Pam’s Pictorama Post: I did not plan to post about Rosa Mulholland so soon on the heels of my most recent post (found here if you missed it just last week and the first one about her books here), where I zipped through a number of her works, mostly early, that I had read. However, Narcissa’s Ring, was a recent acquisition and a later work which kind of knocked me off my chair. As it happens, I was also lucky to find an internet site with a number of her books – including The Daughter in Possession: The Story of a Great Temptation. Both of these interesting works were published originally in 1915 and’16 respectively and they are worth note and comment while they remain fresh in my mind.

Before I get to them, a heads up about where I found The Daughter in Possession which I had not even seen copies or mention of for sale or otherwise. A site I have used occasionally in the past called Internet Archive (find it here) turns out to have a number of these hard to find volumes available for reading online. The did not come up in a general search for her books initially and it wasn’t until I thought to look there that I found them. This is very good news!

The somewhat bad news is that it is not the easiest site to read a long book on – I have had trouble saving them to my “account” although perhaps it is just most easily done on a computer rather than a phone or iPad. I am still working that out. Actual volumes are scanned for every page which is a charming way to read them – inscriptions and all in some cases. It also means if the volume was illustrated (which these virtually all were) you get those too. I am thrilled to be able to offer a place where some of these are available online, not to mention for free.

As far as I can tell, the Internet Archive exists out of California and I have not attempted to tap it for the many, many other categories it lists (everything from television shows to Russian literature). Of course I am curious about film and assume that, like the books, the films archived there may not show up in more general internet searches although may for specific books. I will need to send them a contribution as they have done great work in making some really obscure volumes available.

I had not in fact had I heard of Narcissa’s Ring either until I stumbled across a copy on eBay for sale here in the US. (I search for new ones online on a regular basis and eBay seems to pop for one periodically. The shipping from the UK where many of these reside makes the cost untenable.) It is the real find. In 1916 Mulholland was 71 years old and from reading this she may have in a sense been at the height of her prowess as a writer. While the style remains the same and some of her favorite tropes (romance, class divisions, astronomy) remain intact she goes for a full on sort of mystery in this now favorite novel.

As the story opens we find a young Russian teen with a penchant for chemistry in London, before long he is shifted to her favored locale of Ireland, but not for long as he is chasing clues to rescue his father from a life sentence for murder in Moscow. The search leads him to a certain perfume found in an antique ring – the sort which might have also stored poison but instead house a bit of sponge or other substance scent would be added to and worn. The scent in the ring never dissipates. It has a cabochon of glowing red stone on it – one that takes on an almost supernatural glow in certain lights. (Two stones to engage your imagination above.)

Mulholland leads us on a most wonderful chase through Britain, a sojourn in Egypt and ultimately the Moscow of the day. Because Mulholland is writing about these places as they are being experienced at the dawn of the 20th century there is a more than usual time capsule quality to her record of what these places were like at the time – not so much with her usual eye to recording what she knows may soon drift away in her native Ireland, but with more of a sense of the here and now in these places.

I wouldn’t dream of spoiling the intricate plot but am here to say that it is a corker and I would have to put it at the top of my list of her books!

It also left me wandering the internet looking at these rings – presumably there was one in particular which must have inspired her. The concept goes way back to the Middle Ages and all sorts of examples still abound. As for glowing fire stones there are many – from fire opals exotic agates.

Immediately on the heels of Narcissa’s Ring I was able to hop back a year for The Daughter in Possession: The Story of a Great Temptation. (It’s a bit of a title, right?) This is an interesting lead into Narcissa’s Ring if you are considering her oeuvre as a whole because there is a developing sense of mystery and plot in this novel which is a prelude to the other.

The Daughter starts off with a favorite baby rescued after shipwreck set up (see Marcella Grace for another example) but turns into a multi-faceted plot following several lives as they set off together in one place and diverge wildly before all coming back. Like Narcissa’s Ring, locations in Ireland are briefly paid tribute to but the majority of the book takes place in London and then Europe, largely France which is a bit of a surprise. (There is an interlude in Toledo and sometimes I feel like we are treated to a travel log of her globetrotting.)

We have a narrator for part of the story who is a bit unreliable, and we don’t quite know how the ending will or won’t surprise us. Like Narcissa’s Ring the trip is definitely worth the journey here. I would not rate it quite as highly but must say that she was going full throttle with her writing powers at the end of her life and seems to have only continued to improve.

The next one slated for reading, A Girl’s Ideal (1905), appears to start in the United States but will likely shift to Ireland shortly. (It is also available via the Internet Archive.) It is not clear to me that she ever made it to this country and her nascent description is a bit barren. This one is a you inherit a large fortune if you agree to marry this fellow you don’t yet know story!