The Collegians

It's a story old as time. Boy meets girl. Boy throws his servant, also his foster brother, downstairs for upsetting the girl, giving the servant a hunch. Servant becomes devoted to boy because he says he's sorry. Years later bot meets girl again but is deceived by her apparently cold demeanour and goes off and marries a rope-maker's daughter and installs her in a cottage owned by his servant's sister and her husband. Boy hopes to gradually introduce subject of marriage to his mother. Mother invites girl to stay for a while and boy discovers that under the cool exterior, she loves him, and he loves her and his mother is expecting a wedding, lickety-split. Boy suffers minor torments of the damned, confesses to his mother (calls it an show more engagement, though) and is persuaded to cast the rope-maker's daughter off. Servant is sent to take her to a boat bound for Canada. Rope-maker's daughter's wishes are not considered at any time. Agonies of, not exactly guilt, just a kind of foreknowledge that the servant is going to kill her instead of putting her on a boat, plague him. Later, when engaged to girl, discovers that servant killed her instead of putting her on a boat, because he's present when they find the body, because of course he is.

High wild melodrama it is, to an almost comical degree. What really saves the story itself is the hero who, despite being presented as a paragon brought low by a few unfortunate defects, is so incredibly unlikeable and generally horrible, such that his torments and declarations and wild passions are as much of a vain, self-obsessed pose as the rest of him. He's not even technically guilty of ordering the murder, but he's as guilty of sin of being a narcissistic ham. Hanging would have been to good for him, but his contortions are undeniably entertaining.

Even more entertaining is the depiction of Irish life of the period, presumably somewhat idealised, but nonetheless vivid and lively and filled with sparkle and detail. Every character is energetic and loquacious, every voice jumps from the page. It's a society that feels lived in, from top to bottom, a strange mixture of co-dependance and fierce devotion and loyalty mingling with bullish resentment and alienation. We're a weird bunch all the same.

The story was inspired by the case of The Colleen Bawn, but it's not a retelling or recreation of that story, Griffin seems to use the basic facts as a framework for his own tale.

I think more than one or two speeches and passages could have been trimmed, but it's an unexpectedly enjoyable tragic romp. show less

age wear but in VG cond. overall - cannot determine year of publication - appears to be First American Edition