book would fail, but because there was no good way of doing it?

I find that infuriating remark even more so in light of the quote I highlighted just up above.

On the other hand, in Chapter 10 we see a better side of Trollope, in that his Irish novels always gave proper justice and credit to the work done amongst their people by the Catholic priests of Ireland---and even went so far as to suggest that a Catholic priest could be a good man.

The critics thought that was bad enough, but they resented even more his tendency to suggest that the local Protestant ministers were often more interested in religious "wars" in than doing their job properly. (Though of course some people thought that was their job.)

Trollope is clearly more at ease in this sort of observational writing; the wry tone with which he handles Mr and Mrs Townsend, and the split-vision accounts of Townsend's meetings with Father Bernard, are much closer to what we expect of him:

Mr Townsend's most uncompromising foe for many years had been the Rev. Bernard M'Carthy, the parish priest for the same parish of Drumbarrow. Father Bernard, as he was called by his own flock, or Father Barney, as the Protestants in derision were delighted to name him, was much more a man of the world than his Protestant colleague. He did not do half so many absurd things as did Mr. Townsend, and professed to laugh at what he called the Protestant madness of the rector. But he also had been an eager, I may also say, a malicious antagonist. What he called the "souping" system of the Protestant clergyman stank in his nostrils---that system by which, as he stated, the most ignorant of men were to be induced to leave their faith by the hope of soup, or other food. He was as firmly convinced of the inward, heart-destroying iniquity of the parson as the parson was of that of the priest. And so these two men had learned to hate each other. And yet neither of them were bad men.

That reference to "souping" is interesting. Around the same time, missionaries in China were being accused of making "rice Christians", that is, bribing the locals to convert (or pretend to) with food. There was periodic famine there, too, which made the practice even more contentious.

Also in Chapter 10, the Oxford Movement throws another shadow across the discourse:

    "You know what Aunt Letty says about him. She doubts he isn't quite right, you know."
    Mrs Townsend by this did not mean to insinuate that Herbert was at all afflicted in that way which we attempt to designate, when we say that one of our friends is not all right, and at the same time touch our heads with our forefinger. She had intended to convey an impression that the young man's religious ideas were not exactly of that stanch, true-blue description which she admired.
    "Well, he has just come from Oxford, you know," said Mr Townsend: "and at the present moment Oxford is the most dangerous place to which a young man can be sent."
    "And Sir Thomas would send him there, though I remember telling his aunt over and over again how it would be." And Mrs Townsend as she spoke, shook her head sorrowfully.
    "I don't mean to say, you know, that he's absolutely bitten."
    "Oh, I know---I understand. When they come to crosses and candlesticks, the next step to the glory of Mary is a very easy one. I would sooner send a young man to Rome than to Oxford..."

Compare this to the final description of the former Eleanor Harding in Barchester Towers:

{Her} church is two degrees higher than that of Mrs Grantly... She likes her husband's silken vest, she likes his adherence to the rubric, she specially likes the eloquent philosophy of his sermons, and she likes the red letters in her own prayer-book. It must not be presumed that she has a taste for candles...

:D

I mentioned in >37 lyzard: that I find Trollope's muted handling of the "promise" between Clara and Owen in Chapter 2 a bit strange, and here, I think, we get the reason why.

As we have discussed before, there was very often an insistence in Victorian novels, and particularly those by men, that a "real" woman never gets over her first love---often with an accompanying suggestion that to do so was "not nice". Nice girls held to their first love come hell or high water; and we wouldn't have much trouble naming several Trollope novels where such is the main plot-thread.

So this instance here of Clara breaking her promise to Owen, however good the reasons, is extremely unusual.

And this, I think, is why Trollope insists so much upon Clara's extreme youth at the time, and conversely her strong sense of "duty"; and why he presents that critical moment between her and Owen so indirectly, so that we never hear what she actually says. He needs her to do this for his plot, but he's obviously not comfortable with it.

This is another one of those bits of Victorian male dogma that are so exasperating. Of course there might be good reason for a woman to break an engagement, and of course a woman might - we might even say, should - get over her first love. This excuse-making is just unnecessary.

All that said, as usual Trollope's dissection of Clara's state of mind is insightful and nuanced:

Chapter 11:

    There was at Clara's heart, as she stood there at the window, some feeling of the expediency of being beware, some shadow of doubt as to the wisdom of what she had done. He rode away gaily, with a happy spirit, for he had won that on the winning of which he had been intent. No necessity for caution presented itself to him. He had seen and loved; had then asked, and had not asked in vain.
    She stood gazing after him, as long as her straining eye could catch any outline of his figure as it disappeared through the gloom of the evening. As long as she could see him, or even fancy that she still saw him, she thought only of his excellence; of his high character, his kind heart, his talents---which in her estimation were ranked perhaps above their real value---his tastes, which coincided so well with her own, his quiet yet manly bearing, his useful pursuits, his gait, appearance, and demeanour. All these were of a nature to win the heart of such a girl as Clara Desmond; and then, probably, in some indistinct way, she remembered the broad acres to which he was the heir, and comforted herself by reflecting that this at least was a match which none would think disgraceful for a daughter even of an Earl of Desmond.
    But sadder thoughts did come when that figure had wholly disappeared. Her eye, looking out into the darkness, could not but see another figure on which it had often in past times delighted almost unconsciously to dwell. There, walking on that very road, another lover, another Fitzgerald, had sworn that he loved her; and had truly sworn so, as she well knew. She had never doubted his truth to her, and did not doubt it now;---and yet she had given herself away to another...

That phrase, "given herself away", is a danger note in Trollope: a woman should certainly give herself, but to give herself away suggests improper motives. We understand that the Countess of Desmond "gave herself away" for a title. As for Clara:

Did her heart beat as high now, when his cousin was beside her? No; she felt that it did not. And sometimes she felt, or feared to feel, that it might beat high again when she should again see the lover whom her judgement had rejected...

Chapter 11:

And another extremely unusual Trollope moment follows, when Clara must undertake what she calls to herself the "distasteful" task of telling her mother:

    "Mamma!"
    "Well, love?"
    "Herbert Fitzgerald has---has asked me to be his wife. He has proposed to me."
    The mother's arm now encircled the daughter lovingly, and the mother's lips were pressed to the daughter's forehead. "Herbert Fitzgerald has asked you to be his wife, has he? And what answer has my bonny bird deigned to make to so audacious a request?"
    Lady Desmond had never before spoken to her daughter in tones so gracious, in a manner so flattering, so caressing, so affectionate. But Clara would not open her heart to her mother's tenderness. She could not look into her mother's face, and welcome her mother's consent with unutterable joy, as she would have done had that consent been given a year since to a less prudent proposition. That marriage for which she was now to ask her mother's sanction would of course be sanctioned. She had no favour to beg; nothing for which to be grateful. With a slight motion, unconsciously, unwillingly, but not the less positively, she repulsed her mother's caress as she answered her question...

It was a part of a daughter's duty to be politely "fooled" by imperfect parents, and Clara's clear understanding here of her mother's motivations, the reason for her sudden affection, is a rare bit of reality in such a context.

But before we get into the scenes of Herbert telling his parents, we should note this extraordinary moment, which probably drew more ire upon Trollope at the time than his attitude to the famine: English novelists didn't talk about Catholicism like this, if they knew what was good for them:

Chapter 12:

    "He is an ordained priest even according to her own tenets,---only she knows nothing of what her own tenets are."
    "I'll tell you what they are. They are the substantial, true, and holy doctrines of the Protestant religion, founded on the gospel. Mrs Townsend is a thoroughly Protestant woman; one who cannot abide the sorceries of popery."
    "Hates them as a mad dog hates water; and with the same amount of judgement. We none of us wish to be drowned; but nevertheless there are some good qualities in water."
    "But there are no good qualities in popery," said Aunt Letty, with her most extreme energy.
    "Are there not?" said Herbert. "I should have thought that belief in Christ, belief in the Bible, belief in the doctrine of a Saviour's atonement, were good qualities."

>71 Matke: I think I'd agree with both your points Gail.

>77 lyzard: Yes, I thought Herbert's response there was quite remarkable.

>77 lyzard: >78 souloftherose: Yes, I thought so too.

I have a couple questions from Chapter 12:

What is "Blackstone"? "As he pores over his "Blackstone", he remembers that he does so, not so much that he may acquire law, as that he may acquire Fanny . . . "

I also don't get this: "Lord Brougham and Professor Faraday can, no doubt, command their thoughts . . . "

>80 japaul22: Blackstone was an 18th century judge and legal scholar known for his Commentaries on the Laws of England. This work is often referred to as "Blackstone".

>80 japaul22:, >81 cbl_tn:

"Blackstone" was a treatise by Sir William Blackstone upon English common law, which was historically the basis for most English law (as opposed to statutes and policies being put in place first, and the laws being derived from them). It consists of four volumes, which were first published across 1765 - 1780: the rights of persons; the rights of things; private wrongs; and public wrongs. Its overarching argument is the law as the means of preservation of personal liberty

It was a vital work because it laid out the platform of precedent, and because it was the only legal text written in lay-language. It remained the basis of English law-study for many years and is still considered a key work, although at this distance its political bias is evident in its use of history (Sir William was a Whig).

Somewhat ironically, Blackstone was equally important in the infant United States, while the country was getting its act together after declaring independence. :)

>80 japaul22:

"Lord Brougham" is Henry Brougham, a British statesman who rose to become Lord High Chancellor, and who was significantly involved in the passing of both the First Reform Bill in 1832, and the Abolition of Slavery Act the following year. He was also active in legal reform intended to streamline and speed up court practices.

"Professor Faraday" is Michael Faraday, a scientist famous for his work in chemistry and physics. In particular he is now remembered for his work elucidating the principles of electricity and electromagnetism, and for his inventions which became the basis for modern electric motors.

Trollope's point is merely that they were both insanely busy men who wouldn't have achieved all they did if they weren't able to keep their thoughts focused on their work...as Herbert cannot.

Also in Chapter 12, Herbert's announcement of his engagement doesn't exactly get the response he anticipated:

    "Father," said he, as soon as he had got into the arm-chair, in which it was his custom to sit when talking with Sir Thomas, "I hope what I am going to tell you will give you pleasure. I have proposed to a young lady, and she has---accepted me."
    "You have proposed, and have been accepted!"
    "Yes, father."
    "And the young lady---?"
    "Is Lady Clara Desmond. I hope you will say that you approve of it. She has no fortune, as we all know, but that will hardly matter to me; and I think you will allow that in every other respect she is---"
    Perfect, Herbert would have said, had he dared to express his true meaning. But he paused for a moment to look for a less triumphant word; and then paused again, and left his sentence incomplete, when he saw the expression of his father's face.
    "Oh, father! you do not mean to say that you do not like her?"
    But it was not dislike that was expressed in his father's face, as Herbert felt the moment after he had spoken. There was pain there, and solicitude, and disappointment; a look of sorrow at the tidings thus conveyed to him...

A profound if quiet misunderstanding here develops between father and son: Herbert can only put Sir Thomas's obvious objection to his engagement down to Clara's penniless state, which bewilders and hurts him. However, Sir Thomas does finally give his consent---

The father knew that he had done wrong; and Herbert knew that he also, he himself, had done wrongly. He was aware that there was something which he did not understand. But he had promised to see Clara either that day or the next, and he could not bring himself to unsay all that he had said to her. He left his father's room sorrowful at heart, and discontented...

We probably need to pause here and say something about the entail.

Entailed properties are something that come up in many English novels (most famously Pride And Prejudice), usually in the most negative sense: it was an aspect of primogeniture, in which (almost) everything was invested in the eldest son.

This could be brutally unfair upon younger sons and, in particular, the women of a family. This was one of many instances in which it was assumed that the heir would meet his responsibilities with respect to his mother and siblings, but which in practice did not necessarily work out like that.

Furthermore, if there was no eldest son (as in P&P), on the death of the holder of an entailed estate, the property would pass to whoever was the next heir - a nephew or a cousin - who was under no such obligation to assist the women, and who probably had dependents of his own.

These were side-effects of the main process. The entail was intended as a means of holding an estate together: entailed property could not be disposed of without the consent of the heir and a complicated legal process.

What this meant in practice is that the head of an entailed estate was not in fact the owner of that estate: he was more like a steward, holding the estate in trust for the benefit of the next heir.

Consequently, the entail limited the capacity of the estate holder to act should a financial emergency arise. If that estate holder owned personal property or had a private fortune, separate from the entail, he could do what he liked with that; but he could not touch anything that came under the entail.

We see much of this indirectly reflected in the relationship between Sir Thomas and Herbert. Up to this point, we see the positive face of the entail here: Sir Thomas is only too delighted to run his estate so as to benefit his son; there are many references to Herbert almost as the "real" master of Castle Richmond; again and again, Sir Thomas offers to turn this or that over to Herbert immediately.

The downside, however, is that Sir Thomas's hands are tied beyond a certain point, when it comes to managing the situation which is so obviously burdening him.

The legal bindings involved with the entail inform Herbert's subsequent conversations with his mother and Mr Somers, the agent, also in Chapter 12:

    "As to income, something must be done, I suppose. If the means at our disposal are less than I have been taught to believe, I at any rate will not complain. But they cannot, I think, be so small as to afford any just reason why I should not marry."
    "Your father, you see, is ill, and one can hardly talk to him fully upon such matters at present."
    "Then I will speak to Somers. He, at any rate, must know how the property is circumstanced, and I suppose he will not hesitate to tell me."
    "I don't think Somers can tell you anything."
    "Then what is it? As for the London estate, mother, that is all moonshine. What if it were gone altogether? It may be that it is that which vexes my father; but if so, it is a monomania."
    "Oh, my boy, do not use such a word!"
    "You know what I mean. If any doubt as to that is creating this despondency, it only shows that though we are bound to respect and relieve my father's state of mind, we are not at all bound to share it. What would it really matter, mother, if that place in London were washed away by the Thames? There is more than enough left for us all, unless---"
    "Ah, Herbert, that is it."
    "Then I will go to Somers, and he shall tell me. My father's interest in this property cannot have been involved without his knowledge; and circumstanced as we and my father are, he is bound to tell me."

"The London estate" so frequently referenced in this section is Sir Thomas's private property, inherited by him separately from the Castle Richmond estate, and therefore his to do what he likes with.

    "There is nothing wrong about the property?"
    "Not to my knowledge."
    "Who has the title-deeds?"
    "They are at Coutts's."
    "You are sure of that?"
    "Well; as sure as a man can be of a thing that he does not see. I have never seen them there; indeed, have never seen them at all; but I feel no doubt in my own mind as to their being at the bankers."
    "Is there much due on the estate?"
    "Very little. No estate in county Cork has less on it. Miss Letty has her income, and when Poulnasherry was bought,---that townland lying just under Berryhill, where the gorse cover is, part of the purchase money was left on mortgage. That is still due; but the interest is less than a hundred a year."
    "And that is all?"
    "All that I know of."
    "Could there be encumbrances without your knowing it?"
    "I think not. I think it is impossible. Of all men your father is the last to encumber his estates in a manner unknown to his agent, and to pay off the interest in secret."

It is Mr Somers who ties Sir Thomas's apparently unmotivated state of mind to the "visitor", and to the "younger man" who has been seen in the neighbourhood; but it is Mrs Jones, the housekeeper who has been with Lady Fitzgerald all of her married life, who is in a position to put two and two together:

Chapter 13:

    "Drat it!" said Mrs Jones to herself on that day, as soon as she had regained the solitude of her own private apartment, after having taken a long look at Mr Mollett in the hall. On that occasion she sat down on a low chair in the middle of the room, put her two hands down substantially on her two knees, gave a long sigh, and then made the above exclamation,---"Drat it!"
    Mrs Jones was still thoroughly a Saxon, although she had lived for so many years among the Celts. But it was only when she was quite alone that she allowed herself the indulgence of so peculiarly Saxon a mode of expressing either her surprise or indignation.
    "It's the same man," she said to herself, "as come that day, as sure as eggs;" and then for five minutes she maintained her position, cogitating. "And he's like the other fellow too," she continued. "Only, somehow he's not like him." And then another pause. "And yet he is; only it can't be; and he ain't just so tall, and he's older like." And then, still meditating, Mrs Jones kept her position for full ten minutes longer; at the end of which time she got up and shook herself. She deserved to be bracketed with Lord Brougham and Professor Faraday, for she had kept her mind intent on her subject, and had come to a resolution. "I won't say nothing to nobody, noways," was the expression of her mind's purpose...

Meanwhile, "the younger man" is taking care to thoroughly inform himself of the state of affairs around Castle Richmond:

    "And if he was to be---nowhere like; not his father's son at all, for instance, it would all go to this 'andsome 'Appy 'Ouse man; would it?"
    "Every shilling, they say; house, title, and all."
    "Hum," said Mr Abraham Mollett; and he began again to calculate his family chances. Perhaps, after all, this handsome young man who was at present too poor to marry his noble lady love might be the more liberal man to deal with. But then any dealings with him would kill the golden goose at once. All would depend on the size of the one egg which might be extracted.
    He certainly felt, however, that this Fitzgerald family arrangement was one which it was beneficial that he should know; but he felt also that it would be by no means necessary at present to communicate the information to his father. He put it by in his mind, regarding it as a fund on which he might draw if occasion should require. It might perhaps be pleasant for him to make the acquaintance of this 'andsome young Fitzgerald of 'Appy 'Ouse...

In Chapter 14, Owen Fitzgerald hears of Clara's engagement to Herbert.

I hold to my opinion that this subplot is oddly presented, and towards the end of this chapter there is a moment that highlights the problem:

    "That you may marry and live happily, live near us here, so that we may know you, I most heartily desire. But you cannot marry that child."
    "And why not, if she loves me?"
    "Nay, not even if she did. Wealth and position are necessary to the station in which she has been born. She is an earl's daughter, penniless as she is. I will have no secrets from you. As a mother, I could not give her to one whose career is such as yours. As the widow of an earl, I could not give her to one whose means of maintaining her are so small. If you will think of this, you will hardly be angry with me."
    "Love is nothing then?"

There are so many Trollope novels - including The Bertrams, which is almost a dissertation upon the wickedness of placing material comforts ahead of love - in which this would be the pro argument; and in which this---

"Clara," he continued, "I have passed the last year with perfect reliance upon your faith. I need hardly tell you that it has not been passed happily, for it has been passed without seeing you. But though you have been absent from me, I have never doubted you. I have known that it was necessary that we should wait---wait perhaps till years should make you mistress of your own actions: but nevertheless I was not unhappy, for I was sure of your love."

---would be the bedrock of the love-plot narrative.

And yet here the reverse is true. It's another touch in this novel where it feels as if Trollope is writing against himself.

And I think this is why the scene between Owen and Clara is only reported indirectly:

"What would you have me say? I did do that which was wrong and foolish, when---when we were walking there on the avenue. I did give a promise which I cannot now keep. It was all so hurried that I hardly remember what I said. But of this I am sure, that if I have caused you unhappiness, I am very sorry to have done so. I cannot alter it all now; I cannot unsay what I said then; nor can I offer you that which I have now absolutely given to another."

And we never hear what was said. That seems to be the "out" here: as long as we don't know what Clara actually said, then she's allowed to take it back.

But it still feel like Trollope bending over backwards to allow a situation he doesn't really believe in.

I am up to Chapter 22 and enjoying it, although some of Trollope's comments about the famine and particularly the government's wise response to it is more than a little infuriating.

But if the Owen / Clara business is unconvincing, Chapter 15 gives us a piece of writing not only convincing but perfectly brutal, as Abraham Mollet forces himself upon Sir Thomas and spells out what has previously only been alluded to:

"I've no wish for that 'Appy 'Ouse man, Sir Thomas; not the least. And as for your good lady, she's nothing to me one way or the other---whatever she may be to my governor---" and here there fell a spasm upon the poor man's heart, which nearly brought him from the chair to the ground; but, nevertheless, he still contained himself---"my governor's former lady, my own mother," continued Aby, "whom I never see'd, she'd gone to kingdom come, you know, before that time, Sir Thomas. There hain't no doubt about that. So you see---" and hereupon he dropped his voice from the tone which he had hitherto been using to an absolute whisper, and drawing his chair close to that of the baronet, and putting his hands upon his knees, brought his mouth close to his companion's ear---"So you see," he said, "when that youngster was born, Lady F. was Mrs M.---wasn't she? and for the matter of that, Lady F. is Mrs M. to this very hour. That's the real chat; ain't it, Sir Thomas? My stepmother, you know. The governor could take her away with him to-morrow if he chose, according to the law of the land---couldn't he now?"

He could, too.

Yet somehow, things can still be worse:

    Poor Sir Thomas was now almost broken down. His head swam round and round, and he felt that he was in a whirlpool from which there was no escape. He had heard the sum named, and knew that he had no power of raising it. His interest in the estate was but for his life, and that life was now all but run out. He had already begun to feel that his son must be sacrificed, but he had struggled and endured in order that he might save his wife. But what could he do now? What further struggle could he make? His present most eager desire was that that horrid man should be removed from his hearing and his eyesight.
    But Aby had not yet done: he had hitherto omitted to mention one not inconsiderable portion of the amicable arrangement which, according to him, would have the effect of once more placing the two families comfortably on their feet. "There's one other pint, Sir Thomas," he continued, "and hif I can bring you and your good lady to my way of thinking on that, why, we may all be comfortable for all that is come and gone. You've a daughter Hemmeline..."

The only tiny ray of light - and very tiny it is - is the announced coming of Sir Thomas's solicitor, Mr Prendergast.

>88 PaulCranswick:

Thank you for checking in, Paul.

Yes, just a little... {*eyeroll*}

>89 lyzard: I have to say that Trollope takes an inordinately long time to work up to this point which I guessed at many chapters before. This part of the book puts me very much in mind of Wilkie Collins.

>91 MissWatson: Are you thinking of specific books or just Wilkie Collins in general? I have been reminded of Wilkie Collins, too, especially of No Name.

>91 MissWatson:, >92 cbl_tn:

I think what we need to understand here is that Trollope disapproved of sensation fiction; not of using that kind of material, as such, but of building a whole book around mysteries and shocks.

So this isn't intended as a mystery, though we might automatically try to treat it that way; we're not supposed to be fooled, but rather to understand and be ahead of the characters. The point is the knowledge gap---with the reader seeing the greater significance of unfolding plot-points.

Chapter 16 is largely given over to Clara's analysis of her own feelings towards Herbert and Owen.

Again, I don't find this particularly convincing, because I don't think it's particularly well prepared for. I dislike much of Trollope's handling of Alice Vavasor in Can You Forgive Her? as she vacillates between two men, but there's a lot more psychological depth to it.*

But because, I think, Trollope needs to soft-pedal Clara's acceptance of Owen, we now hear all sorts of things about her feelings that weren't at all evident when the subplot was introduced.

But the important detail is Clara's ironic comparison of the circumstances of her two suitors, and the rights and wrongs of her behaviour in light of it; Trollope here manages a more recognisable piece of irony:

And then again she swore that she loved him. She thought over all his excellences; how good he was as a son---how fondly his sisters loved him---how inimitable was his conduct in these hard trying times. And she remembered also that it was right in every way that she should love him. Her mother and brother approved of it. Those who were to be her new relatives approved of it. It was in every way fitting. Pecuniary considerations were so favourable! But when she thought of that her heart sank low within her breast. Was it true that she had sold herself at her mother's bidding? Should not the remembrance of Owen's poverty have made her true to him had nothing else done so?

(*Of course, Can You Forgive Her? was written four years and four novels later; and perhaps Trollope himself wasn't particularly satisfied with this either.)

Also Chapter 16:

At the gate, just as Herbert was about to remount his horse, they were encountered by a sight which for years past had not been uncommon in the south of Ireland, but which had become frightfully common during the last two or three months. A woman was standing there, of whom you could hardly say that she was clothed, though she was involved in a mass of rags which covered her nakedness. Her head was all uncovered, and her wild black hair was streaming round her face. Behind her back hung two children enveloped among the rags in some mysterious way; and round about her on the road stood three others, of whom the two younger were almost absolutely naked. The eldest of the five was not above seven...

Trollope here accidentally sums up one of my problems with this novel: the raging famine is too often and too easily left "at the gate" by the other characters:

    "What is it I'm wanting? just a thrifle of money then to get a sup of milk for thim five childher as is starving and dying for the want of it." And she pointed to the wretched, naked brood around her with a gesture which in spite of her ugliness had in it something of tragic grandeur.
    "But you know that we will not give money. They will take you in at the poorhouse at Kanturk."
    "Is it the poorhouse, yer honor?"
    "Or, if you get a ticket from your priest they will give you meal twice a week at Clady. You know that. Why do you not go to Father Connellan?"
    "Is it the mail? An' shure an' haven't I had it, the last month past; nothin' else; not a taste of a piaty or a dhrop of milk for nigh a month, and now look at the childher. Look at them, my lady. They are dyin' by the very road-side." And she undid the bundle at her back, and laying the two babes down on the road showed that the elder of them was in truth in a fearful state. It was a child nearly two years of age, but its little legs seemed to have withered away; its cheeks were wan, and yellow and sunken, and the two teeth which it had already cut were seen with terrible plainness through its emaciated lips. Its head and forehead were covered with sores; and then the mother, moving aside the rags, showed that its back and legs were in the same state. "Look to that," she said, almost with scorn. "That's what the mail has done---my black curses be upon it, and the day that it first come nigh the counthry..."

>92 cbl_tn: >93 lyzard: Yes, No Name was the one that sprang to mind. But Collins wrote his book twenty years later, so I don't think there's any connection beyond the illegitimacy.

>95 lyzard: I agree, the famine all too often has to stand back to the personal drama.

The change in times and the laws of inheritance are interesting. The fact that the owner of property is not free to dispose of that property as was his wont in the event of his death is interesting. Trollope is at pains to point out that the Baronet has a "life interest" in the property and titles which then cannot descend to an illegitimate heir, but that surely only extends to the title and the property not the personal wealth of the Baron? I suppose it would be tied up largely with the property and the rents etc that emanate therefrom but I don't see how Herbert would be left absolutely penniless?

A couple questions from Chapter 16:

I really don't understand Clara's insistence on keeping her engagement with Herbert when she was willing to break off her engagement with Owen for her mother's monetary reasons. It's inconsistent and bothers me throughout the entire book (I've finished) and I'll have more to ask/say as we move through the discussion. On the other hand, I don't understand Owen's reappearance to claim his right to marry Clara after seemingly ignoring her and accepting the situation for the past year. Did he really think she was still bound to him? If so, what did he think would change that would allow for their marriage?

I'm also confused about whether Mr. Prendergast is a lawyer or a physician. It says that he's a "physician of the mind" but he acts very much like a lawyer throughout the book.

I'm also having some difficulty deciphering the dialect. In this chapter, what is meant by "That's what the mail has done -- my black curses be upon it"? Does "mail" mean "meal", as in the food they are being given charitably?

>98 japaul22: Jennifer, I interpreted "mail" = meal, i.e., the coarse corn meal.

>93 lyzard:, >96 MissWatson:

Sensation fiction often dealt with irregular sexual relationships (accidental or otherwise), which was one of the reasons it was widely disapproved. The bigamy plot was a way of having a character sexually guilty and innocent at the same time.

We see here that Trollope wasn't above using such material but he's not doing it for the shock value and his eye is on the consequences for his characters.

To be fair to Wilkie Collins, No Name wasn't written just for the shock value either: it is one of his "message" books, where he was seriously campaigning against the existing laws / stigma surrounding illegitimacy.

>96 MissWatson:

Critics at the time often said something like, "Why did Trollope shove the famine into a story about a love triangle?"

Whereas we're more inclined to say, "Why did Trollope shove a love triangle into a story about the famine?"

Just a note for anyone who might be behind a bit:

General spoilers for Chapter 15 onwards:

*****

*****

>97 PaulCranswick:

Under an entail, it depended upon the nature of the property and the broader wealth of the family.

In this case, the majority of the Fitzgerald property is entailed: Castle Richmond and all its surrounding land and all the income that the land generates---which until the famine time was considerable. We see this in the calculations of the Mollets of exactly how much Sir Thomas can afford to pay them. (It isn't quite as much as they think, but it's not a ridiculous overestimate.)

Any income generated by the entailed property becomes part of the entailed property and cannot be redirected.

We don't know what Sir Thomas's "personal wealth" is. We do know that he inherited property in England through his grandmother. This is separate from the entail and Sir Thomas is free to do what he likes with it. But it isn't clear how much income it generates.

(More details around this point emerge as we go along.)

So no, Herbert isn't quite penniless; but at a stroke he is turned from "the Young Master" into an illegitimate outcast. The situation also exiles Lady Fitzgerald and the girls from Castle Richmond and leaves them without a home. Herbert is therefore responsible for their upkeep as well as his own.

We spoke at the outset of this potential side-effect of the entail. The girls too are illegitimate, which (although the narrative never really touches upon it) likewise turns them from the desirably dowered "Miss Fitzgeralds" into fortuneless bastards.

>98 japaul22:

As I've said, I don't find the presentation of the triangle at all convincing, I think because of Trollope's own discomfort with the need for Clara to change her mind in the first place.

I guess you could argue that Clara's guilt over one broken promise makes her cling more stubbornly to a second promise. She feels that she ought to know better now that she's older (although really, she's only seventeen instead of sixteen). She accepted Herbert not in a flurry of emotion, as she did Owen, but as a "rational choice", and that removes any basis for her to take it back...unless she can get to the point of accepting, or admitting, that her persistent feeling for Owen disqualifies her as Herbert's wife.

But I don't think any of this is particularly well-articulated, certainly not given what we know from other of his novels of Trollope's ability to microdissect his characters' motives. Instead, he keeps fudging it.

Owen is another matter again. The fudging means we don't really see the basis of this stubborn passion for Clara, or his grounds for holding to the engagement.

Again, we've seen plenty of Trollopean couples separated for a year or longer by family disapproval or other circumstances---but the way the first engagement is rushed over here makes it hard to believe in this instance of it.

So it's difficult to know how we're supposed to view Owen's behaviour. Is he within his rights? Is he being unreasonable? Is he a victim with a legitimate grievance?

I can't answer that---but I will say this: if we reimagine this novel in moderns terms, to me it is all too easy to picture Owen becoming Clara's stalker.

>98 japaul22:

Mr Prendergast is a London-based solicitor, who manages Sir Thomas's English property. He also (we gather) has had the distasteful task of making Sir Thomas's blackmail payments to Mr Mollet---although we find out that he does not know what Mollet is being paid off over.

"Mail" is "meal" rendered in an Irish country accent.

While we might not be comfortable with Trollope's attitude to the famine, he does (sadly) get all the details of the futile attempts at managing the situation right---the taxing of land owners, the relief committees, the rapid building of mills---and the completely ineffective "road-building" that was a way of forcing the Irish to work for their meal, rather than receiving charity; though it meant trying to compel men without the right training or tools, who were already suffering the effects of starvation, into hard physical labour. It all went about as well as you'd imagine:

Chapter 17:

And then the men came and clustered round Herbert's horse. They were wretched-looking creatures, half-clad, discontented, with hungry eyes, each having at his heart's core a deep sense of injustice done personally upon him. They hated this work of cutting hills from the commencement to the end,---hated it, though it was to bring them wages and save them and theirs from actual famine and death. They had not been accustomed to the discomfort of being taken far from their homes to their daily work. Very many of them had never worked regularly for wages, day after day, and week after week. Up to this time such was not the habit of Irish cottiers. They held their own land, and laboured there for a spell; and then they would work for a spell, as men do in England, taking wages; and then they would be idle for a spell. It was not exactly a profitable mode of life, but it had its comforts; and now these unfortunates who felt themselves to be driven forth like cattle in droves for the first time, suffered the full wretchedness of their position. They were not rough and unruly, or inclined to be troublesome and perhaps violent, as men similarly circumstanced so often are in England;---as Irishmen are when collected in gangs out of Ireland. They had no aptitudes for such roughness, and no spirits for such violence. But they were melancholy, given to complaint, apathetic, and utterly without interest in that they were doing...

This paragraph is also important because it basically describes the situation that some English people believed the Irish were being "punished" for: their capacity to get along on irregular work practices, to "work for a spell" and then "be idle for a spell". This was the direct result of terrible land management, which actively discouraged the Irish from doing more than they needed to, but many English people saw only laziness and shiftless behaviour.

Chapter 19 marks the promised arrival at Castle Richmond of Mr Prendergast:

Such was Mr Prendergast; and my readers will, I trust, feel for Sir Thomas, and pity him, in that he was about to place his wounds in the hands of so ruthless a surgeon. But a surgeon, to be of use, should be ruthless in one sense. He should have the power of cutting and cauterising, of phlebotomy and bone-handling without effect on his own nerves. This power Mr Prendergast possessed, and therefore it may be said that Sir Thomas had chosen his surgeon judiciously...

And so the terrible story is finally told:

    These broad acres of Castle Richmond did belong to Sir Thomas---for his life. But after his death they could not belong to his son Herbert. It was a matter which admitted of no doubt. No question as to whether the Molletts would or would not hold their tongue could bear upon it in the least. Justice in this case must be done, even though the heavens should fall. It was sad and piteous. Stern and hard as was the man who pronounced this doom, nevertheless the salt tear collected in his eyes and blinded him as he looked upon the anguish which his judgement had occasioned.
    Yes, Herbert must be told that he in the world was nobody; that he must earn his bread, and set about doing so right soon. Who could say that his father's life was worth a twelvemonth's purchase? He must be told that he was nobody in the world, and instructed also to tell her whom he loved, an Earl's daughter, the same tidings; that he was nobody, that he would come to possess no property, and that in the law's eyes did not possess even a name. How would his young heart suffice for the endurance of so terrible a calamity? And those pretty girls, so softly brought up---so tenderly nurtured; it must be explained to them too that they must no longer be proud of their father's lineage and their mother's fame...

And of course the situation is bringing about its own conclusion, with Sir Thomas's health failing under constant stress and depression, and his determination to keep the secret as long as possible.

As I have said, Trollope disapproved of sensation fiction per se; but in several of his novels he uses an irregular or non-existent marriage as the basis of his narrative. He was, however, always focused upon the schism between the legal and the emotional aspects of such a situation, rather than its salacious possibilities.

As here:

Chapter 19:

    The wife of his bosom! He persisted in so calling her through the whole interview, and, even in his weakness, obliged the strong man before him so to name her also. She was his wife before God, and should be his to the end. Ah! for how short a time was that! "Is she to leave me?" he once said, turning to his friend, with his hands clasped together, praying that some mercy might be shown to his wretchedness. "Is she to leave me?" he repeated, and then sank on his knees upon the floor.
    And how was Mr. Prendergast to answer this question? How was he to decide whether or no this man and woman might still live together as husband and wife?

So another question I have related to your post about Chapter 18 is why Lady Fitzgerald is so easily let off the hook here. First of all, they don't even ask her if Mollett is her husband in order to "protect her". But also, I'm unclear on whether she hid something about this first marriage. It's clear that all knew that she had been married before, but how long had Mollett been gone (I assume he simply abandoned her?) before she remarried to Sir Thomas? Was there a window of time of abandonment that then legally allowed for remarriage? If so, I don't see why her next marriage would be invalidated unless they didn't follow those laws. And why would Sir Thomas agree to that? If she failed to disclose some of this I don't understand why she didn't take some blame for the situation. Maybe I missed something . . .

>108 japaul22:

The legalities around declaring someone legally dead were less time-consuming and rigid then than now---unless an inheritance was involved, in which case there would be a strict legal inquiry. But in a case like this, it would have been less about the time involved and more about the supporting evidence.

Lady Fitzgerald - like Trollope, we will continue to call her that :) - is exonerated for several reasons, which begin to be spelled out in Chapter 5, and then in various other places.

In the first place she was clearly forced into the marriage when she was only about fifteen or sixteen; her father was poor and desperate to find (as he thought) some other support for her. And then she is deserted after only two months.

It is not entirely clear how much time passes in inquiries and searches - we hear only vaguely of "some months" - before the rumour that Talbot is dead is heard, nor how much more before they feel there are sufficient grounds for believing it; but clearly that goes on for some months too. And once it was accepted, there would have been a year of mourning.

The future Lady Fitzgerald is "a young widow in a widow's cap" when Sir Thomas first sees her and falls in love with her. There would have been no courtship as such until the cap was off; and then again we gather that quite some time passes until "at last" she accepts---not Sir Thomas's proposal, but his love:

And then the father, who had so grossly neglected his duty when he gave her in marriage to an unknown rascally adventurer, endeavoured to atone for such neglect by the severest caution with reference to this new suitor. Further inquiries were made. Sir Thomas went over to Paris himself with that other clergyman. Lawyers were employed in England to sift out the truth; and at last, by the united agreement of some dozen men, all of whom were known to be worthy, it was decided that Talbot was dead, and that his widow was free to choose another mate. Another mate she had already chosen, and immediately after this she was married to Sir Thomas Fitzgerald.

So this probably adds up to about three years, and includes three separate rounds of inquiry conducted by various people, including lawyers to rule on the legality of it, all of whom came up with the same answer.

Of course, after having been pushed into the marriage in the first place, all Mrs Talbot could do was sit and wait to be told whether she was a widow or not.

(Trollope doesn't seem to be aware of the irony in this particular instance of a woman having a man to take the burden off her shoulders...)

But the other important thing in judging Lady Fitzgerald is there was never any deception: Sir Thomas was fully informed before there was any engagement, and he himself headed the third inquiry.

However---though the mistake was made in good faith, if Lady Fitzgerald's first husband is alive, then she is not Lady Fitzgerald, she is not married to Sir Thomas, and their children are illegitimate. There was no getting around any of that under the existing laws.

If such a large inheritance had not been involved, people might have been prepared to look the other way; but English property laws being what they were, there is no wriggle-room.

And increasingly from this point, Sir Thomas is criticised for having tried to hush the situation up.

>109 lyzard: Thank you for clarifying all of that! I really didn't piece together that timeline at all. That helps to understand why Lady Fitzgerald is protected and allowed to stay on the outside of all of this.

In Chapter 20, Mr Prendergast sets himself to a rather distasteful piece of detective work.

We see here that Sir Thomas was wise to send for a skilled lawyer, because Mr Prendergast must cross-examine some very reluctant witnesses...

    "But listen to me. Sir Thomas has reason to believe---nay, he feels quite sure---that this man is alive."
    "Poor gentleman! poor gentleman!"
    "And has been here in this house two or three times within the last month. Sir Thomas is full sure of this. Now can you tell me whether the man who did come was this Talbot, or was not? If you can answer that positively, either one way or the other, you will do a service to the whole family,---which shall not go unrewarded."
    "I don't want no reward, sir. Ask me to tattle of them for rewards, after thirty years!" And she put her apron up to her eyes.
    "Well, then, for the good of the family. Can you say positively that the man who came here to your master was Talbot, or that he was not?"
    "Indeed then, sir, I can't say anything positively, nor for that matter, not impositively either." And then she shut herself up doggedly, and sat with compressed lips, determined to resist all the lawyer's arts.

And then Mr Prendergast goes above and beyond, by confronting Mollet Sr himself.

If you read a lot of British crime novels like I do, you will know that there was never a time when blackmail wasn't considered about the lowest act anyone could stoop to, or when it wasn't held to justify any response up to and including murder: the British were surprisingly swift, too, in putting in place laws to protect the anonymity of the victims of blackmail, to encourage prosecutions.

We see here that this attitude has deep roots:

    "My poor lady! my poor lady!" almost screamed Mrs Jones from under her apron, wagging her head, and becoming almost convulsive in her grief.
    "Yes, it is very sad. But you will live to acknowledge that even this is better than living in that man's power."
    "I don't know that," said Mollett. "I am not so bad as you'd make me. I don't want to distress the lady."
    "No, not if you are allowed to rob the gentleman till there's not a guinea left for you to suck at. I know pretty well the extent of the evil that's in you. If we were to kick you from here to Cork, you'd forgive all that, so that we still allowed you to go on with your trade. I wonder how much money you've had from him altogether?"
    "What does the money signify? What does the money signify?" said Mrs Jones, still wagging her head beneath her apron. "Why didn't Sir Thomas go on paying it, and then my lady need know nothing about it?"
    It was clear that Mrs. Jones would not look at the matter in a proper light. As far as she could see, there was no reason why a fair bargain should not have been made between Mollett and Sir Thomas,---made and kept on both sides, with mutual convenience. That doing of justice at the cost of falling heavens was not intelligible to her limited philosophy. Nor did she bethink herself, that a leech will not give over sucking until it be gorged with blood. Mr Prendergast knew that such leeches as Mr Mollett never leave the skin as long as there is a drop of blood left within the veins...

Yet while Trollope is clearly on Mr Prendergast's side in his attitude to truth and justice, as (nearly) always, he sees the other side of the matter with equal clarity: the price that the Fitzgeralds will have to pay for that truth and justice:

"Oh, Mr Pendrergrass, if it can be hushed up---" said Mrs Jones, rising from her chair and coming up to him with her hands clasped together. "Don't send him away in your anger; don't'ee now, sir. Think of her ladyship. Do, do, do;" and the woman took hold of his arm, and looked up into his face with her eyes swimming with tears. Then going to the door she closed it, and returning again, touched his arm, and again appealed to him. "Think of Mr Herbert, sir, and the young ladies! What are they to be called, sir, if this man is to be my lady's husband? Oh, Mr Pendrergrass, let him go away, out of the kingdom; do let him go away."

As I said earlier, Trollope never meant to make a mystery of this situation to the reader: he intended the reader to understand, and therefore to be in a position to appreciate, if not enjoy, the evolving irony of Clara being so ruthlessly separated from Owen and encouraged / pushed, at Herbert---on the grounds of both young men's circumstances:

Chapter 21:

    "I tell you what, Owen: I did not come out here to hear myself abused; and I will not stand it. According to my idea you had no right whatever to speak to me about Lady Clara Desmond. But you are my cousin; and therefore I have borne it. It may be as well that we should both understand that it is once for all. I will not listen to you again on the same subject."
    "Oh, you won't. Upon my word you are a very great man! You will tell me next, I suppose, that this is your demesne, and will warn me off!"
    "Even if I did that, I should not be wrong, under such provocation."
    "Very well, sir; then I will go off. But remember this, Herbert Fitzgerald, you shall live to rue the day when you treated me with such insolence. And remember this also, Clara Desmond is not your wife as yet. Everything now seems happy with you, and fortunate; you have wealth and a fine house, and a family round you, while I am there all alone, left like a dog, as far as my own relatives are concerned. But yet it may come to pass that the Earl of Desmond's daughter will prefer my hand to yours, and my house to your house..."

And in Chapter 22, the blow finally falls:

    "In her early youth, when she was quite a child, she was given in marriage to a man---to a man of whom it is impossible to speak in terms too black, or in language too strong. And now, this day---"
    But here he paused. It had been his intention to say that that very man, the first husband of this loved mother now looked upon as dead for so many years, this miscreant of whom he had spoken---that this man had been in that room that very day. But he hardly knew how to frame the words.
    "Well," said Herbert, "well;" and he spoke in a hoarse voice that was scarcely audible.
    Mr Prendergast was afraid to bring out the very pith of his story in so abrupt a manner. He wished to have the work over, to feel, that as regarded Herbert it was done,---but his heart failed him when he came to it.
    "Yes," he said, going back as it were to his former thoughts. "A heartless, cruel, debauched, unscrupulous man; one in whose bosom no good thing seemed to have been implanted. Your father, when he first knew your mother, had every reason to believe that this man was dead."
    "And he was not dead?" Mr Prendergast could see that the young man's face became perfectly pale as he uttered these words. He became pale, and clutched hold of the table with his hand, and there sat with mouth open and staring eyes.
    "I am afraid not," said Mr Prendergast; "I am afraid not."
    "And---"
    "I must go further than that, and tell you that he is still living..."

>111 lyzard: Side note: my husband's surname is Pendergast, and he is ALWAYS being called PenderGRASS or PrenderGRASS, so this little mash-up of the name by Mrs. Jones is absolutely true.

I've been a bit behind, but nearly caught up with you. I love the discussion here, and I'm very glad for all the explanations!

Trollope has managed to get me emotionally involved in his story. I am now wondering why they keep from telling what is wrong, it must be more awful, all this secrecy, than knowing what is at stake, bad as it is.

>87 lyzard: I'm behind (up to Chapter 14) and hoping to catch up today but I found the way the Countess left Clara alone with Owen Fitzgerald left me feeling very uncomfortable and felt a little cruel on the Countess's part.

I’m up to chapter 26 and should get much more read today.

I noted that AT says that readers should have been more or less on to the plot, so he’s not trying for the big reveal to some awful horror. Not that this situation, especially in the Victorian era and among that class, wasn’t horror enough. I’m hoping that this story will end up like another one we read not too terribly long ago.

Anyway. I’ve lots of sticky flags by passages I like or plot points or whatever.

This one has started me wondering about AT and his romantic plot lines. He’s an acute observer of humanity (I know, he can be dreadfully ham-handed and just wrong about women), but...his repeated emphasis on how the Countess “sold herself” for a title...is he calling her a whore? If a refined one, even so?

>114 kac522:

Oh dear! :D

>115 EllaTim:, >116 souloftherose:, >117 Matke:

Thank you for checking in, I wasn't sure if I was getting the pace right.

Others?

>117 Matke:

Ooh! Please do add those sticky-note comments! :)

No, he was never much on mystery; here it was more about the knowledge gap between the reader and the characters.

It does finally reach a breaking-point where knowing is better than not knowing, although by then the stress of keeping the terrible secret has just about finished Sir Thomas.

Well...let's face it, in a property-based society, the line between marriage and prostitution can be very thin. (And it is/was usually those societies that most vaunted marriage and damned prostitution, in order to deny the fact; certainly Victorian society did.)

So while Trollope isn't exactly calling the Countess a whore, he thoroughly condemned marriage for material gain; and he explicitly presents her futile passion for Owen as punishment for her having married for a title.

It is interesting to compare her marriage to the Earl of Desmond with Mary Wainwright's marriage to Mr Talbot, though: the now-Lady Desmond can't have been that much older, nor could it have been all her own doing. But Trollope isn't making excuses for her as he does for Lady Fitzgerald---and even as he does around Clara's broken engagement from a man she did love.

Chapters 23 and 24 find the news of his altered position reaching Owen Fitzgerald from two very different sources.

Aby Mollet, judging others by himself, is hopeful of making a profit out of Owen, now that access to Sir Thomas has been cut off; but, well---

    But at this moment a terrible noise was heard to take place in the hall. There was a rush and crushing there which made even Mr Prendergast to jump from his chair, and drove Captain Donnellan to forget his gloves and run to the door.
    It was as though all the winds of heaven were being driven down the passage, and as though each separate wind was shod with heavy-heeled boots. Captain Donnellan ran to the door, and Mr Prendergast with slower steps followed him. When it was opened, Owen was to be seen in the hall, apparently in a state of great excitement; and the gentleman whom he had lately asked to breakfast,---he was to be seen also, in a position of unmistakeable discomfort. He was at that moment proceeding, with the utmost violence, into a large round bed of bushes, which stood in the middle of the great sweep before the door of the house, his feet just touching the ground as he went; and then, having reached his bourne, he penetrated face foremost into the thicket, and in an instant disappeared...

It again falls to the unfortunate Mr Prendergast to tell the story---though it takes some effort on his part to convince Owen that the story told by Aby was essentially true.

Owen's reaction is interesting. A large part of it is very much to his credit: he sees at once what it all means and his first feelings are all for his cousins, particularly Lady Fitzgerald.

But there are mixed motives in his rejection of his unexpected inheritance. For one thing, he understands very well that his exchange of position with Herbert will - ironically enough - do him no favours whatsoever with Clara.

But I find disturbing the subsequent train of his thoughts:

They two would make a bargain,---he and his cousin. Honour and renown, and the money and the title would be everything to his cousin. Herbert had been brought up to expect these things, and all the world around him had expected them for him. It would be terrible to him to find himself robbed of them. But the loss of Clara Desmond was equally terrible to Owen Fitzgerald. He allowed his heart to fill itself with a romantic sense of honour, teaching him that it behoved him as a man not to give up his love. Without her he would live disgraced in his own estimation; but who would not think the better of him for refraining from the possession of those Castle Richmond acres? Yes; he would make a bargain with Herbert. Who was there in the world to deny his right to do so?

---as if Clara is simply an object, to have her fate decided between the men, without any say of her own.

I also, as we go forward, find something else in Owen's steady resistance of his inheritance: I think he likes being the underdog; I think he likes thinking of himself as a victim. It does not suit him at all, psychologically, to be "Sir Owen of Castle Richmond".

And of course, Chapter 24 also gives us our inescapable hunting-scene.

Sigh...

>119 lyzard: I am up to chapter 37. Parts of the premise are irritating but Trollope is just such a good writer and tells such a good tale that you can sort of put up with that. I will say a little later about some of the things that are a bit annoying because the group needs to catch up a bit!

>123 PaulCranswick:

I think that's a good summation.

Please do hold all those thoughts!

Herbert, in his misery and desperation, feels obliged to carry his story - literally carry it, through the rain and mud - to Desmond Court, where he finds little sympathy awaiting him.

We find Trollope on more recognisable ground here, minutely dissecting out the thought processes and motivations of the Countess, and doing so all the more effectively for his fundamental disapproval of her: he is always at his best when being even-handed with someone he disagrees with or disapproves of:

Chapter 26:

    But now! How was she to decide, sitting there with Herbert Fitzgerald before her, gloomy as death, cold, shivering, and muddy, telling of his own disasters with no more courage than a whipped dog? As she looked at him she declared to herself twenty times in half a second that he had not about him a tithe of the manhood of his cousin Owen. Women love a bold front, and a voice that will never own its master to have been beaten in the world's fight. Had Owen come there with such a story, he would have claimed his right boldly to the lady's hand, in spite of all that the world had done to him.
    "Let her have him," said Lady Desmond to herself; and the struggle within her bosom was made and over. No wonder that Herbert, looking into her face for pity, should find that she was harsh and cruel. She had been sacrificing herself, and had completed the sacrifice. Owen Fitzgerald, the heir to Castle Richmond, Sir Owen as he would soon be, should have her daughter. They two, at any rate, should be happy. And she---she would live there at Desmond Court, lonely as she had ever lived. While all this was passing through her mind, she hardly thought of Herbert and his sorrows...

But the day ends for Herbert far better than it begins:

Chapter 27:

In spite of his good intentions for comforting his mother, it is she who ends up comforting him:

    As he did so a soft sweet voice close to his shoulder spoke to him. "Herbert," it said, "are you awake?" And he found that his mother, seated by his side on a low stool, had been watching him in his sleep.
    "Mother!" he exclaimed.
    "Herbert, my child, my son!" And the mother and son were fast locked in each other's arms.
    He had sat down there thinking how he would go to his mother and offer her solace in her sorrow; how he would bid her be of good cheer, and encourage her to bear the world as the world had now fallen to her lot. He had pictured to himself that he would find her sinking in despair, and had promised himself that with his vows, his kisses, and his prayers, he would bring her back to her self-confidence, and induce her to acknowledge that God's mercy was yet good to her. But now, on awakening, he discovered that she had been tending him in his misery, and watching him while he slept, that she might comfort him with her caresses the moment that he awoke to the remembrance of his misfortunes.

And although Herbert steels himself to release Clara from her engagement, her answer is swift and decisive:

I have heard it all. But remember this; nothing, nothing, nothing can make any change between you and me. I will hear of no arguments that are to separate us. I know beforehand what you will say, but I will not regard it---not in the least. I love you ten times the more for all your unhappiness; and as I would have shared your good fortune, I claim my right to share your bad fortune. Pray believe me, that nothing shall turn me from this; for I will not be given up.

One of Trollope's repeated refrains in this novel is the Countess' lack of understanding of others.

Up to a point this is not her fault: she has lived very much alone for many years, with only the most superficial of contacts with the outside world.

But Trollope is certainly intensely critical of her misunderstanding of Clara: a mother who does not know her own daughter is not a "real" mother. There is no confidence between the two of them.

But even here, as she tries to compel Clara to give up Herbert - as she herself, in effect, "gives up" Owen for a second time - Trollope cannot help being fair to her:

Chapter 28:

    "Dearest Clara, you know what I mean. You must be aware that a girl of your rank, and brought up as you have been, cannot be a fitting wife for a man who will now have to struggle with the world at every turn."
    Clara, as this was said to her, and as she prepared to answer, blushed deeply, for she felt herself obliged to speak on a matter which had never yet been subject of speech between her and her mother. "Mamma," she said, "I cannot agree with you there. I may have what the world calls rank; but nevertheless we have been poor, and I have not been brought up with costly habits. Why should I not live with my husband as---as---as poorly as I have lived with my mother? You are not rich, dear mamma, and why should I be?"
    Lady Desmond did not answer her daughter at once; but she was not silent because an answer failed her. Her answer would have been ready enough had she dared to speak it out. "Yes, it is true; we have been poor. I, your mother, did by my imprudence bring down upon my head and on yours absolute, unrelenting, pitiless poverty. And because I did so, I have never known one happy hour. I have spent my days in bitter remorse---in regretting the want of those things which it has been the more terrible to want as they are the customary attributes of people of my rank. I have been driven to hate those around me who have been rich, because I have been poor. I have been utterly friendless because I have been poor. I have been able to do none of those sweet, soft, lovely things, by doing which other women win the smiles of the world, because I have been poor. Poverty and rank together have made me wretched---have left me without employment, without society, and without love. And now would you tell me that because I have been poor you would choose to be poor also?" It would have been thus that she would have answered, had she been accustomed to speak out her thoughts. But she had ever been accustomed to conceal them...

Clara, meanwhile, more than at any earlier point in the novel, sounds here like a proper Trollope heroine---refusing to give up Herbert in the face of his calamity.

Trollope's own discomfort with the broken engagement interferes with the conviction of his writing around it; but now he is back in his element, as Clara joins the ranks of his girls who cling to their man in spite of all the world can do:

    "Not before he writes to you, Clara! You would not wish to be indelicate?"
    "I know but little about delicacy---what people call delicacy; but I will not be ungenerous or unkind. Mamma, you brought us two together. Was it not so? Did you not do so, fearing that I might---might still care for Herbert's cousin? You did it; and half wishing to obey you, half attracted by all his goodness, I did learn to love Herbert Fitzgerald; and I did learn to forget---no; but I learned to cease to love his cousin. You did this and rejoiced at it; and now what you did must remain done."
    "But, dearest Clara, it will not be for his good."
    "It shall be for his good. Mamma, I would not desert him now for all that the world could give me. Neither for mother nor brother could I do that. Without your leave I would not have given him the right to regard me as his own; but now I cannot take that right back again, even at your wish. I must write to him at once, mamma, and tell him this."

There is one other tiny point in Chapter 28 that should be highlighted.

Aunt Letty, with her (ahem) pride and prejudices, has not fared well in the narrative to this point; but again Trollope's fairness breaks out here, as he describes the different sorts of pride that motivate her and the Countess:

No two women were ever closeted together who were more unlike each other,---except that they had one common strong love for family rank. But in Aunt Letty it must be acknowledged that this passion was not unwholesome or malevolent in its course of action. She delighted in being a Fitzgerald, and in knowing that her branch of the Fitzgeralds had been considerable people ever since her Norman ancestor had come over to Ireland with Strongbow. But then she had a useful idea that considerable people should do a considerable deal of good.

In that respect, we could do with a few more Aunt Lettys...

The bitterest irony in Castle Richmond emerges in Chapter 29.

Trollope, both tacitly and via Mr Prendergast, condemns Sir Thomas for trying to keep the truth concealed by paying off Mollet. There is sympathy for Sir Thomas in all that he has suffered, but never any suggestion that he was right. He is punished for this act of dishonesty by the incredible misery he has suffered---but even more so, by the collapse of his health.

Sir Thomas is only in his fifties; under normal circumstances - or even, as the narrative clearly feels he should have, had he taken the bull by the horns at the outset - he might have lived another thirty years as master and holder of Castle Richmond...and Herbert might have had those years to re-establish himself in the world, to learn to stand on his own in preparation for the day when the estate passed from his father to Owen.

But Sir Thomas's actions have the effect of accelerating his family's fate:

Such battle as it had been in his power to make he had made to save his son's heritage and his wife's name and happiness, even at the expense of his own conscience. That battle had gone altogether against him, and now there was nothing left for him but to turn his face to the wall and die. Absolute ruin, through his fault, had come upon him and all that belonged to him,---ruin that would now be known to the world at large; and it was beyond his power to face that world again. In that the glory was gone from the house of his son, and of his son's mother, the glory was gone from his own house. He made no attempt to leave his bed, though strongly recommended so to do by his own family doctor. And then a physician came down from Dublin, who could only feel, whatever he might say, how impossible it is to administer to a mind diseased. The mind of that poor man was diseased past all curing in this world, and there was nothing left for him but to die...

I find it very hard to accept Sir Thomas' utter spinelessness.

>130 MissWatson:

I think we have to keep in mind that we're seeing the end of a long and painful situation. He's "spineless" now, but remember that this has been going on for anywhere up to ten years, requiring Sir Thomas to keep this terrible secret from Lady Fitzgerald all that time, and with a Sword of Damocles over his head for the duration. And of course (as Trollope makes no bones about) he must also deal with his own act of dishonesty.

We know at the very outset that the situation has wrecked his spirits and worn down his health, and when Aby Mollet enters the game, without any of his father's relative delicacy, it's like a killer blow. And as often happens, once the pressure is released, there is a collapse.

The thing to say in Sir Thomas's favour is that he's not doing any of this for himself: it is in terror for Herbert's situation, and even more so for Lady Fitzgerald's: the terror of hearing - of Lady Fitzgerald hearing - "She's a whore."

Of course when the truth gets out, nothing that Sir Thomas feared so much comes to pass: the respect in which Lady Fitzgerald and Herbert are held persists, and there is only shock and sympathy.

In this, Sir Thomas has created his own punishment, and punished even more the very people he was trying to shield. We understand that if he had done the right thing and taken the bull by the horns when Mollet first appeared, the worst of the situation would never have transpired.

The meeting between Herbert and Owen in Chapter 30 is full of mixed messages. There is real, spontaneous generosity in Owen's impulse to refuse his heirship, but it is mixed in with his uncomfortable attitude towards Clara, who he persists in treating like a bargaining chip---or a prize. Despite Owen's offer the honours are all with Herbert here, for rightly pointing out that who (if anyone) Clara marries isn't up to either of them:

Herbert for a while was struck dumb with amazement, not so much at the quixotic generosity of the proposal, as at the singular mind of the man in thinking that such a plan could be carried out. Herbert's best quality was no doubt his sturdy common sense, and that was shocked by a suggestion which presumed that all the legalities and ordinary bonds of life could be upset by such an agreement between two young men. He knew that Owen Fitzgerald could not give away his title to an estate of fourteen thousand a year in this off-hand way, and that no one could accept such a gift were it possible to be given. The estate and title must belong to Owen, and could not possibly belong to any one else, merely at his word and fancy. And then again, how could the love of a girl like Clara Desmond be bandied to and fro at the will of any suitor or suitors?

******

    "It is not easy to speak plainly on all subjects. I would not, if I could avoid it, say a word that would hurt your feelings."
    "Never mind my feelings. Speak out, and let us have the truth, in God's name. My feelings have never been much considered yet---either in this matter or in any other."
    "It seems to me," said Herbert, "that the giving of Lady Clara's hand cannot depend on your will, or on mine."
    "You mean her mother."
    "No, by no means. Her mother now would be the last to favour me. I mean herself..."

******

    Herbert felt that there could be no possibility of his now marrying within the time named, but nevertheless he would not bring himself to make such a promise as this. He would make no bargain about Clara Desmond, about his Clara, which could in any way admit a doubt as to his own right. Had Owen asked him to promise that he would not marry her during the next week he would have given no such pledge. "No," said he, "I cannot promise that."
    "She is now only seventeen."
    "It does not matter. I will make no such promise, because on such a subject you have no right to ask for any. When she will consent to run her risk of happiness in coming to me, then I shall marry her."
    Owen was now walking up and down the room with rapid steps. "You have not the courage to fight me fairly," said he.
    "I do not wish to fight you at all."
    "Ah, but you must fight me! Shall I see the prey taken out of my jaws, and not struggle for it?"

Ick.

NB: This exchange gives the entailed income of Castle Richmond outright as 14,000 a year, so the Mollets were pretty accurate in their estimations. (These things were public knowledge to a surprising extent.)

Herbert might not be left completely penniless by his disinheritance in reality, but in relative terms, he's pretty close to it.

I wanted to ask about Herbert’s “impoverishment” and how tone deaf it seemed to focus on this in comparison to those suffering directly from the potato famine. Do you think Trollope even thought about that or were the two social spheres so remote from each other that they wouldn’t stand comparison?

In Chapter 31, Trollope spells out what I was, at least, trying to articulate in >131 lyzard:: :)

The hopes and aspirations of his eldest son are as the breath of his nostrils to an Englishman who has been born to land and fortune. What had not this poor man endured in order that his son might be Sir Herbert Fitzgerald of Castle Richmond? But this was no longer possible; and from the moment that this had been brought home to him, the father had felt that for him there was nothing left but to die. "My poor boy," he muttered, "tell me that you have forgiven me."

He also does one of exasperating volte-faces here. He can talk about Lady Fitzgerald like this, yet it never stops him broadly buying into the idea of "the weaker sex", or insisting that a woman needs a man around to do the heavy lifting for them:

    ...his wife whispered in his ear that if there had been fault, the fault was hers, but that her conscience told her that such fault had been forgiven; and while she said this she motioned the children away from him, and strove to make him understand that human misery could never kill the soul, and should never utterly depress the spirit. "Dearest love," she said, still whispering to him in her low, sweet voice---so dear to him, but utterly inaudible beyond---"if you would cease to accuse yourself so bitterly, you might yet be better, and remain with us to comfort us."
    But the slender, half-knit man, whose arms are without muscles and whose back is without pith, will strive in vain to lift the weight which the brawny vigour of another tosses from the ground almost without an effort. It is with the mind and the spirit as with the body; only this, that the muscles of the body can be measured, but not so those of the spirit. Lady Fitzgerald was made of other stuff than Sir Thomas; and that which to her had cost an effort, but with an effort had been done surely, was to him as impossible as the labour of Hercules. "My poor boy, my poor ruined boy!" he still muttered, as she strove to comfort him.

>133 japaul22:

YES!!

Herbert's personal disaster is what it is, and you can't blame anyone in such a situation for being self-absorbed.

But the weight that Trollope puts on the Fitzgeralds' situation when human beings are literally starving to death on their doorstep is grotesque. Surely the tone here should be about how relatively minor their tragedy is, compared to the catastrophe engulfing the entire country? The Fitzgeralds may have "lost everything", but they've never missed a meal!

But here again we get that unnerving compartmentalisation---as if, as you say, these events are somehow parallel but unconnected; taking place in worlds so different that they don't ever really touch.

>135 lyzard: But here again we get that unnerving compartmentalisation---as if, as you say, these events are somehow parallel but unconnected; taking place in worlds so different that they don't ever really touch.

Sadly, in reality the two worlds indeed were unconnected, whether Trollope does this intentionally or is completely oblivious. Perhaps Dickens might have pointed out the disparities to a certain extent (for example, think about the death of Jo in Bleak House and how it affects John Jarndyce), but Trollope is not a reformer.

>136 kac522:

I guess it's true enough that there's nothing they could have done; but really, what you're looking for here is just some sort of acknowledgement of the situation---not what we get, which is effectively a suggestion that the tragedy of the Fitzgeralds and the tragedy of Ireland are "different but equal".

>137 lyzard: From our 21st century standpoint there are many things that could have been done. But it was inconceivable from a 19th century point of view that "government" or any large publicly funded effort could, would or even should be made to provide relief. It was expected that churches, parishes, small committees (like Herbert's), various private fundraising efforts and philanthropic wealthy individuals were the means of relieving most societal ills or unfortunate turn of events. It will take acceptance of Marx, Engels, and socialism to begin to change that "act of Providence" philosophy.

Even today here in America there's still a significant controversy about how far government should get involved with relief for our current health crisis and resulting economic woes. Granted, in the US we're an aberration from most of the rest of the world, but that mindset still exists. Speaking of which, do you have some extra room for some of us?

>136 kac522: I don't think Trollope is inconscious. I guess I am a bit ahead, but reading the book on an e-reader it isn't easy to find a certain spot. But there is a chapter where it becomes clear, at least to me, that he is aware of the situation.

>132 lyzard: Now that’s a disgusting image, and doesn’t help Owen’s cause in my eyes. At all.

I think Owen regards Clara more as a possession than Herbert does. And while many girls love a Bad Boy, Owen’s behavior and attitudes overall leave a lot to be desired, particularly in contrast to Herbert’s more mature and reasoned reaction to his loss. I think you’re right in saying that Owen loves to be the victim.

Chapter 33

>137 lyzard: Well. I’m not sure that we don’t get a clear view of the differences of degree in Chapter 33.

He felt that he was stricken with horror as he remained there in the cabin with the dying woman and the naked corpse of the poor dead child.

And a few paragraphs later:
Whatever might be the extent of his own calamity, how could he think himself unhappy after what he had seen? how could he repine at aught that the world had done for him, having now witnessed to how low a state of misery a fellow human being might be brought? Could he, after that, dare to consider himself unfortunate?

That seems to be the author’s voice, so I think Trollope did see the contrast. I’m befuddled and somewhat repelled by his use of a “God’s will” sort of explanation, and by his attitude toward his government. That said, >138 kac522: makes some excellent and valid points about the differences in outlook between 2020 and the 1830’s.

And >138 kac522: is exactly why I like to read fiction from other eras: the reader gets a very clear idea of contemporary thoughts and mores. In much (not all, of course) modern historical fiction, social and political ideas that are contemporary with the time of writing are projected back onto the historical era being discussed, usually evidenced by the protagonist.

Anyway.

This is an interesting book.

>140 Matke:
I didn’t mean to sound harsh there.

And of course I find myself constantly hoisted by my own petard when I contemplate the role of women in prior eras. I mean I get seriously aggravated when some are treated as objects to be bartered, or to be possessed. And even when they’re treated as, literally, weak sisters who must, at all times, be protected (hah!) by the nearest male.

Sigh. Sometimes it’s a struggle.

>138 kac522:

Well, it wasn't "inconceivable" because (as now) there was a strong pushback in some quarters against it: it was well recognised what a government *could* do, but lots of arguments about what a government *should* do.

It is scary how recognisable most of the arguments are: protect the economy before the people; poor people deserve to be poor...

I don't think anyone ever thought that the government did all it could have in this situation; and as we see here, much effort went into retconning how early everyone threw up their hands. Not many people other than Trollope felt that the government doing so was "best and wisest", though...if he indeed did think that.

Pushing the responsibility for the situation back on the Irish landowners, most of whom were struggling themselves - and after the British had spent the preceding sixty years stripping rights and powers away from the Irish - seems like an act of calculated cruelty: a way of taking down the Irish gentry as well as the Irish poor.

With a disaster of this magnitude, only the government could have intervened; and while we can see now that the situation was beyond anyone''s saving, it is clear enough that the will to do so was lacking.

It is interesting, and rather ironic in a Trollopean context, that it was the Low Church / Dissenting people who effectively established public charity; and that from the late 18th century onwards, when it got all mixed up with the abolitionist movement.

>138 kac522:

Room, yes; but we're busy closing borders again at the moment, sigh.

>139 EllaTim:, >140 Matke:, >141 Matke:

Yes, that's a very key passage that we need to consider in detail

>140 Matke:

exactly why I like to read fiction from other eras: the reader gets a very clear idea of contemporary thoughts and mores. In much (not all, of course) modern historical fiction, social and political ideas that are contemporary with the time of writing are projected back onto the historical era being discussed, usually evidenced by the protagonist.

Absolutely!

>141 Matke:

I'm very uncertain about how we're supposed to interpret Owen's attitude to Clara, but - falling into the "imposing contemporary mores" trap - I find it creepy! :)

One last detail from Chapter 30, before we move on:

That night the poor man died, and the Fitzgeralds who sat in the chambers of Castle Richmond were no longer the owners of the mansion. There was no speech of Sir Herbert among the servants as there would have been had these tidings not have reached them. Dr Finucane had remained in the house, and even he, in speaking of the son, had shown that he knew the story. They were strangers there now, as they all knew---intruders, as they would soon be considered in the house of their cousin Owen; or rather not their cousin. In that he was above them by right of his blood, they had no right to claim him as their relation.

While this is a special case, in light of the Fitzgeralds' specific situation, this is nevertheless the reality of the entail.

This is what (for all that people tend to regard her as just a foolish woman) Mrs Bennet fears in Pride And Prejudice, and why her life is about trying to get her daughters married off; this is what Elizabeth risks by refusing Mr Collins.

The difference here is that Herbert, too, is turned out of the house by his father's death. Usually that was a fate preserved for the women of the family.

The opening of Chapter 31 is just...infuriating...but also strangely interesting.

Some of Trollope's choice of language makes me want to reach into the pages and slap him:

At any rate, there was the famine, undoubted now by any one; and death, who in visiting Castle Richmond may be said to have knocked at the towers of a king, was busy enough also among the cabins of the poor. And now the great fault of those who were the most affected was becoming one which would not have been at first sight expected... The fault of the people was apathy. It was the feeling of the multitude that the world and all that was good in it was passing away from them; that exertion was useless, and hope hopeless...

Please explain to me what the people, themselves, could have done? This isn't worthy of Trollope: it's the "blame the poor for being poor" argument that we still hear far too much today.

Exertion WAS useless; hope WAS hopeless. And to boil this down to a lack of faith in God is bitterly cruel.

Yet there's still a sense to me of Trollope arguing against himself - retconning, as I say - that only by accepting and clinging to the "God's mercy" line could he bear to deal with it.

But even then the big picture cannot compete with those moments in which he shows us starvation close up.

There were greatly trusting hearts that could withstand the weight of this terrible pressure, and thinking minds which saw that good would come out of this great evil; but such hearts and such minds were not to be looked for among the suffering poor; and were not, perhaps, often found even among those who were not poor or suffering. It was very hard to be thus trusting and thoughtful while everything around was full of awe and agony.

Yeah. And it probably helped to still be having three meals a day.

Trollope gives himself away by passing from his description of the famine to economic arguments---all the while banging on about "God's mercy".

But there is one ENORMOUS irony in all this that he was not, in 1860, in a position to appreciate; and to which I will return when we wrap up this read.

The rest of Chapter 31 deals with the two standoffs developing in the wake of Sir Thomas's death: Owen's refusal to accept his inheritance; and Clara's refusal to give up Herbert.

I've complained a lot about Trollope not sounding like himself in this book, but here we get a throwaway moment where we can hear his voice:

Aunt Letty on the whole did agree with her, though she greatly disliked her. Miss Fitzgerald had strongly planted within her bosom the prudent old-world notion, that young gentlefolks should not love each other unless they have plenty of money; and that, if unfortunately such did love each other, it was better that they should suffer all the pangs of hopeless love than marry and trust to God and their wits for bread and cheese. To which opinion of Aunt Letty's, as well as to some others entertained by that lady with much pertinacity, I cannot subscribe myself as an adherent.

That's pretty much The Bertrams in half a sentence. :)

The end of this chapter comes back to Paul's point in >97 PaulCranswick: about exactly how "penniless" or otherwise the surviving Fitzgeralds are left by this upheaval:

    Family discussions were held among them as to what they should do, and where they should live in future. Mr Prendergast had written, seeing that Owen had persisted in refusing to make the offer personally himself---saying that there was no hurry for any removal. "Sir Owen," he said,---having considered deeply whether or no he would call him by the title or no, and having resolved that it would be best to do so at once---"Sir Owen was inclined to behave very generously. Lady Fitzgerald could have the house and demesne at any rate for twelve months, and by that time the personal property left by Sir Thomas would be realised, and there would be enough," Mr Prendergast said, "for the three ladies to live 'in decent quiet comfort.'" Mr Prendergast had taken care before he left Castle Richmond that a will should be made and duly executed by Sir Thomas, leaving what money he had to his three children by name,---in trust for their mother's use. Till the girls should be of age that trust would be vested in Herbert.
    "Decent quiet comfort!" said Mary to her brother and sister as they conned the letter over; "how comfortless it sounds!"

"By name": because the children are illegitimate, they must be named as individuals.

And again...it may be "comfortless", but it probably beats starvation...

>147 lyzard: Lord, yes. A lot of this book shows Trollope at his worst. You can see that individual cases of famine struck him deeply, and he doesn’t seem to have any sort of firm idea about what the government should or could do. It’s most disturbing to me, as I’m so fond of AT. And of course I cut my teeth on Dickens and his reforming zeal; I think my first non-American Victorian read was Oliver Twist and we were all familiar with A Christmas Carol as children too.

The only thing I’d add that’s not been mentioned here, I think, is that there was a pretty broad crop failure in Europe which necessitated bringing in the unfamiliar corn (maize) instead of the more familiar oats or barley. Of course that doesn’t excuse government inaction, but does account for this food that they didn’t know how to prepare.

>148 lyzard: I loved that little aside from the author.

>147 lyzard: Yeah. And it probably helped to still be having three meals a day.

I have been wondering about this. Did the gentry not eat potatoes, or did they substitute them with something else? Where did they source their food, from their own estate? AT mentions the Fitzgeralds having breakfast and dinner but never says what they ate (except at Herbert's last meal at Castle Richmond where he can't eat the ham and eggs...)

I looked the famine up in wikipedia. I wondered how other countries had been doing. There were failed potatoe harvests all over northwest Europe, lasting several years. And a bad grain harvest the second year. There was hunger in several other countries as well, but nowhere was it as bad as in Ireland. So prices of all grain products will have gone up, leaving the poor unable to buy.

>149 Matke:, >150 MissWatson:, >151 EllaTim:

All these points are sort of bundled together.

To answer Birgit first, they would have continued to eat normally because they could afford to. There would have been a "home farm" producing at least chickens, eggs, milk and vegetables other than potatoes; possibly mutton and pork (bacon) as well; if not they could afford to buy butcher's meat.

(In Chapter 23 there is a reference to "broiled bones" at breakfast at Hap House: these would have been grilled chops, probably mutton chops. Mollet also has a "steek" at the Kanturk Hotel in Cork, in Chapter 6.)

The reason the potato blight was so devastating was because the Irish poor ate very little else: they often subsisted on enormous meals of just potatoes that they grew themselves, with occasional add-ons if they could afford it. So when the famine came, there was no Plan B.

Gail and Ella are correct in pointing out that there were crop failures across Europe at about this time, which did limit the availability of alternative foodstuffs. But there *was* plenty of corn in England---but no-one wanted to waste it on the Irish when it was a source of huge profits for the English landowners who produced it, particularly at a time when European crops were failing. The imported meal, as I outlined in >51 lyzard:, was a compromise: it was relatively inexpensive and it didn't interfere with English trade crops.

But the level of poverty in the Irish countryside was such that nothing was going to work unless there was almost total subsidisation of whatever was supplied---by taxation, by charity, by government. Wages were low, and as the famine progressed there were less and less ways in which more and more people could earn any money; hence (given the refusal to give food away) the ineffective road-building schemes, and such like. The Irish themselves could not afford to feed themselves following the potato failure, and this was due to the combination of low wages and the discouragement to do anything to improve land by, for example, crop rotation (anyone who improved their rented property was immediately charged more rent).

It all got too big, too fast; and once the meal importation failed, there was no other real attempt to help.

The beginning of Chapter 32 deals with the Fitzgeralds' attempts to sort out their futures.

There's an interesting Trollopean touch here: those of you who have read Phineas Finn might recall that, towards the end, his friends help obtain him a position as Poor-Law Inspector. This wasn't exactly joyous work: the Poor Laws were one one the major points of conflict between the Irish people and the English government; but under the circumstances, it was steady employment.

And here with Herbert:

But Mr Somers gave other advice. In those days Assistant Poor-Law Commissioners were being appointed in Ireland, almost by the score, and Mr Somers declared that Herbert had only to signify his wish for such a position, and he would get it. The interest which he had taken in the welfare of the poor around him was well known, and as his own story was well known also, there could be no doubt that the government would be willing to assist one so circumstanced, and who when assisted would make himself so useful.

But Herbert decides, with his mother and sisters, for the law in London.

There is a great deal of indirect criticism of Sir Thomas here, in the contrast between his behaviour and the decisiveness of the others in the face if their troubles:

    It is astonishing how quickly in this world of ours chaos will settle itself into decent and graceful order, when it is properly looked in the face, and handled with a steady hand which is not sparing of the broom. Some three months since, everything at Castle Richmond was ruin; such ruin, indeed, that the very power of living under it seemed to be doubtful. When first Mr Prendergast arrived there, a feeling came upon them all as though they might hardly dare to live in a world which would look at them as so thoroughly degraded. As regards means, they would be beggars! and as regards position, so much worse than beggars! A broken world was in truth falling about their ears, and it was felt to be impossible that they should endure its convulsions and yet live.
    But now the world had fallen, the ruin had come, and they were already strong in future hopes. They had dared to look at their chaos, and found that it still contained the elements of order...

We also return to the question of what the Fitzgeralds' income will be, going forward. Here at last we get an estimate of what has been recovered from the wreck, and will constitute the family's base income going forward. Whereas before the family had some 14,000 pounds a year, they now have 14,000 pounds total which, invested as Mr Prendergast suggests, will bring them about 400 pounds a year to live on: not a great deal for a family of five living in London.

However---

But one reason for her going Aunt Letty did not give, even to her friend Mrs Townsend. Her income, that which belonged exclusively to herself, was in no way affected by these sad Castle Richmond revolutions. This was a comfortable,---we may say a generous provision for an old maiden lady, amounting to some six hundred a year, settled upon her for life, and this, if added to what could be saved and scraped together, would enable them to live comfortably as far as means were concerned, in that suburban villa to which they were looking forward. But without Aunt Letty's income that suburban villa must be but a poor home. Mr Prendergast had calculated that some fourteen thousand pounds would represent the remaining property of the family, with which it would be necessary to purchase government stock. Such being the case, Aunt Letty's income was very material to them.

I found all this interesting in the light of our constant calculations, when reading The Bertrams, of exactly how much was "enough".

Note too these side-thoughts from Aunt Letty and Mrs Townsend:

    "What story?" asked Aunt Letty.
    "About Lady Clara. Owen Fitzgerald was dreadfully in love with her before your Herbert had ever seen her. And they do say that he has sworn his cousin shall never live if he marries her."
    "They can never marry now, you know. Only think of it. There would be three hundred a year between them.---Not at present, that is," added Aunt Letty, looking forward to a future period after her own death.
    "That is very little, very little indeed," said Mrs Townsend, remembering, however, that she herself had married on less...

In Chapter 33, we return to Herbert's encounter with the dying woman and her children, and the questions raised by Gail in >140 Matke::

And then he looked at her more closely. She had on her some rag of clothing which barely sufficed to cover her nakedness, and the baby which she held in her arms was covered in some sort; but he could see, as he came to stand close over her, that these garments were but loose rags which were hardly fastened round her body. Her rough short hair hung down upon her back, clotted with dirt, and the head and face of the child which she held was covered with dirt and sores. On no more wretched object, in its desolate solitude, did the eye of man ever fall...

There is an impassable gulf between Trollope's attempt to deal with the famine in its entirety as "God's will" and the honest horror of his writing when he is dealing with an individual, as here.

I guess we can understand the former as his attempt to make sense of the catastrophe; and perhaps his unfeelingness was exactly that, an effort not to let himself feel the magnitude of the disaster.

But this scene offers up the reality of famine, and it also touches upon something not made explicit at any point in this novel.

We said at the outset that about two million people emigrated from Ireland as a result of the famine, and that another million starved to death (or died or disease before they could). In that, the majority of the emigrants were men; while the majority of the people who starved to death were women and children.

The dying woman's husband, as it happens, is away in a futile attempt to earn money and buy food; but the reality of the time is that many women and children were abandoned by their men and left to starve.

This is another reason why I go berserk when Trollope says things like (per Chapter 7) "In such periods of misfortune, a woman has always some friend. Let her be who she may, some pair of broad shoulders is forthcoming on which may be laid so much of the burden..."

---though of course, I quite understand that when he does say things like this, when he says "a woman", he means "a lady".

>140 Matke:

Otherwise, though here we do have Herbert himself seeing the vast difference between his personal disaster and that of the Irish people, I'm not convinced that's the "author's voice" as you suggest, Gail; that is, it's not really what we're supposed to take away from the overall narrative. Though certainly it should be. I think overall we're still encouraged to keep our focus on the Fitzgeralds.

How do others feel about this?

Meanwhile, since we're basically at the end of July, can I get a check-in for where people are up to, please?

>156 lyzard: I am finished.

>158 PaulCranswick: Yes I finished it last night too.

>154 lyzard: Good heavens, Yes! What a load of codswallop that idea is!

155 Oh, I see. I think you’re right about the overall point of the book being what is, for Trollope, a pretty thin romance which is lacking in some of the essential pathos, conflict, and drama of the romances in his better books. I’m not even sure why he set the book during the famine because it’s not in any way essential to the plot, and causes some serious authorial problems.

I was trying to say that Herbert’s compassion and sense of horror at the individual tragedy he witnessed—that seemed to me to be true of Trollope as we know him. He’s always capable of understanding and having genuine sympathy and feeling for individuals. But when he tries to deal with the larger social problem here he just falls flat.

I’ve finished the novel.

>159 Matke:

I'll say a bit more about this at the end, but I really think the famine haunted Trollope to the point where he felt obliged to tackle it, particularly as it had otherwise been swept under the carpet (in a literary sense).

>157 japaul22:, >158 PaulCranswick:, >160 Matke:

Thank you for checking in; I will speed up the last section of the book!

>161 lyzard: I would like to be generous to him, Liz, and believe that what he couched in irony hid a deeper sense of shame or pity for the suffering there. It was his defence of the "excellent conduct" of the government of the day which I felt unforgivable.

I have finished it too, and feel somewhat let down by Trollope's handling of his themes. Maybe this is his way of trying to come to grips with the awful situation, but it doesn't really work as a novel. The romance and the famine simply don't mix, he should have concentrated on one or the other.

>163 PaulCranswick:, >164 MissWatson:

I agree with both of you, and we will return to your points when we have wrapped.

Chapters 34 and 35 deal with Herbert's departure from home and resettling in London.

Here we find Trollope in far more recognisable voice:

Now if he had any intention of liberating Clara from the bond of her engagement,---if he really had any feeling that it behoved him not to involve her in the worldly losses which had come upon him,---he was taking a very bad way of carrying out his views in that respect. Instead of confessing the comfort which he had received from that letter, and holding her close to his breast while he did confess it, he should have stood away from her---quite as far apart as he had done from the countess; and he should have argued with her, showing her how foolish and imprudent her letter had been, explaining that it behoved her now to repress her feelings, and teaching her that peers' daughters as well as housemaids should look out for situations which would suit them, guided by prudence and a view to the wages,---not follow the dictates of impulse and of the heart. This is what he should have done, according, I believe, to the views of most men and women. Instead of that he held her there as close as he could hold her, and left her to do the most of the speaking. I think he was right. According to my ideas woman's love should be regarded as fair prize of war,---as long as the war has been carried on with due adherence to the recognised law of nations. When it has been fairly won, let it be firmly held. I have no opinion of that theory of giving up.

Herbert's career choice links this novel to The Bertrams: Trollope, as is evident all over his work, was wary of lawyers---finding dishonesty in the requirement that they argue in favour of anything they were paid to (solicitors were another matter; but gentlemen didn't become solicitors). Here, as in the previous novel, he has Herbert choosing Chancery as---not the most honest, but rather the least dishonest branch of the law.

And there is another connection:

But that house was not yet ready, and so he went into lodgings in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Mr Prendergast had chosen this locality because it was near the chambers of that great Chancery barrister, Mr Die, under whose beneficent wing Herbert Fitzgerald was destined to learn all the mysteries of the Chancery bar.

Mr Die first appeared in Doctor Thorne, where he is consulted over the terms of Roger Scatcherd's will. He then turned up again in The Bertrams, as (briefly) George Bertram's law-mentor.

What is interesting to me is that here, where Mr Die will play a serious part in the working out of the plot, Trollope doesn't mention his first name.

But in those other two appearances, where the barrister is put to some satirical purpose, he is happy enough to reveal it: Neversaye. :D

But he does have a little fun here, naming Herbert's landlady "Mrs Whereas".

On the other hand, Trollope doesn't find much fun in Chancery itself. It had been overhauled and reformed since the days in which Bleak House is set (and had done so before the novel was written, as various irritated parties pointed out at the time); but obviously not everything had changed:

Here, whatever skill there might be, was of a dark subterranean nature, quite unintelligible to any minds but those of experts; and as for fury or fun, there was no spark either of one or of the other. The judge sat back in his seat, a tall, handsome, speechless man, not asleep, for his eye from time to time moved slowly from the dingy barrister who was on his legs to another dingy barrister who was sitting with his hands in his pockets, and with his eyes fixed upon the ceiling. The gentleman who was in the act of pleading had a huge open paper in his hand, from which he droned forth certain legal quiddities of the dullest and most uninteresting nature. He was in earnest, for there was a perpetual energy in his drone, as a droning bee might drone who was known to drone louder than other drones. But it was a continuous energy supported by perseverance, and not by impulse; and seemed to come of a fixed determination to continue the reading of that paper till all the world should be asleep...

In Chapter 36 we find the people around Clara still thinking they can hash out her fate without her co-operation; also, I would say, without properly understanding her:

And then again Owen was silent, walking about the room with his hands behind his back. Then after all the one thing of this world which his eye regarded as desirable was within his reach. He had then been right in supposing that that face which had once looked up to his so full of love had been a true reflex of the girl's heart,---that it had indicated to him love which was not changeable. It was true that Clara, having accepted a suitor at her mother's order, might now be allowed to come back to him! As he thought of this, he wondered at the endurance and obedience of a woman's heart which could thus give up all that it held as sacred at the instance of another. But even this, though it was but little flattering to Clara, by no means lessened the transport which he felt. He had had that pride in himself, that he had never ceased to believe that she loved him. Full of that thought, of which he had not dared to speak, he had gone about, gloomily miserable since the news of her engagement with Herbert had reached him, and now he learned, as he thought with certainty, that his belief had been well grounded. Through all that had passed Clara Desmond did love him still!

This is a curious chapter. I don't think any of us are happy about the way the Owen / Clara situation is presented - about Owen's attitude to the woman he claims to love so much - but while that still persists here, set against it is the better side, or sides, of Owen---in his interaction with the young Earl, and in his compassion for the Fitzgeralds:

"Look here, old fellow, and I'll tell you my views about this. Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, when he married that poor lady who is still staying at Castle Richmond, did so in the face of the world with the full assurance that he made her his legal wife. Whether such a case as this ever occurred before I don't know, but I am sure of this that in the eye of God she is his widow. Herbert Fitzgerald was brought up as the heir to all that estate, and I cannot see that he can fairly be robbed of that right because another man has been a villain. The title he cannot have, I suppose, because the law won't give it him; but the property can be made over to him, and as far as I am concerned it shall be made over. No earthly consideration shall induce me to put my hand upon it, for in doing so I should look upon myself as a thief and a scoundrel."

This passage from Chapter 34 is also telling:

And the young earl, now that Owen's name was again rife in his ears, remembered all the pleasantness of former days. He had never again found such a companion as Owen had been. He had met no other friend to whom he could talk of sport and a man's outward pleasures when his mind was that way given, and to whom he could also talk of soft inward things,---the heart's feelings, and aspirations, and wants. Owen would be as tender with him as a woman, allowing the young lad's arm round his body, listening to words which the outer world would have called bosh...

If we saw more of this Owen, we might sympathise with him more over Clara.

Chapter 37:

This letter, not having slept on the road as Herbert did in Dublin, and having been conveyed with that lightning rapidity for which the British Post-office has ever been remarkable---and especially that portion of it which has reference to the sister island,---was in Mr Prendergast's pocket when Herbert dined with him.

And especially especially that part of the Irish postal service reorganised by one A. Trollope. :D

Chapter 37 is on odd one all around, with more discomfortingly hard references to the famine mixed in with the odd interlude of the turbot, in which we hear Trollope's real voice quite clearly---particularly in showing the better side of Mr Townsend, who hasn't been handled too gently up to this point, and in his sympathy for the contrivances of a woman on very short housekeeping.

He also voices some of that criticism of the English Protestantism of the time that drew so much ire upon him.

Yet even some of this is uncomfortable in context, with the domestic struggles of the middle-class allowed to take precedence over the failing attempts at famine management---in which Trollope even finds a certain humour, granted in the short-sighted over-confidence of the visiting Mr Carter; but still---

    And Mr Carter was ready to provide funds to some moderate extent if all his questions were answered satisfactorily. "There was to be no making of Protestants," he said, "by giving away of soup purchased with his money." Mr Townsend thought that this might have been spared him. "I regret to say," replied he, with some touch of sarcasm, "that we have no time for that now." "And so better," said Mr Carter, with a sarcasm of a blunter sort. "So better. Let us not clog our alms with impossible conditions which will only create falsehood." "Any conditions are out of the question when one has to feed a whole parish," answered Mr Townsend.
    And then Mr Carter would teach them how to boil their yellow meal, on which subject he had a theory totally opposite to the practice of the woman employed at the soup-kitchen. "Av we war to hocus it that, yer riverence," said Mrs Daly, turning to Mr Townsend, "the crathurs couldn't ate a bit of it; it wouldn't bile at all, at all, not like that."
    "Try it, woman," said Mr Carter, when he had uttered his receipt oracularly for the third time.
    "'Deed an' I won't," said Mrs Daly, whose presence there was pretty nearly a labour of love, and who was therefore independent. "It'd be a sin an' a shame to spile Christian vittels in them times, an' I won't do it." And then there was some hard work that day; and though Mr Townsend kept his temper with his visitor, seeing that he had much to get and nothing to give, he did not on this occasion learn to alter his general opinion of his brethren of the English high church...

In Chapter 38, Clara puts the final nail in Owen's coffin, much to the dismay of her family.

We should not this passage particularly: as far as I am aware, this is the only time in all his novels that Trollope allows one of his heroines to change her mind; to have been in love more than once:

She recovered herself, and leaving her brother's arms, walked away to the window, and from thence looked down to that path beneath the elms which was the spot in the world which she thought of the oftenest; but as she gazed, there was no lack of loyalty in her heart to the man to whom she was betrothed. It seemed to her as though those childish days had been in another life; as though Owen had been her lover in another world,---a sweet, childish, innocent, happy world which she remembered well, but which was now dissevered from her by an impassable gulf. She thought of his few words of love,---so few that she remembered every word that he had then spoken, and thought of them with a singular mixture of pain and pleasure. And now she heard of his noble self-denial with a thrill which was in no degree enhanced by the fact that she, or even Herbert, was to be the gainer by it. She rejoiced at his nobility, merely because it was a joy to her to know that he was so noble. And yet all through this she was true to Herbert. Another work-a-day world had come upon her in her womanhood, and as that came she had learned to love a man of another stamp, with a love that was quieter, more subdued, and perhaps, as she thought, more enduring. Whatever might be Herbert's lot in life, that lot she would share. Her love for Owen should never be more to her than a dream.

This is certainly why Clara is so young during her first encounters with Owen; and I suspect it is also why Trollope doesn't apply to Clara's thought processes the kind of detailed examination that we're used to. Even though he needs this situation for his plot, he's not comfortable with it, and is effectively making excuses for Clara that she hardly needs.

And Clara having announced her determination to cling to Herbert no matter what - and that anyway is recognisably Trollopean - she is immediately rewarded for it:

Chapter 38:

And now Mr Pindargrasp I ave a terrible secret to hunraffel wich will put the sadel on the rite orse at last and as I does hall this agin my own guvnor wich of corse I love derely I do hope Mr Pindargrasp you wont see me haltoogether left in the lerch. A litel something to go on with at furst wood be very agrebbel for indeed Mr Pindargrasp its uncommon low water with your umbel servant at this presant moment. And now wat I has to say is this---Lady Fits warnt niver my guvnors wife hat all becase why hed a wife alivin has I can pruv and will and shes alivin now number 7 Spinny lane Centbotollfs intheheast...

We might be disappointed with this, but we can hardly be surprised. Trollope might have gotten away with an illegitimate hero, though they had very much gone out of fashion since the 18th century; but he wasn't capable of punishing Lady Fitzgerald in perpetuity for a "sin" that was none of her own making; nor of having her live in sin for some twenty-five years.

At various points in the Fitzgeralds' woes Trollope has pondered the difference between "law" and "justice", and Mr Prendergast gets the worst of "law" here. Having insisted upon the need to instantaneously adjust the legality of the Fitzgeralds' situation, he has inadvertently been the driving force behind a great injustice---as Mr Die points out with some glee in Chapter 41:

At the end of the hour Herbert was summoned into the sanctum, and there he found Mr Die sitting in his accustomed chair, with his body much bent, nursing the calf of his leg, which was always enveloped in a black, well-fitting close pantaloon, and smiling very blandly. Mr Prendergast had in his countenance not quite so sweet an aspect. Mr Die had repeated to him, perhaps once too often, a very well-known motto of his; one by the aid of which he professed to have steered himself safely through the shoals of life---himself and perhaps some others. It was a motto which he would have loved to see inscribed over the great gates of the noble inn to which he belonged; and which, indeed, a few years since might have been inscribed there with much justice. "Festinâ lentè," Mr Die would say to all those who came to him in any sort of hurry. And then when men accused him of being dilatory by premeditation, he would say no, he had always recommended despatch. "Festinâ," he would say; "festinâ" by all means; but "festinâ lentè." The doctrine had at any rate thriven with the teacher, for Mr Die had amassed a large fortune.

"Festinâ lentè" = "make haste slowly".

But Mr Prendergast does redeem himself with his hunting down of Mr Mollet in Chapters 39 and 40, even if some of his anger with Mollet is undoubtedly dissatisfaction with himself:

    "In the whole course of my life I never came across so mean a scoundrel; and now you chaffer with me as to whether or no you shall criminate yourself! Scoundrel and villain as you are---a double-dyed scoundrel, still there are reasons why I shall not wish to have you gibbeted, as you deserve."
    "Oh, sir, he has done nothing that would come to that!" said the poor wife.
    "You had better let the gentleman finish," said the daughter. "He doesn't mean that father will be hung."
    "It would be too good for him," said Mr Prendergast, who was now absolutely almost out of temper. "But I do not wish to be his executioner. For the peace of that family which you have so brutally plundered and ill used, I shall remain quiet,---if I can attain my object without a public prosecution. But, remember, that I guarantee nothing to you. For aught I know you may be in gaol before the night is come. All I have to tell you is this, that if by obtaining a confession from you I am able to restore my friends to their property without a prosecution, I shall do so. Now you may answer me or not, as you like."
    "Trust him, father," said the daughter. "It will be best for you."
    "But I have told him everything," said Mollett. "What more does he want of me?"
    "I want you to give your written acknowledgement that when you went through that ceremony of marriage with Miss Wainwright in Dorsetshire, you committed bigamy, and that you knew at that time that you were doing so."

The contrivance of Clara Desmond sticking by her man is slightly off-kilter when we consider how easily she assented not to follow her heart when her feelings were initially much stronger for Owen. For me, it is another false note and gives me little patience with her. The mother, I much more understand.

>173 PaulCranswick: Although I can't defend Clara completely, I do understand her. I think this passage from Chapter XI when she first accepts Herbert makes me feel for Clara:

And then Herbert Fitzgerald had come across her path, and those sweet, loving, kind Fitzgerald girls, who were always ready to cover her with such sweet caresses, with whom she had known more of the happiness of friendliness than ever she had felt before. They threw themselves upon her like sisters, and she had never before enjoyed sisterly treatment.....Lady Fitzgerald had welcomed her like a mother, with more caressing soft tenderness than her own mother usually vouchsafed to her; and even Sir Thomas had gone out of his usual way to be kind to her.

This quote is always in the back of mind when I think of Clara.

Remember that Clara's only brother is mostly away at school and her mother is extremely distant. I think if I had to choose between dismal Desmond Court (since her mother has made it clear that Owen is out of the question) and the full life of Castle Richmond, there would be no doubt in my mind which way to go. And everything that has been rumored about Owen and the goings-on at Hap House could hardly recommend it or be enticing enough to fight for.

>174 kac522: Owen's bad reputation is the cause of Clara's rejection of him, according to Trollope. It doesn't feel very convincing though for such a young and lonely girl. I would have thought the story more believable if she had stuck to him and defended him at least at first.

>173 PaulCranswick:, >174 kac522:, >175 EllaTim:

We can understand it in broad outline but what we do not get is the close dissection of thoughts and feelings that we expect from Trollope. Also, we tend to be given Clara's motives after the event, rather than when she is going through her decision-making process.

As I say, I think Trollope needed this situation, but he himself bought into the Victorian dogma that - for a girl at least - first love should be last love, and that a girl who did change her mind, however justified in doing so, wasn't quite "nice".

Once Mr Prendergast pins down Mollet and proves that the Fitzgeralds' marriage was valid after all, and the children therefore legitimate, the pieces fall quickly into place---well for the Fitzgerald family, not so well for others.

Though we may be dissatisfied with Trollope's general handling of his love-triangle, it is interesting that he allows Clara to go on clinging to her vision of the better side of Owen, even when she is fully committed to Herbert. In this there is a glimmering of foreshadowing of the far more complex back-story to the Palliser novels.

It is also interesting that Trollope lets the Mollets off the - legal - hook; chalking up their escape to an avoidance of the publicity that would result from exposing them; but he insists they haven't, and cannot, escape their general punishment.

And we get here another of Trollope's allusions to Dickens:

Chapter 42:

One would say that the rascal, if he but knew the truth, would look forward to Spike Island and the Bermudas with impatience and raptures. The cold, hungry, friendless, solitary doom of unconvicted rascaldom has ever seemed to me to be the most wretched phase of human existence,---that phase of living in which the liver can trust no one, and be trusted by none; in which the heart is ever quailing at the policeman's hat, and the eye ever shrinking from the policeman's gaze. The convict does trust his gaoler, at any rate his master gaoler, and in so doing is not all wretched. It is Bill Sikes before conviction that I have ever pitied. Any man can endure to be hanged; but how can any man have taken that Bill Sikes' walk and have lived through it?

Spike Island was in Cork Harbour: it had a military and possibly monastic history, but it was converted into a prison in 1847---specifically to deal with the vast numbers of people convicted of theft during the famine; at which point it held the undesirable reputation of being "the biggest prison in the British Empire".

Convicts were transported to Bermuda between 1823 and 1863.

>177 lyzard: In this there is a glimmering of foreshadowing of the far more complex back-story to the Palliser novels.

I know I immediately thought of Burgo Fitzgerald when I first became acquainted with this Owen. Not sure if that's what you mean.

There's really only one more point I want to deal with here (thank goodness! they cry), and that is Trollope's handling of the Countess of Desmond.

Trollope is unforgiving of the Countess for (as he repeatedly puts it) "selling herself for a title", though of course such behaviour was standard practice for the aristocracy: presumably her sin was co-operating, or even being pro-active, rather than being forced into it by her parents.

The difference in tone between the references to the Countess' marriage and that of Mary Wainwright, who presumably didn't love her husband either, are striking---particularly when it is made clear that the future Countess was hardly older at the time than was "Mrs Talbot".

Trollope presents the Countess' life as one long punishment for her early sin: she has her title, and along with it she has poverty and loneliness---and marriage to, we gather, a very unpleasant man. But the final blow is when she falls in unrequited love with Owen. This too is presented as punishment: the girl who sold herself learns too late that she has a heart.

Though Trollope is uncompromising and rather unsympathetic in his handling of this, he does one thing that is entirely praiseworthy: he takes the Countess' feelings seriously. He never treats her love for Owen as either ridiculous or revolting---on account of her own age, or on account of the age difference between them. These days of course we don't see the Countess as remotely "old", and certainly not beyond the age of love, but her society's views were very different. Here, Trollope is more generous than his contemporaries.

The Countess' toggling between "I will love him as a lover" and "I will love him as a mother" is uncomfortable, but even here Trollope finds something admirable in her willingness to sacrifice her own desires for Clara's good; even if she can't see further than Clara's wordly good. In fact, the Countess' shortcomings as a mother make her self-sacrifice all the more notable.

But the Countess' final bitter punishment is that there is no real scope for sacrifice: Clara goes her own way, uninfluenced - at least once she reaches womanhood - by a mother with whom she has little emotional connection; and Owen never thinks of her except as Clara's mother---until she forces him to do so:

Chapter 43:

"Yes, we will part," she said. And as she spoke the blood mantled deep on her neck and cheek and forehead, and a spirit came out of her eye, such as never had shone there before in his presence. "Yes, we will part," and she took up his right hand, and held it closely, pressed between both her own. "And as we must part I will tell you all. Owen Fitzgerald, I have loved you with all my heart,---with all the love that a woman has to give. I have loved you, and have never loved any other. Stop, stop," for he was going to interrupt her. "You shall hear me now to the last,---and for the last time. I have loved you with such love---such love as you perhaps felt for her, but as she will never feel..."

>178 kac522:

Yes, though Owen is a much better man. Clara is able to go on thinking of him kindly without any harm to herself, but Glencora never forgets Burgo, and never gets over being separated from him, despite how her life plays out from that point. THAT is Trollope's view of "first love", no matter how unsatisfactory the object of that love.

>179 lyzard: You could also say the Lady Fitzgerald is punished twice: first with her disastrous marriage to Talbot and then the grief it brings upon her, her husband (who I think she does love) and her children, many years later. I don't think either woman gets off easily.

>180 lyzard:

They don't, but Trollope is at pains to contrast the Countess' culpability in her fate with Lady Fitzgerald's "innocence". Given how little agency women had when these two were making their disastrous first marriages, it seems a bit cruel to pile on so much in the first case.

(Clara's independence of her mother is presented as another sign of the Countess' failings, but it is also evidence that the world was changing.)

And I think that's all! - and perhaps more than enough. :)

Those of you who have finished, please give us all your thoughts here, and make any more of those comments you referred to on the way through (Gail, Paul, I'm looking at you!).

And let's discuss the unavoidable question: what the hell was Trollope trying to do with this novel??

>183 lyzard: There's a question! I don't know what Trollope tried to do, but what he achieved with me, is that he showed clearly how absurd it is to determine a persons value by the value of his inherited fortune. Herbert goes from being the worthy inheritor of title and money to being a worthless and penniless pauper, at least in the eyes of his class. And not through a fault of his own, no because of a mistake his parents made. And then later it turns out that his fortune is restored because of something some rascal has done! In fact doesn't Trollope show here clearly that the whole class system means nothing?

>183 lyzard: I felt like Trollope wanted to write a novel that acknowledged the potato famine, but he also didn't have a good idea of how to do that without including an upper class love story. I do wonder if he thought initially that Herbert losing his inheritance would in some way parallel the famine, though if so it was completely unsuccessful. Then I wondered if including the Mollets and the bar scenes was supposed to draw the eye to the poorer classes, but even this social sphere seems above the famine in the book. So, again no, or at least not successful. It really did just seem like a completely separate story line.

So I don't know. I guess he couldn't bring himself to write a book completely exploring the famine. I kept thinking of Thomas Hardy's books and wondering if Trollope would have been more willing to choose to set the whole love story among the poorest people suffering from the family if Hardy's work had come a little earlier to influence him.

>154 lyzard: The most memorable scene to me is Herbert and Clara meeting the woman and her children starving. I felt like this was a more honest glimpse of the feelings that made Trollope want to write about the famine. BUT, I also was upset that Herbert, before giving her any money, has to distrust the woman and her situation and grill her on why she isn't making different decisions.

This book didn't work for me very well because of the competing authorial interests that never really came together for me. I'm glad I came to it with a deep love for Trollope's work already, or I'm not sure it would make me want to read more!

>185 japaul22: I can only say “amen” to your last paragraph. I didn’t hate the book, by any means, but it failed to work for me on many levels, most especially of course the famine.

>183 lyzard: Really, I’m not sure what Trollope’s purpose was here. If we compare it to some of his other books, it’s clear that often he uses a romance or three as the sort of bedrock plot for discussing political or clerical problems and issues of the day. I guess that was his intention here, but he was totally out of his depth in trying to analyze the famine. Perhaps because the results of the famine were much more tragic than, say, the results of the Reform Act? I don’t know. I thought he failed on both fronts here, which was really disappointing, given my love of his work.

Thank you for adding your thoughts; please keep 'em coming!

I think in fairness we do need to bring front and centre the fact that Trollope was the *only* author of his time to try tackling the famine in a novel.

And if he'd written a book just about the famine, no-one would have published it.

So we can accept the love-triangle plot as a smokescreen.

Perhaps as Gail says that explains the lack of the usual analysis, the lack of proper interweaving of the domestic plot with the broader scope of the novel. But it seems to have worked at the time. As I mentioned in >65 lyzard: critics accepted Castle Richmond as a love-plot novel and objected to the famine chiefly as interfering with that aspect of it (and presumably as a downer).

But the handling of the famine is deeply troubling.

Here perhaps the point to keep in mind is that Castle Richmond was written thirteen years after the event. Obviously it was still deeply troubling to Trollope, as evidenced by the fact that he came back to those experiences in a novel. Perhaps during the intervening time he found that the only way he could process what had happened was by accepting it as "God's will", even "God's mercy", a scheme which also allowed him to write off the British government's inaction as part of the divine scheme.

Of course this is hardly satisfactory, to put it mildly; but how do you process a disaster of this magnitude?

"God's mercy" is a lot harder to take than "God's will", though, and where I feel above all that Trollope fails here is in Chapter 31, where it puts it all into blunt economic terms---so that his arguments end up boiling down to, "God killed a million people to slightly raise the minimum wage."

But his insistence upon the improved conditions in Ireland as a result of the famine bring me to irony I mentioned in >147 lyzard:...

Trollope was a few times caught out in his novels in trying to predict the future---chiefly where he was unable to see past his own conservativism.

For example in the historical novel, La Vendée, which deals with Royalist resistance to the French Revolution - and which was written in 1850, just after the abolition of the monarchy following the failed reign of Louis Philippe. At various points in his novel, Trollope voices his assurance that sooner of later the French people would come to their senses and re-establish the "real" monarchy and everything would get back to normal...

(Trollope expressed his opinion of the "elected king" in Doctor Thorne, where the "revolutionary" Roger Scatcherd names his son "Louis Philippe"; of course he turns out to be a drunken weakling.)

When Trollope was arguing for improved conditions in Ireland as a result of the famine, he clearly didn't anticipate that this would form the basis for a new wave of Irish revolt against the English.

This began in the late 1870s - so nearly 20 years after Castle Richmond - with the forming of the Irish National Land League, which fought to abolish landlordism and for the owning of Ireland by the Irish. The years 1879 - 1882 were taken up with the so-called "Land Wars", which led to a concerted campaign to break the grip of the landlords and culminated in a rent strike.

Though it took years of fighting the Irish were eventually successful in forcing complete reform of land ownership and, effectively, the abolition of landlordism---and their success in this area formed the basis for a new campaign for "home rule".

It's doubtful Trollope foresaw much of that when he was praising conditions in Ireland post-famine

BUT---clearly he never lost the Irish burr in his saddle-blanket: his last novel, left unfinished and published posthumously in 1882 was The Landleaguers, which deals with the Land Wars.

So he finished his writing career as he began it: with a serious Irish novel. :)

>184 EllaTim:

Sorry, Ella, I didn't mean to skip your comment.

Trollope may have done that but I'm sure he trying to do the opposite: his argument is that Herbert is able to deal with the great adversity that comes to him because of his birth and breeding.

Trollope's attitude to the aristocracy and to "rule by birth" is difficult to pin down. He often makes fun of ungentlemanly members of Parliament, but he also has plenty of aristocratic wasters and failures. Still, we get a sense throughout that he did feel that gentlemen, if not members of the upper classes per se, were best fitted to govern the nation---perhaps because their situation permitted them a broader view of conditions; and of course because a career in politics (prior to the introduction of salaries for MPs in 1911, which had long been fought over, and which Trollope strenuously disapproved) was likely to be a "family affair" to which individuals were brought up.

Liz, thank you for doing this. I'm sure that we all got more out of the book than we expected and probably more than the novel itself deserved.

For me the juxtapositions didn't work.

The private drama of the Desmonds and Fitzgeralds didn't sit well with the public drama of the Irish famine.
The idea of poverty being defined by less wealth in country estates with servants does not sit well with the absolute poverty of those starving to death.

I am an obtuse fellow occasionally but my sympathies were in large part with Mary Desmond and Owen. Would that the foolish chap had opened his eyes in the early chapters and thrown off the insipid daughter and bedded the willing and glamorous mother we could have been done in twenty chapters!

I agree with the others that I cannot quite see what Trollope wanted to achieve with this novel, so that would be the main failure. I also think that he was unduly cruel to Lady Desmond ( and I loved >191 PaulCranswick: Paul's comment!). I haven't got my notes at hand, so I can't name the exact chapter, but there was a point where he said that Clara at sixteen was a child when she fell for Owen and had reached womanhood when she chose Herbert at a mere seventeen which I find a very creepy concept.

>192 MissWatson: Yes, Birgit, the idea of childhood at sixteen and womanhood at seventeen doesn't even sit well with a modern readership. Her determination to cling to Herbert is woefully at odds with the ease with which she dispensed with the notion of accepting Owen. The letter she sends to Castle Richmond professing her willingness to accept him in "penury" rings false considering the relative disinterest in her betrothed to that point. Surely had she loved Owen as she claimed she would have thrown Herbert's misfortune back at her mother and again insisted on Owen.

I don't quite buy being swayed by the tales of Owen's misconduct as they were living in relative seclusion and gossip of such nature would not easily travel to those not mobile enough to receive it. She already knew Owen's reputation as a man of sports before "deciding" to fall in love with him so she would not have been swayed by idle gossip.

>192 MissWatson: there was a point where he said that Clara at sixteen was a child when she fell for Owen and had reached womanhood when she chose Herbert at a mere seventeen which I find a very creepy concept.

This reminded me of a song from The Sound of Music - Sixteen Going on Seventeen.

Just checking in to say I am proceeding at a snail/tortoise pace with this one but currently up to Ch 26.

>188 lyzard: I think in fairness we do need to bring front and centre the fact that Trollope was the *only* author of his time to try tackling the famine in a novel.

And if he'd written a book just about the famine, no-one would have published it.

I agree completely. I would add that his portrayal of the Irish people as a whole throughout the novel is important at a time when anti-Irish sentiment was pervasive. He portrays the Irish as no more lazy than anyone else, that the Catholic priest could actually be a humane cleric, and that common people were stuck between a rock and a hard place due to the economic system. I suspect that part of the motivation was to humanize the Irish that he had grown to admire for British middle-class readers.

>191 PaulCranswick:

I'm glad you've found this helpful, Paul. Thank you too for adding your comments.

I think we're all pretty much agreed about the novel's failings, but I also think the points that Kathy makes in >196 kac522: are very important, and that we need to do Trollope justice in that respect.

>195 souloftherose:

Don't worry about it, Heather. Just continue on as you feel like it---and of course add your thoughts here when you do finish! :)

>196 kac522: >197 lyzard: Yes, I can see the justice in those comments by Kathy too. He didn't portray most of the suffering Irish in a particularly negative manner and I did notice that his Priest compared at least as favourably in relation to his Parsons!

I tried to give credit to Trollope for his ironies but ultimately I did condemn the spirited defence of the Liberal government who utterly failed to square their principles with their humanity.

>199 PaulCranswick:

It's all eerily familiar, though, isn't it? - "We know what the right thing to do is, and we *could* do it...but it would interfere with our profits..."

>200 lyzard: Hahaha I can't conceive what you could be referring to, Liz!

>196 kac522: I thought his description of the unquestioning servility of the peasants to their lords and "masthers" a little too pat, as if they accepted exploitation and poverty as God-given and their just deserts. But his stance towards the Catholic clergy is definitely a point in his favour.

ETC

I do take lots of notes and mark pages to refer back to, but most of that is for personal amusement, reference, or expansion of points someone has made (even if that someone is the author). So it’s more light-hearted, usually. I don’t know that they would interest anyone else...

Examples:

Chapter 5
He liked little bits of learning, the easy outsides and tags of classical acquirements, which come so easily within the scope of the memory when a man has passed some ten years between a public school and a university.

Trollope is defending Herbert when Owen thinks of him as a “prig.” But isn’t he defending himself as well? Trollope likes nothing better that a classical tag (often in the Latin). And here’s an example of AT using that kind of thing:

Chapter 36
There has been no period of flood in his tide which might lead him to fortune. (A use of Shakespeare, from Julius Caesar, I think, even if it’s a little inside out.)
xxxxxxxx

Chapter 31
But they are wrong, for there would be as much romance after forty as before, I take it, were it not checked by the fear of ridicule.
Here Owen has just reflected that older people don’t experience romantic love.
xxxxxxxxx

Chapter 34
...the heart is capable of cure as is the body; were it not so, how terrible would our fate be in this world...I, for one, think that the heart should receive its new spouses with what alacrity it may, and always with thankfulness.
Herbert has been a little sour about how soon people change or transfer their feelings.

>202 MissWatson:

Though given that we have accepted a lot of Trollope's other descriptions of Ireland and the Irish people, perhaps this is closer to the mark than we like? It may be a behaviour he witnessed.

>203 Matke:

Thanks for those, Gail; how about this one?---also in the context of analysing the Countess' behaviour and the "right" age to be in love:

"Take care that thou also art not carried off by a wrinkled earl. Is thy heart free from all vanity? Of what nature is the heroism that thou worshippest?" "A nice young man!" she says, boldly, though in words somewhat different. "If so it will be well for thee; but did I not see thine eyes hankering the other day after the precious stones of Ophir, and thy mouth watering for the flesh-pots of Egypt? Was I not watching thee as thou sattest at that counter, so frightfully intent? Beware!" "The grumpy old fellow with the bald head!" she said shortly afterwards to her bosom friend, not careful that her words should be duly inaudible...

:D

Yes, Julius Caesar----

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

(Agatha has a novel called Taken At The Flood of course...which in America had its title changed to There Is A Tide...of course...)

>204 lyzard: Very likely!

Well---I'm still hoping that Heather will drop by with some final remarks*, but in the meantime I wanted to thank you all for your participation here. This is a difficult book, and I'm grateful so many of you stuck it out, and made this such a positive experience via your comments.

In addition, I'd like to offer a special vote of thanks to Paul for breaking up the usual group read oestrogen-party. :D

(*ETA: No pressure!)

>208 EllaTim: Thanking you, Liz, for providing so much interesting background, and insights. I liked the discussion here, it has really added to the reading experience!

>208 EllaTim:

Thanks, Ella, that's really good to hear. :)

Yes, thank you Liz! This wasn't my favorite Trollope novel, but these group reads always add to my understanding and enjoyment. Any plans for what would be next?!

>210 japaul22:

Ah, well, since you're asking... :D

Trollope published a book of short stories next; and while I haven't read Tales Of All Countries (but mean to), I'm not sure that it would work as a group project.

The next novel in line is Orley Farm, which I have read but would be happy to re-read.

I didn't read the book but have followed, with interest, this thread so I feel as though I have!

Many thanks from me, too, Liz. I find the explanations extremely helpful! I would be around for Orley Farm.

I'll be around for Orley Farm, too!

One more thought on Castle Richmond. Would contemporary readers have made any comparison between this book and A Tale of Two Cities, which had been published a year earlier? Dickens' book also set a romance against a political backdrop, and he was more successful in pulling it off.

My apologies again for getting so behind on the read and then for getting even more behind on commenting. Thank you to Liz for leading and for everyone else who contributed - I did enjoy reading the comments and conversations as I read along.

I don't think I have anything particular to add as I seem to agree with the consensus on this one - I'm still pretty shaken/appalled by the idea the famine could be viewed as a blessing/mercy from God. And I felt the Fitzgerald/Desmond plotline lacked Trollope's usual nuance and depth of character. So, I think Castle Richmond as the dubious honour of being my least favourite Trollope novel (and probably this had an effect on how slowly I made my way through it).

I would definitely be interested in Orley Farm at some point which I haven't read - I should be under less pressure at work from October.

>215 souloftherose:

No worries at all, my dear. I agree this is not the sort of book you zip through and find extra reading times for. Thank you for sticking with it! :)

I haven't begun to think about a slot for Orley Farm but if October suits you I might start asking around.

(Meanwhile, sigh, I fell off The Yellow Wallpaper and really need to scoot back over there...)