May Laffan Hartley (1850-1916) published several stories and five novels, of which this was the last; she struggled with mental illness and ended her life in a psychiatric asylum.
It is “marked to a singular extent by . . . strength, breadth of humour, and impartiality. . . . No one who is anxious to fathom the enigma of the Irish character will be deterred . . . from the careful study of what we have no hesitation in pronouncing to be the most valuable and dispassionate contribution towards the solution of that problem which has been put forth in this generation in the domain of fiction. . . . There is a ‘sweet wildness and unusualness’ about the scenes and characters in which we move which is distinctly captivating, and yet it is hard to say whether pain or pleasure predominates in the impression left on the mind after a perusal of the volumes. For the picture which the author gives of her compatriots is relentlessly faithful, and excites compassion and repulsion in an almost equal degree. The squalor, suspicion, and greed which are met at every turn in the mutual relations of the peasantry are illustrated with such a wealth of detail as can only be the outcome of intimate acquaintance and close observation. ‘Ismay’s Children’ contains a whole gallery of portraits, gentle and simple, some more elaborately finished than others, but of singularly uniform excellence. . . . These are living human beings who let us know what manner of men they are out of their own mouths. They are not mere lists of qualities catalogued by the author when they are severally introduced, but, as in real life, we only come to know them gradually. The pages of ‘Ismay’s Children’ are full of excellent sayings and characteristic anecdotes, all the more telling for the absence of any conscious effort to bring them in.” Athenaeum, October 15, 1887
Hartley “is as witty, as humorous, as keen-sighted, and, alas! as pessimist as ever. . . . She paints the foibles and faults of the people she knows so well with a brush steeped in black. . . . She is like the good housewife who boasted that, if she had no ear for music, she had a wonderful eye for dirt. . . . And what tends to intensify the reader’s despondency into despair is the apparent hopeless acquiescence of the author’s mind in the necessary perpetuation of the sores she probes so ruthlessly. She sees no possible cure. Her people are squalid, dirty, lying, superstitious, and dishonest. The meanest vices are made compatible with an unsimulated profession of piety and a fervid observance of the rules of the Church. Some of the most amiable and lovable of her personages are tainted with inherent insincerity and untruthfulness. Squalor is the one element she cannot omit from her canvas. If a hospitable priest or an amiable old lady offers her guests refreshment, the biscuits must be sodden and the seed-cake mouldy. . . . The author is absolutely just and fair-minded. Landlords and tenants, priests and parsons, are treated by her with the same placid, cruel impartiality. And yet, with the unpleasing materials she chooses to work upon, the author of Ismay’s Children gives us a novel which charms us in our own despite. If her pathos merges too readily into tragedy the gentler passion is never quite swallowed up by the sterner.” Saturday Review, November 19, 1887
“Though it has, as it could hardly fail to have, some gleams of very genuine humour, it is, as a whole, much too sad a book to be commended to people who demand cheerfulness in their reading; but those who are content to forego even cheerfulness for the sake of power, pathos, and unrelenting veracity of imagination, will find in Ismay’s Children a novel to their mind. . . . In spite of the gleams of gaiety which must find their way into any picture of Irish life, the book as a whole is a very sombre one. Still, sombre as it is, it is too rich in beauty, impressiveness, and pathos to be dismissed in any other words than those of grateful appreciation.” Spectator, November 26, 1887
Download this fortnight’s novel:
https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/35n82s/alma990147068160107026
(Right-click (or control-click, if you have a Mac) on the links to download the novel’s three volumes in pdf form)
