Castle Richmond | Page 4

Desmonds were not so potent either for
good or ill. The late earl had chosen to live in London all his life, and
had sunk down to be the toadying friend, or perhaps I should more
properly say the bullied flunky, of a sensual, wine-bibbing,
gluttonous----king. Late in life when he was broken in means and
character, he had married. The lady of his choice had been chosen as an
heiress; but there had been some slip between that cup of fortune and
his lip; and she, proud and beautiful, for such she had been--had neither
relieved nor softened the poverty of her profligate old lord.
She was left at his death with two children, of whom the eldest, Lady
Clara Desmond, will be the heroine of this story. The youngest, Patrick,
now Earl of Desmond, was two years younger than his sister, and will
make our acquaintance as a lad fresh from Eton.
In these days money was not plentiful with the Desmonds. Not but that
their estates were as wide almost as their renown, and that the
Desmonds were still great people in the country's estimation. Desmond
Court stood in a bleak, unadorned region, almost among the mountains,
halfway between Kanturk and Maccoom, and the family had some

claim to possession of the land for miles around. The earl of the day
was still the head landlord of a huge district extending over the whole
barony of Desmond, and half the adjacent baronies of Muskerry and
Duhallow; but the head landlord's rent in many cases hardly amounted
to sixpence an acre, and even those sixpences did not always find their
way into the earl's pocket. When the late earl had attained his sceptre,
he might probably have been entitled to spend some ten thousand
a-year; but when he died, and during the years just previous to that, he
had hardly been entitled to spend anything.
But, nevertheless, the Desmonds were great people, and owned a great
name. They had been kings once over those wild mountains; and would
be still, some said, if every one had his own. Their grandeur was shown
by the prevalence of their name. The barony in which they lived was
the barony of Desmond. The river which gave water to their cattle was
the river Desmond. The wretched, ragged, poverty-stricken village near
their own dismantled gate was the town of Desmond. The earl was Earl
of Desmond--not Earl Desmond, mark you; and the family name was
Desmond. The grandfather of the present earl, who had repaired his
fortune by selling himself at the time of the Union, had been Desmond
Desmond, Earl of Desmond.
The late earl, the friend of the most illustrious person in the kingdom,
had not been utterly able to rob his heir of everything, or he would
undoubtedly have done so. At the age of twenty-one the young earl
would come into possession of the property, damaged certainly, as far
as an actively evil father could damage it by long leases, bad
management, lack of outlay, and rack renting;--but still into the
possession of a considerable property. In the mean time it did not fare
very well, in a pecuniary way, with Clara, the widowed countess, or
with the Lady Clara, her daughter. The means at the widow's disposal
were only those which the family trustees would allow her as the earl's
mother: on his coming of age she would have almost no means of her
own; and for her daughter no provision whatever had been made.
As this first chapter is devoted wholly to the locale of my story, I will
not stop to say a word as to the persons or characters of either of these
two ladies, leaving them, as I did the Castle Richmond family, to come
forth upon the canvas as opportunity may offer. But there is another
homestead in this same barony of Desmond, of which and of its

owner--as being its owner--I will say a word.
Hap House was also the property of a Fitzgerald. It had originally been
built by an old Sir Simon Fitzgerald, for the use and behoof of a second
son, and the present owner of it was the grandson of that man for whom
it had been built. And old Sir Simon had given his offspring not only a
house--he had endowed the house with a comfortable little slice of land,
either out from the large patrimonial loaf, or else, as was more probable,
collected together and separately baked for this younger branch of the
family. Be that as it may, Hap House had of late years been always
regarded as conferring some seven or eight hundred a-year upon its
possessor, and when young Owen Fitzgerald succeeded to this property,
on the death of an uncle in the year