The House by the Church Yard - Garden Classics

The House by the Church-Yard by J. Sheridan Le Fanu The novel begins with a prologue in the voice of an old man, Charles de Cresseron, that is set in Chapelizod, Ireland, roughly a century after the events of the novel proper. This prologue details how, during an interment at the churchyard of the title, a skull is accidentally unearthed, which bears the marks of two crushing blows to the head and - even more disconcertingly - a small hole from a trepanning. The novel...
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The House by the Church-Yard by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
The novel begins with a prologue in the voice of an old man, Charles de Cresseron, that is set in Chapelizod, Ireland, roughly a century after the events of the novel proper. This prologue details how, during an interment at the churchyard of the title, a skull is accidentally unearthed, which bears the marks of two crushing blows to the head and - even more disconcertingly - a small hole from a trepanning. The novel itself is Cresseron's reconstruction of the history related to this grisly item (though by and large his narratorial voice drops out and the novel is told from a conventional omniscient narrator's point of view). The first chapter of the novel proper moves back to 1767, the period of the novel, and begins with another mysterious occurrence in the churchyard: the secretive burial of a coffin, with the occupant simply identified on the brass plaque as "R.D." But after this ominous opening the book turns (in its first half) to the careful and largely light-hearted elaboration of the social life and intrigues among the denizens of Chapelizod, from the powerful Lord Castlemallard to the soldiers in the local barracks under General Chattesworth, to the good Doctor Walsingham and his daughter Lily, to the gluttonous local Catholic priest Father Roach. The opening section of the novel is largely taken up by a farcical duel between two soldiers, Puddock and O'Flaherty, which arises from drunken misunderstanding and eventually is defused without any harm done.

Excerpt from The House by the Church-Yard
In those days Chapelizod was about the gayest and prettiest of the outpost villages in which old Dublin took a complacent pride. The poplars which stood, in military rows, here and there, just showed a glimpse of formality among the orchards and old timber that lined the banks of the river and the valley of the Liffey, with a lively sort of richness. The broad old street looked hospitable and merry, with steep roofs and many coloured hall-doors. The jolly old inn, just beyond the turnpike at the sweep of the road, leading over the buttressed bridge by the mill, was first to welcome the excursionist from Dublin, under the sign of the Phoenix. There, in the grand wainscoted back-parlour, with 'the great and good King William,' in his robe, garter, periwig, and sceptre presiding in the panel over the chimneypiece, and confronting the large projecting window, through which the river, and the daffodils, and the summer foliage looked so bright and quiet, the Aldermen of Skinner's Alley--a club of the 'true blue' dye, as old as the Jacobite wars of the previous century--the corporation of shoemakers, or of tailors, or the freemasons, or the musical clubs, loved to dine at the stately hour of five, and deliver their jokes, sentiments, songs, and wisdom, on a pleasant summer's evening. Alas! the inn is as clean gone as the guests--a dream of the shadow of smoke.

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