BELLE BILTON (aka Countess of Clancarty) gave birth to twin boys in December 1891, Richard and Power. Power died two years later. She had three other children with William: Roderic, Beryl and Greville. Belle died of cancer on New Year’s Eve 1906 in Galway, age thirty-nine. She is buried in the grounds of Saint John’s Church, Ballinasloe, County Galway.
WILLIAM LE POER TRENCH (aka fifth Earl of Clancarty) was declared bankrupt in 1907 in Ireland and moved to England, where he was bankrupted in 1910. In 1908 he married Mary Gwatkin Ellis. They had three children: William, Power and Sibell. He died in 1929, age sixty, and is buried in England.
ISIDOR WERTHEIMER was declared bankrupt in August 1891. In 1892 he “very quietly” married eighteen-year-old Mary Hammack. He died in his mother’s house in January 1893, after catching a chill on a horse ride in Rotten Row while in recovery from typhoid. However, it has also been suggested he died by his own hand. He was twenty-nine. There is no evidence to suggest that Wertheimer was gay.
FLO BILTON lost her husband William Seymour in 1894; she remarried that same year. Flo died in 1910, age forty-two.
KATE MAUDE PENRICE BILTON died in 1930, age eighty-seven. Her husband, John George Bilton, predeceased her in 1905; he was sixty-three.
ALDEN CARTER WESTON (baby Isidor’s father) disappears from records in 1891 (while serving seven years for fraud).
ISIDOR ALDEN CLEVELAND WESTON (baby Isidor) joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1915. He married Ida Duchon-Doris in London in 1919. He died in Oregon, age eighty.
PRITCHARD, Belle’s canary, is an invention. In fact, she owned a Saint Bernard dog.
GARBALLY COURT and its parkland were sold to the diocese of Clonfert in 1922. It became the home of Saint Joseph’s College, a Catholic boys’ secondary school, which exists there to this day.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my family, as always, for myriad supports. Especially my husband, Finbar, who acts as sounding board, buffer and all-round good guy.
Go raibh míle maith agat ó chroí to my gorgeous agent, Gráinne Fox, for kindness, wisdom, strength and fun in abundance. Gratitude also to Veronica Goldstein and all at Fletcher & Co for continued hard work and cheerleading.
Enormous thanks to my editors, Tara Singh Carlson and Helen Smith, and forensic copy editor, Martha Schwartz, who painstakingly shepherded Belle into becoming the Belle she needed to be. Many thanks also to Helen Richard and Deborah Sun de la Cruz for valuable input and support on the journey with the novel, and to all at G. P. Putnam’s in New York and Penguin Canada in Toronto for their continued amazing work.
Biggest thanks, and a huge brava, to Isabel Maude Penrice Bilton herself for being a courageous, determined, creative woman, willing to swap the lights of London for the delights of rural Galway. This novel is my salute to you, darling Belle.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nuala O'Connor is the author of Miss Emily and a well-regarded short-story writer and novelist, writing in her native Ireland under the name Nuala Ní Chonchúir. She has won many fiction awards, including RTÉ Radio's Francis MacManus Award, the Cúirt New Writing Prize, the Jane Geske Award, the inaugural Jonathan Swift Award, the Cecil Day Lewis Award, and the Kerry Irish Novel of the Year Award, among others. Her short story "Peach" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she was shortlisted for the European Prize for Literature for her short story collection Nude. She has been published in Granta, The Stinging Fly, and Guernica, among many others. She was born in Dublin in 1970 and lives in East Galway with her husband and three children.
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