The Illustrated Letters of Richard Doyle to His Father, 1842–1843. Doyle Richard

in religious figures, mentioned the word “God” in previous letters (“Glory be to thanks,” he writes at one point, neatly sidestepping the issue), or reported attending mass early on Sunday mornings at the French Chapel, as his brothers Charles and Henry had done.³⁵ In fact, there is not a single reference to his family’s Catholicism or to religion generally in all these letters despite the repeated claim by biographers and critics that he was a “devout Catholic.”