HARRIETT JAY BOOK REVIEWS

1. The Queen of Connaught (1875) to The Priest’s Blessing (1881)

1. Novels

The following is taken from Ireland in Fiction: A Guide to Irish Novels, Tales, Romances, and Folk-Lore by Stephen J. Brown, S.J. (Dublin and London: Maunsel and Company, Ltd., 1916 - p.121):

JAY, Harriett. A sister-in-law and adopted daughter of the late Robert Buchanan, Scottish poet and novelist. She lived for some years in Mayo, and the result of her observations was two good novels. She wrote also Madge Dunraven, and some other novels, not of Irish interest.

— THE QUEEN OF CONNAUGHT. (Chatto & Windus). Picture boards. 2s. n.d. (1875).
     How an Englishman, John Bermingham, fell in love with and married the descendant of an old western family. How he tried, but failed, to reform with English ideas the Connaught peasantry. Told with considerable power and insight. Note especially the description of a police hunt over the mountains in the snow. Has been dramatised.

— THE DARK COLLEEN. Three Vols. (Bentley). 1876.
     Scene: an island off the W. coast. Morna Dunroon finds a French sailor, survivor of a shipwreck. She afterwards marries him, but he abandons her and goes back to France. She follows him, and passes through strange adventures, but he is still false to her. Nemesis follows in the end. Father Moy is a fine portrait of a priest. The dialect and the scenery are both true to the reality, the description of the storm at the close is particularly well done.

— THE PRIEST’S BLESSING; or, Poor Patrick’s progress from this world to a better. Pp. 308. (F. V. White). Two eds. 1881.
     A most objectionable book from a Catholic point of view. Very hostile picture of the priesthood of Ireland, who keep the people in “bovine ignorance.” The two specimens that appear in the story are villains of the worst type. One is 25, and has been seven years a priest! He drinks heavily, and works miracles. By another a respectable peasant is incited to murder. The views of politics can only be described as “Orange.”

— MY CONNAUGHT COUSINS. Three Vols. (F. V. White). 1883.
     Jack Kenmare goes to his uncle’s place in Connaught, and has a pleasant time in company with his cousins. He becomes engaged to one of them, who writes stories. Several of these are given. An excellent moral tale, and a glimpse of happy Irish life in a country house. The political point of view is not Nationalist; neither is it hostile to Ireland.

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The Queen of Connaught (1875)

[Advert from The Pall Mall Gazette (16 August, 1875)]

The Daily News (3 September, 1875 - Issue 9161)

     “The Queen of Connaught” (3 vols., Bentley) is a young lady who is one of the numerous progeny of the old kings of Ireland. She is poor, and she marries an Englishman, with whose wealth she tries to restore the ancient splendour of her house. She wears a golden circlet in her hair, and dressed in Celtic garments she sits in the halls of her forefathers, feasting a disorderly crew of the idle retainers and adventurers who claim kin with her. They reward her hospitality by plotting against the life of her English husband, because he is bent on improving the shanties which they share with their pigs and poultry. Side by side with the central interest runs the story of Randal Doneen, who, after promising to marry a peasant girl, pushes her over a cliff when she becomes disagreeably pressing about her wedding. However, Randal Doneen comes to an end befitting an informer, a rake, and a would-be murderer; and the novel ends with the death and the wake of the poor Queen of Connaught. Some confusion exists in the manner in which this story is told. The author begins it in the first person, as an autobiography; but he appears to find his method inconvenient for the autobiographer, dwindles away, and only flickers into occasional life now and then. This wavering purpose is a characteristic of the book, and does not assist it in the good graces of the reader, whose patience is sufficiently exercised by the incredible and unpleasant society into which the author thrusts him.

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Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (Dublin) (25 September, 1875)

     “The Queen of Connaught” is the title of an anonymous story just published by Richard Bentley and Son, London. As its title implies, the locale is fixed in Ireland, and it opens with a beautiful prologue detailing the appearance of Shana O’Mara, the Queen of Connaught, before Queen Elizabeth and her court. The novel proper details the life of Kathleen O’Mara, the proud and haughty descendant of Shana. She is represented as extremely handsome and bewitching, and captivates one Mr. Darlington, a wealthy Englishman, whom she eventually marries, not forgetting to impress him with the honour thus done him by the Royal House of Connaught. The pictures of Irish life which are presented are very vivid, and there are many passages of striking beauty scattered through the three volumes. It is easy to predict, after reading “The Queen of Connaught,” that its writer will be heard of again.

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The Belfast News-Letter (5 November, 1875 -Issue 18808)

     CHARLES READE’S NEW STORY.—It is announced that “The Queen of Connaught,” the novel recently published anonymously by Messrs. Bentley & Son, is by Mr. Charles Reade. It deals trenchantly with the abuses of the Irish priesthood, and has created much sensation in ireland, having been strongly denounced by the Nation. The novel entered upon its third edition, however, on Wednesday.

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The Aberdeen Journal (10 November, 1875 - Issue 6670)

NOTES ON LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
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THE “Queen of Connaught,” a new novel giving a very unfavourable account of Roman Catholic influence in Ireland, is said to be by Mr Charles Reade. The London critics have commended the book.

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The Examiner (19 February, 1876 - Issue 3551)

     The authorship of the ‘Queen of Connaught,’ a novel published some little time since, and wrongly ascribed, for no apparent reason, to Mr. Charles Reade, is now believed to be more rightly attributed to a lady a near connection of Mr. Robert Buchanan.

[Press notices for The Queen of Connaught printed in the endpapers of
Madge Dunraven (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1879)]

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The Dark Colleen (1876)

The Daily News (30 January, 1877 - Issue 9602)

     There is an old Joe Miller about a Frenchman who wanted plum-pudding at Christmas-time. He weighed out suet, currants, flour, and all the ingredients with mathematical precision from a recipe which did not mention the pudding-cloth. So, having stewed our national dish with great pains for many hours he served it up in a soup tureen. The case of this Frenchman may be applied to the writer of “The Dark Colleen” (3 vols., Bentley). Her book combines all the ingredients of an excellent novel. Her heroine is handsome; her hero is handsome, the plan of the story is original, it is full of adventures, and the scenery is new and picturesque. But for want of some inexplicable quality the whole is a failure. The handsome heroine is a grotesque savage; and the hero is a monster without a heart. Where is the reader who would care to read the adventures of such a couple? As to the picturesque scenery, it is not more real than the scenery on the stage. It may be said that to make such a criticism good its writer should point out the one thing needful in this story, the missing touch of nature that makes the whole book kin. But while physiologists are unable to demonstrate the beginnings of life, a critic may be pardoned who follows their example. Perhaps such sentences as these contribute towards the grotesque impression left by the heroine on the reader’s mind. Morna “unconcernedly stretched forth her hand, took one of the steaming potatoes, squeezed it in her palm, and began to eat. . . . She set her white teeth into one after another of the hard brown potato skins.” A heroine showing her teeth over potato skins is in a grotesque position. Or take this, where after surviving a danger she embraces a donkey, which is not less of a donkey because it is written down an ass with a capital A. “For a moment all stood amazed, gazing silently upon the man’s senseless form;” the man had pursued Morna; “then Morna ran to the Ass, and fell with a low hysterical cry upon her neck.” As to the hero, readers who, to speak hyperbolically, try their impression of him by the fire of recollection, will find he dwindles away, like the naughty girl who played with matches in the nursery story, to a little heap of cigars and blue eyes; his only adjuncts.

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The Graphic (17 March, 1877 - Issue 381)

     “The Dark Colleen: a Love Story,” by the author of “The Queen of Connaught” (3 vols.: Bentley).— This is unquestionably a book of mark as it stands, and would have been a finer story than it is were it not that the author’s hand cannot always be trusted to work out her conceptions surely and unerringly, whilst we are all the more sensitive to any deficiencies in power inasmuch as the latter half of the tale is of so painful a character that we need wellnigh flawless work to reconcile us to it. In her “word-pictures” and still-life scenes the author is all that could be desired, but she seems less in her element when action is called for, sometimes going a long way towards spoiling the effect she is aiming at by a tendency to diffuseness. Eagle Island, the home of “the Dark Colleen,” and its strange life, is a veritable “find” for any novelist, and the author makes very nearly as much out of her subject as Mr. Black has made out of the Hebrides. Eagle Island lies far out in the Atlantic, off the north-west coast of Ireland, a spot little visited save by great flocks of sea-birds, peopled by strange beings with gloomy faces, who have never passed beyond the boundary of its shores, “a race apart, with their own language, their own manners and customs, and their own superstitions,” these last of the most gloomy character. Morna Dunroon, the Colleen, is the daughter of the man who for twenty years in succession has, according to the custom of the place, been elected “King” of the island, as the wealthiest of the people, and the best qualified to take the lead among them. Morna, from her solitary rearing, has all the innocence, simplicity, and warm affections of a child, and is besides perfect in shape as a Grecian statue, with the soft dark eyes and olive-tinted skin that come from the Spanish blood that flows in her veins. She saves the life of a shipwrecked sailor, washed half-dead upon the beach, the only survivor from his ill-fated vessel. This Emile Bisson is a French merchant captain, a man with a fair face, a splendid physique, and a certain winningness of manner, but, in truth, what Dr. Newman calls a “bad imitation of polished ungodliness,” utterly selfish and unprincipled, with views of life formed on what he has seen and heard in the casinos and cafés in which his time has been spent when not at sea. But sorry divinity as he is, he seems god-like in Morna’s eyes, and her heart is yielded to him unreservedly, whilst he, fascinated for the moment by the beauty of the belle sauvage, and finding that in her rustic simplicity she will not hear of those relations between them which he in his superior civilisation thinks the most natural and fitting, is at last impelled into marrying her, and carrying her off to his usual quarters in Normandy, that is to say, into what for Morna is another world. How, when he is tired of his fancy, and caught by a new beauty, he repudiates the tie between himself and Morna, and puts her from him with an almost incredible baseness and brutality,—being even ready to hand the girl over to his mate, who loves her in his own fierce way, and is eager to marry her—is told further on, and a very sickening story it is, though Morna’s bewilderment and dismay before the fact which she can neither understand nor ignore, that Bisson has ceased to love her, is painted with some fine and subtle touches. How Morna finally escapes the meshes of villany into which she is for awhile entrapped, and makes her way home to eagle Island, we must not attempt to tell here, any more than the details of the terrific storm which avenges Morna’s wrongs by again wrecking Bisson, this time with fatal result, on the Creag na Luing—an episode, this last, which from its extreme unlikelihood, we think, rather a blemish on the book, which had much better have closed with the unlucky heroine’s restoration to such peace as was possible for her. She is a very fascinating conception, and drawn with great truth and tenderness of feeling. We are not able within out limits either to do justice to the many excellent scenes and descriptions in the book or to call attention to what struck us in reading it as weak points, but we can have no hesitation in classing it amongst those books of the day that are pre-eminently worth reading.

[Press notices for The Dark Colleen printed in the endpapers of
Madge Dunraven (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1879)]

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Madge Dunraven (1879)

The Graphic (6 December, 1879 - Issue 523)

     “MADGE DUNRAVEN,” by the author of “The Queen of Connaught,” &c. (3 vols.: Bentley).—
We cannot help thinking that the author has here somewhat mismanaged her play, and wilfully thrown away her trump card. Her strong point, as has been universally allowed, were her sketches of Irish life and character—as witness that picture of the strange life on Eagle Island, which constitutes the real attraction in “The Dark Colleen;” but here, after the briefest of introductions, the Irish trio among the dramatis personæ are whirled away to an inland English country parish, in which, and in the neighbouring assize-town, the scene lies for the rest of the book. Some amusement is, indeed, afforded by the account given of the efforts of Mr. Dunraven, his son Conn, and his niece Madge, to live at Armstead precisely as they had lived at Shranamonragh Castle—how they entertain tramps and beggars on the best the house can furnish, leave doors unbarred and windows unfastened at night, and then are astonished to find that teaspoons, table-cloths, and great coats have mysteriously disappeared in the morning; but, after all, this does not go a great way, and the author seems rather to overdo the contrast between Irish geniality and honesty and English knavery and churlishness. Another fault we have to find with the construction of the book is, that the tragic incident in which its interest is supposed to culminate is allowed unduly to dominate over the rest of the story. That some such catastrophe is coming—is in the air—we are hardly permitted to forget for a moment; and, no doubt, this sense of impending gloom and disaster may be most effective when it is skilfully handled. But then it is not every novelist who can deal with such an element as it should be dealt with, and the misfortune is that if it fails by a nail’s breadth in being impressive, it becomes rather tiresome—as we must own we have found it here. We might, very likely, have been more readily stirred as the author would have had us could we have brought ourselves to feel more real belief and interest in her characters; but in the delineation of character she does not seem at all at her best. No doubt she can give us strongly marked individualities, such as Morna and Bisson; but she appears at a loss when she would work out such ordinary men and women as one might anticipate rubbing shoulders against in the chances of daily life. We are told that Conn is very handsome, and we know that he is very unfortunate; but he remains a mere name throughout; whilst Madge herself, the principal figure in the story, Madge, the tender, admirable, heroic maiden, is never seen, except in the vaguest outline. The one personage in the tale of whom most might perhaps have been made, is the perjured beauty, Rosamund Leigh, though that type of woman, at once heartless and sensuous, is no longer a novelty in fiction. As readers will have seen, we have said a great deal in dispraise of the book, for it is one well worth while finding fault with, being in point of style, general ability, and most of the gifts that go to make the novelist, much in advance of the run of fiction of the day; and if the writer will only be true to herself, we are persuaded she may do much finer work than any she has yet given to the world. We cannot, however, take leave of her without one parting shot. We should strongly recommend her, when next she attempts to describe the proceedings in an English court of justice, to try to make them less grotesquely wild and impossible; and it is certainly odd enough that, though she repeatedly lays stress on the fact that Madge is a Catholic girl, it does not seem to have occurred to her that the first thing such a girl placed in such a dilemma as Madge is between her oath to the outcast not to betray him, and her obligation not to permit an innocent man, her own near and dear relative, to suffer for a crime she knows he has not committed, would do, would be to lay the whole matter before her spiritual director under seal of confession. A “few words emanating from an intelligent mind” would have soon solved Madge’s doubts as to her conflicting obligations, and saved herself and her friends many weeks of anxiety and heartache.

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Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (January, 1880 - p.313-314)

     As a rule the genuine novel-reader prefers to enjoy without previous enlightenment the agreeable surprises by which an ingenious novelist contrives to intensify the interest of a story, and renders small thanks to the officious critic who robs it in advance of its freshness and flavor by an outline of its plot and incidents. Out of deference to this feeling we shall merely give our general impressions of the novels of the month. One of these, Madge Dunraven, is essentially an Irish tale, although the scene is shifted very early to England, and the narrative has little of the rollicking abandon of the conventional Irish novel. The characters for whom our sympathies are most keenly excited are indeed Irish of the Irish in their tastes and feelings; but the alchemy of love converts them to many English and thoroughly un-Irish ways, while their Irish virtues exert a mellowing influence upon their English associates. The author describes a “Castle Rackrent” which is no less dilapidated, and is even more genial in its dilapidation, than Miss Edgeworth’s. The narrative is seasoned with a double love story, several poaching adventures, a brace of homicides, and an exciting trial scene. It is, however, less sensational than might be inferred from these rather startling incidents.

[Press notices for Madge Dunraven printed in the endpapers of
My Connaught Cousins (London: F. V. White and Co., 1883)]

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The Priest’s Blessing, or Poor Patrick’s Progress from this World to a Better (1881)

The Newcastle Courant (1 July, 1881 - Issue 10774)

     The authoress of “The Queen of Connaught” has just finished a new story on the Irish question, entitled the “Priest’s Blessing.” It is a kind of study of the life of an Irish peasant, from the cradle to the grave, and constitutes a formidable indictment against the Roman Catholic priesthood.

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The Graphic (10 September, 1881 - Issue 615)

     “THE PRIEST’S BLESSING : or, Poor Patrick’s Progress from this World to a Better,” by Harriet Jay, authoress of “The Queen of Connaught” (I vol. : F. V.White and Co.). This is the secret history of a case of landlord-murder in the West of Ireland. In telling it, Miss Jay has, with finished art, avoided every appearance of literary colouring, and has depended for effect upon an almost excessive simplicity. We are compelled to read it as uncritically as a private letter, and do not consciously realise its full power and pathos until we can look back upon it as a whole: and then every well-remembered stroke tells. Not all Miss Jay’s readers will agree with her that Irish troubles are due to no deeper cause than priestly influence, or indeed that such influence is anywhere near the root of the matter, and she makes the usual mistake of supposing that an Irish landlord is necessarily incapable of comprehending, at least as well as a novelist, the natures of the people with whom he has to deal. But, if this were so, landlords would learn much from the life-progress of Pat O’Connor of Patrickstown—how, from being a mere harmless victim of a large family and potato disease, he came to die on the gallows, a martyr to a blind sense of religion and honour. No word of conventional sentiment mars the effect of this powerful study of the heart and mind of a savage of our own time and nation, with his capacities for unconscious heroism under circumstances which would seem to make anything in such a shape impossible. We are not cheated into taking strong and bitter stuff by the formalities of a love story. Plot and style are strong and bitter enough—as much so as any story must be that deals with the extreme conditions of Irish peasant life as they are. Exception must, in justice, be taken to Miss Jay’s inaccurate treatment of legal matters in general and of criminal procedure in particular. It injures that effect of complete truth which, in other respects, her knowledge of the larger human nature which lies outside the law-courts ensures. Pat O’Connor himself represents a type which she obviously and thoroughly understands, and which all who are interested in the Ireland of to-day and to-morrow ought to understand also. The novel is certain to attract exceptional attention.

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The Pall Mall Gazette (15 September, 1881 - Issue 5165)

     “The Priest’s Blessing.” By Harriett Jay. (F. V. White and Co.) No reader will think this equal to the author’s “Queen of Connaught.” And the reason of the inferiority is evident. A “purpose” is almost inevitably fatal to literary success; and Miss Jay has a very decided purpose, and, what is worse, a purpose closely connected with the burning questions of the Irish difficulty. The chief dramatis personæ are Mr. O’Brien, who purchases an estate at “Patrickstown;” Father Malloy, the parish priest of this same place; and Patrick O’Connor, a peasant, who represents the object for which these two rival powers contend. The new proprietor seeks to elevate the population; the priest opposes what will end with diminishing his own influence. Provoked by the resistance which he meets with, the reformer becomes harsh and even oppressive to his tenantry—O’Connor, whom he had specially sought to serve, being one of the chief sufferers. In the end Mr. O’Brien is murdered and O’Connor is executed for the crime, to which, indeed, he had been privy, but which he had not committed. He is about at the last to reveal the organization which had ordered and executed the murder, when the priest succeeds, by the use of spiritual terrors, in closing his mouth. We can quite understand how a writer, convinced that such things do happen, should see in fiction the only way of making her conviction known; but she has to deal with the difficulty that her subject is not suited for art. Her readers get a political pamphlet in the shape of a novel, and in all probability miss both instruction and amusement. Miss Jay has, we allow, written with no small force, but we cannot congratulate her on a success.

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The Daily News (10 November, 1881 - Issue 11098)

     Miss Harriett Jay’s volume, “The Priest’s Blessing” (V. V. White and Co.), is less a story of Irish life, though it is thrown into that form, than a diatribe against the Irish priesthood. Patrick O’Connor, the ill-fated victim of priestly tyranny, intrigue, and ambition, is a poor, ignorant Irish peasant, trained under the influence of his clergyman into deceit and perjury, and finally expiating the crime of another on the gallows, still under the direction of his spiritual guide. This and other instances of extraordinary criminality are declared by the author to be drawn from actual life, and to be not singular “in wild out-lying villages such as that where the scene of this story is laid.” This may be so, nor would it be difficult to detect remarkable instances of villainy in any and every section of society were one to take the trouble to search for them. But attacks on a whole body of men founded on isolated cases of depravity are manifestly misleading, and we are fain to believe that Fathers Malloy and Flannigan of Miss Jay’s polemic are exceptional and rare individuals. Miss Jay’s cleverness and power of graphic writing are necessarily hampered in a story written to order, but they make themselves evident even under such adverse conditions.

Press notices for The Priest's Blessing, or Poor Patrick’s Progress from this World to a Better
printed in the endpapers of Two men and a Maid (London: F. V. White and Co.,1881)

Robert Buchanan provided the following preface for Harriett Jay’s My Connaught Cousins - her next ‘Irish novel’ after the controversial The Priest’s Blessing:

From My Connaught Cousins (London: F. V. White and Co., 1883 - p. iii-viii)

PREFATORY NOTE.

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THE Authoress of My Connaught Cousins, smarting under a certain misconception, but thinking that polemics of any kind ill befit a lady’s pen, has asked me to write a few prefatory words explaining how this book and its predecessors came to be written, and how unjust is the charge, made in one influential quarter, that she is an enemy to Irish nationality. The task is a difficult one, especially as I sympathise more strongly than she does with the present political movement, and am, indeed, much more of an advanced Liberal; but we are entirely at one in our sympathy with the social life and aims of the Irish people, and in our love for what is best and noblest in the Irish nature. In these days of haste and folly, anything really original in literature is certain to be misunderstood. When the Queen of Connaught appeared, its great and instantaneous success was unconnected with its most sterling characteristic—that of an entirely new (but I believe the only true) reading of the national character and temperament. Subsequent events have justified that reading in an extraordinary manner; and it is clearly understood now that the familiar Irishman of literature and the stage, the merry, good-humoured “Pat” of a thousand novels and melodramas, was more or less a product of the inner consciousness. In a subsequent but far less successful work, unpopular from its rigid and terrible truth of delineation, the Authoress put her finger on the canker which now, as heretofore, poisons the wholesome life of Ireland; but the Priest’s Blessing, though neglected now, will live as perhaps the most powerful social study that ever came from the mind of a young girl. No unprejudiced person who reads that work, and takes it in connection with other works from the same pen, will doubt its deep insight—I should say, its unparalleled insight—into the nature of the Irish peasant.
      The Authoress of these works went to Ireland when very young, lived for years in the wildest and loneliest part of the wild and lonely West, and was first inspired to literary effort by what she saw and knew. Her pictures were drawn from the very life, of which she was all that time a portion. She had no prejudices and no predispositions, and her sympathy, above all, was for the suffering people; and if in her portrayal she often had to describe moral darkness, she did so with a full sense of what was brightest and best on the other side of the picture. Behind the wretchedness and the squalor, the ignorance and the prejudice, beginning in misconception and culminating in crime, she showed the deep tenderness, the devoted patience, the sweetness and the purity, of the Celtic temperament. The characters of Dunbeg in the Queen of Connaught, of Patrick O’Connor in the Priest’s Blessing, of James Merton in the present work, are, as living types, unique in literature; and the infinite pity of literary sympathy was never better exemplified than in the life story of “Madge Dunraven” and  “Morna Dunroon,” or than in the tender idyll of “How Andy Beg became a Fairy.”
      Among the first to recognise the unique power of these stories, their fidelity to human nature, and their predominant dramatic power, was one of the foremost moral teachers of this or any time,—Mr Reade. Had they been unveracious, had they been in any sense productions of the inner consciousness, they would never have attracted that most keen-sighted of social observers; had they lacked sympathy for their subject, had they been opposed to what was best in Irish life and character they would never have won his approval. But their veracity is vital and will prevail. Meantime, the reader is to be warned that they contain many things, present many pictures, which the false friends and summer lovers of Ireland must naturally regard with suspicion and dislike. The true friends of Ireland, and all those who honestly sympathise with the national aspirations, will find in them that truth which genius only can reveal, and which, when once revealed, is fairer than any falsehood, however brightly drawn.

                                                                                                   ROBERT BUCHANAN.

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Harriett Jay Book Reviews continued

Two Men and a Maid (1881) to Robert Buchanan (1903)