Cocktail Talk: The O’Conors of Castle Conors (or Early Short Stories, Part I)
Oh, Anthony Trollope, what more can I say? I mean, I’ve had a whole bar’s worth of Anthony Trollope Cocktail Talk posts, with many words unfurled on my love of and like of nearly every book in the Anthony Trollope canon, as I own nearly every single book he wrote, which is saying something as he was prolific as apple pie (whatever that means; he wrote lots of books). But there are still a few books out in the book wild by Trollope that I don’t have, and every time I discover one, I am happy as, oh, a kid at their birthday. And guess what? The other day I did indeed find a Trollope book I didn’t have, the Early Short Stories collection. A couple stories in it I had read (in the Lotta Schmidt and Other Stories collection), but most I hadn’t, and it’s been a treat reading them, a treat! Many take place all-round-the-world, though the one we’re Cocktail Talk-ing today takes place in Ireland, where Trollope lived for years, and set a few early books, and is called “The O’Conors of Castle Conors,” and ends on a happy note and with at tray of . . . well, you’ll see below.
“And Patsey,” said she, “ride for your life; and Patsey, whatever you do, don’t come back without Mr. Green’s pumps—his dancing-shoes you know.”
And in about two hours the pumps did arrive; and I don’t think I ever spent a pleasanter evening or got more satisfaction out of a pair of shoes. They had not been two minutes on my feet before Larry was carrying a tray of Negus across the room in those which I had worn at dinner.
“The Dillon girls are going to stay here,” said Fanny as I wished her good night at two o’clock. “And we’ll have dancing every evening as long as you remain.”
— Anthony Trollope, “The O’Conors of Castle Conors”
