"he who for winds and clouds
maketh a pathway free,
through waste or hostile crowds
can make a way for thee."
—paul gerhardt.
one morning in 1882 i saw in the morning papers a cable message announcing the death of miss fanny parnell. mr. parnell was at my house at the time, but asleep. after an all-night sitting i would never allow him to be roused until four in the afternoon, when he would have breakfast and chat with me until it was time to go to the house. on seeing the newspaper cable from america about his sister i thought it better to wake him and tell him of it, lest he should read it while i was away with my aunt. i knew that fanny parnell was his favourite sister, and he had told me that she was the cleverest and most beautiful woman in his family. this i knew was high praise, as willie had met mrs. thomson—another of parnell's sisters—and had told me that she was the most strikingly beautiful woman he had ever met.
i woke him and told him of his sister's death as gently as i could, but he was terribly shocked, and i could not leave him at all that day. for a time he utterly broke down, but presently a cable arrived for him—sent on from london—saying that his sister's body was to be embalmed and brought to ireland, and his horror and indignation {205} were extreme. he immediately wrote out a message for me to cable from london on his behalf, absolutely forbidding the embalmment of his sister's body, and saying that she was to be buried in america.
the idea of death was at all times very painful to him, but that anyone should be embalmed and taken from one place to another after death was to him unspeakably awful. for this, amongst other reasons, i could not bear to have him taken to ireland—to glasnevin cemetery—after his death. my desire was to have him near me and, as he would have wished, to have taken care of his grave myself. but i gave way to the longing of the ireland he had lived for, and to the clamour of those who had helped to kill him. how they dealt with him alive is history now, but how they dealt with him in death is not so well known; and i give an extract from the message of a friend, who had gone to see his grave a few short years after his death: "your husband's grave is the most desolate and neglected spot in the whole cemetery, and i grieve to tell you of the painful impression it made upon me."
i then sent over a servant, with some flowers, and his report was even worse. fragments of glass from the broken artificial wreaths, placed there years before; trampled, neglected grass, and little of that but weeds; and the bare untidy backings and wires of the wreaths i had been sending for the greeting of so many days marked only in the calendar of our love.
poor ireland—a child in her asking, a child in her receiving, and so much a child in her forgetting.
when mr. parnell first came to eltham he told me that he had had, since his boyhood at school, a habit of sleep-walking whenever he was at all run down in health. {206} when he was in america he used to lock the door of his room and put the key into a box with a spring lock that he had bought for the purpose. he feared he might wander about the hotel in his sleep. also he warned me, when he first came, that he was subject to "night terrors," very much as a highly strung child is, and in these he would spring up panic-stricken out of deep sleep, and, without fully awaking, try to beat off the imaginary foe that pressed upon him. it was a species of nightmare; not apparently excited by any particular cause other than general want of tone. after a few years of careful dieting i succeeded in freeing him of these painful and most wearing attacks.
when the attacks came on i went into his room and held him until he became fully conscious, for i feared that he would hurt himself. they were followed by a profuse perspiration and deep sleep of several hours. he was terribly worried about these nightmares, but i assured him that it was only indigestion in a peculiar form. "you really think so?" he would reply, and when i told him that they would pass off with careful dieting he was reassured, and he followed my directions so implicitly as to diet that he soon proved me right.
he became very much run down again after his sister's death, but recovered perfectly, and had no recurrence of these attacks until some years after, when he suffered from a nervous breakdown brought on by overwork. sir henry thompson treated him then, and he quickly recovered.
soon after i met mr. parnell i sent to worcester for some white roses in pots to keep in my hothouse in order to provide my exigeant lover with buttonholes. he loved white roses, he told me, and would not be content with any other flower from me; nor would he wear a rose from {207} my garden, as he said anyone could have those who asked me for them. so i had to keep a constantly blooming company of white roses in my conservatory to provide a buttonhole of ceremony on his speech days, or on other occasions when i wished him to look particularly well. sometimes we would drive out miles into the country. keston common was a favourite resort of ours, and, as we rarely took a servant with us, we would either put up the horse i drove (dictator, given to me by mr. parnell) at some inn, or tie him to a tree while we wandered about or sat under the trees talking.
he would do his best to learn the names of the wild flowers he picked for me—with uncomfortably short stalks!—but, beyond being at last able to name a dandelion or buttercup at sight, he did not shine in any branch of botany. "what did you call this fine plant?" he would ask with a glimmer of fun in his eyes. "it is not a plant you have, but a single flower branch, and it is called a king-cup—picked much too short!" i would answer severely, and he laughed as he tumbled his trophies into my lap and insisted that the ferns ruthlessly dug and cut out with his pocket-knife would grow all right, in spite of their denuded roots, if i "made them do it, in the greenhouse!"
when it was too wet to go out, or if he was not well, he used to amuse himself at home in my sitting-room practising shooting with an air-gun. he used a lighted candle for target, and became so expert in putting out the light this way that it became too troublesome to light the candle so often, and we substituted other targets.
sometimes he would go to the farther end of my aunt's park, where there was a pond basin, dried up long before, {208} and many happy hours were spent there, shooting in turn, with his revolvers.
i remember on one sunday afternoon my aunt's bailiff came down, having heard revolver shots, though the sound was deadened by the high banks. the bailiff was much perturbed by our sunday sport, chiefly because it was sunday. he did not dare press his opinion upon me, as he knew my position in my aunt's household was impregnable, but he had always been jealous of my coming to eltham, where he had served her for over forty years, and he was now so plainly antagonistic that mr. parnell, who did not particularly wish his presence with me talked about, rose to the occasion with the tact he could exert when he considered it worth while.
"oh, is that you, mr. ——?" rising from an absorbed examination of his last bull's-eye. "mrs. o'shea was telling me when we started this match of your being such a good shot with a gun. do have a shot with my revolver; see here, i've got a bull's-eye five times running against mrs. o'shea's one. now let us see what you can do."
mr. —— hesitated; he was a fine shot and had won prizes in his youth, and was susceptible to flattery.
mr. parnell said dryly: "i don't suppose you have had so much practice as i lately, but—" the bailiff turned a wary eye on his wife, who was waiting for him at the gate of a rookery some way off, and mr. parnell smiled as he said: "the lady will not see you," in such a gently sarcastic manner that mr. —— was nettled, and picking up the revolver shot so wildly that he missed the little target altogether.
i said: "mr. —— can shoot, really, mr. parnell, as i told you, but he is nervous!" so mr. —— went on, making shot after shot with varying success till {209} mrs. —— appeared on the scene dressed in her best and sunday virtue, which was resplendent in eltham. she gazed with pain upon mr. ——, who, to appear at ease, entered into a discussion of revolver patterns with mr. parnell. i talked cheerfully to her for a few moments, and introduced mr. parnell, which gratified her immensely, and the two went off happy, but so conscious of the enormity of having given countenance to such desecration of the sabbath, in sunday shooting, that we knew we were safe from their perhaps inconvenient chatter.
mr. parnell was always interested in cricket, and i had a private pitch laid out for him at eltham in a two-acre field. as a young man he had been an enthusiast, and the captain of his eleven. he never went to matches, however, after he entered parliament.
he talked to me much about avondale. he loved the place, and was never tired of planning the alterations and improvements he meant to make in the old house when we could marry. he often went over to ireland expressly to see how things were going there, but after 1880 he could never stay even a few days there in peace. the after-effects of the awful famine, in such terrible cases of poverty and woe as were brought to his notice the moment he arrived in his old home, made it impossible for him to remain there at all. no one man could deal charitably with all these poor people and live, and as time went on mr. parnell's visits became necessarily shorter, for the demands were so many, and the poverty so great, that he could not carry the burden and continue the political life necessary to their alleviation. he told me that he despaired of ever having a penny in his pocket when he took me there, as he always hoped to do.
he was very fond of the old woman he kept at {210} avondale in charge of the house, and who attended to his few needs when he was there; and whenever he went there he would get me to go to fortnum and mason's to buy a pound of their 4s. a pound tea for the old dame, who much appreciated this delicious tea, though she of course stewed it into poison before drinking it.
this old servant of his had the most curious ideas on "first aid to the injured," and when on one occasion mr. parnell had his hand crushed in some machinery at his arklow quarries, she dressed the injured fingers with cobwebs from the cellar walls. to my astonishment he asked for cobwebs at eltham once, when he had cut his finger, to "wrap it in." my children, with delighted interest, produced cobwebs (and spiders) from the cellar, and i had the greatest difficulty in preventing a "cure" so likely to produce blood-poisoning. he accepted the peasant lore of ireland with the simplicity of a child, and i still remember his doubtful "is that so?" when i told him it was most dangerous to put anything so dusty as a cobweb on an open wound. "susan gaffney said cobwebs would stop the poison. they all do it," meaning the peasants.
on august 16th, 1882, he was presented with the freedom of the city of dublin. he wished to avoid a public demonstration, but the corporation insisted on making the most of the occasion.
morrison's hotel, dublin,
saturday, august 20, 1882.
my own queenie,—your two letters have given me the greatest pleasure, and i am so much obliged to wifie for the trouble she has taken about the request i made to her.
the two d.'s[1] have quarrelled with, me because i won't {211} allow any further expenditure by the ladies and because i have made arrangements to make the payments myself for the future. they were in hopes of creating a party against me in the country by distributing the funds amongst their own creatures and are proportionately disappointed.
i hope to have everything settled by tuesday evening so as to enable me to leave town then, and after a week in the country propose to return to wifie.
your own husband.
in october, 1882, was founded the national league, which was to fill the gap caused by the suppression of the land league. a convention had been called for the 17th of the month.
october 10, 1882.
my own queenie,—i hope to be able to start for london on thursday evening.
the doctor says it was an attack of dysenterical diarrhoea, but not of a severe character, and very little fever. it is now quite over. he says my stomach must have been getting out of order for some time.
i hope wifie has been taking good care of herself, and that she has not been alarmed.
her husband will go right back to her, and will not return to avondale for the shooting.
with ever so much love, my own queenie,
your loving husband.
friday evening, october 14, 1882.
my own darling wifie,—i have been so longing to be with you during all these dreary hours, still more dreary as they have been made by the knowledge that wifie has been unhappy and anxious all the time. her letters came to me quite safely and were a great pleasure, and i want some more. on tuesday or wednesday, i forget which, i left my room for the first time and caught a slight cold, which threw me back somewhat, but i have more than regained my lost ground to-day, and am to leave my room again to-morrow, and if i {212} don't over-eat myself or catch cold again, shall go on all right.
the conference will most probably last two days, but i hope to be able to leave on wednesday, or at latest on thursday evening, to be with my queenie until the end of the session.
do please write me a nice letter, my darling.
your own husband.
october 17.
my dearest wifie,—i have arrived all right, and got through the first day of the convention successfully.
you will be glad to hear that the telegrams which i missed were of no importance, and i received them this morning unopened, as well as yours also unopened.
with best love to my own katie.
the convention duly met, parnell presiding, and the national league was formed, with home rule and peasant proprietorship as the two main articles of its creed.
sunday.
my own darling wifie,—i have been so delighted to receive both your letters quite safely; you have no idea how much i long for a letter or a wire from you, and how frightened and nervous i feel when, as sometimes happens, a whole day goes by without any news.
i was very much afraid that my little wife would not have approved of all my speech, and so much relieved to find that you did not scold me.
has anything been done about the monument yet? i hope there will not be any hitch.
am trying to get together a meeting of directors in dublin for next saturday, which i can take on my way back to you, and which i trust may afford the desired relief. i have been doing a good deal of healthy and necessary work since my arrival here, out riding or driving in the open air all day long. i ride a horse called tory, a splendid thoroughbred of my sister's, though he has now seen his best days. he goes just {213} like an india-rubber ball. i have been very successful in that part of the business which i came over for that i have been able to attend to thus far; having already discovered several quarries on my own land, much nearer to the railway station than the one we are working on, and for which we have to pay a heavy royalty. i have every confidence that one and all of them will be found suitable upon trial. kerr is rather a duffer about anything except book-keeping. he ought to have found these out for himself long since, as i gave him the clue when leaving here last september.
my brother-in-law's funeral takes place to-morrow. i am going in a closed carriage, and shall be careful not to expose myself or stand about in the churchyard.
i am certain of being able to finish up everything here so as to leave ireland on saturday or sunday at the latest, and shall soon have my only and best treasure in my arms again.
your loving king and husband.
i shall be in dublin on tuesday evening, and shall sleep at morrison's that night, returning here next day.
from these quarries at arklow parnell supplied the dublin corporation with "setts" for many of the streets in dublin. these setts (granite, pavement kerbing) were not turned out quickly enough by his men at first, so he tried the experiment of giving the men a share in the profits, and this he found answered well in keeping the supply up to the demand of the corporation.
some of the polished granite work turned out by his men was beautiful, and a heavy granite garden vase and a celtic cross appeared in the london (irish) exhibition and also in the cork exhibition.
1882-83 was a very anxious time for me, and the nervous tension caused by the agitation in the political world and the continual threatenings of violence, intrigue, and physical force, made privately to parnell, against him and others, was so great that, by the end of '83, if i had not {214} had my lover's health to care for i should myself have broken down altogether. as it was, there were days when the slightest sound or movement was an agony to me in the throes of neuralgia brought on by the overstrain of the nerves. but for his sake i concealed my misery of pain as well as i could, and in so doing won back a measure of health for myself, which would perhaps have been lost to me had i been able to give way to my "nerves."
during this time i attended the sittings of the house as often as i was able, going up to town as soon as i could leave my aunt for the night, so that i might hear parnell if he spoke, and in any case drive home with him. we always drove home in a hansom cab, as we both loved the cool of the night or of the early morning air.
during these anxious days i did not let parnell have one-half of the threatening and other worrying letters he received. he brought me his letters and parcels from the house, and from a london address he had, to be sorted out. i gave him those for his secretary's answering, any personal ones i thought he would wish to see, and just as many "threats" as i thought would make him a little careful of himself for my sake. the bulk of the "warnings," threats of murder, and invitations to murder i kept to myself, fearing that he would worry himself on my account and object to my continual "shadowing" of him, which i considered his chief protection. he always carried a revolver in his pocket during this time, and insisted on my being similarly provided when i drove home with him at night.
these precautions may appear fantastic in these later sober times, but they were very necessary during that time of lawlessness and unrest in ireland, when the prophecy made by parnell to me ere he finally decided to leave {215} kilmainham on the treaty had become fact: "if i turn to the government i turn away from them—and then?"
the force of his personality was carrying him through the seething of the baffled hatred he would not use, but not without a danger so real and so acute that many a time i was tempted to throw his honour to the winds and implore from the government the protection he would have died rather than ask for himself. but i held on to the end till the sheer force of his dauntless courage and proud will broke down the secret intrigue of spleen that, held by him back from england's governance, would have revenged itself upon the holding hand, had it dared.
there was a lonely part of the road between london and eltham after going through lee, over a common where, to the right, was a deep ditch, and, beyond, the land of (the late) mr. blenkiorn, breeder of racehorses. there were no houses near in those days, and on moonlight nights we could see a long way on each side of a rather desolate bit of country. the moon which gave light also gave shadows, and more than once from some way off we saw the shadow of a man running behind the hedge on the way we had to pass. i always took the side of the hansom near the park, as i thought it would conceal to some degree the fact of parnell's being there. i knew, too, that the fact of my being a woman was still some little protection, but i took the precaution of telling the driver to drive quickly and not stop for anyone at any lonely point in the road. once, to my horror, when we were nearly over the common, i saw a man rise from the ditch and the glint of steel in the moonlight. the man driving saw it, too, and, with a lurch that threw us forward in the cab, he lashed his horse into a gallop. i could just see that the man threw up his arms as he staggered {216} backwards into the ditch and a shot rang out; but nothing dreadful had happened after all. the man had obviously slipped as he sprang up the bank, and, in throwing up his arms to recover his balance, his pistol had gone off—for neither of ours had been discharged. so this exciting drive had no more serious consequences than the rather heavy price of the cabman's putting up in the village till day brought him renewed confidence in the safety of the london road.
sometimes after a late sitting parnell and i would get some coffee at the early coffee stalls for workmen on the way from london. 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.
about this time (it was in 1883) mr. (afterwards sir) howard vincent, head of the detective department of scotland yard, sent a note to the house of commons asking parnell to see him for a few minutes, as he had an important communication to make to him. parnell was just going to speak, so he brought me the note up to the ladies' gallery, and, hastily putting it into my hand, said: "see to this for me."
it was a morning sitting, and i hurried off to scotland yard hoping to get back in time to hear parnell speak, and yet anxious to hear what the note meant. i was shown {217} into sir howard vincent's private room directly i arrived, and he expressed great pleasure, as well as great surprise, at seeing me. i showed him his note to parnell, and asked him to what it referred. he answered that the "officials" all considered the matter serious, and that the government were prepared to give mr. parnell protection if he wished it.
i told him that mr. parnell would, i was sure, not like that at all, and, after a long conversation of no particular definiteness, sir howard said: "i do not think you believe in this particular threat against mr. parnell, do you, mrs. o'shea?"
i replied: "well, it does seem rather like a hoax to me. would you mind letting me see the 'letter of warning'?" he laughed and said: "not at all, but i've torn it up and flung it into the waste-paper basket."
i promptly picked up the basket in question and turned it over on his table, saying: "let us piece it together." 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. the government did not trust parnell, and they wished to frighten him into care of himself and thus weaken the trust of the irish in him.
one evening in 1882 or 1883, when parnell and i were waiting at brighton station to catch the train to london, {218} we noticed that there was much crowding round the book-stall placards and much excitement among buyers of newspapers. parnell did not wish to be recognized, as he was supposed at that time to be in ireland; but, hearing gladstone's name mentioned by a passer-by, our curiosity got the better of our caution and we went to get a paper. parnell, being so tall a man, could see over the heads of the crowd, and, reading the placard, turned back without getting a paper to tell me that the excitement was over the report of "the assassination of mr. parnell." i then asked him to get into the train so that we should run no risk of his being known, and managed to get through the crowd to buy a paper myself. how the report arose we never knew, but at that time, when every post brought parnell some threat of violence and my nerves were jarred and tense with daily fear for him, it took all my fortitude to answer his smile and joke at the unfounded report which left me sick and shaken.
