Castle Richmond by Anthony Trollope

Castle Richmond Book Cover

Castle Richmond by Anthony Trollope was published in 1860, the setting is mainly County Cork, Ireland, at the time of the potato famine of 1846 – 47.

Castle Richmond is owned by Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, he’s wealthy with adult children, a son Herbert and two daughters. His wife, Lady Fitzgerald, had been married previously, but her husband had died in France apparently and Sir Thomas had set his lawyers to find evidence of his death before marrying. The eldest son is expected to inherit the estate and all that goes with it, and as was usual with  wealthy Irish landowners Herbert  hadn’t been trained in any profession for that reason. He has fallen in love with a local lass, Lady Clara, the young daughter of an impoverished but ‘aristocratic’ widow and they plan to marry. Unfortunately Lady Clara had been very briefly attached to Herbert’s cousin Owen Fitzgerald not long before. Her mother had put a stop to that as Owen didn’t have enough money for her liking, but more importantly she rather fancies the young man for herself despite him being years younger than her, young enough to be her son really. It’s a tricky situation especially as Owen is determined not to give up Clara.

When Sir Thomas begins to be visited by some English ne’er do wells – a father and son – Sir Thomas’s health takes a turn for the worse, something is obviously worrying him but he is keeping it to himself.  Eventually he has to admit the reason for the visitors arriving, the worst has happened and it seems that Lady Fitzgerald’s first husband is still alive, which means that the children are all illegitimate and of course Herbert will not inherit anything at all, they will be penniless and homeless on the death of Sir Thomas – and cousin Owen will inherit the estate.

I did enjoy this book although some parts of the plot are predictable – see above, apparently it wasn’t one of Trollope’s  more popular books. Parts of it are about the potato famine, I imagine that may not have been popular with readers but it is I’m sure a very authentic portrayal of those times, and it’s desperately sad.  There’s also quite a bit of Protestant/Catholic antagonism with Trollope being more sympathetic to the Catholics, which won’t have gone down well with many readers.

There are some light moments though, when Herbert’s aunt is trying to persuade him to become a church minister, with an eye to him being a bishop:

Aunt Letty was strong for the Church. A young man who had distinguished himself at the University so signally as her nephew had done, taking his degree at the very first attempt, and that in so high a class of honour as the fourth, would not fail to succeed in the Church.

Who knew that there was such a thing as a fourth class degree?!

This is the first Trollope with an Irish setting that I’ve read. Related titles with a similar setting are

An Eye for an Eye

The Kellys and the O’Kellys

The Landleaguers

The Macdermots Of Ballycloran

I might get around to those ones – sometime.

It seems that I read An Eye for an Eye back in 2015 and I blogged about it then. That’s the advantage of blogging as I just had a vague memory that I might have read it, well it was about ten years ago.

 

 

Girl With Green Eyes by Edna O’Brien

Girl with Green Eyes

Girl With Green Eyes by Edna O’Brien is the second book in her trilogy featuring Caithleen Brady and her old schoolfriend and sometime bully Baba. It was published in 1962 and is sometimes titled The Lonely Girl. At the end of the last book – The Country Girls they were expelled from their convent school and amazingly they’ve been allowed to leave their homes and move to Dublin where Baba is to attend college while Caithleen is working in a grocery.

The girls are determined to make the most of the freedom from their families and scrimp and scrape to get the money to go to dances. It isn’t long before Caithleen is again involved with a much older man – as happened in the first book. He isn’t a Catholic and is already married with a child, but his wife has gone to America to get a divorce. When Caithleen’s father hears of her behaviour with a married man he goes to Dublin, determined to rescue his daughter from mortal sin and the fires of hell. It doesn’t seem to matter to anyone that Caithleen is over 21 and entitled to do what she wants with her life. It’s a very paternalistic society with the Roman Catholic priests and bishops at the top of the tree.

This is another enjoyable read with quite a lot of humour in it but it also rings so true about how women in Ireland were treated by men, and the church still thinking that it’s their right to treat them like mentally subnormal children if they didn’t obey priests and bishops. At one point I feared that Caithleen was going to end up incarcerated in a convent – as that did happen to some poor women even in the 1960s when their family thought they might ‘give the family a bad name’. Ironic really since so many of the men had a serious problem with drink and abused their wives. I well remember the singer Sinead O’Connor saying in an interview that her Granny had warned her never to marry an Irishman!

These books caused such a furore in Ireland when they were first published, they’re so autobiographical but the locals didn’t appreciate her honesty. You might be interested in watching the interview with Edna O’Brien below.

The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien

The Country Girls cover

The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien was first published in 1960 and it’s a slim read at just 186 pages. It was the author’s first book and there are two other books by her featuring Caithleen, a young girl still at school and her sometime friend but often her bully Baba. Caithleen is smart and gets a scholarship to the supposedly prestigious convent school but Baba’s parents have to pay for her to go there.

Life for females in Ireland has never been easy what with most of the men apparently having a drink problem and being abusive in various ways, the women being downtrodden by their families and the Catholic Church. Until recently it was still like that but it seems to be changing – too slowly.

I loved this one with the two young girls refusing to be ruled by their families and the church, and getting up to all sorts of nonsense. The blurb on the back says: ‘Excellent and highly unusual blend of bawdiness and innocence’Evening Standard.

I don’t often buy books from the internet but I bought the second one in this series Girl With Green Eyes (also titled The Lonely Girls) – so that I could continue reading the adventures of Caithleen and Baba.