Country House to Special Collections: Rediscovering Books from Carton

On the 10 October 1925, an advertisement in the Irish Times gave notice of an upcoming sale at Bennett & Son Auctioneers and Valuers, 6 Upper Ormond Quay, Dublin. Under the auctioneer’s hammer was

‘A highly important and valuable collection of works of art moved from Carton Co. Kildare…including – 8,000 ounces of silver plate…a gallery of paintings of considerable merit…coloured prints, old French and English furniture, tapestries, continental and European porcelain, French gold and jewelled boxes, bijouterie, rare Irish coins, badges and antiquities …; also the Library of scarce and interesting books. The whole forming the most important collection ever offered for Sale by Auction in this country.’

Irish Times, 10 October 1925, p.12

Two weeks later, a further advertisement gave further details of the library items to be sold, described as being:

‘selected from the Library at Carton…Particularly inclusive of rare and important works on the history and antiquities of Ireland… Folio and other finely illustrated books on art, very many books with coloured plates, books printed in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, works on sport and topography, books relating to America […] and Occaitism, and numerous other well-bound and interesting books.’

Irish Times, 24 October 1925, p.14.

The sale itself started on the 11 November 1925, and continued over three days. Reports noted that it ‘attracted a large crowd’, with ‘many well-known buyers present, including Messrs. Quaritch, Thorpe, Maggs and Josephs (London); Elley (Liverpool), and Neale (Eastbourne). Mr. Greer, of Belfast, was also a buyer, and amongst the Dublin buyers were Messrs’ Hodges and Figgis, F. Hanna, Massey, and Hicks.’ Also present at the sale, the newspaper noted, was Agnes O’Farrelly (or Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh, scholar and later Professor of Modern Irish in UCD) who purchased a set of the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters (Irish Times, 12 November 1925, p.8).

Although no other name connected with UCD appears among these notable booksellers and bibliophiles, over time items that were included in the Carton sale have found their way into the Library and are now part of UCD Special Collections. To date, around fifty such books have been identified, ranging in date from 1687 to 1896, covering a variety of subjects including travel, literature, antiquities, legal history, fine art, and architecture.

Carton House was the home of the Earls of Kildare and the Dukes of Leinster, and the house as we know it today was built under the care of the 19^th Earl, Robert Fitzgerald. Designed by Richard Cassells (or, Castle, architect of Leinster House, Russborough, and other notable Georgian buildings across Ireland) and constructed between 1739 and 1745, with interior stucco decoration by the Lafranchini Brothers, it was a grand and elegant home for an aristocratic family.

A later photograph, taken by Robert French in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, shows the library at Carton: an elegant book and painting lined room, filled with tables and chairs perfect for afternoon’s reading. Before we even get to the contents of the shelves, there is much to see in this image: for example, eagle-eyed viewers might recognize one of these paintings, which is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland (hint: look to the upper right hand side, at the back), or the large photographic print of two women which is propped on a table near the fire place. It shows two sisters: Helen, Viscountess D’Abernon and Hermione, Duchess of Leinster, in a portrait taken at Lafayette, 30 Westmoreland St, Dublin, in 1888. Through an open door at the back of the room, we can see that the book collection extends into the adjacent room, filled again with books of every size.

By the early twentieth century, the Carton estate was in financial difficulties: the 7^th Duke of Leinster sold his interest in the estate to pay off his gambling debts and the long relationship between the house, demesne and the FitzGerald family ended. Several sales ensued in the 1920s and 1940s, breaking up the collection of artworks, furniture, silver, and much more besides.

Compared to the glossy and highly illustrated sales catalogues we see today, Bennett’s listing for the 1925 library sale is relatively modest. A former owner of this copy surely attended the sale, as notations in pencil beside many of the titles indicate the prices that they sold for.

In starting to create a fuller listing of books in Special Collections with Carton provenance, this catalogue has been a useful guide, but in many instances, there was a much quicker way of identifying books that had come from this library. As the images below show, many of the Carton books have a distinctive feature on their binding: a heraldic device showing a small monkey, and a duke or earl’s cornet.

These also feature in the heraldic bookplate found inside many of these books, along with the FitzGerald motto ‘Crom a boo’. Walking carefully along the shelves, these books could be spotted and then cross-referenced with the sale catalogue. This has giving us a good start in listing these books, but there is still work to do for a more diligent scholar: what other gems, not immediately obvious due to alternative bindings, might be nestled on the shelves? What, given time and resources, could be found if the search was extended to other libraries? And to add to this, the 1925 sale was merely the beginning of the dismantling of the Carton library: a further sale was held in 1949, with some 211 books going to Trinity College, Dublin alone.

Alongside their interesting provenance, many of the Carton books also have great appeal for their visual and decorative features (to say nothing of the printed words!). As the illustrated examples show, many have beautifully marbled endpapers (in fact, an example of these is on display in our exhibition at MoLI) and detailed engravings, appearing both as frontispieces and throughout the text. These also include fold-outs, printers devices, and initials.

Other than finding correlation between the 1925 sale catalogue and our holdings, it is difficult to piece together exactly how these books came to UCD. It seems likely that someone from the library would have gone to the sale, given its importance, and the range of material that was available. One last clue, however, also appears on two items identified to date: the sale catalogue itself has the notation ‘O’Kelley’ on the front cover, and a book, A Complete Collection of the State Tyrals of Persons for High Treason, Murders, Rapes &c., (1736-37, sale item no., 602) has both the Carton bookplate, and a second ex libris noting that it was part of the Francis J. O’Kelley collection bequeathed to UCD in 1951.

O’Kelley was an American-born historian, collector and bibliographer, and over 1,000 items in UCD Library come from his collection. Could he be the link between UCD and Carton? This is one of a number of avenues still to be explored in relation to this important collection, and as always, we welcome researchers to come and make full use of these rich holdings.

This post was written by Katy Milligan, Library Assistant, UCD Special Collections

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Further Reading

Aspects of Irish Aristocratic Life: Essays on the FitzGeralds and Carton House, eds., Patrick Cosgrove, Terence Dooley and Karol Mullaney-Dignam, UCD Press, 2015.

Country House Collections: Their Lives and Afterlives, eds. Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgeway, Four Courts Press, 2021.

Mark Purcell, The Country House Library, Yale University Press, 2017.