Brown’s two sons, Fred and George, have from the first been spoiling for a fight. “The sod’s the only place now, father,” each exultingly exclaims, adding: “I like him the better for not recanting.” Fred takes a more serious view, remarks that Webb is a cursed good shot, suggests his father should make his will before he goes out. It would also be as well, in case of accidents, to have a doctor handy, for, as one of the sons thoughtfully remarks: “Though so vital a part as the head be not touched, the body is all over tender bits,” devoutly adding, in words that really have a touch of Dogberry or Shakespearean clown about them: “May heaven always keep lead out of my bowels; I’d sooner have it in my brains.” The father has fidgeted a good deal between these two fires of filial thoughtfulness and counsel, but so far has said nothing. At the last remark, his patience deserts him, and he exclaims: “D---- your brains! I don’t believe you’ve got any,” presently adding that the affair is one of which he has had some experience, while as yet neither of the young men has been out. The preliminaries of the duel may be comedy; the combat itself rises to farce. _The Macdermots_ contains, as will have been seen, touches of more polished humour than this, though in most cases it is broad enough to suggest Anthony Trollope’s inheritance of the gift from his clever mother.
Such passages as that last dwelt upon in _The Macdermots_ prepared, as had been suggested, the way for the transition to the next novel, _The Kellys and the O’Kellys_. That story, indeed, is not without some incidents only less sombre than those which diffuse their colour through the earlier book. It is characteristic of Trollope’s novels that the underplot is often of as much importance, and the source of as sustained an interest, as the main plot itself. In _The Kellys and the O’Kellys_, the secondary narrative not only keeps pace with the primary, but reflects the general character of its interest and displays a parallel for some of its occurrences. The period, a little later than the time chosen for _The Macdermots_, is that of O’Connell’s agitation, trial, and unimpaired ascendency. Among those brought to Dublin by the Liberator’s appearance before his judges are two men. One is the head of the O’Kelly, as of the Kelly clans, now Lord Ballindine; the other is a young man of about his own age, a widow trader’s son, Martin Kelly, whom the nobleman contemptuously acknowledges as a sort of fifteenth cousin. This group is completed by the evil genius of the story, Dot Blake. Both the peer and the peasant happen just now to be united by a similarity of object, more closely binding them for the moment than the tie of remote kinship. Fond of the turf, with one or two horses in training for the English “classical” races, Viscount Ballindine is bent on improving his finances by sharing his title with an heiress, Fanny Wyndham; her guardian, the Earl of Cashel, having other views for her, is actively concerned to prevent communications between his ward and her lover.