Kitty O'Shea

“ His code of honour forbade him to bring up a wrong of private life against a public man, and he had the subtle love of truth that dares to use it as the shield of expediency.
Physically Parnell was so much afraid of pain and ill-health that he suffered in every little indisposition and hurt far more than others of less highly strung and sensitive temperament. He had such a horror of death that it was only by the exercise of the greatest self-control that he could endure the knowledge or sight of it ”

“ Parnell had a great love of sea-storms, and when there {240} was a gale blowing from the west, and rough weather assured, he loved to get me out to Birling Gap to listen to the roar of the sea and the screaming of the wind as it blew around us, nearly carrying us off our feet. He would tie his coat about me, and hold me firmly against the wind as it tore about us, and while we gazed out at the raging waves he would exclaim: "Isn't this glorious, my Queen? Isn't it alive?" ”

“ In the society of men his characteristic reserve and "aloofness" were much more strongly marked, and even in the true friendship he had with at least two men he could more easily have died than have lifted the veil of reserve that hid his inmost feeling. I do not now allude to his feeling for myself, but to any strong motive of his heart—his love for Ireland and of her peasantry, his admiration that was almost worship of the great forces of nature—the seas and the winds, the wonders of the planet worlds and the marvels of science. ”

“ Parnell at liberty was a disturbing force, and the culminating embarrassment of English government in Ireland, but Parnell in prison had become merely a concentrated embarrassment in that there was now no governmental possibility of dealing with the reactionary spirit he had let loose in Ireland—a spirit that was at least better controllable as a weapon in Parnell's hand than as the scattered and absolutely irresponsible fulminations, unreasoning and motiveless, of lawless desperadoes. ”

“ Parnell's moral standard was a high one, if it is once conceded that as regards the marriage bond his honest conviction was that there is none where intense mutual attraction—commonly called love—does not exist, or where it ceases to exist. To Parnell's heart and conscience I was no more the wife of Captain O'Shea when he (Parnell) first met me than I was after Captain O'Shea had divorced me, ten years later. He took nothing from Captain O'Shea that the law of the land could give, or could dispossess him of, therefore he did him no wrong. ”

“ Far beyond the basin at Aldrington, near the mouth of Shoreham Harbour, we had the shore to ourselves and talked of the future, when Ireland had settled down, and my King—king, indeed, in forcing reason upon that unreasonable land and wresting the justice of Home Rule from England—could abdicate; when we could go to find a better climate, so that his health might become all I wished. We talked of the summer visits we would make to Avondale, and of the glorious days when he need never go away from me. ”

“ The house at Patcham was a dear, little, old-fashioned place right against the Downs, and there I used to walk for miles in the early morning, the springy turf almost forcing one foot after the other, while the song of the {29} larks and scent of the close-growing, many-tinted herbage in the clear bright air filled me with joyous exhilaration.
Willie went to town, and often was away for days, on various businesses, and I was very lonely at home—even though I daily drove the old pony into Brighton that I might see my sister. ”

“ Hailed as his country's saviour, execrated as her betrayer, exalted as a conqueror, or judged and condemned by the self-elected court of English hypocrisy, he kept a serene heart and unembittered mind, treading the path he had chosen, and doing the work he had made his own for Ireland's sake.
And there are those who can in no way understand that some few men are born who stand apart, by the very grandeur of Nature's plan—men of whom it is true to say that "after making him the mould was broken," and of whom the average law can neither judge aright nor understand. ”

“ Your Irish Governor would have to have full power to check the evil-doer; whether the evil-doer were a lord or a peasant, whether the malefactor hailed from Westminster or New York, the power should be equally exercised and constantly maintained. In that way, perhaps, as I have said, you might govern Ireland for a season. That, in my judgment, from the first time when I entered political life, appeared to me to be the only alternative to the concession to Ireland of full power over her own domestic interests, and her future. ”

“ We had a long talk about Parnell and about politics—chiefly, of course, as referring to Ireland. He was extremely agreeable and courteous, and I remember very well the great charm of manner he possessed, a charm that struck me afresh at each subsequent meeting. A natural charm and, no doubt, a natural insincerity, but one which is such an immense asset in the career of a great man: that of making others believe—or wish to believe—that they are on the same plane of intellect and diplomacy as himself! ”

“ In the early morning half-light, when the day was just beginning to break, we loved to watch drowsy London rubbing the sleep from her eyes, hastening her labouring sons upon their way to ease the later waking of their luxurious brothers. Parnell was always interested in manual labourers; he loved to watch them at work, and he liked to talk to them of their work and of their homes. A man with a hammer or a pick-axe was almost an irresistible attraction to him, and he would often get me to stand and watch the men engaged on a road or harbour work. ”

“ I had urged my children and his work; but he answered me: "For good or ill, I am your husband, your lover, your children, your all. And I will give my life to Ireland, but to you I give my love, whether it be your heaven or your hell. It is destiny. When I first looked into your eyes I knew."
When Willie arrived so suddenly at Eltham Mr. Parnell was not there, but Willie went into his room, and finding his portmanteau, sent it to London, and left my house, declaring he would challenge Parnell to fight a duel and would shoot him. ”

“ No one could flatter Parnell, neither could anyone humiliate him. "What I am, I am, what I am not I cannot be," was his summing up of his own and of every other man's personality.
His cold, scientific way of sorting out and labelling his own Party at first made me hesitatingly complain, "But, after all, they are human beings!" and his characteristic answer was "In politics, as in war, there are no men, only weapons." ”

“ I am very comfortable here, and have a beautiful room facing the sun—the best in the prison. There are three or four of the best of the men in adjoining rooms with whom I can associate all day long, so that time does not hang heavy nor do I feel lonely. My only fear is about my darling Queenie. I have been racked with torture all to-day, last night, and yesterday, lest the shock may have hurt you or our child. Oh, darling, write or wire me as soon as you get this that you are well and will try not to be unhappy until you see your husband again. ”

“ But now, after all these years, one of Parnell's erstwhile followers has arisen to explain to another generation that Parnell was not really such a man as this, that he {x} was one of Ireland's eternal failures. One who held her dear indeed, but one who balanced her welfare against the clutches of a light o' love with all the foolishness of callow degeneracy, so fondly imagined chivalry by the weak. Not a man who gave his country his whole life, and found the peace and courage of that life in the heart of the woman he loved. ”

“ I could not settle to reading, and began to feel very lonely and to wish I were really waiting up for Parnell, as I used to. I thought of my aunt, of how very old she was, of her immense goodness to me ever since I had lived at Eltham, and of what a great blank there would be when she died—her life seemed to be like a flame flickering in the wind now, and it might go out any day. ”

“ What the ultimate government of Ireland will be is settled, and it will be so, and what my share in the work has been and is to be, also. I do wish you would stop fretting about me. We know nothing of how or why, but only that we love one another, and that through all the ages is the one fact that cannot be forgotten nor put aside by us. ”

“ Some time afterwards, in an interview I had with him, Mr. Gladstone referred to this declaration of Parnell's—that he would stand or fall only by the judgment of the Irish people.
He said: "You know Mr. Parnell's inmost feelings better than others; does this truly represent his mind, Mrs. O'Shea?"
I answered, as I could truly do: "Yes, Mr. Gladstone, that is his only and absolute ideal. I may say Ireland's is the only voice he regards as having any authority over him in the whole world." ”

“ Yet, in his home life, he would come to no decision without seeking my approval, and was absolutely unselfish and considerate. I have known him deadly white, with the still, cold passion that any deliberate thwarting of his will produced in him, sweep aside out of "the Party" and out of all further recognition in any capacity a man who had done useful work, and who, thus thrown out, might have been—and was—dangerous to Parnell's political policy in many ways. He had gone against Parnell's explicit instructions in a certain matter. ”

“ I remember one rough, stormy day when we had been much worried and were wondering whether the time of waiting we had imposed upon ourselves (that Ireland might not risk the leadership which seemed her only hope) till the way could be opened to our complete union before the world, was not to be too long for our endurance. It was a wild storm, and Parnell had to hold me as we slowly beat our way to the pier-head. ”

“ No, that is how a man lives and loves, whether in secret or before the whole world. That is how Parnell lived and loved, and now after these long years I break my silence lest the unmanly echo of excuse given forth by Mr. O'Brien in an age that loves excuse may cling about the name of the man I loved. ”

“ We cannot avoid speculating what would have happened had he gone to Ireland. He had taken a leading part in the release of Parnell; would that have saved him—since the Phoenix Park murderers did not intend to kill Lord Frederick? And if Mr. Chamberlain had been killed in May, 1882, what other course might British politics have taken? Would Tariff Reform ever have been a Tory election cry? Would there have been no Boer War? Would the Tories not have enjoyed that long term of office which for years kept the question of Home Rule in abeyance? ”

“ AVONDALE,
January 14, 1885.
MY OWN QUEENIE,—A word to say that your promised letter has not yet reached me, and I suppose it may turn up to-morrow. The parcel came safely to Dublin, and the hamper here. Mary and I unpacked it with fear and trembling, lest there should have been no tea and sugar, as I had forgotten to say anything to you about them; but they were all right.
The new horse is very quiet and a very fine one; strong and short legs, with plenty of bone, a splendid fore-quarter, and a good turn of speed. I suppose I may bring him back with me. ”

“ He pretended to help me for a few moments, as I neatly put together various uninteresting documents, and then, with a deprecating smile, swept them all together, saying: "It is your game, Mrs. O'Shea; you are too clever. Why didn't you send Mr. Parnell round?" and we parted with laughing expressions of goodwill and amusement on his part that we had not been taken in.
The Government, of course, were bent on forcing "police protection" on Parnell as a convenience to themselves and a means of ascertaining the extent of his influence over the Invincibles. ”

“ I have wondered at the blindness of her mistress, England; wondered that England should still hold out the reward of Home Rule to Ireland, whose sons can fight even, it is said, their brothers, but who fight as children, unknowing and unmeaning, without the knowledge of a cause and without idea of loyalty.
How long the Irish Party had known of the relations between Parnell and myself need not be here discussed. Some years before certain members of the Party opened one of my letters to Parnell. I make no comment. ”