British Library, Day Twelve

After a brief break to enjoy some Culture (TM), I returned unto the novels. A surprising number of characters remained alive today.

The Protestant Rector, or a Tale of Other Times in Ireland (J. Nesbit, 1830). The Protestant Barclays relocate to a little parish in Ireland, where they encounter the usual things one encounters in an Irish novel. There's a nice priest, which, of course, means that he's going to convert--which he does after Barclay jams a sufficient number of prooftexts down his throat. Despite some occasional threats, there are no serious disasters, most of the local Catholics convert, and everyone lives happily ever after. An example of the speed with which this type of controversial novel (lots of prooftexts and explicit discussions of doctrine) caught on. BODY COUNT: Zero.
“Philalethes.” John Drummond Fraser: A Story of Jesuit Intrigue in the Church of England (Cassell, 1893). Despite the subtitle, this novel has a remarkable shortage of both Jesuits and intrigue. (The actual intrigue, once it appears, is what Maureen Moran calls "the Popish plot"--Catholics plotting to get their hands on Protestant property.) The novel's real brief is for the importance of lay preaching to counter the moral degeneracy of both Ritualists and Rationalists (this novel is sort of an anti-Robert Elsmere). Our title character, having experienced conversion, goes out and seeks ways to save the masses. He consorts with various characters whom he brings to the truth. Along the way, he also engages in lengthy monologues on preaching, clerical education, the nature of salvation, sin, evil, the Bible, &c. &c. &c. Meanwhile, the two young Mildmay siblings fall prey to Ritualism (Charlie, who turns into "Brother Gregory" and hangs out with Jesuits) and Rationalism (Rosie), but are eventually saved. Needless to say, the lurking Jesuits are exposed, and everyone lives happily ever after. A very late example of this type of controversial novel. BODY COUNT: Zero.
Marian Nesbitt, The Priest's Hiding-Place; or, Ripplethorpe Grange, and Who Lived There (Washbourne, 1892). Catholic novel. Despite the title, the priest-hole isn't all that important. The young Grahames are staying with their grandmother while their father, Colonel Grahame, is in India. Bertie, the oldest, has a vocation to the priesthood, but he fears leaving his youngest sister, the adorably angelic Vera. My readers will be in no suspense about Vera's ultimate fate--she dies, of course, conveniently removing the last obstacle to Bertie's vocation. And besides, the other characters decide, she wouldn't have survived long anyway. (Mrs. Wilfrid Ward employs a similar strategy in One Small Scruple, although in that novel, it's the young woman's pets who keep dying in order to remind her to think of higher things.) BODY COUNT: One.

George Edwards, The Old Douay Priest's Diary (St. William's Press, 1892). Another Catholic novel. A "found manuscript" told in the voice of Richard Wetherall, a missionary priest to England during the Elizabethan period. Richard's narrative, which goes back and forth between the time of writing (when he is living happily in Douay) and the time of his experience in England, counterpoints the loving, familial culture of devout Catholicism to the social degradation of post-Reformation England. Richard lays considerable stress on the care of Catholics for the poor and sick, as opposed to the mercenary quality of Protestantism. After some adventures ministering to other Catholics, Richard is arrested, imprisoned in the Tower, and tortured (racked?), before somehow (it's not clear how) escaping. BODY COUNT: Zero.