Yet The Milesian Chief must be considered, in a way, a national tale, and it is even extremely characteristic as such; the plot, in its roughest outlines, is the identical one used by Irish novelists up to this day with a persistence which cannot escape any student of Anglo-Irish literature. These rough outlines are as follows. A person of eminence arrives in Ireland; he (or she) possesses every qualification for a rich and interesting life, yet nothing noteworthy has ever happened to him, and he is full of spleen until, once there, he is dragged into a whirl of undreamt-of adventures; his former habits, prejudices and ways of thinking suddenly give way to an all-absorbing passion, which irresistibly hurries him towards bliss or destruction, as the case may be. In the predilection of Irish novelists for an intrigue of this description there is something more than a natural partiality to a theme which aptly lends itself to literary aims; it is the revenge of a subdued and oppressed country upon her masters. In the field of fiction the conquered becomes the conqueror, and the first come in as the last. Connal O’Morven, unreal and idealized though he be, is the embodiment of all that is great and proud in the Milesian spirit, which spirit here subjugates the most brilliant representative of the happier race. This, again, does not hinder Armida’s infatuation from being quite individual in character, limited only to the person of Connal. His princely ancestry of which he is so proud, the ancient glory of Ireland, her poetry and music, are all indifferent to her, and Irish scenery, in all its grandeur, only makes her sigh for the sunny regions she has quitted. As Connal is persuaded that he could never be happy out of Ireland, their love is born under most unpromising auspices, and its tragic issue is necessitated by the circumstance of their having nothing in common.—
Armida and Connal—and Wandesford, too—are all nearly related. This fact is made no mystery of, but plainly communicated to Armida by her father, on their way to Ireland. At the time of the ruin of the Irish family, and upon the estates forthwith becoming the property of Lord Montclare, his sister has married Mr. Randal O’Morven, son of the old Milesian. The latter has never forgiven his son, any more than Lord Montclare has forgiven his sister; but shortly before her death Mrs O’Morven has written to her brother and disclosed the extreme misery of their condition. Lord Montclare has, consequently, appointed her husband to be his land-steward, and offered her sons commissions in the army. The younger, Desmond, has accepted the offer, while Connal prefers to starve with his grandfather.
The family has, it is true, been shrouded in a real mystery, but this also is shortly afterwards revealed by Lord Montclare, when lying at death’s door to which he is brought by the unexpected arrival in Ireland of the rest of the family, whose existence Armida has been wholly ignorant of. Her father has, long ago, contracted a marriage, having in view the sole purpose of excluding the O’Morvens from the property, by begetting a son. Armida, however, is the only child remaining alive, whereupon Lord Montclare, exasperated by his misfortunes, confines his wife in an obscure place and spreads the report of her death; this is done with the assistance of an Italian monk called Morosini, who subsequently turns out to be in the service of two masters. Before Lord Montclare has time to form another connection, his lady is delivered of a son. Under the circumstances he cannot acknowledge his heir without acknowledging his imposture, and threatened and persecuted by Morosini he flees from land to land, too feeble in courage to reveal the secret. Wandesford—who is the son of his younger sister—is the only person acquainted with the actual facts of the case, and therefore Lord Montclare eagerly presses Armida to accept his proposal. At last he is determined to give the matter publicity in Ireland, for the consolatory reason that in this country ‘the judgment of his character was indifferent to him from his contempt for its inhabitants.’ Before, however, he has accomplished his purpose, his death is caused by the sudden arrival of his family, who make their appearance at Castle Montclare, attended by Morosini and Desmond O’Morven. Desmond has come from Italy by the same boat as Lady Montclare, and has had an opportunity of saving her son from drowning, after which a very tender friendship has sprung up between the two.—
The commencement of the story in Ireland is preceded by two prologues, representing ‘Armida in Italy’ and ‘Armida in England.’ The first describes a banquet given by Lord Montclare at Naples, where Wandesford also makes his appearance. Armida has, for the occasion, arranged some tableaux in which her manifold accomplishments are dazzlingly displayed. In one of these the scene
represented the garden of an oriental palace: the sides filled with flowers, whose lofty and luxuriant clusters seemed to rise above the height of the apartment, and whose deep and sunny hues were softened by the magic diffusion of the lights; and the perspective terminated in an arch, beyond which was caught a view of the ruins of Persepolis. — — — Armida advanced on the stage alone: she was in the oriental dress, and she had an instrument in her hand resembling the lute. Wandesford gazed with astonishment: the pale, slight, simply clad girl he had lately seen was transformed into the most brilliant female in the world. The colour which applause brought to her cheek mantled richly through the tinge of rouge she had put on to conceal the effects of her exertions. — — The torrent of sound that she now poured forth, the height to which she soared, the rapidity with which she traversed intervals that connected the widest extremes of human voice, the precision with which she marked their minutest subdivisions, and, above all, the ease of attitude and expression which she preserved amid her exertions, like a skilful charioteer, who commands and enjoys the flight of his coursers, whilst their speed terrifies the spectators, filled the Italians with a sensation which applause could neither express nor exhaust.
There is, it will be observed, no stint of powerful attributes, the marvels of Armida leading directly back to Lady Montrevor in The Wild Irish Boy. Yet the descriptions here are somewhat softened, and the style is free from the extravagances of Maturin’s second book; Armida, somehow, seems more fit for a heroine of this extraordinary kind. Her cousin Wandesford, though a cold and selfish character, is so enraptured by her performance that he declares himself on the spot. Armida decidedly rejects his attentions, and on the following morning when he calls on her again, he is informed that Lord Montclare and his daughter have departed from Italy without any intentions of ever returning.
The second prologue represents Armida in London society, of which Maturin draws an amusing and curious picture. Here she is incapable of creating any sensation:
But what was the astonishment, the horror, of the beautiful, intelligent, and ambitious foreigner, on her first introduction to fashionable life in London: lost amid a crowd where beauty could not be distinguished; stunned by a buz of nothings, where mind could not be displayed; elbowed by rouged, naked, dashing dowagers; suffered to stand unnoticed or eyed through a glass by yawning, lounging bucks of ton; sinking amid the crowd, to be permitted to help herself to refreshments, or to want them; to be without conversation, though a mistress of half the dead and living languages, from her ignorance of fashionable jargon; to walk down a set with a partner who appeared to be debating whether it would not be high ton to drop asleep during the exercise—what a reception for a woman who had seen at her feet Italy and France contending to scatter the laurels of fame and the roses of pleasure.
Wandesford reappears, and Armida, in her desolation, receives his attentions with something akin to gratitude. He renews his proposal, which is eagerly embraced by Lord Montclare. Harassed on all sides Armida at last complies and gives Wandesford her word; upon this she is hurried off to Ireland, where Wandesford is shortly to follow them.—
These two chapters are a clever preliminary to the thrilling adventures Armida is going forth to meet, besides giving a good idea of her character and circumstances. In spite of her brilliant position in society she feels lonely and unhappy in her restless life, where in everything she is subjected to the caprices of her father. Her only pleasure is the gratification of her pride through the admiration she excites with her talents; but in England her pride also gets a severe blow. She feels utterly humiliated and is, as it were, prepared to meet what she will be forced to surrender to. In a state of dejection she accepts the proposal of Wandesford, who is less than indifferent to her, nor is her future brightened by her father’s determination to set out for Ireland, which determination she cannot imagine to be anything but a fit of his incurable melancholy. She shudders to think of the country she is taken to, and travels on almost in apathy. Much ‘fury’—of which there is quite enough already—is spared by her not entering the scene of action immediately from the highest pinnacles of glory and triumph; and the deeper and truer side of her character is naturally developed in sorrow and desolation, which her father’s death increases to the uttermost. Her new-found relations cannot compensate for the loss. Lady Montclare, though always wearing a mask of unvarying suavity, inspires not the least confidence in her daughter, and her young son, Endymion, is so closely watched by her and Morosini, that it is impossible for Armida to approach him. Thus she is inevitably drawn to Connal O’Morven, who comes like an incarnation of his wild country, grand and solitary, distinct from anything she has ever seen or dreamt of, while at the same time the boundless devotion he offers her recalls by-gone, brighter days to her mind. Being thus mentally prepared for their fate, they are thrown together by external events with rather unnecessary violence: in the first dawn of their acquaintance Connal finds an opportunity of saving Armida’s life—at the risk of his own—three different times. Upon her first arrival to the castle her horses are terrified and rear staggering backwards on to the rock, and she would be lost did not Connal rush to the scene of imminent danger and snatch her from the carriage. The following day she walks out to the shore and sits down on a rock. Lost in meditations she fails to observe the tide coming on before it has cut off her return; again she would perish but for Connal, who happens to be close at hand. And a few days later, when Wandesford, too, has arrived, he and Armida and Connal visit a small islet to look at some Celtic antiquities. In the meantime a dreadful storm breaks out, and only by exerting his superhuman strength to the utmost Connal succeeds in rowing them back sufficiently near the shore to be rescued when the boat capsizes. In all this, however, there is a kind of inner veracity which saves any of the passages from becoming merely melodramatic. The delineation especially of Armida, who is not (like Connal) raised above human weaknesses, is skilfully represented, and the descriptions of her mental struggles are both psychologically, as well as poetically, true. In Ireland everything is so different from what she is accustomed to, and her relation particularly to Connal is so uncomfortable, that all her experience of the great world is unable to guide her upon her first encounters with him. When Connal rescues her from the waves of the tide, Armida, in her confusion, offers him her purse. The manner in which this ill-chosen retribution is rejected she imagines to imply contempt of her person. This is a possibility that has never before entered her mind; and though it makes her shed tears of resentment, she is unable to answer with the same feeling by dismissing him from her recollection; in order to rid herself from thoughts of Connal, she sits down to—write to Wandesford.