Status Updates From The Kellys and the O'Kellys

“The countess had spent the morning pretending to make arrangements… and when she commenced the operation of dressing herself, she declared she was so utterly exhausted by what she had gone through during the last week, as to be entirely unfit to entertain her company. Poor dear Lady Cashel! Was she so ignorant of her own nature as to suppose it possible that she should ever entertain anybody?”

“Since his boyhood he had looked forward to a life of ease, pleasure, and licence, and had longed for his father's death that he might enjoy it. It seemed now within his reach; for his means, though reduced, would still be sufficient for sensual gratification. But, idle, unprincipled, brutal, castaway wretch as Barry was, he still felt the degradation of inaction…”

“…he could however have borne and put up with all this, if he could only have got his will of his sister; but to give up to her, who had been his slave all his life—to own, at last, that he had no power over her, whom he had always looked upon as so abject, so mean a thing…to do this, while he felt convinced…that a sufficiently unscrupulous attorney could save him from such cruel disgrace and loss…” Rotten brother!

“… she truly loved her family, and tried hard to love her neighbours, in which she might have succeeded but for the immeasurable height from which she looked down on them. She listened, complacently, to all those serious cautions against pride, which her religion taught her, and considered that she was obeying its warnings, when she spoke condescendingly to those around her.”

“The widow Kelly seldom went out into the world; she seldom went anywhere except to mass; and, when out, she was a very modest and retiring old lady; but she could face the devil, if necessary, across her own counter. And so Anty was rescued, for a while, from her brother's persecution.”

I hope I’ve never been a Lady Selina when counseling a mourning friend. “Here, just fix your mind on volume 2 of Gibbon.” 👀😂

This is Trollope’s Irish sensation novel. I’m always 👀